World of Final Fantasy: MAXIMA grabbed my attention soon after I purchased my Nintendo Switch. I have been a fan of JRPGs for as long as I can remember, especially the Final Fantasy series. This game is certainly more enjoyable if you have some Final Fantasy knowledge. Without it, you wouldn’t get as much joy out of seeing your favorite characters from the franchise, and this game tends to rely pretty heavily on that.
The reason I say that is because this game has a ton of Final Fantasy fan service. From locations you visit, to the ability to change your character’s appearance to a famous Final Fantasy character, there’s plenty of love here. Every monster, or Mirage, you encounter is from Final Fantasy games as well.
In this game, the Mirages are actually the most important part. The game’s battle system revolves around them. The main characters, twins Reynn and Lann, can stack two additional Mirages on top of themselves to form a stack. Mirages come in different sizes and throughout the game you’ll capture them to add them to your stack or collection. Large Mirages go on the bottom of the stacks, then medium, then small. The twins can change between large and medium as well, to better create stacks to your advantage.
Think of World of Final Fantasy as a Final Fantasy/Pokémon hybrid. Unlike Pokémon though, each Mirage has a different condition that needs to be met before being able to capture them. Some are as simple as lowering their health, but others may need a certain status effect to be inflicted on it. From there, your stacks combine all of your abilities with the abilities of the Mirages you have stacked on top of you. This gives you plenty of ways to strategize and gain new abilities. This was probably my favorite aspect of this title.
Once you have your stacks, battling is traditional turn-based. To make things easier, I tried to give most of the white magic spells to Reynn’s stack and the black magic spells to Lann’s stack. Every once in a while though, I’d be in positions where I’d need some extra heals or attacks, so I began to mix things up a bit.
I enjoyed the story as well, even though at times it was very childish. It was, in a way, refreshing to see Final Fantasy in a more lighthearted way, though. As a Funko Pop collector, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the Final Fantasy characters in their Chibi forms. Sometimes though, the voice acting would get a bit weird, or the story would get lost in the twin’s fussing at each other. It was definitely directed towards a younger audience than most Final Fantasy titles.
I actually would really enjoy another World of Final Fantasy game, though. I love monster collecting games and RPGs. Any game that makes me strategize is a win for me. With this one, it wasn’t all too difficult but I still enjoyed exploring with different stacks and leveling up the Mirages to unlock more abilities.
Overall, the experience I took from this game was exactly what I wanted from it. It is a solid RPG that kept me interested until the very end. I think I have around 70 hours of gameplay in it, and I don’t think I ever finished everything it has to offer. I hope they make another one soon, because I would play it in a heartbeat.
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