Final Fantasy Explorers (for Nintendo 3DS) Review - Review 2022

Final Fantasy Explorers is a scrap of a misnomer. This $39.99 Nintendo 3DS ($260.00 at eBay) game from Square-Enix doesn't have a whole lot of world to explore. It's actually a hunting game in the same vein as the Monster Hunter series, with a focus on killing big enemies, collecting materials, and crafting equipment. And every bit such, information technology's a pretty fun romp filled with Final Fantasy references that serial fans will appreciate. Information technology isn't most equally wide or deep as Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate ($25.72 at Walmart) , but it's even more accessible and easy to get through, whether you accept friends to hunt with or not.

You're an Explorer, Sort of

Don't recall of this every bit a Final Fantasy game. Think of it as a Final Fanservice game. Y'all won't get any deep characterizations or epic stories hither. It'due south purely a monster-hunting game with loads and loads of Final Fantasy references thrown in. It doesn't endeavor to be anything more, nor should it; these side games tin exist satisfying in their own means to fans without requiring them to swoop deep into new and increasingly complicated lore.

In this game, you're an explorer in a globe powered by crystals. You lot're on an island that has a really big crystal in the center, and y'all're trying to brand your style to it. The way to that crystal involves undergoing dozens of quests to impale monsters and repeatedly defeating powerful eidolons, classic summoned monsters from the Final Fantasy series.

Hunting is the Better Word for It

The story is a flimsy framing device to put you in the monster-hunting mood. You're an explorer (hunter) who has to undertake quests that more often than not involve running effectually the same areas killing big monsters. Y'all discover materials to make new equipment. Once y'all do so, you can go out and kill tougher monsters. There might exist chocobos and cactuars all over the place, simply at its heart this is purely a Monster Hunter game with a few Final Fantasy twists thrown in.

Final Fantasy Explorers

You lot won't get experience points or level upwards every bit you play, as y'all practice in nigh Last Fantasy games. Instead, your capabilities are completely adamant by your equipment, job, and skills. Y'all start as a jack-of-all-trades Freelancer, only can unlock over a dozen boosted Final Fantasy jobs, such equally Dragoon, Paladin, and Black Mage, each with its own abilities and equipment limitations. You can then load eight skills to the 10, A, B, and Y buttons, paired with the L and R triggers. A Black Mage might load up with every elemental attack spell available, while a Paladin might dissever his abilities between white-magic spells for healing and buffing and sword attacks for criminal offense.

Hack and Slash and Cast

Combat is real-time, with all deportment dominated by the employ of Action Points (AP), which serve as both your stamina and mana. All weapon skills and spells use AP, as does sprinting. You can recharge AP by walking around normally, or by using regular weapon attacks on enemies. Managing your AP employ is simply as of import as monitoring your health; when your AP are tuckered, your offensive and defensive options in battle are drastically limited. Y'all also have to argue with Last Fantasy status furnishings similar Silence, Confuse, and Blind, responding to them with the right items and spells so y'all can keep fighting.

Skills build up Resonance, an energy level that steadily climbs and unlocks temporary, powerful buffs chosen Crystal Shifts. These charge you with special abilities such every bit enhanced elemental attacks, improved armor, or higher critical hit rates for a brusk period of time. Crystal Shifts tin can also trigger environmental changes to the zone that unlock new routes, or they can summon special rare enemies to fight.

A split meter lets you lot go into Trance mode, a more powerful country that enhances your stats, heals you, and enables special super-attacks that can devastate the surrounding area. Trance depends on the magicite (a kind of enchanted crystal) you equip. You unlock magicite types past progressing through the game and trapping eidolons (summoned monsters) in crystals. Eidolon magicite simply makes your graphic symbol stronger, then enables a summon set on using the eidolon. You can also go character magicite of classic Terminal Fantasy figures similar Cloud, Terra, and Cecil. Using Trance with a character magicite equipped cosmetically turns you into the character for a short period of fourth dimension, and information technology lets you utilize a powerful limit-break attack like Cloud's Omnislash.

Final Fantasy Explorers

This is where Final Fantasy Explorers differs most from Monster Hunter. In Monster Hunter, about everything is determined by your equipment. There are no classes or skills, simply the forcefulness of your gear and your ability equally a player to use it. Each weapon blazon becomes its own pseudo-chore, with wildly dissimilar inherent mechanics. Weapons and skills in Final Fantasy Explorers are much simpler in implementation, just you can mix and match them much more freely through the job organisation. As Monster Hunter, you can only alter your chore, skills, or equipment at the hub village; you're stuck with your loadout when you're out exploring.

The game trades active complexity for passive complexity. Yous can craft your ideal class and load information technology with your favorite skills, simply it becomes a fairly repetitive process of using those skills at the correct time and under the right circumstances. It's much less engaging than combat in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, in which each weapon has a unique experience and extensive philharmonic trees and mechanics. This means that Concluding Fantasy Explorers is more accessible, only Monster Hunter four Ultimate is more engaging and complex.

The Scope of the State

The lands are filled with archetype Last Fantasy enemies similar imps, malboros, and iron giants. They don't provide the majority of the game's claiming, though. Much like Monster Hunter, the middle of the game lies in fighting large dominate monsters. In the case of Final Fantasy Explorers, these monsters are the eidolons metnioned above, and they by and large consist of the serial' classic summoned creatures, such every bit Shiva, Ifrit, and Bahamut. These larger, more than complicated boss fights require careful management of resources and paying attention to various cues to avoid devastating area-of-consequence attacks. Trapping eidolons to make magicite is very similar to trapping boss monsters in Monster Hunter; you need to weaken them, so trigger the Encase Crystal Surge instead of defeating them. It's trickier than just defeating them, only it produces better rewards.

The globe of Final Fantasy Explorers initially seems larger than Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, but it'due south actually significantly smaller in scope. Rather than a series of different regions, each with its ain selection of zones, Terminal Fantasy Explorers has a unmarried land mass. This area is significantly larger than a given Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate hunting region, but once you unlock all zones y'all've effectively unlocked the entire globe. Y'all won't move on to new hub villages and regions to explore as you lot play.

As in whatever adept hunting game, you tin join with fellow hunters to become afterwards challenging targets. Y'all tin can play either locally or online with upward to three other people in co-op play. The game features a built-in chat tool that lets y'all communicate with your team via text. If yous don't want to rely on others, you can recruit monsters to fight alongside you lot. These include Final Fantasy archetype creatures similar chocobos, cactuars, and tonberries, all of which take their own unique skills and get more powerful every bit you hunt with them.

Monster Hunting Light

You can easily sink over xx hours into the game but to beat the flimsy story, which accounts for less than half of the available missions. After that, you can proceed going to fight even harder bosses and get better equipment for another sixty hours past that. 80 hours sounds like a lot for most video games, but the hunting genre is a bit weird that mode; yous tin hands driblet 300 hours in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and however not chase every single beast or craft every unmarried weapon. Again, this makes Final Fantasy Explorers more attainable to newcomers to the genre, though longtime Monster Hunter fans will observe the content thin.

Final Fantasy Explorers is a fun, easy monster-hunting game that follows the conventions of the genre without plumbing the full depth of information technology. That's fine; that depth is an acquired taste. If you're a fan of Final Fantasy, this is a calorie-free romp through the series' tropes with niggling pressure and a generous corporeality of content, gratis of drama and complexity. I enjoyed it, but both mechanically and content-wise it's a pale imitation of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, spiced up with some familiar faces and concepts from Terminal Fantasy.