Fans of Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier, a free-to-play mobile-based battle royale from Square Enix, are expected to close on January 11, 2023. Non-English languages will be provided with support from then on, meaning only English text will be available to players.
The ambitious battle royale game was originally created on November 17, 2021, as a prequel to the Final Fantasy 7 remake, revealing the early days of the nefarious Shinra Corporation''s super soldier program, as seen in the Final Fantasy 7 prequel, Crisis Core, which is a getting a much-deserved remaster.
Through Fortnite-esque battle royale combats, you take on the role of a Shinra operative. However, First Soldier did not offer anything of a departure from the standard formula.
Square Enix admitted that "[[s]despite all our efforts to provide you regular updates, we haven''t been able to deliver the experience that we were hoping to achieve, which you all deserve," according to Gematsu. I didn''t play First Soldier, but its battle royale layings put me off, but I never like to see a game shut down. However, Square Enix may have a silver lining in terms of the lessons it can take from the First Soldier''s death.
The price of freedom
First Soldier was aggressive in many ways and attempted to do more than just transplant the PUBG and Fortnite formula into Final Fantasy 7. Though the gradually shrinking maps and vehicle spawns of more traditional Battle Royale games were alive and well.
Although First Soldier prefers traditional third-person shooting, it also adds a few tweaks to the concept. In First Soldier, you may carry up to three Materia orbs, allowing you to set spells. Poison spells, healing spells, and crowd control spells are all possibilities in your arsenal. This includes a useful additional layer of strategy.
Unfortunately, this desire was also part of what resulted in the game''s collapse. Although straightforward on paper, First Soldier''s additional features made it clunky and difficult to play on mobile. Simply put, the game just had too many buttons for a small touch screen to handle sensitively.
This is, suspect, why it was never able to become the PUBG or the Fortnite of the Final Fantasy series. First Soldier had a lot of promise, but the limitations of the touch screen put an end to the game''s ambitions.
The key to this is that mobile platforms aren''t necessarily the best place for games with complex control techniques, and that First Soldier might have been better suited to a PC or console release. Conversely, more traditional turn-based RPGs from Square Enix have improved on mobile because of the relatively simple control scheme.
Classics such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy 7 themselves are now fit in the palm of your hand, demonstrating that mobile gaming has a lot to offer. If Square Enix chose to use First Soldier as an excuse to return to more traditional RPGs on mobile, who knows what it might accomplish?