I will get this out of the way early. If you are in any way, shape of form a Final Fantasy fan, you need to go buy World of Final Fantasy. Plain and simple.
The nostalgia here is so thick you can cut it with a buster sword.
World of Final Fantasy follows the typical FF formula. Start off by confusing the audience, drop your Hero and Heroin into a unfamiliar world, and let things slowly boil to the surface.
But what sets it apart from the 14 core games before it is, it takes all you favorite heroes and monsters from previous franchises and adds them in to this mysterious world of Grimoire.
There is no explanation, no preamble, just that they somehow exist all together on this strung together floating island world. They are all friends to an extend.
Tifa lives in Neiblheim, a city assembled by Shinra after a disaster along side Squall who works for Seed with Rydia and Shelke.
Vivi and Edgar forge a friendship and work to save their kingdom.
Tidas, Squall, Bartz and the original Warrior of Light will all work together to help you save Grimoire from the dark forces threatening it.
None of it makes any sense, but all of it feels so good.
You get the point, this is a walk down memory lane, all while being completely fresh and new.
At the core of WoFF is a robust RPG system, with a simple yet very complex fighting system.
The whole system revolves around stacking a pile of monsters you capture and using them to fight, so take a baby Shiva and “teen” Ifrit, pile them on top of you, and you now have a fire and ice based combo mage.
Or take a baby Ifrit and a teen Ifrit to morph all your spells from there vanilla form to a Firaga or Firaja
Stand on top of an Iron Giant and a Rock monster and you have a heavy hitting melee class.
It is difficult to explain, but it works very well, in practice easy to get into, but hard to master.
Leveling up is done through the creatures themselves. Sure you have a base level for the 2 main characters, but all your bonuses and skills come from spending AP points gained through combat on your specific monsters.
The story itself is pretty cohesive for Final Fantasy all things considered. It has the standard build up to the false ending which so many JRPGs have in common. This is in no way a slam, and actually is pretty well executed. It will keep you guessing as to what is happening and is all very well wrapped up in the end.
The world as a whole is fairly substantial, and you will visit a lot of familiar location from the FF world.
I will not go into detail as I do not want to ruin the surprise, but there are moments here that brought me back to my 20’s playing FF7, and made me seriously long for that FF7 remake we have been promised.
Also, this happened:
If that does not make you run out and grab WoFF, then nothing I have told you will.
The tale lasts about 40 hours for a straight play-through and all the “tea room” side stories. You could easily milk another 20-30 hours out trying to find all the 165 monsters available and finishing all the side quests.
There is also a clear picture by conversations in the game, that this will not be the last game in the World of series, with talk of other worlds and universes, I can see that if WoFF succeeds, we can expect a World of Dragon Quest, or a World of Kingdom Hearts in the future. Which in my opinion would be very welcomed.
All in all a fantastic lighthearted adventure that was enjoyable every moment, not once did I get that familiar “ugh, I just want to be done” feeling that so many RPGs seem to give me.
A solid 9/10 and a must buy for FF fans.
The Compulsive Canadian Gamer 