![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arynisWhile Final Fantasy IX was my first mainline FF game, I may or may not have played another game before it, which was a memorable part of my childhood: Chocobo Racing. I fell in love with the cute rendition of recurring characters such as Chocobo, Moogle and Bahamut, even though I wasn't familiar with the references to previous games, or the franchise's shared lore elements. Roughly 20 years later, I have several FF games under my belt, and World of Final Fantasy offered a chance to revisit the feelings Chocobo Racing evoked in me. A crossover game with a super adorable aesthetic? Sign me right up! To make it even sweeter, WoFF is the Pokemon game I didn't know I wanted so much.
Full spoilers for World of Final Fantasy. Because of the nature of this game, there are full spoilers for several FF games as well!
Strengths
Strengths
Cozy and Entertaining Catch 'Em All
One of the biggest strengths of the game, if not the biggest, is the gameplay centered around the various monsters you can collect, the Mirages.
Instead of weapons, armor and accessories, your primary equipment consists of the many Mirages you can capture across the land of Grymoire. Each Mirage has its own elemental and status resistances, stat distribution (e.g., high HP, but low ATK), and unique abilities. They all have their level up board too! Furthermore, every Mirage fits into one of the four sizes (S, M, L, XL) which affects how you can use them in battle. Many of these Mirages have an evolution line, and several of them can be transfigured into different Mirages. Most of them are recurring creatures from the franchise, some of them are new. (Probably? I'm not sure, to be honest.)
Does this sound familiar? Final Fantasy XIII-2 did have a monster pet system that let you control a creature as a third party member, level them up and give them active and passive skills. This game builds on the same concept and made it the central element. And it does work so well!
First of all, there's a nuance to imprisming (capturing) Mirages. It's not as simple as reducing the Mirage's HP, or defeating them with a chance of recruitment. Every Mirage has its own conditions for triggering a so-called prismunity, which makes the Mirage eligible for imprisming. In the case of most conditions (such as inflicting a status effect), prismunity can be triggered multiple times, which increases the chances of successfully imprisming said Mirage, up to ensuring a guaranteed capture. This can add a risk vs. reward dilemma where you may need to decide between imprisming or furthering the prismunity, such as when facing off against a more powerful foe, or when said foe might be on the verge of being defeated or fleeing the battle. Some conditions are easier to trigger, others require you to bring a Mirage with specific abilities.
Once you have your Mirages on hand, the next step is using them. Your teams consist of a stack of the protagonists and their Mirages. When you create a stack, the individual Mirages' (plus the protagonists', Reynn and Lann) stats are combined, for better and worse. You can gain access to their abilities, cancel out specific weaknesses, or make weaknesses worse if you aren't mindful of your build. Stack combinations also yield special skills. For example, two characters have Fire in the stack, so the special ability would be Fira. Half of the fun is discovering these combinations and coming up with builds you enjoy using. Sizes also come into play with stack building. Reynn and Lann can be either M or L size, so you need to decide if you need certain S and M Mirages more, or would prefer S and L Mirages. Worry not, though, as Reynn and Lann can equip Mirajewels, which can grant them stat increases, abilities or resistances, allowing you to fit them to whatever stack you have. One Mirage has Fire and you lack another one? Add a Fire Mirajewel into the mix. As with stack themselves, you can experiment with what Mirajewels to equip, and when.
Speaking of skills, I mentioned how each Mirage has their own level up board. These are called Mirage Boards. When a Mirage levels up, they gain skill points beyond stat increases that come with level growth. You can spend skill points on the Mirage Board to gain additional stats and learn skills. You can only catch a limited number of each Mirage, but you can gain additional prisms (which is used for imprisming) from leveling up said Mirage if you want to have more. Most importantly, each Mirage's board comes with a Mirajewel that you can unlock for later use. So if you know which specific Mirajewel you need, you can go out, obtain multiple copies of the corresponding Mirage, and level them up until you have enough.
In addition, there are several skills that resemble Hidden Machines from Pokemon, which are passive abilities. They are used to bypass or eliminate obstacles so you can access hidden areas, although in some cases it's necessary for progress. The most notable abilities are Stroll and Joyride. The former has Mirages following you for extra cuteness (they can find items in the area, but it's rare), the latter lets you ride Mirages for faster travel, and the game is generous with the lineup. You can ride Magitek Armors and Chocobos for a classic experience, or pick unconventional options such as Malboro or even Omega(!).
Lastly, Mirage Boards can pave the way to unlock transfigurations. For many Mirages, it's unlocking their evolution line, so to speak, or the option to transform the Mirage into another Mirage. A full line lets you complete that Mirage's Mirage Board, while transfiguration options are helpful for accessing other Mirages you weren't able to catch, or if you just need to toolbox your way into something more appropriate for your current needs. That's the best way to sum up WoFF's system, it's a giant toolbox you expand over time.
Your toolbox can be adorable, cool or even scary, however you want it!
But your options don't end with the Mirages. Champions, the various heroes of the mainline FFs, also play a notable part in your repertoire. Champion Medals let you summon Champions to deal a lot of damage, or heal up your team. XL Mirages can be summoned as Mega Mirages, which are the summons of this game. It does help that most of the XL Mirages are actual Espers, but a few of them are elite beings, such as Behemonster or Cerberus. You can obtain Champion Mirajewels, which transforms Reynn and Lann into the hero of your choice in battle (complete with corresponding battle music), in addition of granting them additional skills. However, Champion Mirajewels lock out Champion summons and Mega Mirages, so plan accordingly.
Lesser summons such as Ramuh, Ifrit and Shiva, who are often filler before the Good Stuff(tm), also play a much bigger role in this game and have more personality, and chances you'll be using one of their forms in your lineups through most of the game. Their evolution line is great, and the addition of gender swapped versions is nice too, although Ramewl is Ramuh's granddaughter instead of a female Ramuh.
The only aspect of battling I felt that could have played a bigger role was the stacking/unstacking mechanic. The tutorial points out the choice and importance of stacked vs. unstacked, but outside of very niche scenarios, you want to be stacked at all times. Being unstacked makes your characters squishy, which means they fall in battle too easily on their own, nor they do much damage. In general, you want to make sure you are always stacked, while making sure you unstack any enemy as soon as possible.
Beautiful and Cute Aesthetic
As far as visuals and designs go, the game is super charming and resembles a toy world. The characters look a lot like collectible figures, which made me want to collect Mirages even more. I especially enjoyed WoFF's rendition of recurring creatures. The Espers are all great, but the moment I saw Behemoth or Coeurl, I wanted them in my collection right there, to the point I got myself 3 Coeurls. Baby Coeurl and Coeurl are too irresistible.
Quacho Queen, one of my favorite designs.
Beyond the usual cutscenes in the game, some are anime cutscenes. This was a pleasant surprise, and the anime opening really kicks off the tone of the game. Cute, yet awesome.
The world of Grymoire is colorful and vibrant. While some zones don't stand out and feel like "oh, this is the woods zone, oh, this is the cave zone," several are a homage to other FF areas (such as Pyreglow Forest resembling FFX's Macalania Woods and Spring). At the end of the day, they are all pretty and pleasing to explore. It makes you feel like you're on an adventure as you witness places familiar and new.
In terms of exploration, the areas are well designed. While they are linear, all of them have a secret area that requires you to go out of your way to find them. Some of them involve a puzzle whose solutions are hinted in the key items written by Biggs and Wedge, like following a trail of lights. Treasure chests also require you to explore and look at every nook and cranny—some chests have tricky placements and are easy to overlook.
As far as navigating the world goes, you can do fast travel from one area to another from the world map. Unfortunately, airship navigation, which is available late in the game, is kind of underwhelming and is only used for hunting down Murkrifts and to visit areas to unlock a superboss.
Emphasis on Fun and Freedom
Compared to other FF games, WoFF isn't as challenging in terms of difficulty or missables. There are no missable Mirages or items, although undiscovered treasure chests can be a pain to track down even with the Treasure Tracker item. A few areas do lock down temporarily during certain story parts, but you can go to wherever you want. The tougher fights, which may require more specific strategies and teams, are locked behind the postgame, so you can go through the story with any build that fancies you. Just make sure your Mirages are sufficiently leveled—don't throw level 1 Mirages at the final boss, for example. So if you find a Mirage you like and want to stick with, feel free to do so. The game is also generous with healing items, by the endgame you'll have plenty of Elixirs and Ethers at your disposal to heal your way through.
The game also provides options such as making abilities cost 0 AP (including Mega Mirage summons and attacks), Champions being free to summon and can be repeated in the same battle, unlimited battle items (spam Megalixirs to your heart's content) and unlimited Gil (if you don't want to grind for money). Battles themselves can be sped up via button hold/toggle, and Champion/Mega Mirage summon scenes can be skipped.
Overall speaking, this game is fantastic if you want a laid-back FF game. I'd say even the final boss and the superbosses are fair in comparison to the other games. The game isn't without frustrations (those dang minigames), but as far as I know you can fail them in the story (or at least some of them?) and still progress with the plot. If you want to platinum the game, that's another matter.
Fanservice Everywhere
While WoFF can be enjoyed without having knowledge about the franchise, the game rewards those who are familiar with the series and its lore. I already mentioned the area homages. The Champions' mannerisms and dilemmas click together if you know their stories from their respective games. One of the bigger ones is an intervention quest where Yuna is witnessing villagers sacrificing themselves to the Cogna, so they don't invade the village. Yuna dealing with a depressing cycle feels profound when you recall the cycle with Sin from FFX. There are plenty of smaller nods as well. Eiko guarding Big Bridge Alexander, you say? She even floats and glows similarly to how she looked like while summoning Alexander in FFIX. Oh, she's with Princess Sarah later in the game? Princess Garnet's/Dagger's original name was Sarah, too. Lightning's Crimson Blitz broke again? Not the first time someone broke it. And that's not even getting into Lightning confronting Odin. Yeah, this Odin is nothing like the Odin we know and love from the trilogy. And so on, and so on. Another area where lore knowledge shines is Pellinore and Segwarides resembling Valigarmanda and Zona Seeker respectively. Combined with Brandelis's design (Bahamut), it's an early sign that the Exnine Knights are based on Espers. One third of them, that is.
Really, the entire game is a giant, heartwarming love letter to the franchise.
Puntastic Story
Reynn and Lann are quite the comedic duo (with extra Tama the-commentary), there's a lot of humor and puns going around, and the writing doesn't shy from breaking the fourth wall or being outright snarky. But beneath all the lighthearted shenanigans, there's an intriguing lore to the world of Grymoire, and the details of chaotic beings bent on death and destruction. The title of the game is also clever: it's not just a world of Final Fantasy in the fanservice sense, but Grymoire is a world of Final Fantasy, one of many A-worlds.
The mechanic behind Champions and Anti-Champions are fascinating, though we don't see examples for the latter beyond Sephiroth. The Exnine Knights are terrifying abominations, and it makes you wonder what really led up to their creation. A lot of these details aren't prominent in the game, but the Who's Who entries do paint an overall image of these matters.
Personally, I liked Reynn and Lann, although they felt like more of an audience surrogate than their own characters with their own personalities. The reliance on the comic relief and the running gags probably didn't help in this regard, either—the twins were too defined by their funny moments, although they were written with Manzai in mind. I'll say that I did like the banter between the twins and Tama, as well the puns. It was the "Haha Lann is so hopeless and oblivious" humor that felt forced and fell flat for me.
Speaking of puns, which I appreciated all the way through the game...
Submitting without comment.
While the game is overall lighthearted, the shift between serious and non-serious moments didn't feel jarring to me. And the reliance on being funny does pay off when you see the twins falling apart, haunted by their past atrocities, or when Lann seals Brandelis and himself away, tears in his eyes. The twins facing off against Pellinore and Segwarides, who possess their mom and dad respectively, is quite the gut punch too. I don't think I can look at Valigarmanda or Zona Seeker again without getting teary-eyed. In regards to Zona Seeker, this was a lousy Esper who cast Shell on your party, and... that's it. It's way more terrifying and memorable in WoFF, for sure.
Tama's sacrifice and the subsequent events are also tear jerking, even if the game blatantly telegraphs her coming back (the anime OP featuring her bigger form and the big, glaring rectangle in her Mirage Board menu, among others). The way she's brought back felt pretty clever, too.
Brandelis, while he's just an omnicidal maniac, represents well the terror of an out-of-this-world abomination. He cares about his own rules, and doesn't mind breaking others' rules. Not even a cage is enough to keep him confined. However, Reynn and Lann kicking his ass (well, face) feels like one of the most satisfying victories I've seen in FF. They beat him up to keep him down, without fancy magic or gods involved. (At least as far as the cutscene goes, I enjoyed dropping a Megaflare on Exnine Bahamut.) Even the final boss music feels more victorious and positive compared to the other FF final boss songs.
Suddenly, these two aren't funny comic relief anymore.
The game doesn't end on the happiest note, either. Reynn and Lann rid Grymoire of Brandelis, wanting to make up for their misdeeds. Two teenagers who are reckless but have their hearts in the right place, decide to take a hitch with a terrifying monster that near destroyed the world. The secret ending added in Maxima shows a glimpse of what happened to the twins on the other side. Lann is covered in dark rags, has Reynn's arm, and Reynn herself is nowhere to be seen. There's no humor anymore, only a grim fate that makes me worry for both of them.
I think the game's central theme is rules and breaking them. Enna Kros talks about having to follow rules even as a god, Brandelis remarks he's fond of his rules, while Tama is revived thanks to a loophole. It all ties nicely together.
Flaws and Shortcomings
Crashes and Hang-Ups
I'm going to note that these issues are annoying and frustrating, but they can be circumvented so any loss of progress (or data) is as little as possible.
The game has a tendency to crash at random, but the trigger is rather specific: it happened to me either when I used an exit gate at the end of a dungeon, or when I tried to fast travel from one location to another using the world map. The best you can do is save as often as you can. The game is generous with save points (both gates and save crystals give you the option to save), so in most cases you shouldn't have to backtrack much to save your progress.
The hang-ups are much nastier, however. It happened to me about 1-2 times, so I'd say it was a rare occurrence. In these cases, the game hung up when I started it up. Now, the game is super stubborn with Alt-Tabbing, you can't Alt-Tab your way out if you're playing fullscreen. Alt-F4 didn't seem to work, neither did trying to close the application from the Alt-Tab pop up on Windows. You can't go into Task Manager, either, or any other app for that matter. You can't even get Windows to shut down or reboot, so the only way to get past this issue is hard booting by turning the computer off and on. My advice would be to make sure you aren't doing anything else before playing, and save any work beforehand.
I've heard of other problems: corrupted saves, the game not playing well with AMD video cards, but thankfully I haven't experienced the former.
Various UX Gripes
The game's design fell short in a few places that made the experience clunky and tedious. UX stands for user experience, I'm going to borrow this definition from Sebastian Long which explains it better than I could, for now:
1) Information regarding status buffs
In battle, the game displays status effects in two ways: visual effects on the characters on the field, and icons in the status screen you can view by pressing START. These are status effects such as Haste or Confusion, as well stats changes like increased DEF/MDEF. Stat changes can be only seen in the status screen. Status debuffs (such as Poison or Confusion) can be seen on the status screen, and are always indicated with an icon on/over the character. Poison is green bubbles above the character, Confusion is a spinning green dot over the character, and so on. However, the game is inconsistent when it comes to buffs.
The game comes with the following buffs: Haste, Bravery, Faith, Shell, Protect, Reflect, Regen. Out of these, only the following have visual representation on the field: Haste (lines flowing upwards), Bravery (red glow on the character model), Faith (blue glow on the character model) and Regen (green stars floating above the character model). The rest can be only seen in the status screen. This is a problem because buffs have a limited duration, and are helpful in more difficult fights, such as vs. Enna Kros. Shell can make the difference between getting killed or living (especially when hit by super effective spells). The only way I can make sure Shell is still active is repeatedly checking the status screen, which is turns the battle into a clunky, slow crawl. What is even worse is that the icons for Shell/Protect/Reflect are identical and only differ by color. Blue is Protect, Red is Shell, Green is Protect. I struggled remembering which was which, which is not fun when you need to keep track of several of these effects. Nevermind that R/G/B as color choices are poor picks in terms of accessibility. Having distinctive icons for these three buffs would have been helpful.
2) Navigating the battle status menu screen
A related issue to the above, but navigating the status screen itself is a chore. The way this screen functions in case of multiple stacks is the following:
Stack A -> Unit A1 -> Unit A2 -> Unit A3 -> Stack B -> Unit B1 -> Unit B2 -> Unit B3 -> etc.
If you want to view Stack B's info, you have to cycle through units A1-3 first. I think it would have helped to make stack check the default, and make checking a stack's units optional.
3)Mirajewels and stack abilities
I talked about how Mirajewels can help with shaping your stack, and how certain abilities result in special skills within that stack. The problem is that the Mirajewel equipment and the stack setup are two separate menus, you can't look at both at the same time. If you want to align Reynn/Lann to their stack, you'd need to look over the skills in the stack setup menu, then go into the Mirajewel menu and equip Mirajewels accordingly. This slows down experimentation and switching between the two menus (three if we count the main menu itself) is a slog. It would have been helpful to view stack skills from the Mirajewel menu, or just a more streamlined menu in general, so making your decisions is a less tedious experience.
These three complaints were my biggest problem. There are probably smaller annoyances that didn't register as much in my mind as these did.
Voice Over Lines Cutting Off
Several lines in the game suffer from being cut off near the end of the line. I don't know if this is an issue with editing the VO lines themselves, or if something else is to blame, but it took me out of the experience, especially with more emotional/intense moments. It's a huge shame because the English VO is fun to listen to, from Tama's the-verbal tics to NPCs being hammy to helping-welping someone with questy-duesty-doos. I don't know if the Japanese VO has this issue, I only played with the English VO on.
Hit-and-Miss Minigames
Minigames. The part of the game that's arguably the most frustrating and tedious. While the FF series isn't a stranger to minigames being a mixed bag, it was a letdown to have such content in a mostly lenient and chill game.
I liked some of the minigames, such as Noctis's fishing (Fishing) and Lightning running in Nether Nebula (Nebula Storm). The former is similar to the stage fight minigame from FFIX, you need to press buttons in order to catch Mirages, which get a fourth button thrown into the mix as you advance. If you can keep your calm and give it some practice, Leviathan (and Noctis's Mirajewel) will be yours. The latter has Lightning run through the cave while she punts the S forms of Ramuh/Shiva/Ifrit out of the way. The Mirages both pop up with a visual and audio cue, so just keep calm and press whichever button corresponds said Mirage. My only complaint is that the Mirages' hitboxes can be tricky, so timing the hit poorly can count Lightning as having run into the Mirage, even if you swung her sword. It's bit of a trial-and-error, but practice helps here too.
The rest of the minigames, though? Not fun at all.
One minigame has Reynn trying to kick (or punch) the Cactuar Conductor under a time limit in Whack-A-Mole style (Whack-a-Cactuar). The catch? Cactuar Conductor moves entirely by RNG, so expect to fail this minigame a lot. Reynn screaming with anger feels oddly relatable here. I think it would have helped to give Cactuar Conductor some kind of pattern that would make hitting him easier. This is the intervention mission version, the one you can play from the twins' room is slightly different.
Another has Tidus hitting Einhänders with his Blitzball (Einhänder Invasion). The catch with this game is that the strength of Tidus's shot fluctuates too quickly, so it's easy to screw up the timing and miss your shot because you didn't let the button go at the right time. The fluctuation could have been slower and thus a little more lenient. Tidus is a star Blitzball player, come on.
Lastly, there's Sandstalker, which is a combination of Battleship and Minesweeper. This minigame has two achievements tied to it: one for completing it 10 times, another for completing it under special conditions during the intervention mission for Maduin's Memento, which is a requirement for 100% Mirage Manual. I didn't enjoy this kind of minigame in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and I sure don't enjoy it here either, haha. The Maxima DLC supposedly made it easier, but the few tries I had with it wasn't enjoyable. Maybe I'll come back to this some other time and try again.
Conclusions
World of Final Fantasy let me re-experience what I felt with Chocobo Racing back then, and it exceeded my expectations. I sincerely hope this game gets its sequel greenlit one day (Hiroki Chiba already has the full script written), because I'd love to see a continuation of the story with a refined gameplay.
Full spoilers for World of Final Fantasy. Because of the nature of this game, there are full spoilers for several FF games as well!
Strengths
- Cozy and entertaining catch 'em all
- Beautiful and cute aesthetic
- Emphasizes fun and freedom
- Lots of rewarding references and homages
- Puntastic setting and story
- Occasional crashes and hang-ups
- Various UX gripes
- Voice over lines are frequently cut off
- Minigames are hit-and-miss
Strengths
Cozy and Entertaining Catch 'Em All
One of the biggest strengths of the game, if not the biggest, is the gameplay centered around the various monsters you can collect, the Mirages.
Instead of weapons, armor and accessories, your primary equipment consists of the many Mirages you can capture across the land of Grymoire. Each Mirage has its own elemental and status resistances, stat distribution (e.g., high HP, but low ATK), and unique abilities. They all have their level up board too! Furthermore, every Mirage fits into one of the four sizes (S, M, L, XL) which affects how you can use them in battle. Many of these Mirages have an evolution line, and several of them can be transfigured into different Mirages. Most of them are recurring creatures from the franchise, some of them are new. (Probably? I'm not sure, to be honest.)
Does this sound familiar? Final Fantasy XIII-2 did have a monster pet system that let you control a creature as a third party member, level them up and give them active and passive skills. This game builds on the same concept and made it the central element. And it does work so well!
First of all, there's a nuance to imprisming (capturing) Mirages. It's not as simple as reducing the Mirage's HP, or defeating them with a chance of recruitment. Every Mirage has its own conditions for triggering a so-called prismunity, which makes the Mirage eligible for imprisming. In the case of most conditions (such as inflicting a status effect), prismunity can be triggered multiple times, which increases the chances of successfully imprisming said Mirage, up to ensuring a guaranteed capture. This can add a risk vs. reward dilemma where you may need to decide between imprisming or furthering the prismunity, such as when facing off against a more powerful foe, or when said foe might be on the verge of being defeated or fleeing the battle. Some conditions are easier to trigger, others require you to bring a Mirage with specific abilities.
Once you have your Mirages on hand, the next step is using them. Your teams consist of a stack of the protagonists and their Mirages. When you create a stack, the individual Mirages' (plus the protagonists', Reynn and Lann) stats are combined, for better and worse. You can gain access to their abilities, cancel out specific weaknesses, or make weaknesses worse if you aren't mindful of your build. Stack combinations also yield special skills. For example, two characters have Fire in the stack, so the special ability would be Fira. Half of the fun is discovering these combinations and coming up with builds you enjoy using. Sizes also come into play with stack building. Reynn and Lann can be either M or L size, so you need to decide if you need certain S and M Mirages more, or would prefer S and L Mirages. Worry not, though, as Reynn and Lann can equip Mirajewels, which can grant them stat increases, abilities or resistances, allowing you to fit them to whatever stack you have. One Mirage has Fire and you lack another one? Add a Fire Mirajewel into the mix. As with stack themselves, you can experiment with what Mirajewels to equip, and when.
Speaking of skills, I mentioned how each Mirage has their own level up board. These are called Mirage Boards. When a Mirage levels up, they gain skill points beyond stat increases that come with level growth. You can spend skill points on the Mirage Board to gain additional stats and learn skills. You can only catch a limited number of each Mirage, but you can gain additional prisms (which is used for imprisming) from leveling up said Mirage if you want to have more. Most importantly, each Mirage's board comes with a Mirajewel that you can unlock for later use. So if you know which specific Mirajewel you need, you can go out, obtain multiple copies of the corresponding Mirage, and level them up until you have enough.
In addition, there are several skills that resemble Hidden Machines from Pokemon, which are passive abilities. They are used to bypass or eliminate obstacles so you can access hidden areas, although in some cases it's necessary for progress. The most notable abilities are Stroll and Joyride. The former has Mirages following you for extra cuteness (they can find items in the area, but it's rare), the latter lets you ride Mirages for faster travel, and the game is generous with the lineup. You can ride Magitek Armors and Chocobos for a classic experience, or pick unconventional options such as Malboro or even Omega(!).
Lastly, Mirage Boards can pave the way to unlock transfigurations. For many Mirages, it's unlocking their evolution line, so to speak, or the option to transform the Mirage into another Mirage. A full line lets you complete that Mirage's Mirage Board, while transfiguration options are helpful for accessing other Mirages you weren't able to catch, or if you just need to toolbox your way into something more appropriate for your current needs. That's the best way to sum up WoFF's system, it's a giant toolbox you expand over time.
Your toolbox can be adorable, cool or even scary, however you want it!
But your options don't end with the Mirages. Champions, the various heroes of the mainline FFs, also play a notable part in your repertoire. Champion Medals let you summon Champions to deal a lot of damage, or heal up your team. XL Mirages can be summoned as Mega Mirages, which are the summons of this game. It does help that most of the XL Mirages are actual Espers, but a few of them are elite beings, such as Behemonster or Cerberus. You can obtain Champion Mirajewels, which transforms Reynn and Lann into the hero of your choice in battle (complete with corresponding battle music), in addition of granting them additional skills. However, Champion Mirajewels lock out Champion summons and Mega Mirages, so plan accordingly.
Lesser summons such as Ramuh, Ifrit and Shiva, who are often filler before the Good Stuff(tm), also play a much bigger role in this game and have more personality, and chances you'll be using one of their forms in your lineups through most of the game. Their evolution line is great, and the addition of gender swapped versions is nice too, although Ramewl is Ramuh's granddaughter instead of a female Ramuh.
The only aspect of battling I felt that could have played a bigger role was the stacking/unstacking mechanic. The tutorial points out the choice and importance of stacked vs. unstacked, but outside of very niche scenarios, you want to be stacked at all times. Being unstacked makes your characters squishy, which means they fall in battle too easily on their own, nor they do much damage. In general, you want to make sure you are always stacked, while making sure you unstack any enemy as soon as possible.
Beautiful and Cute Aesthetic
As far as visuals and designs go, the game is super charming and resembles a toy world. The characters look a lot like collectible figures, which made me want to collect Mirages even more. I especially enjoyed WoFF's rendition of recurring creatures. The Espers are all great, but the moment I saw Behemoth or Coeurl, I wanted them in my collection right there, to the point I got myself 3 Coeurls. Baby Coeurl and Coeurl are too irresistible.
Quacho Queen, one of my favorite designs.
Beyond the usual cutscenes in the game, some are anime cutscenes. This was a pleasant surprise, and the anime opening really kicks off the tone of the game. Cute, yet awesome.
The world of Grymoire is colorful and vibrant. While some zones don't stand out and feel like "oh, this is the woods zone, oh, this is the cave zone," several are a homage to other FF areas (such as Pyreglow Forest resembling FFX's Macalania Woods and Spring). At the end of the day, they are all pretty and pleasing to explore. It makes you feel like you're on an adventure as you witness places familiar and new.
In terms of exploration, the areas are well designed. While they are linear, all of them have a secret area that requires you to go out of your way to find them. Some of them involve a puzzle whose solutions are hinted in the key items written by Biggs and Wedge, like following a trail of lights. Treasure chests also require you to explore and look at every nook and cranny—some chests have tricky placements and are easy to overlook.
As far as navigating the world goes, you can do fast travel from one area to another from the world map. Unfortunately, airship navigation, which is available late in the game, is kind of underwhelming and is only used for hunting down Murkrifts and to visit areas to unlock a superboss.
Emphasis on Fun and Freedom
Compared to other FF games, WoFF isn't as challenging in terms of difficulty or missables. There are no missable Mirages or items, although undiscovered treasure chests can be a pain to track down even with the Treasure Tracker item. A few areas do lock down temporarily during certain story parts, but you can go to wherever you want. The tougher fights, which may require more specific strategies and teams, are locked behind the postgame, so you can go through the story with any build that fancies you. Just make sure your Mirages are sufficiently leveled—don't throw level 1 Mirages at the final boss, for example. So if you find a Mirage you like and want to stick with, feel free to do so. The game is also generous with healing items, by the endgame you'll have plenty of Elixirs and Ethers at your disposal to heal your way through.
The game also provides options such as making abilities cost 0 AP (including Mega Mirage summons and attacks), Champions being free to summon and can be repeated in the same battle, unlimited battle items (spam Megalixirs to your heart's content) and unlimited Gil (if you don't want to grind for money). Battles themselves can be sped up via button hold/toggle, and Champion/Mega Mirage summon scenes can be skipped.
Overall speaking, this game is fantastic if you want a laid-back FF game. I'd say even the final boss and the superbosses are fair in comparison to the other games. The game isn't without frustrations (those dang minigames), but as far as I know you can fail them in the story (or at least some of them?) and still progress with the plot. If you want to platinum the game, that's another matter.
Fanservice Everywhere
While WoFF can be enjoyed without having knowledge about the franchise, the game rewards those who are familiar with the series and its lore. I already mentioned the area homages. The Champions' mannerisms and dilemmas click together if you know their stories from their respective games. One of the bigger ones is an intervention quest where Yuna is witnessing villagers sacrificing themselves to the Cogna, so they don't invade the village. Yuna dealing with a depressing cycle feels profound when you recall the cycle with Sin from FFX. There are plenty of smaller nods as well. Eiko guarding Big Bridge Alexander, you say? She even floats and glows similarly to how she looked like while summoning Alexander in FFIX. Oh, she's with Princess Sarah later in the game? Princess Garnet's/Dagger's original name was Sarah, too. Lightning's Crimson Blitz broke again? Not the first time someone broke it. And that's not even getting into Lightning confronting Odin. Yeah, this Odin is nothing like the Odin we know and love from the trilogy. And so on, and so on. Another area where lore knowledge shines is Pellinore and Segwarides resembling Valigarmanda and Zona Seeker respectively. Combined with Brandelis's design (Bahamut), it's an early sign that the Exnine Knights are based on Espers. One third of them, that is.
Really, the entire game is a giant, heartwarming love letter to the franchise.
Puntastic Story
Reynn and Lann are quite the comedic duo (with extra Tama the-commentary), there's a lot of humor and puns going around, and the writing doesn't shy from breaking the fourth wall or being outright snarky. But beneath all the lighthearted shenanigans, there's an intriguing lore to the world of Grymoire, and the details of chaotic beings bent on death and destruction. The title of the game is also clever: it's not just a world of Final Fantasy in the fanservice sense, but Grymoire is a world of Final Fantasy, one of many A-worlds.
The mechanic behind Champions and Anti-Champions are fascinating, though we don't see examples for the latter beyond Sephiroth. The Exnine Knights are terrifying abominations, and it makes you wonder what really led up to their creation. A lot of these details aren't prominent in the game, but the Who's Who entries do paint an overall image of these matters.
Personally, I liked Reynn and Lann, although they felt like more of an audience surrogate than their own characters with their own personalities. The reliance on the comic relief and the running gags probably didn't help in this regard, either—the twins were too defined by their funny moments, although they were written with Manzai in mind. I'll say that I did like the banter between the twins and Tama, as well the puns. It was the "Haha Lann is so hopeless and oblivious" humor that felt forced and fell flat for me.
Speaking of puns, which I appreciated all the way through the game...
Submitting without comment.
While the game is overall lighthearted, the shift between serious and non-serious moments didn't feel jarring to me. And the reliance on being funny does pay off when you see the twins falling apart, haunted by their past atrocities, or when Lann seals Brandelis and himself away, tears in his eyes. The twins facing off against Pellinore and Segwarides, who possess their mom and dad respectively, is quite the gut punch too. I don't think I can look at Valigarmanda or Zona Seeker again without getting teary-eyed. In regards to Zona Seeker, this was a lousy Esper who cast Shell on your party, and... that's it. It's way more terrifying and memorable in WoFF, for sure.
Tama's sacrifice and the subsequent events are also tear jerking, even if the game blatantly telegraphs her coming back (the anime OP featuring her bigger form and the big, glaring rectangle in her Mirage Board menu, among others). The way she's brought back felt pretty clever, too.
Brandelis, while he's just an omnicidal maniac, represents well the terror of an out-of-this-world abomination. He cares about his own rules, and doesn't mind breaking others' rules. Not even a cage is enough to keep him confined. However, Reynn and Lann kicking his ass (well, face) feels like one of the most satisfying victories I've seen in FF. They beat him up to keep him down, without fancy magic or gods involved. (At least as far as the cutscene goes, I enjoyed dropping a Megaflare on Exnine Bahamut.) Even the final boss music feels more victorious and positive compared to the other FF final boss songs.
Suddenly, these two aren't funny comic relief anymore.
The game doesn't end on the happiest note, either. Reynn and Lann rid Grymoire of Brandelis, wanting to make up for their misdeeds. Two teenagers who are reckless but have their hearts in the right place, decide to take a hitch with a terrifying monster that near destroyed the world. The secret ending added in Maxima shows a glimpse of what happened to the twins on the other side. Lann is covered in dark rags, has Reynn's arm, and Reynn herself is nowhere to be seen. There's no humor anymore, only a grim fate that makes me worry for both of them.
I think the game's central theme is rules and breaking them. Enna Kros talks about having to follow rules even as a god, Brandelis remarks he's fond of his rules, while Tama is revived thanks to a loophole. It all ties nicely together.
Flaws and Shortcomings
Crashes and Hang-Ups
I'm going to note that these issues are annoying and frustrating, but they can be circumvented so any loss of progress (or data) is as little as possible.
The game has a tendency to crash at random, but the trigger is rather specific: it happened to me either when I used an exit gate at the end of a dungeon, or when I tried to fast travel from one location to another using the world map. The best you can do is save as often as you can. The game is generous with save points (both gates and save crystals give you the option to save), so in most cases you shouldn't have to backtrack much to save your progress.
The hang-ups are much nastier, however. It happened to me about 1-2 times, so I'd say it was a rare occurrence. In these cases, the game hung up when I started it up. Now, the game is super stubborn with Alt-Tabbing, you can't Alt-Tab your way out if you're playing fullscreen. Alt-F4 didn't seem to work, neither did trying to close the application from the Alt-Tab pop up on Windows. You can't go into Task Manager, either, or any other app for that matter. You can't even get Windows to shut down or reboot, so the only way to get past this issue is hard booting by turning the computer off and on. My advice would be to make sure you aren't doing anything else before playing, and save any work beforehand.
I've heard of other problems: corrupted saves, the game not playing well with AMD video cards, but thankfully I haven't experienced the former.
Various UX Gripes
The game's design fell short in a few places that made the experience clunky and tedious. UX stands for user experience, I'm going to borrow this definition from Sebastian Long which explains it better than I could, for now:
Games User Experience is a discipline of science and design for overcoming the difficulties in making games that deliver on their experiential intent. It uses formalised processes and job roles to discover flaws in a game's design and its means of communicating itself to the player. UX leverages a body of academic knowledge on designing for humans than spans decades of study, across many domains.I'm filing these under UX because these issues involve the way the game presents information to the player, as well makes it difficult for the player to discern information from various choices. So what are these issues?
Without UX approaches, games fall victim to difficulties that are inherent to creativity, including a lack of objectivity, and challenges in teaching and accommodating players that are dissimilar to ourselves. These factors ultimately affect the perceived quality of the game, critical reception and enjoyment. (Long, 2017)
1) Information regarding status buffs
In battle, the game displays status effects in two ways: visual effects on the characters on the field, and icons in the status screen you can view by pressing START. These are status effects such as Haste or Confusion, as well stats changes like increased DEF/MDEF. Stat changes can be only seen in the status screen. Status debuffs (such as Poison or Confusion) can be seen on the status screen, and are always indicated with an icon on/over the character. Poison is green bubbles above the character, Confusion is a spinning green dot over the character, and so on. However, the game is inconsistent when it comes to buffs.
The game comes with the following buffs: Haste, Bravery, Faith, Shell, Protect, Reflect, Regen. Out of these, only the following have visual representation on the field: Haste (lines flowing upwards), Bravery (red glow on the character model), Faith (blue glow on the character model) and Regen (green stars floating above the character model). The rest can be only seen in the status screen. This is a problem because buffs have a limited duration, and are helpful in more difficult fights, such as vs. Enna Kros. Shell can make the difference between getting killed or living (especially when hit by super effective spells). The only way I can make sure Shell is still active is repeatedly checking the status screen, which is turns the battle into a clunky, slow crawl. What is even worse is that the icons for Shell/Protect/Reflect are identical and only differ by color. Blue is Protect, Red is Shell, Green is Protect. I struggled remembering which was which, which is not fun when you need to keep track of several of these effects. Nevermind that R/G/B as color choices are poor picks in terms of accessibility. Having distinctive icons for these three buffs would have been helpful.
2) Navigating the battle status menu screen
A related issue to the above, but navigating the status screen itself is a chore. The way this screen functions in case of multiple stacks is the following:
Stack A -> Unit A1 -> Unit A2 -> Unit A3 -> Stack B -> Unit B1 -> Unit B2 -> Unit B3 -> etc.
If you want to view Stack B's info, you have to cycle through units A1-3 first. I think it would have helped to make stack check the default, and make checking a stack's units optional.
3)Mirajewels and stack abilities
I talked about how Mirajewels can help with shaping your stack, and how certain abilities result in special skills within that stack. The problem is that the Mirajewel equipment and the stack setup are two separate menus, you can't look at both at the same time. If you want to align Reynn/Lann to their stack, you'd need to look over the skills in the stack setup menu, then go into the Mirajewel menu and equip Mirajewels accordingly. This slows down experimentation and switching between the two menus (three if we count the main menu itself) is a slog. It would have been helpful to view stack skills from the Mirajewel menu, or just a more streamlined menu in general, so making your decisions is a less tedious experience.
These three complaints were my biggest problem. There are probably smaller annoyances that didn't register as much in my mind as these did.
Voice Over Lines Cutting Off
Several lines in the game suffer from being cut off near the end of the line. I don't know if this is an issue with editing the VO lines themselves, or if something else is to blame, but it took me out of the experience, especially with more emotional/intense moments. It's a huge shame because the English VO is fun to listen to, from Tama's the-verbal tics to NPCs being hammy to helping-welping someone with questy-duesty-doos. I don't know if the Japanese VO has this issue, I only played with the English VO on.
Hit-and-Miss Minigames
Minigames. The part of the game that's arguably the most frustrating and tedious. While the FF series isn't a stranger to minigames being a mixed bag, it was a letdown to have such content in a mostly lenient and chill game.
I liked some of the minigames, such as Noctis's fishing (Fishing) and Lightning running in Nether Nebula (Nebula Storm). The former is similar to the stage fight minigame from FFIX, you need to press buttons in order to catch Mirages, which get a fourth button thrown into the mix as you advance. If you can keep your calm and give it some practice, Leviathan (and Noctis's Mirajewel) will be yours. The latter has Lightning run through the cave while she punts the S forms of Ramuh/Shiva/Ifrit out of the way. The Mirages both pop up with a visual and audio cue, so just keep calm and press whichever button corresponds said Mirage. My only complaint is that the Mirages' hitboxes can be tricky, so timing the hit poorly can count Lightning as having run into the Mirage, even if you swung her sword. It's bit of a trial-and-error, but practice helps here too.
The rest of the minigames, though? Not fun at all.
One minigame has Reynn trying to kick (or punch) the Cactuar Conductor under a time limit in Whack-A-Mole style (Whack-a-Cactuar). The catch? Cactuar Conductor moves entirely by RNG, so expect to fail this minigame a lot. Reynn screaming with anger feels oddly relatable here. I think it would have helped to give Cactuar Conductor some kind of pattern that would make hitting him easier. This is the intervention mission version, the one you can play from the twins' room is slightly different.
Another has Tidus hitting Einhänders with his Blitzball (Einhänder Invasion). The catch with this game is that the strength of Tidus's shot fluctuates too quickly, so it's easy to screw up the timing and miss your shot because you didn't let the button go at the right time. The fluctuation could have been slower and thus a little more lenient. Tidus is a star Blitzball player, come on.
Lastly, there's Sandstalker, which is a combination of Battleship and Minesweeper. This minigame has two achievements tied to it: one for completing it 10 times, another for completing it under special conditions during the intervention mission for Maduin's Memento, which is a requirement for 100% Mirage Manual. I didn't enjoy this kind of minigame in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and I sure don't enjoy it here either, haha. The Maxima DLC supposedly made it easier, but the few tries I had with it wasn't enjoyable. Maybe I'll come back to this some other time and try again.
Conclusions
World of Final Fantasy let me re-experience what I felt with Chocobo Racing back then, and it exceeded my expectations. I sincerely hope this game gets its sequel greenlit one day (Hiroki Chiba already has the full script written), because I'd love to see a continuation of the story with a refined gameplay.