This morning following the sort of surprising but not really release of Final Fantasy Dimensions on the New Zealand App Store I sat down with Brad and Jared to play through the first bit of the game. Hopefully some Final Fantasy connoisseurs can identify the source material, as Square has been quite vague when it comes to whether or not this is a port, a refresh, a new title, or a mixture of all three. The interface is very similar to Final Fantasy III ($14.99) in that all of the UI elements have been nicely re-worked to be touch-friendly and the on-screen controls seem to work well enough despite having an obnoxiously large virtual D-pad that appears whenever you move.
This is every bit a old school feeling Final Fantasy, with tons of text, random battles, and a pretty slow pace overall. If you’re a veteran of these sorts of games, all of this will be more than familiar to you. As of this writing, I haven’t hit the pay wall yet, but I sort of suspect it comes after the requisite opening dungeon and whatever the Dimensions equivalent is of defeating Garland and crossing the bridge in the original Final Fantasy ($7.99). As mentioned in the video, it’ll be really interesting to see how the IAP conversion rate works out with the rest of the game locked behind a $28.99 pay wall. It really feels like they’re giving a lot away for free. Check it out:
Curiously enough, also as of this writing Final Fantasy Dimensions has been pulled from the New Zealand App Store. We’re not sure if this release was intentional, if there’s some sort of problem with it, or if they’re going to try to do a worldwide simultaneous release at some point today or tomorrow. Regardless, we’re plugging through it and plan on having a full review as soon as we can.
