REDMAGIC Game Review: Final Fantasy First Soldier

We were excited to see the new Final Fantasy First Soldier game a few months ago and now that it is out, we’ve been playing it quite a bit. What do we think of it now that we have it in our hands? It’s good, it’s fun to play, hits our nostalgia for our favorite Final Fantasy game, and it looks great on mobile, but it’s also flawed. Join us as we take a first-hand look at Final Fantasy Frist Soldier and see if you agree with us or not.

First Thoughts

It looks Amazing
This game is gorgeous and I didn’t know how much I missed Final Fantasy 7, damn. Quite possibly the first thoughts myself and many of us here at REDMAGIC thought when we first fired up Final Fantasy First Soldier on the REDMAGIC 6S Pro. This game looks great and it runs great on the REDMAGIC 6S Pro. It also hits us right in our nostalgia feels every chance it gets with this latest addition to the Final Fantasy 7 story. For the purists out there, don’t worry the events in First Soldier do not appear to conflict with the story from our beloved Final Fantasy 7. Also, perhaps the most important aspect of any Final Fantasy game, you get your very own Chocobo and it’s awesome! Out of the game, you can raise your Chocobo and in a way make it more your own and unique. When you’re in a match there are special Chocobo calling stations where you can call your Chocobo onto the field and ride it around. You can even attack stuff with it. Be Careful though because while the Chocobo is fast, that attack is a little weak and the Chocobo doesn’t have that much HP. But riding it has definitely been a highlight for us.

Magic And Monsters
The inclusion of magic and monster NPCs throughout the map is a nice touch to the battle royale genre and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We also found ourselves dying to the monsters more than to other players at first so be careful when you pick a fight with them!

The Magic System
The magic system they have put into the game is a nice addition and made the battle royal style game even more fun than the other additions like the RPG leveling up mid game or the NPC monsters. The magic system has the basic kind stuff like healing, fireballs, and area effects damaging spells, but there are also a few others that give you more options for how to deal with different encounters. Such as Blizzard, where you drop a little turret that shoots ice shards at nearby enemies. There is also the super cool Comet spell where you drop a literal massive fireball from the sky on top of your opponents from the sky. While not damaging, Gravity and Aero give some really interesting options in the game. Gravity acts like a trap and slows down people when inside and it seems to stun NPC monsters. Aero on the other hand gives you a massive vertical boost. Ever find yourself needing to get around a mountain or big building? Use Aero and you can jump over it like a superhero! Just toss the spell on the ground before and then jump onto it and it yeet you high into the year. Super useful and highly amusing to use.

At any one time you can only hold up to 3 spells, so it pays to try them all out and find your favorite spells in the training zone. We liked running around with Aero, Cure for healing, and Blizzard or Thunder.

Things That Could Have Been Better

Movement
The controls are solid and they are customizable, but we noticed early that the movement system could use some work and so could the shooting.

When moving, the character only has two speeds, his normal running speed and his crouched running speed. If you’re not used to this kind of binary control and want more sensitivity like what you would get in PUBG then you’re likely to miss things, like doors. We sure did several times.

Shooting
We also found the shooting in the game to be clunky. Thankfully they do offer three types of controls for shooting, auto shooting when you have your reticle over the target - our least favorite-, having the fire button be a hovering button that follows your thumb, or a locked button. Originally we wanted a locked button like all of our other FPS games but we found that you couldn’t move the camera to track someone while shooting at the same time, a big problem honestly. This problem goes away if you choose the hovering button. However if you use non-automatic weapons, you’ll need to keep tapping the button to fire which makes the camera stop moving and stops you from tracking, we hope this gets changed soon.

Should You Play It?

Short Answer, Yes
Long answer, if you’re a fan of Final Fantasy 7 then it’s a must try just for a few rounds at least, it’s free to play after all. Once the developers send out some patches, hopefully they will fix the things that we found difficult. Once those pain points are fixed, this will be a real fun Battle Royal to play for hours on end either solar or with your two best friends.