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Gamescom 2015: Collecting Loot in Final Fantasy Explorers (3DS)

by Daan Koopman - August 17, 2015, 8:55 am EDT
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Yar, I heard you like to slay some mystical monsters!

When I heard about Final Fantasy Explorers, it was in a Japanese Nintendo Direct a few years back. I was always intrigued, but I did think that it looked like a Monster Hunter clone. That isn't exactly a bad thing, but I was already playing that a lot at the time, so I didn't give Final Fantasy Explorers a fair chance. Even when a demo version came out in Japan, I just wasn't that interested. Many months later, I got to play a short demo for the English version of the game. Now I feel really silly for not giving it a chance before now!

The demo almost immediately drops you into a small town. You can look around in the shops, talk to people and accept the quest for this vertical slice. The quest puts you in the middle of a volcano, where your end goal is defeating the gigantic fire beast Ifrit. As you team up with a Goblin and Chocobo, you work your way through this straightforward dungeon. It was only a couple of rooms big, but there were plently of enemies to tackle including some unfriendly Chocobo. Every enemy would leave some loot behind, which could range from a recovery item to materials for crafting.

Every demo unit at Gamescom had a different class for you to try out. I played the demo as a Knight and a Black Mage, and both classes had unique and interesting attacks. Learning of all these attacks was quite important as it was the sole focus of this demo, and the action based combat felt extremely responsive. By pressing L or R, each button gives you access to four attacks for you to use. With names like Plunder Slash, Mercurial Thrust and Trinity, I immediately knew that I was in good hands. Once the power meter was charged enough, I was able to get more attacks by pressing L+R at the same time. One of them allowed my character to change into Cloud, the hero from Final Fantasy VII. He made all of the attacks more powerful, with even the regular Y button attack doing major damage to the enemies.

When I finally reached Ifrit, I was going all out to succeed. I used my best attacks to defeat him, but he certainly wasn't a pushover. I had to run a lot with the B-button and do a lot of camera switching with the D-Pad, as the C-Stick didn't work during the demo. It took a while to get used to the flow of the battle, but I stayed calm and kept my focus throughout. The AI characters also helped me out as the Chocobo was constantly healing me and the Goblin distracted Ifrit so that I could attack. The AI was really intelligent and it is always great to see when they don't just stand on the sidelines.

Final Fantasy Explorers looks and sounds great. The style feels very at home on the Nintendo 3DS and brings the colorful world of Final Fantasy to those screens. There was information on the upper screen that gave you constant battle updates and the bottom showed the status of all the characters plus a handy map. The boss music got me exactly in the right mood and they had headphones at every station to ensure that you would hear it!

Final Fantasy Explorers is one of those games I am really looking forward to. With a beautiful style and great gameplay mechanics, I am ready to dive into this game early next year. While I really hope that I can use the C-Stick in the final game, the controls are fine after you get used to them. While I only got a slight taste of the game, I was happy and satisfied when I walked away. That can only mean good things I reckon!

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Final Fantasy Explorers Box Art

Genre RPG
Developer Square Enix
Players1 - 4
Online1 - 4

Worldwide Releases

na: Final Fantasy Explorers
Release Jan 26, 2016
PublisherSquare Enix
jpn: Final Fantasy Explorers
Release Dec 18, 2014
PublisherSquare Enix
Rating12+
eu: Final Fantasy Explorers
Release Jan 29, 2016
PublisherSquare Enix
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