Reflections About Mobius Final Fantasy

It’s the first post of the new year! XD Of course it’s about Mobius FF~! :B

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Mobius Final Fantasy was released at 10 AM on June 4th, 2015, Japan Time. It seems so long ago yet it’s only been half a year! There’s been a lot of new additions since the beginning and I feel privileged to have seen all of it happen. You can read about my initial impressions about the game and its system here: https://koukoupuffs.net/2015/06/05/mobius-final-fantasy-pic-dump/. :3

The funny thing about Mobius Final Fantasy is the fact that it’s one big grinding game that’s full of cliches and free-to-play staples (which you can read about in the link above ^^).

This is the gameplay in a nutshell: You control a single character and move around to different nodes on a map to fight a set of battles at each one. In battle, tapping anywhere on the screen initiates an attack. Tapping on the readied abilities on the side triggers the use of those abilities. After winning, the user gains experience for overall player level, equipped cards, and Skill Seeds which can be used toward developing jobs.

Enemies drop ability or evolution card materials which are for strengthening cards that possess the same ability or used as fodder to level up the rarity level of a card. Cards can also be obtained through random draws which need special tickets or premium currency.

You’ll find yourself fighting monsters, levelling up cards and jobs, and, drawing for new cards (and maybe jobs too) over and over. You can view it as a roleplaying game with just the battle system. There are some moments where you’ll get to speak to NPCs but there are no towns to visit, no shops to purchase gear and goods, and no way to explore the world the way you want.

Why have I stuck with it then? It’s because I find that it’s fun, completely playable without spending any money, and I also set goals for myself which gives me reason to continue with it.

In fact, my current goals are as follows:

• Max out Titan’s ability and evolve it to 4-star
• Max out Amazoness’ ability and evolve it to 4-star
• Max out Siegfried’s ability and maybe evolve it to 5-star
• Max out the Paladin
• Maybe max out the Viking
• May also work on completing the Skill Panels for the Knight and Thief too

I find that having a focus and something to aim for makes the grind much more bearable. It’s still kind of annoying when I have to manually play through battles such as the Gigantuar fights though. Those ones have to be fought in a certain way to get the desired results. 😡

Here’s a look at my jobs and total number of cards since I started from day 1. ^^ This was all achieved without spending a single penny. I also have no life and play at least once every single day. 😛

I guess I’ll write about my likes and dislikes about Mobius FF as well~

Likes

• Fun, simplistic gameplay that’s not completely mindless. I mean, if your job and cards are strong enough, you CAN use Auto [attack] for almost every battle but that’s not the case for me in the current story chapter or in the harder areas of event maps. XD
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• Beautiful graphics. I started off playing with standard graphics since I didn’t have much storage space on my iPad mini 2. But after restoring it, I’ve upgraded to high definition and wow, Mobius FF is a really gorgeous looking game!
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• Active fan community. ^^ It’s super easy to find information about jobs, cards, and strategies. Unfortunately, most of it is in Japanese and Google Translate tends to mangle sentences so sometimes, it’s hard to understand the meaning of some things.
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• Active development team. The Mobius FF crew is always working on the game and shows no signs of slowing down! There’s usually a big update every month! *__* Hopefully, user count will only continue to increase over the year so it’ll give Square Enix the motivation to keep going (and eventually localize the title). ^^
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• Cute or funny familiars. The literal translation is fairy or sprite but I don’t like to refer to them as either so I always stick with the term “familiar”. Here’s a video of the Red & White Cactuars: https://www.instagram.com/p/_-zh8LiAuE/ 😀 And who can forget the Blitzball familiar? XD
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• Generous bonuses. This is a big thing for me when it comes to freemium games. These bonuses can come in the form of the game reaching a milestone, log in presents, or promotions. There are treasure chests scattered throughout the game that offer one-time gifts too. Clearing and finishing maps net some sweet rewards as well.
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• Mobius Days. Every 8th day of a month is celebrated as Mobius Day. Players will receive a one-time +88 Stamina points added to their Stamina, double stamina recovery when using an Elixir, +20% card fusion success rate, and an increased rate of high rarity card drops among other things. 😀
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Dislikes

• The grind. The re-balancing that happened with the most recent update is really welcomed! I’m seeing a sharp increase in card drops and, more importantly, 3-star card drops. I received a ton of them during my runs in the bonus region maps so developing support cards should no longer take eons like they used to. Of course, fighting the same monsters ad infinitum is still a thing and will always be since it’s a fundamental part of the gameplay design. I’m actually hating the grind for the Skill Seeds more than cards, honestly. I wish they would reduce the amount of Seeds needed for the final Skill Panels. Ugh.
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• Maintenance. Sure, it keeps the game running smoothly but I always hate it when the game is down for hours for adding a new story chapter and other in-game awesomeness. XD
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• Echo familiars. She’s the mascot so there’s really nothing that can be done to dissuade the Mobius FF team to stop giving her new costumes. (Echo familiars are just Echo in different outfits. The exception is the chibi one.)
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• Ugly job outfits and weird corresponding battle music. Many of the jobs look pretty great in illustrations. Sadly, once they’re rendered in 3D, the designs just don’t transfer that well. Here are the most offensive ones in my eyes. These screencaps were taken from Google Image results:
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  Here are the issues:
  Wal’s hair doesn’t work well with the Sword Master or Cloud outfits. ^^ The colour scheme for the Sword Master isn’t appealing either.
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  The Dancer’s design is pretty gross compared to the painting. I totally think the usual hairstyle ruins it.
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  The Warrior of Light has armor that appears to have been made out of cheap plastic.
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  I dislike the Devout more than the Avatar due to the puke-inducing colours. The clothing makes Wal look like he’s wrapped in a winter coat too. Of course, the illustration of it is nice though. The Hierophant actually seems kind of cool but as someone on the Mobius FF English Facebook community pointed out, the costume makes Wal look like a Chinese vampire.
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  As for the background music for jobs, the weirdest one I’ve heard is the Viking’s which sounds like it belongs to some 1970’s or 1980’s show. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHhUIX2d5PY
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  The Dancer’s is strange too but it’s appropriately(?) festive. Not exactly something one would expect to hear during a fight:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHiTd9KTz-Y
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• “Wol“. Although it makes sense that ウォル is translated as Wol, I’ve gotten so used to writing and seeing it as Wal. XD I do wonder if the name is an abbreviation of “Warrior of Light”?

  

Closing Remarks
I think I started both the Japanese and English versions of Puzzle & Dragons not long after they started but I didn’t stick with them very long. I still log in almost every day but I rarely actually play the game. ^^ Mobius FF is one of the few mobile titles I actually spend time with because unlike PAD, the grind doesn’t feel that bad. ^^

I do hope that we’ll see the game in English one day. I’ll definitely play it from the beginning once again. I may even do some re-rolling so I can start with the Thief or Dark Knight. However, that’s dependent on whether or not they include the Save Data Reset right from the get-go. Otherwise, I don’t want to download 1+ GB worth of data multiple times. (The Save Data Reset option was added months later.)