TESSA’S VERDICT:

It’s rare that I will review a cell phone game, but after playing FFBE: WOTV, I felt it was worth the time to give it a deeper look. The game has been out for a while in various forms, but there are many fans of Final Fantasy Tactics who have no idea Brave Exvius even exists. Many people I’ve talked to were always wondering when a Final Fantasy Tactics sequel or a spiritual successor would be released. Unfortunately, this game is not a sequel FF Tactics, but it is a more complicated spiritual successor to its battle system.

The game is free to play and download, but contains mountains of optional in game purchases and gachca nonsense. That said, I’ve played the game extensively and have yet to give the misers over at SE a dime for it, so it’s possible to enjoy the game for free if you take your time with it. I evaluated the game based on the 6 categories below. If you’ve read my other game reviews, five of them will be familiar, but the sixth I added due to its nature as a cell phone game. I hope this helps you decide whether you want to sink time or money into War of the Visions. One other warning is that the game forces you into a lot of tutorials, but they are mostly aimed at teaching you how to give SE money for materials you need. The tutorials teach you very little about how to actually play the game. However, if you get to the point where you can freely play the game under your own direction, it can be an enjoyable experience. Adding the star ratings of each category, divided by the number of categories (6) brings my rating of this game to 3 out 5 stars.

THE WORLD

The world in War of the Visions is interesting from a story perspective only. It consists of one solitary continent with many nations and entities. The game highlights 4 nations and 1 church entity in the bulk of the game’s story, but other nations are mentioned as major players in the geopolitical landscape and will eventually be revealed in more detail.

The battle environments draw hard from the FF Tactics diorama style layouts. The background settings and levels aren’t spectacular, but they have a nostalgic charm to them for anyone who enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics. Cell phone games have come a long way, but the world is not freely explorable and, instead, is only accessible through linear story quests or optional quest sublists. Even when accessing the sub quests lists, the areas are merely plots on a map with lines drawn between them. If you are looking for an immersive world, then it’s one you have to experience through the story. Taking the limitations of cell phone games into account to soften the blow, I’m giving the world depicted in War of the Visions a 2.5 out of 5 stars.

THE STORY

The story has a number of good plot points: romance, kingdoms, betrayal, infighting, powerful alliances, evil religious entities. Many of these points are portrayed well, but all the love themes rely heavily on tropes and are shallow / hastily done. The story does have its exciting moments, but part of the story’s failure is in the format SE chose to release it in. To explain, there is one cutscene for each story mission, and there are a lot of story missions. Since SE is trying stretch content and make it last longer, the vast majority of events in the story are not integral to the plot. There are many scenes where a character, like Ramamda (The main nation of Leonis’ resident stargazer and prophet), for example, will be asked what the stars say of their future or chances in battle, only to have Ramada give a coy, equivocating answer that leads to no knowledge gained. Then, a battle will just ensue. Presumably because the land is just so monster infested.

Battles centered around the story also have an odd disconnect I hadn’t experienced until playing this game. In most RPG’s you have your main characters and then play the game to achieve their goals throughout the plot. This game does that most of the time, but, sometimes, it will show you a cutscene from the antagonists’ perspectives, then make you fight the battle with your units for the antagonists’ goals in a setting your characters would never be in. It’s jarring and ultimately a lazy way to force more battles into the plot. Also, it’s mostly due to the fact this is a cell phone game with small battle maps, but the story will talk about massive battles and war, but then there will be like 6 characters in the “war” scene. It's not a bad thing, just something you’ll need to temper your expectations about.

I’ll get to the game’s periodic events in a later portion of this review, but many of those events have their own mini stories / sub plots. They are fairly rushed, but some of them can be good at times. I’m framing this positively because it is very rare for modern SE to do extra work outside the main story and they should be encouraged to keep doing so. Also, in addition to dialogue text, the cutscenes and plot events are voice acted in English. The dub work is decent over all, but certain characters have speech pathologies that make them annoying to listen to at times. For all these reasons I’m giving the story a 3 out of 5 stars.

THE MUSIC

The music in War of the Visions is decent over all with a few gems, but I have not yet heard anything as good as some of the tracks from older Brave Exvius games. The battle theme that plays at the end of most chapters is especially good. The home menu screen when you enter the game also has a dramatic song that plays and fits the game well. Some limited time events (the Nier Automata cross over in particular) helped add some amazing songs, but it was only temporary, and there were no original remixes for WOTV. Most of the songs I hear are just passive mood-setting tracks, like deep brass tones while enemies are skulking around plotting. Because the soundtrack does not have as much effort put into it, I’m giving it 2.5 out of 5 stars.

THE BATTLE SYSTEM AND ABILITIES

The battle system is where this game really shines. Even if it is just a recycled version of previous Brave Exvius games, it still is an incredibly fun and more difficult version of the Final Fantasy Tactics battle system with a FFX style grid for ability unlocks. Even though many of my other ratings on this game are average, I have played this game, and continue to play this game, mostly so I can enjoy the quality of the battle system.

First, the game uses a tiles/ squares movement system like the original Final Fantasy Tactics and you’ll instantly feel nostalgic when you play it. In most battles you can choose five units (and sometimes hire a companion from other players as a 6th), which gives you a great deal of control over strategy and maximizing the teamwork of your units. However, unlike Tactics, each unit is locked into a specific main job with the choice of three static subjobs. While this aspect more limited, it still allows for plenty of customization. The game has tons of abilities and certain units have special jobs that are only available to them (Like 2B from Nier Automata being a YORHA Type 2B job class). Many of the special jobs have abilities from regular jobs, but with some unique tweaks. I’ll talk more about unit rarity later, but all UR units (Ultra Rare, and the rarest rating a unit can get at this point) have a special ultimate move. Some of the ultimate moves are lame or silly, but most of them are very exciting to use.

Every unit has an unchangeable element associated with their abilities and the elements are used in a paper, scissors, rock fashion using a standard Square Enix elemental wheel:

Fire > ice > wind > earth > lightning > water > fire

Light <> dark

Elemental weaknesses and resistances are always in play (on most of the unit’s abilities, but not their regular attacks), but they work in addition to the weapon type resistances and weaknesses from your characters’ equipped weapon. Every unit can be equipped with a specific weapon type, but some sub jobs can give access to weapon types you aren’t currently equipping. For example, a mage equipping a staff (blunt damage) with the spellsword subjob will do slashing damage when using spellsword abilities. There are two types of chains for successive attacks: regular chains and elemental chains. If abilities of the same element or weapon type are used on an enemy before the enemy’s turn comes up, a chain will occur. The damage multiplier of chains is decent, so it’s worthwhile to use them as long as you aren’t stacking your team with units the enemy can easily kill.

Characters can also equip armor and some of the rarest armor can even give the equipping unit a new battle ability. Many of these ultra rare weapons and armor are acquired by maxing out specific units, but once the piece is unlocked, it can be used on any character that meets the requirements for equipping the piece. I’ll describe the character upgrade process in more detail in the gacha section, since that is one of the game’s money sinks.

Maps are mostly small, but SE uses height a lot, which can make the jump stat (how high you can walk) more important than the move stat (how far you can walk) on many maps. There are some maps with interactive effects, like switches that open doors or magic circles that cause things to explode and kill anyone on certain squares, but most maps are just basic ones. I enjoy the basic maps a lot though.

Every battle will have optional objective that give bonus rewards, which are usually items you’ll need to upgrade units. Make sure to check what the objectives are before entering battle. There can also be treasure chests in battle, but most maps do not have any treasure. Like in Final Fantasy Tactics, enemies that are defeated and fade away will leave crystals behind. If a unit picks up a blue crystal, it will recovery that unit’s hp and give them a temporary bravery boost (bravery and faith stats work in a similar way to Final Fantasy tactics, but without any move find item abilities). Purple crystals are better and, in addition to recovering a unit’s hp and granting a bravery boost, they also reward bonus job points. Job points are used to unlock abilities on a grid that is like a hexagonal version of the FFX sphere grid.

Two more key parts of the battle system are stats called TP and AP. Every unit starts a battle with full (or near full) TP. TP is spent to use buffs, cures, and some non-damaging debuff moves. Units start with varying levels of AP depending on what kind of job they are (i.e. mages start a battle with significantly more AP than physical attacking units). AP is gained by expending TP or by physically hitting an enemy with a melee attack. Melee attacks generate significantly more AP than using a TP ability. One of the things that seems a little unbalanced to me in this game’s battle system is some units have access to much more AP generation techniques than others, and it makes the game very AP focused. Some pieces of ultra rare armor you can unlock by maxing out units have AP generation moves on them, so if you unlock the right units, you could potentially turn a unit with slow AP gain into one with fast AP gain. There are customization ways to make even mediocre units significantly better, but it takes a ton of materials and time.

There are also summons that each unit can equip and special “vision cards” that give units extra buffs (and some grant party wide buffs).

When you first start the game, SE will give you access to a fully unlocked level 99 character. This can make many of the story battles very easy, but you can always not use that unit to get more challenge from the fights. The game does have extremely challenging fights that you will need a whole team of unlocked/ high level characters for (if you’re worried about the game not being challenging enough).

Because the battle system is so deep and I’m not including analysis of the tedious gacha unit upgrades in this section, I’m giving the battle system 4.5 out of 5 stars. I would have given it a 5, but I feel the game’s TP to AP conversion rate needs a little rebalancing. (At least as of the date of this post, I’m not sure what future updates hold).

CONTENT AND EVENTS

The game has a decent amount of unique limited time event with good rewards. These events will often tell new stories or give you another character’s view point of existing events. Events will consist of a long chain of different battles that scale dramatically as you near the end. The Gacha elements and shop are also have their own events. Some of them are only good opportunities if you are will to give SE money, but the vast majority of shop events do have opportunities to pick up rare materials and items for free (and by free I mean by expending the free in game currencies, like gil).

The story is average, but there are a lot of story quests. There are also a ton of optional quests, side quests, and quests for materials to upgrade everything from weapons and armor to abilities and summons. It’s a large amount of content you can access, especially after the game’s lengthy tutorial phase.

The game also has an “NRG” stat, which is basically how many missions you can run before having to wait. However, this limit is functionally obsolete because the game throws so many NRG restore items at you when you first start. I could probably play the game every day for the next year without ever being locked out by the NRG limit based on the items I was given.

The game also has co-op, guilds you can join with other members, an automated pvp (arena), and actual pvp (match battle). However, anything co-op in the game requires a very solid internet connection or you get booted quickly. These modes can be fun, but I find them less fun than the other events. The arena in particular is a bit frustrating because it relies on the game’s AI to fight for you, and the AI is not very good. Sometimes it can make brilliant plays, but it will often not use units effectively.

The game also has “story skip tickets” and “event skip tickets”. At first I thought this was a FF14 style “lazy players pay SE to not experience the game” kind of thing, but the tickets are more used to skip repetitious materials grinding for fights you’ve already cleared.

The events are simple, but this is also a cell phone game. I find the content plentiful enough and fun. For these reasons I’m giving the content and events a 4 out of 5 stars.

PAY TO WIN AND GACHA

Hoo boy… Where to begin… This game is a confusing nightmare mess of upgrade materials, and this is largely intended by SE so they can bleed more money out of you for items you need to max out your units. First, let me detail the kinds of currency the game has. Then I’ll explain the types of units there are and the extra components they need. After that, I’ll go over all the different upgrade items you need to max units out.

The main types of currencies the game uses are:

Visiore. This is a more difficult to obtain currency, but you get small amounts of it from log in bonuses, first time mission completion rewards, goals / monthly goals, and daily missions. This is the main way you get rare items in the game without having to pay.
Paid visiore. It looks exactly like regular visiore, but says paid next to it. It is intentionally made to be confusing by SE so you accidentally use paid visiore on items that can be bought with normal visiore. It’s a really bad system, but SE intends it to be that way. Paid visiore is also very expensive. I think I remember seeing a combination of 6,000 paid visiore and 6,000 regular visiore for $99. Considering most of the upgrade item packs you’ll want to buy cost 2000-3000 visiore per pack, it gets real costly real fast. Another thing is that the game has around 10-12 different gacha summons at any given time and you really have to read to know what they’re for and the odds of getting what you want out of it. For example, if a new UR unit is released there will probably be “10-step summon” associated with that unit and each of those 10 steps will cost 2,000 visiore each. You wouldn’t be faulted for thinking that getting to step 10 (20,000 visiore deep) would guarantee you the unit being advertised, but that is rarely the case. Typical SE nonsene.
Gil. The tried and true SE currency is mostly a joke in this game. New player log in bonuses started me with 2 billion gil (Yes, billion with a b). Everything that costs gil consumes a lot of it, but even taking the scale into account, you won’t run out of it unless you burn it all on gil summons. Some shard summons can be accessed with gil, but they’re mostly 3 steps with step 1 being 5 mil gil, step 2 being 10 mil gil, and step 3 being 10 mil gil (for a grand total of 25 mil). The drop rates of rare unit shards in these are garbage, so this is mostly just an exercise in throwing gil away. As long as you stay away from these summons, you shouldn’t have to worry about gil consumption.
Medals. I mention medals down below with the upgrade items. Just know there are a lot of different kinds and they’re used to buy other materials.

Now let’s get into the units and extra items they need:

Units you can use on the battlefield come in varying rarities as follows: normal, rare, super rare, and ultra rare. Within the Ultra Rare class, not every unit is equal in rarity. The best way to tell if an ultra rare unit is rarer than others is to check how much their vision shards cost or how many tries they have a day for their unit shard quests. If the cost is 250 visiore for 5 shards in the shop or 2 tries a day for the unit’s hard quest, it’s a normal UR unit. If the cost is 500 visiore for 5 shards in the shop or only 1 try a day for it’s hard quest, then it’s a rarer UR unit. There are enough opportunities to get UR units when you start the game that you don’t really ever have to waste materials on units lower than UR. The one exception is a mode SE recently released that bars the use of UR units (in an attempt to make all other units less useless).
Vision cards. These cards are equipped by units and they make a dramatic difference if the cards are fully upgraded. Like units they come in normal, rare, super rare, and ultra rare. Certain vision cards will also give you a summon (esper) that you can equip on a unit and summon in battle.
Espers. These are summons units can call in battle and they’re usually obtained by pulling its associated vision card.
Weapons, armor, and accessories.

To put things in perspective, here’s a list of some of the items and materials you’ll need when playing:

Items (Exp cubes) to raise your character’s exp level.
Items to “awaken” a unit. This is increase the upper limits of your unit’s max level and subjob levels. These items include: elemental prisms of 6 different levels per element, fragments of thought for each element type, vision spheres (rainbow for ultra rare units), and rainbow fragments of thought.
“Shards” to “limit break” a unit. These are similar to awakenings, but are much more tedious. In fact, shards are the main way the game controls how fast you can advance and make units more powerful. Acquiring shards is a very slow process and is usually easiest during a small window of 9-16 real life days after a unit is released. SE does this to pressure you into buying what you need with real money.
Items (magicite) to upgrade an esper’s level.
2-3 different types of items to upgrade and esper’s maximum level.
Items to raise a vision card’s exp level.
Vision card shards and vision orbs (you can also use vision spheres for this, but is a waste to do so) to raise your vision card’s max level. Vision card shards are very difficult to acquire because the quests to get them are limited to 1 shard per day (There is a way to reset the limit later, but it doesn’t amount to much).
Items (burst pots) to upgrade the strength of a UR unit’s ultimate ability (the animation doesn’t change).
Recipes for different armor and weapons (armor and weapons range from normal to ultra rare).
An ungodly amount of different items that can be used to craft weapons and armor or raise the max level of a piece of equipment.
Items (adamantite) to increase the weapon or armor’s exp level.
Items (armor pots) to increase the ability strength of moves on armor.
Items (Seals). There’s 5 or 6 different ones for different stats) that give bonus stats to weapons or armor based on their level.
Items (Dwarven hammers for each stat) that give extra bonus stats to weapons and armor.
Items that are used to help build a guild and train your units in the barracks facility.
Tons of different “medals” that you can use to purchase other units and upgrade materials. There’s usually one for each event currently available in addition to arena medals, guild medals, and medals you get if you receive shards from units you’ve already maxed (you usually don’t need these last medals, but they can be used to acquire more materials you do need).
EX job limit break items (broad stones, blossoms of paradise, alcryst statues) . Some units have access to an expanded ability tree that you need to “EX limit break” the job to access.

The game also has chocobo expeditions, which are like the FF Tactics errands you could send units on. These just return materials and random shards based on which zone you set to explore, but they also will give units exp. Units on a chocobo expedition can still be used in battle, so there’s no downside to sending them out. I mention this here because there are chocobo expedition tickets you can buy to speed the expedition up.

This game also has substantial “pay to win” opportunities. You can buy arena restores for example to rank up faster than other people, or you can outright buy certain vision shards in paid visiore offerings sometimes. Pay to win mechanics are always trash.

I have never seen a “good gacha system”. They’re all just varying degrees of terrible, so I’m not sure how to rate this hot mess. Since the game does have a lot of opportunities to get regular visiore for accomplishing certain tasks, I’m going to give it a 1.5 stars out of 5 (I would have given it a 0 or a 1 otherwise). Below are some screen shots from the game to give you an idea of the visuals.