 |
| Andrew Barker |
You can see it for yourself in the livestream.
09.07.14 - 8:30 AM
In two recent livestreams, Square Enix showed off a good twenty minutes of in-game footage of Final Fantasy Explorers on Nintendo 3DS. There's a ton of new stuff that we learned from the plays, including the Dark Knight class, quests, Trance mode and more. You can watch a recording of one stream that features director Atsushi Hashimoto and project manager Takahiro Abe for yourself below, or skip down to read notes on exactly what was shown in both.
Plenty of time was dedicated to showing off and discussing the different abilities that classes will have. As you might expect, most of the abilities will be Final Fantasy staples such as Cure, Fire, Chakra, and so on, but there will be new ones too (about 200 new and old overall).
In towns, you can learn new abilities by spending CP earned through quests at crystals. The game is based around completing quests, and each will take approximately twenty minutes to beat. You won't learn the abilities instantly, rather work on them over time (probably like in Final Fantasy IX) and some can be used while you are another class (cross-class skills). Different job classes can be played in different ways, too, such as White Mages who focus on damage output rather than healing.
Originally appearing in FFIX, a new version of Trance mode will also be in Explorers. As the gauge builds up over time, you'll eventually be able to 'Trance' and become more powerful temporarily. It seems that, at least in some cases, when you Trance you actually transform into a 'Legendary' Final Fantasy character, such as Cloud, and use their signature attacks. We don't know yet which other past heroes will be putting in an appearance.
In battle, the bottom-screen is used to keep track of health and status buffs and ailments. It looks like it will be particularly useful for healing classes, such as White Mage. Just like in Final Fantasy XIV, area attacks that foes execute will be shown as circles on the screen. You'll be able to avoid them by moving away from it.
While you're out in the field, but not in battle, different classes move at different speeds. While the Paladin is slower, for example, Haste can be cast to improve travel time.
As previously mentioned, Dark Knight was revealed as a new job class. These vicious warriors have immense physical power and can use weapons such as the sword and axe. Their defence is low though, so having a healer on hand will be vital.
Final Fantasy Explorers will be released in Japan on December 18th.
