For this month, I wanted to try something a bit different! A lot of my time recently has been occupied by my interest in games, so I was thinking about talking about games for a bit (or whenever I haven't read anything new lol). Aside from watching anime and reading manga, I like to play games and read books, so why not talk about them as well I guess lol! I'm currently reading To Aru Majutsu no Index and that's taking up most of my book reading time though LOL (up to Volume 16 of the Old Testament), but I'm constantly playing games, or more recently, reading visual novels. So yeah, maybe in the future!
Anyway, today I wanted to talk about a mobile game. I've played the game since its' Global launch in 2018 and I've nearly played it every day (not kidding, only excluding holidays probably LOL). I won't deny that there were points where I was so ready to give up on the game and quit because it got boring etc, but I still trudged on, and funnily, I'm still enjoying it haha.
DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY OPERA OMNIA (iOS/Android)
Story/Plot: Honestly, I've never played the Dissidia games so I'm not sure of the exact relation it has between them, but I think the gods in the game (Materia and Spiritus) are a part of the Dissidia storyline? Anyway, the story is a very simple one, our Final Fantasy heroes have been called to this world by Materia and Spiritus (who created this world) hoping for these heroes possessing the "light" within them to save the world from "torsions" that have been opening up and endangering the safety of this world. And that's probably all you need to know because honestly the story isn't that great LOL. This is especially evident in the beginning tbh. A lot of the initial encounters with the respective characters from the Final Fantasy games were really bland because it followed a lot of the same kind of thing, which was basically:
~"Someone is over there!"
"You've been summonsed to this world!"
New Character: "No, I'll wander around myself"
You: *saves/helps them*
"Okay, let's journey together"~
A lot of the initial characters are introduced like that, and the beginning story is pretty boring as well because it just involves the heroes fighting against monsters and some villains from the Final Fantasy franchise, so mostly just some cliche fanservice. HOWEVER! Recently, I feel like Act 2 really upped their game! Maybe it's because the game actually decided to delve more into the characters to progress the plot itself and that has definitely made it much more enjoyable, since it pays a lot of homage to the character's original game. This will be probably done with a lot of characters (much more to comee~) because when Materia summoned her heroes (most of the good guys), they are missing a lot of their memories, mainly because she took them away since she thought it would hinder their abilities or whatever. Whereas, most of the heroes Spiritus summoned (most of the villains), their memories are intact. So really, a lot of the story involves around the two of them believing in different methods to save this world. Anyway, back to the recent stories! One of the chapters that I really liked was Kuja's, because not only did it really showcase what kind of villain he was in his game, and his motivations etc, it also showed how Aerith's beliefs affected him. They both had a mission that they had to complete in their own game, and Aerith did what she could to succeed it, whereas Kuja defied it, and I think it was really interesting to see how it affected how Kuja interacting with all the different people. On the other hand (spoilers ahead!), I also really enjoyed the FFXIV chapter with Lyse's introduction and how happy Papalymo was to be able to witness her growth and how even though he can't do anything in their original world anymore, he can still see her and watch over her in this world, and I thought that was really sweet and probably the best thing about this game! Sadly, a lot of our favourite characters are dead or die in their original games, so I think the best thing about Opera Omnia is that you can see them alive and well here, as well as you can see them interact with other favourites across the franchise! Not only do you get to see more of their characters here ( Tbh, I feel like the Type-0 characters have more of a personality here loll), you get to see a lot of them after their games and actually have some sort of future. Also, random Tidus and Jecht moments are honestly really cute and sweet when they appear.
Characters: Currently, there are 117 ( I think) characters from FFI-FFXV including FF Tactics, FF Crystal Chronicles, World of Final Fantasy etc. Obviously some titles get more love and have more characters but overall, I'd say there's a great selection of characters because it's nice to have people like Jecht. Sephiroth, Vayne etc since they're good characters and where else would you be able to play with them?!~ Otherwise, I live for the simple interactions the characters have with each other, it really feels nostalgic when you see your favourite characters doing similar things in a different environment, whilst seeing how they interact with other fan favourites. The dialogue is really fun, and you can definitely see the care put into them because I honestly think they really nail the dialogue in the everyday life kinda ones and the story ones.
Music: Considering that a lot of events reuse the music from the respective character's original game, what is there to not love? It's FF music, it's nice, it's fun and it's very memorable.
Gameplay: The main reason I played this game was because it goes back to the old days with the turn-based style (that I much prefer). Basically, there are three characters in your team and they have two skills, one EX skill (like a limit break, but you must have their EX weapon to use it), and an additional skill if you level their crystal strength enough. During battle, you will mostly be accumulating up "brave" with BRV attacks and then dumping it all on the enemy with HP attacks to kill them. However, you don't always have to accumulate brave that way, and can use skills that either boost your brave through extra attacks or through the skill granting you brave. As usual with most games, there are DPS, Tanks and Support characters, but you don';t necessarily need a balanced team all the time, it really depends on the monsters and the situation etc. But yeah, basically, there are maps with battles to get through as you uncover the story alongside it. This probably sounds confusing lol, which is probably why the game recently introduced a permanent novice and intermediate dojo kinda thing where it will take you step by step on the different buttons, the different elemental weaknesses. the difference between magic, ranged and melee attacks etc. Once you get used to it, it's quite simple, and the only time you'll need to think about how to use a character will be due to their different skill sets and how you can make the best out of it with different team combinations.
For me, I really enjoy the play style because it's simple but also challenging. The difficulty has recently ramped up and it really makes you think about what you need in a team to last long battles, as well as how to conserve skills whilst meeting mission requirements such as finishing within a certain amount of turns, no KOs and taking less than 10k HP damage etc. As a F2P player, I've been able to complete all content as of now, but there were certainly times that due to my lack of useful characters, I wasn't able to, but you never really miss out on much even if you don't complete the missions in time, which is really good!
Oh and also, unlike a lot of other games, there is no stamina to hinder you playing through the story. You can spend 10 minutes or 10 hours, however you like. The only thing that uses stamina aka SP would be the World of Illusions and the Summons (levelling up your summons for extra passive skills), and even for this, the game is really generous with the amount of SP potions you can getm so you really don't need to care about losing out on the free stamina.
Multiplayer: Since the game is mostly single player, most of the events are catered to that. But, there are multiplayer events where you can join in with another two players to defeat a big boss to get extra materials and items. When the game first launched, I have to say. there were a few co-op that were definitely not newbie friendly and caused lots of frustration, but nowadays, as long as you level up your character and have their weapons, it's pretty much a breeze. It probably only takes 2-3 minutes per battle and you can communicate with your team members with moogle stickers haha. However, there are raids every now and then where the difficulty is much higher and you work alongside the other players in this game to defeat the bosses and accumulate points, which is kinda fun because you can actually see there are actually a lot of other people playing lol. The player base is mostly friendly and active as well, so definitely a great time to play!
Levelling up/Gearing up characters: This is probably the most important part! The most important currency in the game is gems. These gems are used to draw weapons for your characters, so basically all characters are free and useable, but to make them viable, you have to get their weapons. Right now there are three weapons for each character (15cp. 35cp and an EX 70cp weapon), these boost the skills of your character and so is usually recommended for your characters to have all 3 of them in order to be useful for the hardest content. Respectively, armours are the same. Due to the amount of gems you get from completing events, logging in every day, it is quite likely that you'll be able to get the "meta" characters and your favourites. The good thing is that the game now has a "pity system" where if you have spent 75k gems, you can get the banner's EX weapon with the tokens it gives you from those draws! You can also use tickets to draw weapons btw! Gems are used for 10+1 draws (above) where you're guaranteed one gold 5 star weapon, but the rest is RNG. As for tickets, they are basically drawing one weapon at a time and don't guarantee anything but disappointment one by one (LOL), but occasionally if you're lucky, you can get the weapons through tickets too.
You also have to level up your characters' crystal strengths, which is very simple. Basically, each character is one of the respective crystal colours e.g. blue, and you will have to farm that particular coloured crystals to level them up. Right now, there are enough crystals to level most of your characters to max level, and they're easy to farm, so not too much trouble here. The boosts it gives to your character are indispensable though, and you must level their crystals for them to be useful, whether you take them to max or not would depend on whether you have their weapons though.
Artifact grinding is probably the most tedious part of this game. There are artifacts granting extra stat points or extra damage to character's skills and you have to farm these individually for each character that you plan to use. They grant stuff like attack + 108 and max brave + 330 that can really make your character much stronger, but as usual, not necessary most of the time. I don't have perfect artifacts for most of my characters and they still work well. Seriously though, the RNG for these artifacts are absolutely terrible and it really depresses you enough to want to quit, but as long as you recognise they're not necessary, you'll be fine.
A pretty recent addition to the game are summon boards. These summon boards are kinda similar to the FFX sphere grid where you have to get points in order to unlock additional stats and passive skills. Although they are not necessary, it is definitely helpful to get them. However, the way to get points is quiteeee annoying! You must defeat the respective summon (e.g. Shiva) multiple times to get enough points to level up the board, and you have to do that for every character for every summon! Yes, it's annoying, yes, it's tedious, so unless you really do plan to use that character, I wouldn't max the board for them.
Events Schedule: Every month, there are probably at least 5-6 events where they feature probably around three new characters. Honestly, there's so much content, sometimes it can become a full time job finishing everything lol. But as long as you're not like my bro and I, if you take your time, the game gives you around 2 weeks to finish most events. Up to now, there are still at least a year's worth a content to catch up to what's in Japan so there's definitely no stagnation in that respect haha. The Global game is also very well looked after with the community managers taking in a lot of opinions to improve the game etc, and recently there was the second global first character Aranea (FFXV)! So, definitely a great time to start the game to try it if you're interested. They also have lots of Christmas and Anniversary events to give free stuff!
F2P Friendliness: I've probably mentioned this in the other parts, but honestly, I've played this game mostly free (I've spent like a few dollars on 100 gem bundles LOL), mainly because gems are waaaay too expensive, but really, you can totally play this as a F2P player and you won't miss out on much (you'll probably only miss out on finishing hardest level content if you're unlucky with draws). If you have good luck and are able to get lots of weapons, you probably won't miss out on anything though, but then even if you don't have good luck, there are a lot of helpful people on the DFFOO reddit that are helpful in team compositions and showcasing videos on how to beat difficult bosses. As of now, I've beaten everything :) I also only have 10k gems left LOL. But on the other hand, my bro has also beaten everything and he has 250k gems in stock, so really, play the game however you want because that's how games are, they're there for you to have fun. I have fun trying to get all my favourite characters and my bro has fun hoarding gems to selectively choose which characters' weapons he wants. Either way, the content is fun and we still get excited when a new character's weapon comes out and I think that already shows how much we like the game even after two years lol.
