World of Final Fantasy’s Weird, Conflicting Harmony

With so many elements at odds with one another, this game still managed to stick with me after four years

I rarely ever preorder a game. I’ve been burned before, having fallen prey in my younger years to the Gamestop clerk warnings that if I didn’t pre-order right then and there, I probably wouldn’t get a copy on release day. I have boxes of sub-par, mediocre, and downright awful games that I was swayed into pre-ordering based on a fancy screenshot or by being tied to a recognizable franchise.

I did, however, make one exception a few years back. Square Enix was making World of Final Fantasy: a spin-off from the original series that incorporated elements of Pokémon, having the player wandering an expansive world, capturing iconic monsters from the series, and fighting alongside them. Looking back, I believe it was the art style that swayed me. These cute, doll-like characters bouncing around in a brightly colored world, forcing hulking behemoths of destruction to do their bidding looked so out of place that I just had to see what this game was about. It would either be a fun, light-hearted romp or an incredibly weird experience. Either way, I was going to be there for it.