Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius

Gameplay

Brave Exvius is designed as a turn-based role-playing game, using elements from the Final Fantasy series with those of Brave Frontier. Similar to Brave Frontier, the battle system consists of a simplified interface where players can command their characters to attack by touching the character's corresponding attack button, and special attacks or items can be used by swiping the button and choosing the desired command. Players advance through a series of stages until they encounter and defeat the end boss, all while gaining experience points, crafting materials and money.

The game also uses elements from the Final Fantasy series such as magic spells, character-specific limit breaks, and summon monsters. As part of the game's gacha system, players can summon characters from past Final Fantasy and Brave Frontier titles to help them along their quest. Players can then use those characters to build a party of five units for battling in dungeons, exploring and competing in the Arena against other players' teams. Characters are presented in a pixel art style. Also new to the game compared to Brave Frontier is the ability to explore through towns through touch control in a classic RPG style, which allows the player to talk to people and interact with them, which sometimes gives the player certain quests to complete. Also after completing one dungeon, they can also wander through dungeons which also allows them to obtain more items and complete certain quests.

Story

In a world filled with fantasy, there are two powerful forces in balance: Vision and Lapis. Vision is the manifestation of people's thoughts and feelings and Lapis is the world where all Magic Crystals exist alongside all the visions of the world. With these powers, people flourished in the land and the whole world prospered. However, sometimes peace can be false and darkness can devour the light. As the world of Lapis is falling to its own destruction, two brave warriors stand up against the darkness with the power of Visions in order to bring peace back to the land.

The story focuses on Rain, a young knight from the Kingdom of Grandshelt. Though a stalwart knight in his own right, he feels overshadowed by his father, Sir Raegan. He and his childhood friend Lasswell are traveling on their airship when they encounter a young woman trapped in a crystal who begs assistance from them. She leads them to the Earth Shrine, where the Earth Crystal is under attack by Veritas of the Dark (Dark Lord), who claims to be one of the Sworn Six of Paradia. While the Dark Lord's real motive remains unknown, it seems that he wants to end the world by destroying all crystals. Though Rain and Lasswell have never heard of either Veritas or his organization, he proves to be a formidable foe, destroying the Earth Crystal despite their opposition. With the help of the young woman from the crystal, Fina, a healer and archer who has lost her memory, the two set out to track down Veritas and stop his rampage.

Development

The game was first revealed at the Final Fantasy Live Event in Tokyo alongside Final Fantasy Legends: Toki no Suishō and the Final Fantasy Portal App Eiji Takahashi and Hisatoshi Hayakashi of Brave Frontier both direct and produce the game while Noriyasu Agematsu composed the game's musical score. Illustrations of the characters are handled by Yoshitaka Amano, who illustrated art on early Final Fantasy works. On August 26, 2015 a beta test began for the Android version of the game for a limited number of players who had registered accounts on Square Enix Japanese website. An English global release was announced with the beta version being released in Sweden, alongside the pre-registration campaign. The game was officially released worldwide outside of Japan on June 29, 2016.

Reception

It has a score of 75% on Metacritic. TouchArcade awarded it a score of 3.5 out of five, saying " It's worth a shot if you're a fan of Square's classic RPG series, but in trying to stretch out to two different camps, I fear it may not entirely please either." As of January 2016, the game has been downloaded 5 million times. Mobile titles like Exvius helped Square Enix achieve profitability in 2015, in conjunction with other mobile titles it created.