I have no particular love for Final Fantasy, a statement that would strip my status as an RPG fanatic in the eyes of some. I had very little exposure to the series in my youth, however, and my first Final Fantasy would actually be a spinoff, the first entry in the Crystal Chronicles series. The action-based, cooperation-focused role-playing systems were extremely appealing to me, and its unique races and more straightforward lore were easy to grasp, serving its rustic sensibilities nicely. I would go on to play each title in the Crystal Chronicles series, witnessing the refinements of its cooperative structure and eventual regression into something utterly weird, before vanishing off the map completely.
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In its place, I would find another coop ARPG to fill the void: a little series known as Monster Hunter. Its focus on precision movement, intense preparation, and dedication to equipment and weapon builds would enthrall me in a different way than Crystal Chronicles, which featured dungeon crawling and its own species-based form of character building. Of course, Monster Hunter focused on extended engagements with a singular enemy, something of a boss-rush styled game, so the similarities between the two series are relatively few. In my heart, however, I always hoped Square Enix would give Crystal Chronicles another chance on a new system, as better online options would benefit the gameplay established in the stellar Echoes of Time.
That didn't happen.
Instead, an attempt to replicate the Monster Hunter style title was offered, the ambitious Final Fantasy Explorers on 3DS. Ambitious, in the sense that Square Enix would attempt to once again lazily shoehorn their tried and true franchise elements into yet another subgenre of RPGs, this time an action oriented cooperative boss rush RPG. With its interconnected overworld and cartoonish character proportions, I had hoped that Explorers would attempt to carry over some of the trends found in Crystal Chronicles, but instead discovered a job-based title that, while offering a bit more variety in its quest structure, monster taming, and skill development, resulted in nothing more than a messy and mixed experience, and a short one, at that. Not only did Final Fantasy Explorers fail as a Monster Hunter-like ARPG, it also failed to prove that the franchise's flexibility.
In order to understand why the game was ultimately dissatisfying, however, it is important to first acknowledge just how wrong Explorers manages to get the series it lovingly rips-off. There are several fatal flaws that contributed to Explorers lukewarm reception, and in this article, I'll attempt to explain which of these dealt the strongest blow to its gear grinding structure, and what improvements or changes would need to occur if this title were to ever receive a sequel (mind you, it's not likely).
In other words, let's see how EFFed FFE was.
Applying Final Fantasy Motifs
An important part of both of Square Enix's most popular franchises is their strict adherence to overarching motifs that permeate almost every aspect of their design. A more loving term for this might be "nostalgia," but the way this translates into FFE's core mechanics ends up doing much more harm than good. Let's highlight how Final Fantasy traditions bleed into the game's systems:
-Jobs seek to add a simultaneous layer of depth and difficulty cushion to choosing a weapon type, as many classes can use similar types of weapons upon changing class, and can therefore share skills. However, each job has some specific traits, such as mastery of a specific type of magic or a useful ability, that is meant to differentiate one from the other. While this allows for some experimentation and versatility, especially when equipping skills, it means that, as is the case with many job systems, there's a bit of overlap and some jobs that are just plain fluff. There's a lot of customization that can be done in the endgame, which would be great if the bosses offered any sort of challenge.
-There are two flavors of attack- basic, used to deal damage per second and generate AP, and skills, which are more committal in regards to movement and can similarly deal high amounts of damage or grant bonuses to party members or debuffs on enemies. In this sense, Explorers blurs the line between input-based action combat and active-selection combat, although not substantially enough in either direction to form cohesive and satisfying combat. Skills are accompanied by a lovely little text box announcing their usage, which can be beneficial for alerting party members, but enemies often use these skills as well, so it can be a sign to avoid or block damage. Skills can be mutated by achieving something called Crystal Surge, which is achieved when the player has performed a number of skills and attacks in a certain area of the world map and raised their Resonance level. It sounds complex when really it's anything but- you just need to hit a lot of things, and then you get the chance to add a trait to a skill. While these abilities can stack, many of them feature drastically diminishing returns after mutating them on a certain level, and there are a number of minor variations that specific mutations have that act as exceptions to stacking abilities. This is one of the game's three methods of generating artificial progression, although this one is far less intensive than the weaponry and equipment grinds.
-Eidolons, traditionally known for being summons within mainline releases, are instead the large boss-type enemies in FFE. Many enemy types from other games also appear. These enemies give specific drops, and can be "captured" in a method similar to Monster Hunter, the difference being that captured Eidolons grant Trance moves and/or a material to be used to create new weaponry or equipment. While the fifteen Eidolons in the game appear in a number of different locales and each possess a variation, there's very little variety outside of elemental affinity and some terrain navigation present in their encounters.
-Equipment and weaponry is one of the more fascinating aspects of FFE, as each individual piece and weapon has multiple tiers to be upgraded. Sets often grant passive bonuses, so picking your set usually comes down to what sort of build and role you are attempting to play, and maxing it out as much as possible, as soon as possible. Upgrading pieces usually requires extensive material grinding to compete with some of the base higher tier equipment and weaponry, however, so the alternative option is to simply push through all of the quests, creating different sets along the way, until you have a nice number of pieces in the late-game.
-Trance is essentially the way of allowing players to use Eidolons as summons and also a way to allow them to play as... classic Final Fantasy characters. It's a method of quick-resetting your avatar's HP and AP in addition to dealing large amounts of damage. Again, this would be a curious and potentially neat element if any mission required the need to play safely.
Exploring World Design
Before we broach the more technical aspects of the game, it is more important to address one of the glaring flaws in its design, and that is the world itself. Explorers takes place on a crystal-rich island- because, you know, Square Enix loves them some crystals- which has all of your standard biomes present: grasslands, beach, forest, cliffs, desert, swamp, volcano, tundra, etc. However, the way these biomes are laid out is, to put it frankly, stupid. The entire island is a massive loop of smaller rooms, with the only shortcut opening after you beat the entirety of the main story. While quests will allow players to drop themselves off at certain waypoints around this loop thanks to an airship- because, you know, Square Enix loves them some airships- none of these drop points are particularly close to the more important mission objectives. The most aggravating aspect of the game's world design, however, is the nature of Eidolon lairs, which a player must navigate before fighting any of the major bosses. These lairs are semi-randomized dungeon layouts with dead ends and enemies scattered throughout, and though the enemies can be avoided via sprinting, there is no particular reason players should be forced to traverse these areas before fighting an Eidolon, never mind that they may have to go through TWO of these in order to defeat two separate Eidolon encounters.
While some might argue that Monster Hunter has similar issues with traversal, requiring players to find enemies within larger biomes, there is a fundamental difference. In Monster Hunter, boss encounters have the potential to move from area to area, and tracking a boss is an integral part of the experience. Eidolons appear in one area and stay there. Likewise, terrain in Monster Hunter is interconnected by multiple types of pathways through different movement options, none of which are present in the entirely ground-based combat of Final Fantasy Explorers.
The only ways to bypass these large swaths of land are by either using the airship to get as close as you can to a lair, or by sprinting, which rather annoyingly costs AP, for some bizarre reason. AP does slowly regenerate, but if a player reduces it to extremely low levels, the only way they can replenish it is by using a consumable item or by attacking enemies, which is more wasted time. To me, it seems that there must be some sort of reason for all of this traversal- maybe loading times are buffered because of it- but it detracts severely from the overall play experience because it is simply time spent not doing anything worthwhile. This is considered one of the primary flaws in the game's mission structure.
Gated Progression
Often used when discussing fighting games, the term skill ceiling technically applies to any sort of action combat system, as these kinds of games usually demand precise positioning and committal attack inputs. While players may have to improve their weaponry and abilities in order to defeat certain enemies, the potential to survive or escape engagements becomes much higher when they have mastered such systems. There is an extremely low skill ceiling, and therefore a lack of ebb and flow or momentum shifts, present in Explorers because, strictly speaking, it isn't an action combat system at all. As mentioned prior, it has much more to do with active-selection, where the standard auto-attack is instead executed through button inputs. There is some amount of timing and resource management that goes into how combat plays out, but it lacks substantial depth.
One of the crucial ways Explorers fails to challenge players is in how its AP system works, which is a combination of both magic and stamina. AP exists so that players cannot endlessly spam skills, although skills too have a cooldown. As mentioned prior, AP can be regained by dealing basic attack damage, so players who remain consistently on the attack are likely going to be able to keep up their skill usage. This means that, while the game is aggressive by nature, the only way it can truly provide any sort of challenge is by having enemies possess homing attacks, status effects, or those that deal massive amounts of damage.
Because players can function in extremely specific roles, and also because of the way skill mutation works at a fundamental level, there is a strong potential to create powerful abilities and combinations from the very start of the game. Since damage can be dealt in a variety of stacked methods, and players can mutate HP and AP draining traits onto a number of their abilities, the player is really only limited by their level of commitment to a particular job. The reason I say this, is because Final Fantasy Explorers slowly filters in its different jobs by having players obtain them through quests or other achievements. As specific classes specialize in certain weaponry, following a certain "lineage" of weapon types through jobs is likely the best option, as their skills will transfer over into other jobs and the player will be able to manage their CP more effectively. Therefore, if a player wishes to maximize their potential as a particular job, they have to stick with it, and commit to its equipment builds, as much as possible. This is not possible when jobs unlock later down the line, and if this exists because Square Enix didn't know how to balance every class for access at lower levels, then they likely should have reconsidered making a Monster Hunter-styled RPG. Because of this gradual unlock, the game is tiered in a much more punishing manner than other games that focus on creating a toolkit from the outset of their journey.
Balancing, or Lack Thereof
So then, what do you get when you create multiple progression systems that revolve around quest completion? Well, obviously, you get a lot of questing. There are a number of job-specific quests that grant job-specific rewards, but there are present at different questing tiers, which operate similarly to Hunter Rank in Monster Hunter. The caveat of Explorers' tiers, however, is that the more difficult the quest is, the more likely a player will obtain items of higher rarity.
How is this a bad thing, you might ask? Most games that encourage character progression do the same thing.
The sad aspect of Explorer's gated progression is truly that it stops being a consideration at the end of the main story. While there are a handful of quests to complete in the "post-game," the game caps off its quests by incentivizing the player to raise the difficulty manually via quest options. While you can do this earlier during the main story as well, some of the optional difficulty buffers are ridiculous and daunting, to the point where it seems that they are designed to raise difficulty by just being arbitrarily punishing. One option causes a quest fail state upon any party member dying- something easy to achieve on earlier missions, but much more difficult against an Eidolon who has a one-hit kill attack. You can half and quarter quest completion time, increase AP cost for your moves, and limit your usage of items, which can turn the highest-level quests into... well, harder versions of the highest-level quests.
These limitations grant higher rewards, yes, but since there is no real ranking system and no additional quests to unlock after placing these limitations upon oneself, there is no real incentive to do so, either. Players can grind more CP and materials out of monsters and Eidolons at lower ranks with much greater ease, so these challenges exist for no other reason than for player incentive. While players could certainly use the completion of these high-intensity quests for bragging rights, that limiting player options is the only way the developers themselves could think to enhance the difficulty says something about the way the game is balanced and designed.
Identity Crisis
I felt it necessary to state what I consider mechanical flaws before getting to the "heart" of the matter, one that I believe is a fundamental cause for why Final Fantasy Explorers doesn't really stack up. I hate to harp on the notion of how superior Crystal Chronicles is to this Frankenstein of an attempt, but it is important to note how many of Final Fantasy's aesthetic and mechanical motifs end up needlessly over-complicating the gameplay formula. Jobs range from extremely niche in application to obviously superior, and a great deal of what lies in between is just unremarkable. Weapons already develop specific skills, but they are broadly distributed across jobs, so that the most unique element of committing to a specific job is to access the higher-tier weapons and job-exclusive armor. However, because of the wonky equipment system, job-exclusive armor is a higher time investment than maxing out an early-game equipment build, which can operate with the same level of efficiency in the late game. This is one of the more baffling aspects of Explorers' design that, despite technically being more player-friendly and encouraging towards job switching, ends up just muddling the total experience.
Because of the quest system, players are technically incentivized to switch jobs in order to complete specific objectives, but this once more confuses the idea of role-based gameplay. In this way, it is more of a single-player experience, requiring that players complete at least a good amount of its story-related quests before hopping online. Yet, even if a player goes out of their way to invest in taming beasts, a primarily-single player-oriented mechanic, they will have to construct their player class differently from how they operate in co-operative play, a move that will require additional skill and/or equipment grinding. That Explorers wants players to go out of their way to obtain mid-game classes in order to create better builds for end game challenges is counter-intuitive to the nature of its gameplay. While players may find that hopping on to a cooperative server increases their chances of completing higher-tier quests because their single-player builds are poorly optimized, this is vastly different to the sort of prep work that goes into fighting monsters in other games.
The Trance system is arguably one of the more baffling aspects of the game, as it contextualizes summoning in a way that makes little sense. Encasing Eidolons, a mechanic that is awkwardly explained, allows their attacks to be used as summons and grants stat boosts, and certain magicite allows players to transform into one of the main protagonists from past entries. Judging by how a number of the already limited pool of Eidolons that exist are unique to this game, one might wonder why they must even be the boss monsters that the player must face. Likewise, is there any particular reason that Trance should allow a player to transform into mainline characters? Not really, other than to slavishly adhere to Final Fantasy tropes.
Lastly, as mentioned before, Explorers attempts to keep the skill selection-intensive systems of Final Fantasy intact, but it ends up playing much more like a very, very basic sort of active-selection system, instead. Though the company itself would label Explorers as a "Final Fantasy XI/XIV-lite," a cursory look at the game by any remotely savvy RPG player would dispel this theory. The main method of leveling just about any part of character customization is through completing quests- or which there are several varieties, but are mostly "go here, kill (x)" style affairs. There is no story tied to the world, other than flavor text offered with quest information, and the locales themselves are uninspired. The game attempts to blend MP systems with stamina systems, but it ends up being a half-hearted mixture that fails to offer precision or satisfactory management. There is little else to do other than upgrade oneself to take on more extreme enemy engagements, until they are all inconsequential, which results in the player having to place limitations upon themselves in order to make things harder, though not necessarily more rewarding.
The most damning evidence of all, however, is the focus on Eidolon engagements. Even if the game were designed to be a lite MMO, it would likely attempt to impart some amount of variety and lore to the engagements that occur before an Eidolon battle. However, Eidolons are treated as nothing more than directionless, inconsequential guardians, having no particular story significance outside of being a hindrance to exploration, which is the only objective of the game. It would be like, I don't know, calling a game about people who hunt monsters Monster Hunter. If Square Enix was attempting to capture a specific audience, they did so by attempting a number of ambitious variations on a style of gameplay that already had solid enough foundations. Their attempts to change things only ended up making them more convoluted and less appealing.
And it's got severe input lag and slowdown when playing online.
Conclusion
With all of this being said, there are some things that Explorers does get right. The way enemies can inflict status effects that are not seen in traditional Monster Hunter engagements is unique. The skill mutation system is extremely expansive, and would be fantastic if utilized in a game that wasn't a cooperative boss rush RPG. The presentation values are sharp for a 3DS game, with the aesthetics being enjoyable and the music pretty good. The enemy variety, as well as the taming system used to bolster single-player, is also neat, but is only exploitable through gated progression. There's a great amount of ideas that are sound, but poorly implemented. Ultimately, the blend of active selection systems and action input gameplay doesn't quite work, and outside of a few terrain aspects and status inflicts, many of the Eidolon engagements don't feel all that memorable. While it is easy to place Monster Hunter on a pedestal thanks to the quality of life and ease of access improvements it has made in recent years, Final Fantasy Explorers was a spirited first attempt in a gameplay style that was already very well-established by the time of its release. Its reverence to Final Fantasy motifs could not overshadow or even make up for the more irksome and lazy quirks present in the gameplay, and it was unable to make a splash within its target demographic.
To me, Square Enix already had a great action RPG series, one that focused on cooperation and dedicated character builds in a way that was distinguished and unique. There was a greater focus on dungeon design and more varied and unfamiliar enemy engagements. There was a distinct aesthetic that was ancient and rustic all at the same time. But Crystal Chronicles doesn't seem to fit in with modern trends, which is why we may never get the chance to see another installment. To me, this is a shame, because I would rather Square Enix try to diversify their efforts within their ecosystem of series so that they might do the same within the game industry, as well. As it stands, Final Fantasy Explorers will simply be known as an odd one-off, an attempt to do too little with a subgenre that has clearly defined foundations. Its unclear whether its fatal flaw was trying to be too much like something, or trying to be different enough to stand apart from its contemporaries. Because of the environment in which it was released, however, I'd like to think its more the former than the latter.
Do you love Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles as much as I do? I doubt it. What about Final Fantasy Explorers? I don't doubt that. Leave your impressions below and feel free to comment on this analysis. I am open to discuss any and all aspects of this article, as well as the game that inspired it. Oh, and do be a dear and share this and our other content if you know someone who would appreciate this sort of thing!
In its place, I would find another coop ARPG to fill the void: a little series known as Monster Hunter. Its focus on precision movement, intense preparation, and dedication to equipment and weapon builds would enthrall me in a different way than Crystal Chronicles, which featured dungeon crawling and its own species-based form of character building. Of course, Monster Hunter focused on extended engagements with a singular enemy, something of a boss-rush styled game, so the similarities between the two series are relatively few. In my heart, however, I always hoped Square Enix would give Crystal Chronicles another chance on a new system, as better online options would benefit the gameplay established in the stellar Echoes of Time.
That didn't happen.
Instead, an attempt to replicate the Monster Hunter style title was offered, the ambitious Final Fantasy Explorers on 3DS. Ambitious, in the sense that Square Enix would attempt to once again lazily shoehorn their tried and true franchise elements into yet another subgenre of RPGs, this time an action oriented cooperative boss rush RPG. With its interconnected overworld and cartoonish character proportions, I had hoped that Explorers would attempt to carry over some of the trends found in Crystal Chronicles, but instead discovered a job-based title that, while offering a bit more variety in its quest structure, monster taming, and skill development, resulted in nothing more than a messy and mixed experience, and a short one, at that. Not only did Final Fantasy Explorers fail as a Monster Hunter-like ARPG, it also failed to prove that the franchise's flexibility.
In order to understand why the game was ultimately dissatisfying, however, it is important to first acknowledge just how wrong Explorers manages to get the series it lovingly rips-off. There are several fatal flaws that contributed to Explorers lukewarm reception, and in this article, I'll attempt to explain which of these dealt the strongest blow to its gear grinding structure, and what improvements or changes would need to occur if this title were to ever receive a sequel (mind you, it's not likely).
In other words, let's see how EFFed FFE was.
Applying Final Fantasy Motifs
An important part of both of Square Enix's most popular franchises is their strict adherence to overarching motifs that permeate almost every aspect of their design. A more loving term for this might be "nostalgia," but the way this translates into FFE's core mechanics ends up doing much more harm than good. Let's highlight how Final Fantasy traditions bleed into the game's systems:
-Jobs seek to add a simultaneous layer of depth and difficulty cushion to choosing a weapon type, as many classes can use similar types of weapons upon changing class, and can therefore share skills. However, each job has some specific traits, such as mastery of a specific type of magic or a useful ability, that is meant to differentiate one from the other. While this allows for some experimentation and versatility, especially when equipping skills, it means that, as is the case with many job systems, there's a bit of overlap and some jobs that are just plain fluff. There's a lot of customization that can be done in the endgame, which would be great if the bosses offered any sort of challenge.
-There are two flavors of attack- basic, used to deal damage per second and generate AP, and skills, which are more committal in regards to movement and can similarly deal high amounts of damage or grant bonuses to party members or debuffs on enemies. In this sense, Explorers blurs the line between input-based action combat and active-selection combat, although not substantially enough in either direction to form cohesive and satisfying combat. Skills are accompanied by a lovely little text box announcing their usage, which can be beneficial for alerting party members, but enemies often use these skills as well, so it can be a sign to avoid or block damage. Skills can be mutated by achieving something called Crystal Surge, which is achieved when the player has performed a number of skills and attacks in a certain area of the world map and raised their Resonance level. It sounds complex when really it's anything but- you just need to hit a lot of things, and then you get the chance to add a trait to a skill. While these abilities can stack, many of them feature drastically diminishing returns after mutating them on a certain level, and there are a number of minor variations that specific mutations have that act as exceptions to stacking abilities. This is one of the game's three methods of generating artificial progression, although this one is far less intensive than the weaponry and equipment grinds.
-Equipment and weaponry is one of the more fascinating aspects of FFE, as each individual piece and weapon has multiple tiers to be upgraded. Sets often grant passive bonuses, so picking your set usually comes down to what sort of build and role you are attempting to play, and maxing it out as much as possible, as soon as possible. Upgrading pieces usually requires extensive material grinding to compete with some of the base higher tier equipment and weaponry, however, so the alternative option is to simply push through all of the quests, creating different sets along the way, until you have a nice number of pieces in the late-game.
-Trance is essentially the way of allowing players to use Eidolons as summons and also a way to allow them to play as... classic Final Fantasy characters. It's a method of quick-resetting your avatar's HP and AP in addition to dealing large amounts of damage. Again, this would be a curious and potentially neat element if any mission required the need to play safely.
Exploring World Design
Before we broach the more technical aspects of the game, it is more important to address one of the glaring flaws in its design, and that is the world itself. Explorers takes place on a crystal-rich island- because, you know, Square Enix loves them some crystals- which has all of your standard biomes present: grasslands, beach, forest, cliffs, desert, swamp, volcano, tundra, etc. However, the way these biomes are laid out is, to put it frankly, stupid. The entire island is a massive loop of smaller rooms, with the only shortcut opening after you beat the entirety of the main story. While quests will allow players to drop themselves off at certain waypoints around this loop thanks to an airship- because, you know, Square Enix loves them some airships- none of these drop points are particularly close to the more important mission objectives. The most aggravating aspect of the game's world design, however, is the nature of Eidolon lairs, which a player must navigate before fighting any of the major bosses. These lairs are semi-randomized dungeon layouts with dead ends and enemies scattered throughout, and though the enemies can be avoided via sprinting, there is no particular reason players should be forced to traverse these areas before fighting an Eidolon, never mind that they may have to go through TWO of these in order to defeat two separate Eidolon encounters.
While some might argue that Monster Hunter has similar issues with traversal, requiring players to find enemies within larger biomes, there is a fundamental difference. In Monster Hunter, boss encounters have the potential to move from area to area, and tracking a boss is an integral part of the experience. Eidolons appear in one area and stay there. Likewise, terrain in Monster Hunter is interconnected by multiple types of pathways through different movement options, none of which are present in the entirely ground-based combat of Final Fantasy Explorers.
The only ways to bypass these large swaths of land are by either using the airship to get as close as you can to a lair, or by sprinting, which rather annoyingly costs AP, for some bizarre reason. AP does slowly regenerate, but if a player reduces it to extremely low levels, the only way they can replenish it is by using a consumable item or by attacking enemies, which is more wasted time. To me, it seems that there must be some sort of reason for all of this traversal- maybe loading times are buffered because of it- but it detracts severely from the overall play experience because it is simply time spent not doing anything worthwhile. This is considered one of the primary flaws in the game's mission structure.
Gated Progression
Often used when discussing fighting games, the term skill ceiling technically applies to any sort of action combat system, as these kinds of games usually demand precise positioning and committal attack inputs. While players may have to improve their weaponry and abilities in order to defeat certain enemies, the potential to survive or escape engagements becomes much higher when they have mastered such systems. There is an extremely low skill ceiling, and therefore a lack of ebb and flow or momentum shifts, present in Explorers because, strictly speaking, it isn't an action combat system at all. As mentioned prior, it has much more to do with active-selection, where the standard auto-attack is instead executed through button inputs. There is some amount of timing and resource management that goes into how combat plays out, but it lacks substantial depth.
One of the crucial ways Explorers fails to challenge players is in how its AP system works, which is a combination of both magic and stamina. AP exists so that players cannot endlessly spam skills, although skills too have a cooldown. As mentioned prior, AP can be regained by dealing basic attack damage, so players who remain consistently on the attack are likely going to be able to keep up their skill usage. This means that, while the game is aggressive by nature, the only way it can truly provide any sort of challenge is by having enemies possess homing attacks, status effects, or those that deal massive amounts of damage.
Balancing, or Lack Thereof
So then, what do you get when you create multiple progression systems that revolve around quest completion? Well, obviously, you get a lot of questing. There are a number of job-specific quests that grant job-specific rewards, but there are present at different questing tiers, which operate similarly to Hunter Rank in Monster Hunter. The caveat of Explorers' tiers, however, is that the more difficult the quest is, the more likely a player will obtain items of higher rarity.
How is this a bad thing, you might ask? Most games that encourage character progression do the same thing.
The sad aspect of Explorer's gated progression is truly that it stops being a consideration at the end of the main story. While there are a handful of quests to complete in the "post-game," the game caps off its quests by incentivizing the player to raise the difficulty manually via quest options. While you can do this earlier during the main story as well, some of the optional difficulty buffers are ridiculous and daunting, to the point where it seems that they are designed to raise difficulty by just being arbitrarily punishing. One option causes a quest fail state upon any party member dying- something easy to achieve on earlier missions, but much more difficult against an Eidolon who has a one-hit kill attack. You can half and quarter quest completion time, increase AP cost for your moves, and limit your usage of items, which can turn the highest-level quests into... well, harder versions of the highest-level quests.
Identity Crisis
I felt it necessary to state what I consider mechanical flaws before getting to the "heart" of the matter, one that I believe is a fundamental cause for why Final Fantasy Explorers doesn't really stack up. I hate to harp on the notion of how superior Crystal Chronicles is to this Frankenstein of an attempt, but it is important to note how many of Final Fantasy's aesthetic and mechanical motifs end up needlessly over-complicating the gameplay formula. Jobs range from extremely niche in application to obviously superior, and a great deal of what lies in between is just unremarkable. Weapons already develop specific skills, but they are broadly distributed across jobs, so that the most unique element of committing to a specific job is to access the higher-tier weapons and job-exclusive armor. However, because of the wonky equipment system, job-exclusive armor is a higher time investment than maxing out an early-game equipment build, which can operate with the same level of efficiency in the late game. This is one of the more baffling aspects of Explorers' design that, despite technically being more player-friendly and encouraging towards job switching, ends up just muddling the total experience.
Because of the quest system, players are technically incentivized to switch jobs in order to complete specific objectives, but this once more confuses the idea of role-based gameplay. In this way, it is more of a single-player experience, requiring that players complete at least a good amount of its story-related quests before hopping online. Yet, even if a player goes out of their way to invest in taming beasts, a primarily-single player-oriented mechanic, they will have to construct their player class differently from how they operate in co-operative play, a move that will require additional skill and/or equipment grinding. That Explorers wants players to go out of their way to obtain mid-game classes in order to create better builds for end game challenges is counter-intuitive to the nature of its gameplay. While players may find that hopping on to a cooperative server increases their chances of completing higher-tier quests because their single-player builds are poorly optimized, this is vastly different to the sort of prep work that goes into fighting monsters in other games.
The Trance system is arguably one of the more baffling aspects of the game, as it contextualizes summoning in a way that makes little sense. Encasing Eidolons, a mechanic that is awkwardly explained, allows their attacks to be used as summons and grants stat boosts, and certain magicite allows players to transform into one of the main protagonists from past entries. Judging by how a number of the already limited pool of Eidolons that exist are unique to this game, one might wonder why they must even be the boss monsters that the player must face. Likewise, is there any particular reason that Trance should allow a player to transform into mainline characters? Not really, other than to slavishly adhere to Final Fantasy tropes.
Lastly, as mentioned before, Explorers attempts to keep the skill selection-intensive systems of Final Fantasy intact, but it ends up playing much more like a very, very basic sort of active-selection system, instead. Though the company itself would label Explorers as a "Final Fantasy XI/XIV-lite," a cursory look at the game by any remotely savvy RPG player would dispel this theory. The main method of leveling just about any part of character customization is through completing quests- or which there are several varieties, but are mostly "go here, kill (x)" style affairs. There is no story tied to the world, other than flavor text offered with quest information, and the locales themselves are uninspired. The game attempts to blend MP systems with stamina systems, but it ends up being a half-hearted mixture that fails to offer precision or satisfactory management. There is little else to do other than upgrade oneself to take on more extreme enemy engagements, until they are all inconsequential, which results in the player having to place limitations upon themselves in order to make things harder, though not necessarily more rewarding.
The most damning evidence of all, however, is the focus on Eidolon engagements. Even if the game were designed to be a lite MMO, it would likely attempt to impart some amount of variety and lore to the engagements that occur before an Eidolon battle. However, Eidolons are treated as nothing more than directionless, inconsequential guardians, having no particular story significance outside of being a hindrance to exploration, which is the only objective of the game. It would be like, I don't know, calling a game about people who hunt monsters Monster Hunter. If Square Enix was attempting to capture a specific audience, they did so by attempting a number of ambitious variations on a style of gameplay that already had solid enough foundations. Their attempts to change things only ended up making them more convoluted and less appealing.
And it's got severe input lag and slowdown when playing online.
Conclusion
With all of this being said, there are some things that Explorers does get right. The way enemies can inflict status effects that are not seen in traditional Monster Hunter engagements is unique. The skill mutation system is extremely expansive, and would be fantastic if utilized in a game that wasn't a cooperative boss rush RPG. The presentation values are sharp for a 3DS game, with the aesthetics being enjoyable and the music pretty good. The enemy variety, as well as the taming system used to bolster single-player, is also neat, but is only exploitable through gated progression. There's a great amount of ideas that are sound, but poorly implemented. Ultimately, the blend of active selection systems and action input gameplay doesn't quite work, and outside of a few terrain aspects and status inflicts, many of the Eidolon engagements don't feel all that memorable. While it is easy to place Monster Hunter on a pedestal thanks to the quality of life and ease of access improvements it has made in recent years, Final Fantasy Explorers was a spirited first attempt in a gameplay style that was already very well-established by the time of its release. Its reverence to Final Fantasy motifs could not overshadow or even make up for the more irksome and lazy quirks present in the gameplay, and it was unable to make a splash within its target demographic.
To me, Square Enix already had a great action RPG series, one that focused on cooperation and dedicated character builds in a way that was distinguished and unique. There was a greater focus on dungeon design and more varied and unfamiliar enemy engagements. There was a distinct aesthetic that was ancient and rustic all at the same time. But Crystal Chronicles doesn't seem to fit in with modern trends, which is why we may never get the chance to see another installment. To me, this is a shame, because I would rather Square Enix try to diversify their efforts within their ecosystem of series so that they might do the same within the game industry, as well. As it stands, Final Fantasy Explorers will simply be known as an odd one-off, an attempt to do too little with a subgenre that has clearly defined foundations. Its unclear whether its fatal flaw was trying to be too much like something, or trying to be different enough to stand apart from its contemporaries. Because of the environment in which it was released, however, I'd like to think its more the former than the latter.
Do you love Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles as much as I do? I doubt it. What about Final Fantasy Explorers? I don't doubt that. Leave your impressions below and feel free to comment on this analysis. I am open to discuss any and all aspects of this article, as well as the game that inspired it. Oh, and do be a dear and share this and our other content if you know someone who would appreciate this sort of thing!
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