FINAL FANTASY BE:WOTV 12+

Nothing is really wrong with this game. I’m a huge fan of FFBE and DFFOO because they’re relatively simple to get used to and most things come easily or with some grinding are obtainable. However, WOTV seems to have a million different things going on at once and can be slightly confusing especially if you’re just starting out. It makes sense to have in depth tutorials but even then the amount of information you’re being forced to remember is a little wild. There’s character abilities, prerequisite levels, prerequisite job levels, character awakenings, ability enhancements, character masteries, vision cards with awakenings, esper cards with awakenings, and then on top of that a weapon system that seems super unreasonable. For example we got a free weapon for early register or something, which is great, but the level on the weapon is so high and the weapon proficiency leveling is EXTREMELY slow. I used Sterne from release for a few months and never saw his weapon proficiency move despite the fact that he had the correct weapon equipped and got plenty of combat experience. It’s just too much. For all of that I would rather play WOTL and grind job points and stat improvement. Significantly simpler. Not a bad game, just requires the amount of time and focus you would dedicate to a console game or pc game.

Good things first: the game itself is fine (an FFT clone basically), and the gacha is actually quite generous and reasonably f2p friendly, with all the free crystals they give you (unless you want to be seriously PvP competitive of course). The way the gacha works is weird (upgrading characters to the point of them being useful is far more expensive & time consuming than actually getting them, so you need to spend all your crystals on upgrades, rather than the gacha itself), but I can live with that. The UI is not great, but passable. Graphics look a bit wonky on my iPhone 7, but perhaps that’s what I get for not having the newest model.

My main problem is that the amount of mindless grinding it wants you to do is far beyond any other game I’ve played, and I’ve played a few. Raid events are the worst, but even beyond that, you, for example, need to play 1000 battles for each character/esper pairing to reach full potential (skip tickets don’t count, and don’t work outside of story missions anyway), grind for mats/gold/etc. Be prepared to leave your phone on & playing itself for many hours daily (at least the game has auto play, to its credit). Weapon upgrade system is complicated far beyond any reason, requires tons of luck, and yes, more grinding. And if that wasn’t enough, material drop rates have recently been further reduced. I don’t have time for this, so back to Langrisser mobile (which is a much better game anyway).

What makes this game so great? 1) The game is very generous. I’ve just started and I already have a handful of UR characters. 2) The combat is complex and interesting. It reminds me of the good old days of Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. 3) The story and its characters are all very good. I had trouble falling asleep because I couldn’t stop myself from progressing through the story. Some suggestions: I used to play Covenant of the Plume, so that has shaped my expectations quite a bit. I feel like more should happen when you strike the enemy from behind. Maybe there can be an Ambush buff/de-buff that increases damage/lowers defense or maybe there can be an Off-guard de-buff that increases the time before the next turn. I also feel like there should be formation buffs that reward grouping and positioning units together. For example, maybe something can happen when a unit attacks an enemy and there’s an ally unit on the opposite side or the enemy is surrounded on all fours by allied units. There should be something that rewards teamwork. For example, maybe when a unit acts, allies that are in range join in with preset actions that have reduced effectiveness or something. Overall, still a great game that I would recommend.