Complaints about gacha game monetization on [i]Mobius FF[/i] seem so quaint in retrospect. During its run, this was hands-down the fairest (to free players) gacha of all, with no special perks for paying (other than additional pulls) until about halfway through the game's lifespan, and even then it was a little while later that there was anything to entice a large purchase (for $72, you could guarantee yourself one overpowered card, though which one was still random).
It's a tragedy that this game has yet to be revisited in single-player/offline form (a lot of people were contrasting [i]Mega Man X: Re: Dive[/i] to this), and while I could speak for hours if not days about the fun I had, being forced to reflect on it, I've distilled one key takeaway: no single element of the game was, on its own, particularly unique. This much has been covered by contemporary reviews--a common comparison is the Break Gauge to [i]FF13's[/i] rage meter, esp. since [i]Mobius[/i] itself hammered this home with the [i]FF13[/i] crossover event equating Ravager to Breaker--but since I've been pondering for years how to replicate the "systems" of [i]Mobius[/i] in a project I could do on my own, I really took notice about a lot of little things, and how the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
[i]FF[/i] references alone weren't this game (though sadly, as usual, they had to whip out [i]FF7[/i] to sell it), and the other [i]FF[/i] gachas had those in spades (and even [i]FF14[/i] gets in on the brand-synergizing fun).
A simplified elemental table, touch-based controls with auto-play for grind sessions... these are hardly new.
Colored mana is ripped directly from TCG's.
Even at its peak, it was possible for you to waste time and rare/limited resources on things that had been power-crept to Hell and back, or were about to.
But on the other hand, how often have you seen status effects have equal-opposite interactions, wherein Regen and Poison don't merely cancel out conceptually, but literally? The weight of individual statuses also had to be carefully considered when assembling your character builds.
How many gachas leave you with a menagerie of useless, outdated characters after every major patch, where [i]Mobius[/i] made sure each Job had a modular moveset, allowing you to swap out older moves like Flame Sword for their updated equivalents like Leadthrower, Overheat, and more, as well as releasing retroactive buffs that could be earned through a series of Job-specific challenge stages?
Speaking of which, the typical "hero collector" style of game also has a bad continuity problem, where 99.99% of the time, you will be using a mix of characters who either don't know each other, don't exist in the narrative yet, or are not supposed to be where you currently are, etc.. [i]Mobius[/i] was not immune to this, except that in the beginning, it was: leveraging not only the fact that there was only one player character, who simply had a wide variety of potential looks and powers, but a narrative that makes him just one of millions of similar young men actually kept continuity strong for a while. This may have eroded over time, as guest characters could be used in almost any story beat, but chapters in Act 2 would actually require you to use Jobs from a specific character in order to maintain the narrative thread.
Not counting Ultimate Heroes (or "skins" as they were unceremoniously referred to in common speak), the game had only five true playable characters, but each with dozens (or eight in the case of the last two char's) of Job changes, alternate costumes with stats and a seemingly-random elemental wheel attached to them, asserting a sort of quality-over-quantity approach that seems antithetical to the very nature of the subgenre--exactly the sort of thing that left such a grand, lasting impression for a game that was for me ultimately free.
In retrospect, the variety of card arts displayed here--again, nothing unique on its own, just somewhat unusual outside of a TCG/CCG--is bittersweet, knowing how much of that work AI bros. seek to invalidate (a particular problem we didn't have to deal with when this game was around), 'cause there were a number of generic but visually-striking card arts early on that nowadays you have to look twice before discerning if someone actually made that....
...when taken altogether (plus many details I didn't bother enumerating, you'll have to get the more complete picture from playthroughs or the Subreddit),
[i]Mobius[/i], as the name/logo suggests, was all about crafting a satisfying gameplay loop, which is really almost every game ever (video and board),
but for real--battles and menu flow into each other, and within battle, your decisions flow into each other, in an endless loop of resource management that shouldn't be overwhelming, since it's presented in a familiar format, and the main things you have to keep track of are very similar in nature.
Strength-based moves--the basic attack and Ultimates--[b]gain[/b] you Orbs, and chip away at the enemy's Break Gauge;
Magic-based moves--Ability Cards (unless they have the Taijutsu or Mantra property)--[b]cost[/b] Orbs, and soften up the enemy's Break Gauge without actually depleting it.
You can also [b]eat[/b] (I'm paraphrasing) all Orbs of a single color to both gain temporary resistance to that element [b]and[/b] temporarily reduce the odds of you getting that type.
Most of the above contributes towards the Ultimate, a Limit Break/Overdrive/EX Burst/Final Smash/etc. that could be described as "a finisher," but often it, while technically the same in each case, can be used for two or three different potential purposes, depending on your needs in the moment: breaking the enemy, damaging the enemy, and/or simply buffing yourself (and getting more Orbs for spellcasting), with the damage dealt being seen as a secondary bonus? And these often synergize with the role of the Job you have equipped, with Breakers being able to melt defenses, Attackers being extra-devastating if the enemy is already Broken, and so on.
Ah, but maybe I've just fallen into the trap of reminiscing, as if I were trying to sell a discontinued game to anyone who'd listen, and I sure did a bad job of it while the game actually ran.
Funnily, [i]Mobius'[/i] end was [b]right before[/b] [i]FF14's[/i] free-to-play was extended to Heavensward...and for as much of a blast as that game has been, it's also been a massive blow to my wallet and thousands of hours I could've been working...yet though you could see that I spend thousands in [i]Mobius FF[/i] as well, the format of that game allowed me to be able to drop it and pick it back up more smoothly. Maybe it was demanding if I wanted to stay on top of things, but it was never to the ridiculous degree that any Hoyoverse game is, nor as condescending as something like the minimum level in [i]Dissidia FF: Opera Omnia[/i] being raised to 70 by the time I briefly tried to fill the void with that.
This game was not infallible, and while I laud it as a better example of how a freemium game could be run, realistically, if forced to continue, it likely would have slid into trashiness, like a good old cartoon from "way back in the day" vs. some 20-to-30-season-long-runners that [b]started[/b] amazing, but got stretched so thin (and marketed to Hell and back) that their contemporaries look better and better each year (or simply, it did not--ironically, given the plot of Act 2--live long enough to see itself become the bad guy).
I had a great time, and I believe that it's worth revisiting, both as a new game, and as an observation of the interwoven systems that made it somehow fast-paced without being real-time or ridiculous, yet also strategic and flexible, despite the fact that you're glued to one spot the entire time and can pretty much only ever attack...
it's just such a hard overall experience to describe, and I hardly mentioned story.
It just [b]was.[/b]
Recommend.
