I Got So Bored While Social Distancing, I Actually Played a Mobile Game: My Review of Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia

YOU: Hey man if you were so bored why not just play one of the dozens of console games you haven’t played yet?

ME: I wanted a game that I could play while walking the neighborhood.

YOU: So just take your Switch?

ME: Mind your business.

Dissida Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia is a turn based mobile game that brings together all the main characters from previous Final Fantasy titles and shoves them into a campaign/story mode and then adds all the bells and whistles that come along with most mobile RPG experiences. Please note; not all the bells and whistles are good. Some of them are bad bells and naughty whistles.

The game follows an evil demi-god as he opens portals connecting multiple worlds and generally causing chaos. Heroes from all the mainline Final Fantasy games join together to defeat this threat and eventually return to their own worlds.

The appeal is obvious. Combining characters from different FF worlds to make your team is a majorly enjoyable feature. Want to rock a team of Noctis (FFXV), Aerith (FFVII), and Terra (FFVI) then boom you got it. That idea is exciting for anyone who’s followed this franchise and it’s a huge part of why I decided to try this game out.

THE GOOD

DFF:OO (called “Deefo” by the fan base) gets full marks for having a positive, supportive, and friendly online community. In fact it’s probably one of the best gaming communities I’ve ever interacted with.

Jumping into the free to play game space I was worried that I would hit a wall in the game where I’d need to spend money to progress. I’m happy to tell you with smart resource management you can make it very deep into the campaign without spending a dime.

Your roster grows fast, extremely fast even. You’ll quickly have a couple dozen characters and consistently add more as the game progresses. If you don’t spend money you can focus all your upgrades to your main three characters and they’ll become fairly strong, allowing you to push deep into the story.

When I first downloaded DFF:OO the game was right in the middle of some Final Fantasy 7 Remake marketing, so those characters had double experience. It made the grind nice and easy.

Like almost all Final Fantasy games, this one introduces a new battle system. It’s interesting and feels crisp. Summons work well and feel like a FF summon should. All the classic FF weapons are there. Want Cecil to wield Sephiroth’s long sword? It’s all possible in DFF:OO.

The amount of content/battles that you dive into right from the jump is frankly unlike anything I’ve seen for an RPG mobile game. There are near constant events happening, co-op challenges, community challenges, there’s no shortage of things to swing a sword at.

One final impressive little note before we move on to the bad. DFF:OO does an excellent job of making past events available to new players. Mobile gaming is extremely event heavy and many mobile games suck at making certain events available to players that come along later, not DFF:OO. They keep a running list of old events that new players can partake in.

But…

THE BAD

Like mostly all mobile RPGs this game has got an overwhelming amount of different currencies to juggle. There’s gil obviously, there’s also diamonds, currencies that match specific events, currencies that are specific to armor, specific to weapons, there’s just too many balls to keep juggling to ever really keep track of. This is a consistent complaint of the mobile/FTP genre and I know it’s not going away anytime soon. Having said that, I do think there’s a way to streamline a lot of this nonsense.

Next up on the cons list, loading times. DFF:OO has loading screens nearly constantly. In between nearly every screen is a 5-10 second load screen. This isn’t affected by wireless or cellular network (I tried multiple of each). Granted, I was playing during the COVID-19 outbreak and there’s a good chance the Square Enix servers are slammed.

THE END

To conclude, I recommend this game if you A) are a fan of the Final Fantasy series, and B) feel like you can handle the extra annoying facets of mobile gaming.

If you are leaning into playing this game I’ll tell you that on iPad the experience is a tad better, but it works just find on the average mobile device.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy – Opera Omnia is a game that leans heavily on the loyal fan base of Final Fantasy (as it should). In no way should this game be your first step into the wider Final Fantasy world, but if you are intrigued by the idea of pulling different FF heroes together into one experience, then this game could very well be for you.

Nathan is the co-host and co-creator of the Splash Damage Bros. Podcast. He can typically be found at the Honey Bee Inn.

About the author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *