On the assurances of others who have played it a lot further that it does get a lot more interesting and challenging later, I’ve been idly trying a bit more of Final Fantasy Record Keeper. And I’m starting to “get it”, I think.

One of the issues I have with mobile games of this type is that they often throw too much content at you at once, much of which is well out of your league and is just a waste of the limited “stamina” resource to participate in. Record Keeper does suffer from this to an extent, but it is at least pretty up-front about the fact that you should probably play what it calls the “core dungeons” first in order to upgrade your stamina bar, then challenge either the Elite versions of the core dungeons or the daily event dungeons.

Record Keeper takes a slightly interesting approach to powering up your “account”; rather than having experience points and a level, in order to increase your maximum amount of stamina — and, consequently, the amount of dungeons you can challenge in a session without spending the “Mythril” currency to recharge — you simply need to repeatedly collect five “Stamina Shards”, which are crystals awarded to you when you finish a dungeon. Normally you get one the first time you finish a dungeon and another the first time you “master” the dungeon by completing various rather straightforward objectives along the way; this usually means that the first time you run a dungeon, you’re pretty much guaranteed two Stamina Shards, which means you can upgrade your stamina bar and keep playing fairly easily, especially as your stamina completely replenishes when you upgrade the bar.

So clearly the “best” way to approach the early game in Record Keeper is to grind your way through the core dungeons to get your stamina as high as it can possibly go, then once you have a decent stock of that — and, in theory, some good characters and equipment by then, too — you can challenge the game’s more, well, challenging content. Makes sense, for sure.

Trouble is, the core dungeons… well, they’re quite boring, or rather they’re painfully easy. When you can get through each one almost entirely by using the “Auto-Battle” function, perhaps unleashing a special Soul Break ability from a character you’ve borrowed from another player on the boss to one-shot it in most circumstances, that’s not particularly compelling gameplay, though I suppose it does allow you to play the game almost as an “idle game” a la those endless “clicker” games that infest Steam.

This isn’t all that unusual for mobile games, though. Mobile games, despite their reputation for being disposable, throwaway experiences, are often designed with the long tail in mind. That means being as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. That means catering to all ability levels, including “dribbling idiot”. That means if the early game of your mobile game isn’t easy as fuck, the “dribbling idiot” end of the spectrum — which, I theorise, is the end of the spectrum most likely to spend money on the game in order to ease their progression — will lose interest and drop off quickly. More hardcore gamers, meanwhile, are used to piss-easy early games in RPGs and MMOs, and are usually willing to put up with this for the promise of challenging content and amazing rewards in the endgame. I can’t speak for Record Keeper’s “endgame” at present, but there’s certainly scope for the collecting aspect to become rather compelling.

So that’s where I am quite now. It’s proving to be quite a nice diversion for while I’m, say, queueing for a dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV, and a suitable toilet game in that I can set them off battling on auto-mode while I’m having a shit, then reap the rewards afterwards. Unlike Brave Frontier, the mobile game that previously grabbed me, Record Keeper’s dungeons and battles seem to be kept reasonably short and snappy, at least in the early game; eventually, I tired of Brave Frontier because it became too time-consuming for something I originally only started playing to “fill gaps” in time, but if Record Keeper remains pacy I can see it being a nice thing to have on my phone for quiet moments.

We’ll see if it maintains my interest. I’m intrigued to start looking at the Elite Dungeons and the daily events, but I’m going to continue grinding my way through some more core dungeons first of all; while the depth of gameplay in these early battles is nothing special, it is nice to revisit monsters and locales from classic Final Fantasy games from a new angle, and getting loot and XP is always fun, isn’t it?

On the offchance you want to “follow” me in the game, my Friend ID is rfEj.

I’ve been having a sporadic go at Final Fantasy Record Keeper on mobile recently. I sort of like it, but I also sort of think it’s rubbish. It’s hard to say which opinion carries the greater weight at the moment.

For the unfamiliar, Record Keeper is a Final Fantasy fanservice game in that it allows you, as an original (and rather dull) character created specifically for the game, to venture into the worlds of most of the mainline Final Fantasy games from I-XIV and engage in some of the iconic battles from the series. Major plot beats are presented as “dungeons” in which you have to complete several different stages concluding with a boss fight against a boss from that point in the original game, complete with its original attack patterns.

As you progress through the game, you unlock various characters from Final Fantasy history, and you’re encouraged to swap them around and experiment with different party combinations, as a character running a dungeon from their “own” game gets significant bonuses. You can then get equipment — again, sourced from all the various games — and give them to characters to power them up and make them stronger, as well as crafting “ability orbs” that allow them to cast spells and skills that deal more damage or have special effects.

There’s actually quite a lot to it, but the fact that it’s a free-to-play mobile game means that it’s riddled with irritating features. Firstly and perhaps most significantly is the fact that it’s entirely dependent on being online, with painfully sluggish menus and lengthy load times, even when the game has cached its data. Worse, if your network connection flakes out while you’re playing, the whole game freezes until connectivity is restored, even if you’re in the middle of battle.

Then there’s the social features, which actually weren’t in the game when it originally launched. As is usually the case in mobile games of this type, you have the opportunity to “borrow” another player’s showcase character when you run a dungeon, and make use of their special ability a limited number of times during the dungeon. A nice idea, for sure, but completely unbalanced; most other players are well above my current level and consequently inflict one-hit kills on bosses, making strategic play unnecessary. It would perhaps be better if you were matched with players who were of a similar level or amount of progress through the game to you.

Free-to-play also means gacha, and in this case that comes in the form of the “relics”, the equipment you give to your characters. Rather than purchasing these from a shop, you “draw” them, either one crap one for free per day or a chance at better ones if you spend money or use the rarer “Mythril” currency you acquire through playing. Relics can be levelled up and upgraded in rarity independently of characters, so the main metagame comes from collecting and fusing these items together to form a powerful (overpowered?) party to challenge the content in the game.

There’s a lot to dislike about Final Fantasy Record Keeper, but a lot to like, too; the developers are clearly very much in love with Final Fantasy as a whole, incorporating authentic graphics, sound, music and animations into the game. The fact that the boss fights make use of authentic attack patterns — even from less “conventional” Final Fantasies such as XIV — is a really nice touch for longstanding fans of the series, and the Relic and Ability systems provide plenty of scope for customising and upgrading characters.

It’s a nice idea, in other words; I’m just not sure that a free-to-play mobile game was quite the optimal way to do this. Still, it’s significantly better than many other mobile games I’ve fiddled with in the past, so I’ll give it a chance for a bit longer and see if it holds my interest.