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# Why Final Fantasy: All the Bravest isn’t the portent of doom you think it is.
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/why-final-fantasy-all-bravest-isnt-portent-doom-you-think-it/
- Published: 2013-01-23T13:30:51.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T14:42:29.000Z
- Description: Final Fantasy All the Bravest released for iOS last week. The game is a boiled-down experience of nothing but RPG combat. If turn-based battles were your favorite part of Final Fantasy but the story, relationships, exploration and sense of adventure got in the way… here’s your game. Our old editor J
- Author: Jon Irwin
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/finalfantasybravest.jpg)

*Final Fantasy All the Bravest* released for iOS last week. The game is a boiled-down experience of nothing but RPG combat. If turn-based battles were your favorite part of *Final Fantasy* but the story, relationships, exploration and sense of adventure got in the way… here’s your game. Our old editor Joe [didn’t like it](http://killscreendaily.com/headlines/consensus-ios-final-fantasy-untrammeled-turd-monster/?ref=killscreen.com) very much. Neither, probably, [did you](http://www.edge-online.com/review/final-fantasy-all-the-bravest-review/?ref=killscreen.com).

But the release of a major franchise reduced down to such a simplistic version portends an ominous, or at least more efficient, future.

– – –

With this and last summer’s *Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy,* a music-rhythm game highlighting the best of the series’ twenty-five years of sounds, Square-Enix has established an intriguing precedent for the industry’s immediate future. Triple-A blockbusters are becoming more expensive, with more burden on unrealistically high sales for a company to make back their investment, let alone turn a tidy profit. But what if the risk was spread across multiple, smaller games, stripped from the larger experience?

We see this already with post-launch DLC giving players a reason to buy more content for what are essentially level- or mission-packs, using the same engine and parts already paid for by the developers. But what if the full game is sold in packs? Enjoy the music? Here, have a music game. Enjoy combat? Take this fighting game.

Many mobile games already ask you to pay intermittently throughout the experience to unlock and see the whole thing. Square-Enix’s treatment of the *Final Fantasy* series as fodder for smaller, more consumable games, sold to a wider audience with less time to devote to 80-hour epics, might suggest a future of games we buy, and play, piecemeal.

If resources are directed away from full-scale experiences toward their more feeble counterparts, this would be a shame. But I, for one, welcome the option.

Having arrived to RPGs late in my life, I now don’t have the time nor inclination to sink dozens of hours into each mainline *Final Fantasy* game retroactively. Instead, I’m playing through *Theatrhythm*. I’ll get to experience the same great music (minus the context, sure) and play a genre I actually like! Plus I’ll save about 1000 hours. Call me a heathen if you must. I’m still open to change; certain game’s themes have already made me want to check out the real deal ([Man with the Machine Gun](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jho-peCAKs&ref=killscreen.com), you slay me). But for right now, I’m content listening and swiping and distributing my play-time elsewhere. For me, that’s all the *Fantasy* I need.