Is ‘Final Fantasy: All The Bravest’ Actually a Game?

Now normally, I’d just toss up a game review for something like Final Fantasy: All The Bravest like it was any other game. But it isn’t really like any other game. In fact, I am not even sure it is really a game at all. Let’s give a little background first. Final Fantasy: All The Bravest (or FF: ATB for the purposes of this discussion) was pushed as a combination of some fan favorite Final Fantasy nostalgia and the Active Time Battle system (also known as the ATB, see the connection?).Think about it. Cloud from FF VII teaming up with Locke from FF VI or the Dark Knight Cecil from FF IV teaming with a Magitek armored soldier and a moogle. Now combine that with classic villains from the series as well as a party with upwards of thirty members. How could it go wrong?

Download FF: ATB for $3.99. The first thing you’d notice is that you aren’t allowed to pick your targets and effectively each squad member only has one health each. Also, each character has only one specific attack which is activated by tapping or swiping over them in the game screen when their meter has filled up. This means that as long as a player keeps moving their finger across the screen, they’ll hit characters by default and continue the battle without even needing to look. As you unlock more characters, you don’t even get to decide the makeup of your party as it is totally random. One battle you may have 3 warriors and the next you may have none. So strategy completely goes out the window.

Oh, and did we mention these characters that unlock in the game are just generic FF roles too? The Warrior. The Bard. The Red Mage. That’s it. To get the nostalgic favorites, you have to buy them… at 99 cents each. That means to get all of the “premium” character content, it’d cost $34.65 more on top of the $3.99 price point. But that’s okay because who needs ALL those characters? You only played Final Fantasy VII and just want Cloud, Tifa, Aeris and Red XIII. Screw the rest of them. You can just pay four bucks and get your favorites right? Nope. When purchasing the premium characters, buyer beware because these purchases are random. Unless you’ve loved every character from every Final Fantasy, prepare to be disappointed when you don’t get the ones you want.

But don’t worry, once you get through all of Final Fantasy: All The Bravest’s world which is just a path of gauntlet battles which has no story at all and just some minor dialogue from various boss fights, you can purchase more worlds. At $3.99 a pop, you can get “airship tickets” to Midgar, Zanarkand and Archylte Steppe. So we are talking about roughly $46 of purchases for a “game” with no story and no strategy to its gameplay. Literally, the game can be played with your eyes closed.

Finally, there’s no way to lose. While characters can get incapacitated from losing their single hit point, a battle doesn’t end when the player’s team has been knocked out. Instead the screen goes grey and every three minutes one member revives. Wait long enough and everyone will be alive and well. Or you can continue the microtransaction curse that is FF: ATB and purchase golden hourglasses which bring everyone back to life.

So this isn’t written as a review because a review would give an indication that there was actually a game being played in Final Fantasy: All The Bravest. This is instead written to act as a warning to watch out for this soul and wallet sucking microtransaction app in disguise. Don’t expect a rich RPG based off the Final Fantasy license or to even see your favorite characters together unless you’re willing to risk trying to pay for them. Shame on you SquareEnix for trying to pass this on us. First you announce a game based just on Lightning and now this?