Eidolon Hunter
If one wanted to delve into the world of Final Fantasy for the first time, the barrier to entry is generally rather high. You have a host of 50-hour JRPGs, several daunting MMOs, and a number of complicated and deep tactical spinoffs.
Final Fantasy Explorers tries to ease people into the world of Black and White mages with a different, gentler approach, albeit with its own set of flaws.
Final Fantasy Explorers (3DS)
Developer: Square Enix, Racjin
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: January 26, 2016
MSRP: $39.99
Right at the character creation screen, it’s immediately evident that Final Fantasy Explorers is a dated game. It was released in 2014 in Japan, after all, and the limitations of the tool itself will not inspire any confidence. I actually got a laugh out of the initial male avatar — it had typical chibi-like features but a rock-hard manchild set of abs. It won’t matter much when you’re all suited up in gear, and the game has a Goku hairstyle in its small pool of options, so it gets a pass.
Like many other entries in the series, Explorers revolves around crystals (of course), and the overall plot is kind of secondary to leveling up, acquiring cash, and completing missions, which lead to those sweet, sweet boss battles we all crave. You’ll roam about in a Monster Hunter-esque hub world complete with shops, upgrade centers, and a few other fixins (like a one-mission-bonus-granting fortune teller who takes Play Coins as payment) as you take on new quests that lead you out into the overworld.
Combat is based around AP, which fuels your abilities and is used when sprinting. The game has a rudimentary lock-on feature, the option to use the Circle Pad Pro (or the New 3DS nub) to control the camera, L or R toggles menus for your powers (with four mapped to each trigger, for a total of eight active abilities), an auto-attack button, and that’s really it. To dodge or do anything fancy, you’ll need to equip a skill for it, and even then, it’s a bit rigid in nature. Make no mistake, this is not a high-intensity twitch action game.
You’ll get the keys to the kingdom so to speak after roughly 30 minutes of tutorials, where Explorers will provide you with five jobs (classes) right away: Knight, Monk, Ranger, White Mage, and Black Mage. Thankfully, it isn’t as rigid as a lot of other RPGs in that jobs and abilities can often overlap. With the exception of, say, a Knight using bow-based skills while equipped with a sword, players can thankfully experiment a bit.
Almost anyone can use magic, including the always helpful Cure spell. It’s a great concession for newcomers and veterans alike. You can really mess around with nearly everything available to tool up your dream build — which includes silly “Trance” modes featuring fan-favorite characters like Cloud. As time goes on it only gets deeper, as an impressive 21 jobs are at your disposal.
The freedom to do what you want is even better when playing with a party (both locally or online). Team synergy and class makeups aren’t necessarily bound by the RPG Trinity (tank, healer, damage), but are composed a bit more loosely, to the point where everyone can have fun with what they want to play — like a Dragoon that can use his jumps along with evasion techniques from other jobs for maximum mobility. Speaking of multiplayer, there is support for lobbies online (rather than shoddy matchmaking), which allowed me to get into a number of games even before launch. If you’re going at it solo, you can bring up to three other monsters with you on your travels, with the caveat that the AI isn’t very intelligent or nearly as effective as players.
By the time you fight Shiva several hours in, it picks up, but as a general rule Explorers is a slow burn. Now, I did have fun working my way up the ladder, earning more jobs, and crafting my own equipment, but it’s a bit too slow going at times. As such, the “it gets better after you put time into it” argument comes to mind, but plenty of games do allow for an enjoyable early game to accompany the payoff. That’s not the case here, to an extent.
If you do end up sticking with it though, you’ll find a 100-hour RPG full of stuff to do, including an endgame that involves fighting all of the core bosses again with new strategies in tow. Like many games filled to the brim with different classes, a lot of my time was spent trying out new jobs. While some of them don’t feel wildly different from one another, the dichotomy between the three core playstyles (melee, ranged, and magic) is strong enough to feel like you’re playing a different game.
Final Fantasy Explorers has a litany of pacing issues, particularly when it comes to its quests and, visually, it feels like a DS-era game at times. But players who are willing to jump in with both feet will find a lot to love, and that goes double if you’re planning to play through the adventure with a friend.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
