War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius – 2020 First Impressions and Thoughts

I rarely do this at the beginning of an impressions article, but this was a pretty solid game.
I didn’t know what to expect going into this – at first I thought it was just an RPG with auto-combat, but.. it was definitely not.
I’m a pretty big fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. I’ve played almost every single main-title game, the Dissidia spin-offs, the MMO, the Gameboy titles, and you know what? This reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics, but instead of being set in Ivalice.. this is set in… uhh, another, non-Ivalice related place.

You start off in a tutorial, and – just, real quick, let me say that this tutorial dragged on way too long. But after the lengthy tutorial on features, you’re finally thrown into the game.
You’re, interestingly enough given quite a few different currencies with which to populate your roster of heroes via the Gacha system. I think I recruited what, 20 different heroes? Some of them were really damn good, some were.. a little iffy.
Knowing me though you can be certain I went with an all-waifu harem as that’s how I roll. Don’t tell Mrs Stix though. She doesn’t watch my mobile videos so I feel like I’m safe saying this here.

Characters looked fantastic. Both their 2D and 3D sprites. The environments, although mostly the same in battles from what I played through over my course of the several chapters I progressed through, were beautiful. I don’t see this graphical style used that often, with most games opting for very Anime-esque.
There was a lot of voice acting – in various languages, as well. I chose English because I wanted to see what the dub was like. The Japanese dub was obviously going to be good so there’s no point in choosing that.
And you know what? The English dub was solid. Voice actors out of console RPGs I’ve played – I can definitely say that I was happy with opting to go for the English language.

Combat, as stated, was very much like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. Maybe even Disgaea too. You have a grid, you move your characters around the grid while attempting to strategically position them around the enemies and not die in the process.
You then unload onto them with the ferocity of a teen boy watching his first Ecchi Anime series and leave nothing in the wake but destruction. Or, alternatively, you can let the game do it for you. Either works. One requires less effort, though.

The game functions much like your typical Mobile RPG: There are chapters, and missions available per chapter. There are plenty of characters, there’s an absolute ton of story, more than I’m used to in mobile games. Each chapter helps progress the story, and the story unlocks new chapters and features.
Ultimately, this is a game that I actually enjoyed. I don’t know about you guys – some of you seem to hate when I say I enjoy a game but I can’t help it. Not only is it a Final Fantasy game, but it’s a damn solid RPG.