Hey guys, Nick here bringing you more unique and exciting Japanese game reviews from the Japanese iTunes Store to you! As you may already know from reading my blogs, I am huge square enix fan and have played many Final Fantasy games including the online ones, as XI and XIV. It's no surprise that I had been scouring the web to get content on Final Fantasy Grandmasters (the XI spin-off for mobile) over the last few weeks and months. Well, to my surprise the game appeared on "new releases" on the Japan iTunes Store and I got to finally play the amazing title! Any of you who are former players of Final Fantasy XI, will definitely want to check this title out. So without further ado I bring you my in-depth look at Final Fantasy Grandmasters, developed and published by Square Enix and available now free to download on the iTunes Japan Apple App Store!

When you begin the game you are asked which main job you would like to choose at that moment, as well as your starting race. Appearance among other things is not customization right out of the gate but you will later be able to adjust your character. At this point I picked a TaruTaru (the small race) female and a White Mage, which somewhat mimicked my original character from XI. I was extremely impressed how the characters have been revamped with chibi models, yet all of the armors look somewhat familiar. 

The amazing part about this game is a lot of the old things that made Final Fantasy XI special are still in-tact in this mobile version of the game. The job and subjob system is still very much present, and at this time you can play as a White Mage, Black Mage, Warrior, Thief, and the locked class, Paladin. I assume that a time passes new classes will be added. Additionally, with unlocking the sub job you can stack two jobs so that you can have mixed traits. How cool is that?

Battle is pretty straight forward, where you take on various quests and are in a muliplayer field where you can jump directly into battles with other players. The battles are unique, along with armor and gear. Your left side is 4 weapon slots that will represent the attacks that you have to use in the game. As you collect more and more weapons you can have a more diverse attack skillet, which makes this a very unique feature to this version of the game. 

There are various events and gachas that you can use to gain very good gear that will help you throughout the game. Gear has no level limitations, but is ranked from C to S (being the best) and you will always want to try and get S rank gear, obviously. Gear and be enchanted and socketed with materia too, to ensure that you're as strong as you can be during all types of battles.

I especially liked how I was able to gain levels fairly easily, but also you have a rank level which will go up as you progress through quests and do more group related things. Rank will help strengthen your base stats in the long run.

As far as the landscapes, it's all of your favorite zones of XI, but you start out in the legendary Elvaan capital, San D'oria. I was very impressed how accurate they kept the bestiary and all of the landscapes. You will jump from zone to zone through a little animated airship, as the game is not a true open world, which would be difficult for a mobile game. 

Overall, I am finding the game absolutely breathtaking and I really think that you guys will enjoy it too. The Japanese is not so bad to get past if you don't know the language at all, and given enough time you will start to get how the game works. 

Final Fantasy Grandmasters is available now free to download and play on the Japanese Apple  iTunes App Store. Be sure to check it out today!

At JapanCodeSupply we work hard to bring you the best rates in Japan iTunes Gift Cards so that you can enjoy amazing content like this!