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New iOS Game is "Final Fantasy: All the Bravest"


Apple
Contrary to what we (and many others) proposed yesterday, the new iOS release isn't Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, or a bundle release of both; it is, as laszlow mentioned after the original post, "All the Bravest."

What does that mean, "All the Bravest?" Well, it pretty much does what it says on the tin. This game is all-combat, all-the-time, with you controlling ten or more characters - I think I count twenty in one of the screenshots - at once by tapping them when their ATB gauge is full. The combat will progress through "stages" in which you battle various monsters followed by a boss. It looks to be pretty low-strategy, as well. There's no indication that you pick attacks per character (which, admittedly, would get pretty frustrating, pretty fast with that many folks in the battle party), merely that you tap them when they're ready and tap multiple characters in succession to create attack chains. The base set of characters appear to be generics, with jobs culled from the history of the Final Fantasy series. There are twenty of these, some of which are unlockable through play.

I think this game has a few things against it, personally. First, with most of the sprites being recycled from other games, odds are there's going to be no coherent art direction in the battles, and it's going to look like a third-grader's collage project - I mean, just look at the title screen. Second, and this won't surprise anyone, but much of the content, including 35 premium characters, are available via in-app purchase, and not for the initial buy, which is expected to be about three US dollars. Finally, if there's really not much more to it than "tap things when you're prompted," it seems like this is a mashup of Theatrhythm and Airborne Brigade, two other recent iOS offerings from Squenix, which doesn't seem terribly innovative when you think about it.

The game's out in New Zealand now, given the magic of world time. Since New Zealand has about nine people, none of whom I know to be CoN members, we might have to wait a little bit to see if my first impressions are indeed accurate.

Sources: Kotaku, Official All the Bravest Site
Posted in: Square-Enix News, News from Japan, The World at Large

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Comments

Del SComment 1: 2013-01-16 18:02
Del S This one is just... I don't know, it just all seem like SE are producing a bit cheap shovelware for phone-gaming because it's a good way to make up for the fact their flagship titles keep having engine fires. And the odd thing is, it looks like it would be fun, maybe even worth the price.

But overall I can't help but see this as being just a bit of quick plundering of fan-wallets to keep their heads afloat. It really does look like even as a decent and entertaining thing, the letdown people might have is that there's not really anything new being presented to people. This seems like it won't really appeal to anyone but existing fans, and IMO SE's real problem is that they're having trouble getting new fans and trouble retaining the rest.
Death PenaltyComment 2: 2013-01-17 09:07
Death Penalty
Quote (Del S @ 16th January 2013 14:02)
This one is just... I don't know, it just all seem like SE are producing a bit cheap shovelware for phone-gaming because it's a good way to make up for the fact their flagship titles keep having engine fires.  And the odd thing is, it looks like it would be fun, maybe even worth the price.

It really does seem this way. And given Wada's statements recently (which have been reported here), it seems like SE is going to keep churning out the shovelware.

As far as All the Bravest is concerned, I'm not sure. Josh has pointed out a lot of valid concerns. I like the basic idea of the game: sprite based, can use characters and fight enemies from the series, can have like a bajillion party members. But with no story and seemingly no strategy, I'm not sure that it'd be good for much more than one afternoon's amusement.

Edit
Gosh, there's already an absolutely scathing review on 1UP.
Rangers51Comment 3: 2013-01-17 15:30
Rangers51 So here's my thing, and I think it's a thing that not a lot of people seem to process (elsewhere, I mean, not here, where the commentariat seems more savvy). I might have posted a similar argument elsewhere in the past, as this is not really a new thought; if so, forgive the redundancy - this restatement is triggered mainly by things I've seen on Twitter the last couple days and also that "review" DP mentioned (which, by the way, is just one blogger's review who is tied to 1up only because 1up allows members to blog things like that on their site).

Games like Airborne Brigade and All the Bravest have the Final Fantasy brand and reference things in the Final Fantasy universe. That's it. You can't say that they're ruining Final Fantasy any more than the SaGa games for Game Boy that were released in the West using the FF name ruined Final Fantasy, in my opinion. They may have that familiar logotype, but they're not Final Fantasy. They're not even developed by Square.

Continuing that line of thought, I'd say these games are actually not much different than when we got Super Mario Bros.- and Zelda-branded cereal twenty-five years ago. Cash-in? Yep. Godawful? Absolutely. Damaging to the brands? Yeah, probably a little bit, though I think the people loudly making that claim about Squenix somehow seem to think that a mobile phone game is the reason they didn't like Final Fantasy XIII or haven't gotten Kingdom Hearts 3 or Versus yet.

My point is this: If you don't like the way that Square Enix is using the Final Fantasy brand? Don't buy the games, or try the games and say that the games are terrible. Just don't sit there and complain about how this shovelware is ruining the franchise, because it's not. You can say that the franchise is ruined, and that's a valid opinion to make. However, the people who make this claim tend to be the people who have played more of the games and have a long-standing positive opinion of the Final Fantasy brand. How does a bad mobile game make the quality of <insert your favorite FF game here> less? How does it tie in to the lack of quality you see in <insert your least favorite FF game here>?

The bottom line, at least to me, is that it simply does not. I say this because (again, in my opinion) there's no actual evidence that there's any connection between these sidecar releases and the core series beyond the name and the re-use of some names and visual elements. Not the same platforms, not the same developers, nothing but the name and the fact that someone like Wada at some point saw the proposal and said "hey, why not, we like money."

I know it's hard to separate something like Final Fantasy XIII or XIV from the rest of the series, if you don't like the decisions made in those games. But with these mobile games, it shouldn't be that hard. And face it, there's not a soul out there who would be this up in arms about games like ATB if they didn't have that branding. You wouldn't even be reading about them, because they'd be just another mobile release in a sea of games that come out every day, some good, some awful. So what's the point in freaking out so much?

Again, let me point out that this isn't directed at anyone in particular, here or elsewhere. It's just a response to the zeitgeist specific to these games.
Glenn Magus HarveyComment 4: 2013-01-30 12:22
Glenn Magus Harvey Question: Is this thing getting the same sort of overwhelmingly negative reaction that Rockman Xover is getting?
Rangers51Comment 5: 2013-02-01 21:17
Rangers51
Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 30th January 2013 07:22)
Question: Is this thing getting the same sort of overwhelmingly negative reaction that Rockman Xover is getting?

Not sure, personally, as I have next to no interest in the Mega Man franchise, and doubly so because I don't think Xover was released outside of Japan, was it?

Anyway, based on five minutes of reading the internet, yes, it seems to be. Both are F2P games with silly in-app purchases that jack up the cost of the game in ways that make the game experience less enjoyable. Again, based on what I'm reading, though, FF:ATB is a much more egregious offender, if for no other reason than the fact that you might not even get the character you want to use when you make a purchase.
laszlowComment 6: 2013-02-02 04:28
laszlow
Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 30th January 2013 07:22)
Question: Is this thing getting the same sort of overwhelmingly negative reaction that Rockman Xover is getting?

Honestly, I think All the Bravest is having a worse reaction. The gameplay is just as mindless, but All the Bravest has drawn more attention in general and *seems* to be more primed for price-gouging. Both games are just fanservice on mobile phones and I'm not interested in either one.
Glenn Magus HarveyComment 7: 2013-02-03 16:22
Glenn Magus Harvey
Quote (Rangers51 @ 1st February 2013 16:17)
Not sure, personally, as I have next to no interest in the Mega Man franchise, and doubly so because I don't think Xover was released outside of Japan, was it?

Anyway, based on five minutes of reading the internet, yes, it seems to be. Both are F2P games with silly in-app purchases that jack up the cost of the game in ways that make the game experience less enjoyable. Again, based on what I'm reading, though, FF:ATB is a much more egregious offender, if for no other reason than the fact that you might not even get the character you want to use when you make a purchase.

The trade show demo of Xover was used to "reconstruct", in Flash, an extrapolation of what the game might turn out to be like. Said Flash game is...a rather poor experience, and was widely distributed among the western Mega Man fandom. The actual game is reportedly only a tiny bit better than the extrapolated imitation.

Also, I think Xover doesn't even give you a choice of character, but I'm not sure whether it's worse to just star one main character, or to give people a slate of characters but prevent them from choosing.
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