Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius

Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius is a gacha game, and for that reason, it runs on an inherently predatory freemium business model. Players that pour money into the game will progress further, faster, be able to tackle harder content, and have the upper hand in the PvP-esque arena system. I want to be clear that my enjoyment of this game is based solely on the nostalgia factor of putting characters from my favorite games in the Final Fantasy franchise on the same team. All this said though, FFBE is not bad for a gacha game.

The UI is cleanly designed and mostly explanatory, although some skills aren't very specific about exactly how much of a percent buff they provide or how much damage they do relative to other skills, and you'll need to look this up outside of the game. New content is released almost every week, often coinciding with the release of ~4 new characters to gamble - I mean summon - for. Many of these events are based off of dungeons from the main series FF games, so if you want the nostalgia of exploring FFVII's reactor in Midgar, or the thrilling battle against Golbez from FFIV, you'll spend a lot of time on these events.

The plot is lackluster to say the best, but is skippable at the touch of a button and you can get back to the standard JRPG practice of grinding and increasing those shiny stats. Again, I want to emphasize that nobody is playing this because it's a good standalone game. It's about the novelty of defeating old nemeses like FFVI's Intangir with a ragtag team of heroes from across the franchise, and that one BE original character that's suspiciously way more powerful than any of the main series games.

I'll close my review with the disclaimer that I am definitely blinded by nostalgia, but I have not spent a cent on this game and this game still satisfies my obsessive need to min/max character builds and grind out new gear. I can't recommend this to anyone who hasn't enjoyed multiple FF titles, but if you're nostalgic and can live with not throwing $200 at the game in the hopes of adding Cloud to your roster, this is a good way to occupy your bathroom breaks at work.