It may be a while away yet, but 2016 is shaping up to be quite a year for fans of Square Enix's long-running role-playing game series, Final Fantasy. There's the cutesy character-stacking adventure, World of Final Fantasy coming to the Playstation 4 and Vita, and Final Fantasy XV almost guaranteed to show up in the first half of the year - never mind the long awaited Final Fantasy VII remake on the horizon (although that may miss 2016), as well as the Disney/Final Fantasy mash-up, Kingdom Hearts III in development. Still - now, there's one more Final Fantasy-themed title that's definitely coming next year - the long-awaited (by us, anyway) Final Fantasy Explorers, which is heading to the 3DS in January.
The story here is one that's fairly by the numbers - set in a world on the brink of a war over it's energy reserves (which just so happen to be crystals), an elite squad of Explorers bands together and heads out on a quest. Heading to an island rich in crystals, they begin their search for the ultimate in treasures, the Grand Crystal, every Explorers dream. As it'd be a bit of a short game if everything went swimmingly, we can only imagine that the hunt for the crystal won't quite go as planned - and the expedition sets the stage for a Final Fantasy adventure.
Looks like Explorers will have a few familiar faces too, like Final Fantasy X's Yuna.
The big twist here is that Final Fantasy Explorer is multiplayer friendly. Whether you're playing on your lonesome, or with the help of up to three friends, you journey into the world's various dungeons, exploring the labyrinths, beating up monsters and searching for treasure along the way. With more than 20 'jobs' your characters can specialise in, from Knights and Monks to the healing-focused White Mage and damage-centric Black Mage, there's a class for everybody and every play style - but if you're having problems building yourself a balanced enough team with your friends, you can always recruit some of the realm's mightiest monsters to fight by your side. You'll also be able to call up on the 'powers of the eidolons', summoning the likes of Ifrit and Bahamut to help turn the tide of battle.
Speaking of battles, depending on how you feel about your Final Fantasy games, the next point will either be sacrilege or a breath of fresh air, so brace yourselves. Final Fantasy Explorers has real-time battles (queue booing from our Editor Ian). Traditionally relying on old-school take-it-in-turns battles, Explorers trades this in for some button-mashing every-man-for-themselves face-offs instead - although whether it's just because it's a spin-off or simply indicative of the new direction the series is taking (given that the upcoming Final Fantasy XV is going this route too), remains to be seen. Either way, we'll likely reserve judgement until we get our hands on the game, hopefully at next week's Gamescom trade show in Germany.
Also threatening their world - giant angry snake dragons...
But there's one 'problem' of sorts doing multiplayer games on portable consoles like the 3DS - with the exception of quick-fire courses on things like Mario Kart, very often you'll find you need a copy of the game for each player. 'Download Play', a la the aforementioned Mario Kart lets a number of players download a trial-sized, multiplayer-only portion of the game to join in, but for a lot of the bigger, more complex games, it's not really used. And given the press release for Final Fantasy Explorers only mentions that "multiplayer functionality is enabled through the Nintendo 3DS's wireless communication functions", with no mention of Download Play, we're going to assume it's an everyone-needs-their-own-game multiplayer one. Which kind of sucks.
Final Fantasy Explorers will be hitting the 3DS early next year, on the 29th January (narrowly missing my birthday in the process). In the meantime, why not check out the debut trailer below:
