Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise has been a true success to date, the games are still selling like hotcakes and sequels are being made regularly. It must hurt a company like Square Enix to see this success so they try to mimic the Monster Hunter formula in their own Final Fantasy: Explorers game for Nintendo 3DS. On paper it sounds smart, the Final Fantasy universe is filled with interesting monster to hunt, but this first attempt to create a ‘Final Fantasy Hunter’ isn’t that successful yet.
The plot
A Final Fantasy game without a story is like Nintendo without Super Mario. The story of Final Fantasy: Explorers is a light one compared to the main Final Fantasy games. Thanks to powerful crystals, humanity is able to achieve things that seemed impossible in the past. Thanks to these crystals, humans could build bigger cities; cure more diseases and a lot more. These crystals play a crucial role in the survival of the human race. Specialists, called explorers seek these crystals to harvest their power. On Amostra, a single island, a lot of new crystals were recently discovered, guarded by dangerous monsters. Your adventure starts there. As a new explorer, it’s your task to harvest the crystals and beat the monster on the island of Amostra. As said before, a rather light story without a lot of narratives. The focus isn’t on the story this time; the action forms the heart of the game.
Explore Amostra
As the title already suggests, exploration is an important part of the game. During your first minutes in the game, you’ll need to complete a lot of tutorials, showing you the ropes. During these tutorial missions you might think that Amostra is a rather small island but that’s not true. The more you play, the bigger the island will get. If you advance, you’ll unlock new parts of the island filled with new monsters to defeat and new treasures to collect. Some of these environments unlock rather slow and you’ll need to right level and gear in order to enter them. This Final Fantasy is filled with grinding and improving your character in order to defeat the bigger and stronger monster. It’s a very long game so you’ll definitely need a lot of time to reach the end. The island itself is fun to discover and offers enough variation to keep things interesting, it’s just a shame some of the better environments demand a lot of time to unlock.
Monster Hunter light
Improve your gear
The monsters are the biggest threat in the game so you’ll need to get stronger in order to bring them down. By crafting new gear, you’re able to improve your defense and attacks. Gathering the right tools and materials to craft new gear is crucial in the game and it’s something you’ll be doing a lot. A lot of better gear can be unlocked if you find the right treasure chest or if you defeat a certain monster but it’s important to learn to craft it on your own. If you don’t invest time in learning this, you’ll get defeated by a lot of monster for sure. The game is filled with materials and tools to improve your gear so be prepared to spend a lot of your time on making those outfits and weapons!
As said before, a lot of what you need can be unlocked if you defeat monsters. The beating heart of the game is its combat; too bad it isn’t as intuitive as Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise.
Shallow combat
The biggest problem in Final Fantasy: Explores is the way combat is handled. Unlike Monster Hunter, you attack the monsters with a single button. Meaning there’s no difference between light and heavy attacks and you can’t even dodge the enemies. This results is rather boring combat to be honest. There’s no real difference in fighting a small enemy or gigantic monster, you bring them down using the same single button. The combat lacks depth and the charm Monster Hunter games are able to transfer to the players. The combat is fun at first but after a couple of hours you’ve seen everything already and that’s a shame. Certainly since the monsters themselves are interesting.
The monster are taken from the rich Final Fantasy history and feature monster ranging from the first to last Final Fantasy games. It’s certainly great for the fans to see their favorite monster make a return on the Nintendo 3DS but this doesn’t make up for the shallow combat. Lucky the jobs are back and Square Enix included an innovative ‘Crystal Surge’ mechanism.
Jobs and the Crystal Surge
The game offers a lot of traditional Final Fantasy jobs that come with their own strengths and weaknesses. Deciding which job you’ll take is an important decision in the game. Knights will have a lot of power to attack for example but will be slower to control. If you want fast and sneaky gameplay, you should go for a thief. Each job feels different and the best part is to work together with other players. The game is best enjoyed together online with friends and strangers or locally with friends. Creating a perfect party of four players start with deciding which job you’ll take and how they can help the other character. Things get a lot more interesting thanks to the Crystal Surge.
This mechanism is the most innovative gameplay element the game has to offer. After you manage to string some of your skills together, you’ll unlock the Crystal Surge power, a power that affects some of your skills. The best part about it is that everything about the Crystal Surge happens randomly. You never know what to expect and the effects even change depending on the environment you’re in. The best part about it all is that once you used them, you can even buy the special skills and alter them the way you like best, opening room for a lot of customization and innovation. It’s great to see this fresh take on the traditional gameplay and it’s a shame the combat itself isn’t as innovative as this mechanism.
Conclusion
If you get hyped by the idea of a Monster Hunter game in the Final Fantasy universe, you’ll adore this game for sure. This doesn’t take away the fact that Square Enix could have done things differently. The combat is too shallow and the story or quests aren’t that interesting to follow. The foundation is already there but the game doesn’t feel as complete as Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise. The interesting Crystal Surge mechanism and variety of jobs make up for a lot but in the end the game still is too repetitive. We do hope Square Enix will consider a sequel since the idea is already there, now they just need to work out the actual game a little better.
