Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest Retrospectives: Tact, Opera Omnia and the Fleeting Lifespans of Mobile Games

Way back when I wrote about the end of life of Mobius Final Fantasy, I thought I would have a bit more time to catch up and write about other Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest mobile games, but not only have I been working slower than I would like, the games have been dropping like flies, especially the newer ones.  The most notorious of these was Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, but several more games went through development and release, only to die a short while later.  The mobile game graveyard receives more titles every year.

Both Dragon Quest Tact and Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia are shutting down at the end of this month, adding another two grave stones to the yard.  The former launched four years ago in Japan and three years ago worldwide, and the latter launched seven years ago in Japan, six years ago worldwide.  These are, perhaps, not as tragic as games like Echoes of Mana shutting down in 2023 after only a year, but it does drive home the point that mobile titles like these are only temporary.  Even Square’s most long running mobile games will eventually shut down.

Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia is a game set in the Dissidia universe, but it makes use of a turn based battle system instead of the fighting game battle system from previous titles in the continuity.  It still uses elements from the fighting game system including Breaking enemies, but being a mobile title, I assume it would’ve been too difficult to make it anything but a turn based system.  The Break system from Dissidia is reminiscent of other turn based games which give enemies both HP and Break gauges and which turns said enemies into damage sponges in order to force players to interact with this system.  It’s entirely because of systems like this which made Hyperdimension Neptunia such a chore to play, and the only reason Final Fantasy XIII was tolerable was because it retained enough aspects of the classic ATB system that it still made battles feel like they flowed quickly enough to be worth the time investment.

Dragon Quest Tact is pretty much half a tactical game, which is probably why it only uses half the word in its title.  Its battle system is supposed to be like that of a tactical RPG, but I assume they also didn’t want to fully commit to the kind of long term battles that a tactical RPG typically entails, so battles play out more like the ones in Adventures to Go or Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure.  There are few enemies per battle on a relatively small grid and players can easily dispatch them within a turn or two, at least in the early game.  Most bosses, with the right combination of troops, should still be able to be dispatched within five turns or less and with no casualties, thus granting the full amount of rewards to players.

The fact that both of these games lasted as long as they did make it seem to me like they were scratching itches people had but which the market wasn’t providing.  A single-player turn-based Dissidia title, for example, might prove to be interesting as long as it doesn’t resort to making enemies into damage sponges like a lot of end-game bosses in mobile titles turn into.

Dragon Quest Tact is, by far, the more interesting idea.  As far as I can tell, this is the only time the Dragon Quest series has experimented with a tactical-style battle system.  Final Fantasy did it way back in 1997, dipped from the same well a few more times and then stopped.  Dragon Quest has experimented with other types of games like Minecraft and Dynasty Warriors but has never tried to be Fire Emblem before.  You would think that a game series as seemingly in love with difficulty as Dragon Quest would have tried something like this, but then Dragon Quest prefers the idea that players can grind out levels if they’re having trouble.  Fire Emblem tends to reward careful strategy, planning ahead, and making do with what you currently have.  It also actively punishes efforts to try to grind by making weapons have a limited durability, suggesting players should try to finish a battle as quickly as possible.

The thing about Dragon Quest Tact is that many of its boss fights tend to just become several troops surrounding a classic Dragon Quest boss and pummeling it into submission.  I would love for an actual tactical RPG to not only include an original story, but also include boss battles more in line with a traditional tactical RPG, where not only is there a boss, there are weaker enemies to contend with at the same time.  That way, if there is a boss fight with no additional enemies, the player will know it’s going to be a very difficult battle.

Unfortunately for those whose tastes fall into these two specific niches, both Opera Omnia and Tact are going away at the end of the month.  Perhaps this is going to make way for more mobile titles, only time will tell.

Even a game like Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is going to disappear eventually.  Despite using a naming convention that suggests it’s an integral part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, it’s a mobile title just like the rest of them, although as far as I can tell, it doesn’t have a stamina or energy system.  I have only seen gameplay footage, though, so I don’t know if it does limit players to a certain amount of game per day like most of the rest of Square’s mobile titles.

How the game works is that players make their way through the entire Final Fantasy VII series in mobile form, although the gameplay I’ve seen develops each dungeon a little bit more and includes random battles like the original game had.  It’s nuts that the company would spend years developing a brand new trilogy adapting the original game at the same time that they were adapting the original game into a separate, mobile version.

I guess Ever Crisis is for people who wanted a more traditional style of remake, but given that it’s a mobile title, it’s going to exist for a few years before shutting down completely.  It might not even exist by the time I make it into the 2020s in my Final Fantasy game list.