If you’re a fan of Turn-Based Strategy titles, chances are, you’ve played a couple Final Fantasy titles in your gaming career. If you’ve become a fan of these titles over the years, or have been since the beginning, seeing Square Enix take advantage of the AppStore and iOS devices, releasing multiple FF titles for the platform is something of a miracle. If you told me that FF Tactics, or even FF 1, 2, or 3 would be available on my phone by the time I was 30, I probably would have gone into shock.
However, with the current price points, relative to other titles in the AppStore Square Enix has shown us that is has some balls. This also most likely means that if you have any of these titles, you’re either a hardcore Final Fantasy fan, a super hardcore RPG fan, or just have to have console ports on your iDevice. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that. I myself have every FF iOS title, along with other Square titles. But this time around, Final Fantasy Dimensions’ release price is going to be set at $28.99, a hefty price, even for Square, especially considering Dimensions was originally a mobile release back in 2010, which also isn’t necessarily a bad thing; look at Chaos Rings, a mobile only title. Though it does look like it was made with RPG Maker, along with sprites from FF IV, and a set-up like The After Years, which isn’t too much of a surprise considering the team that made The After Years is the same team that made Dimensions.
Things are looking up, though, the game will initially be free, allowing players to go through the prologue before deciding if they want to pay for either single chapters, with the first chapter priced at $2.99, and chapters two through 4 priced at $9.99 each. The $28.99 price tag is reserved for the full game unlock, saving you a couple bucks.
There’s also a fairly deep Job Ability System, as well as an Active Time Battle System, making it more reminiscent of console FF titles. If Square managed to pull this off just right, it could very well be worth the $30, and then some, though I don’t expect many gamers will actually bite on the full game unlock. I guess we’ll find out just how great this originally Japan-only mobile game really is once it hits the AppStore tonight.