Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia review – Far from a Brave Attack

Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia is out now for mobile, but what does it have to do with Dissidia? Not all that much, unfortunately.

Developers: Square Enix, Team Ninja
Publisher: Square Enix
Platforms: Android (version reviewed), iOS
Release Date: February 1, 2018

Final Fantasy is everywhere, anymore, even more so since Square Enix embraced mobile as a place to drop characters from all its games at once to varying degrees of success. Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia plays off the Dissidia universe in that it mixes up all the Final Fantasy characters, but it’s no fighting game. Instead, it’s a single-player RPG that’s low on the Dissidia elements, with the name thrown on the front perhaps more as a plug for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT than anything.

The lack of Dissidia-ness is perhaps to the detriment of the entire game, since at least “it’s a fighting game” gave some plausibility to the franchises all mixing. Opera Omnia attempts to mash as many Final Fantasy franchises together as possible, too, but does so with a weird, multi-universe plot that saps most of these characters of whatever made them interesting, to begin with. Cloud is reduced to his broody, solo-fighter self; Hope plays the role of helpless kid, and so forth. Only the unnamed Warrior of Light from the original Final Fantasy manages to gain any personality out of the deal, and even that’s as one-dimensional as it comes.

Your chief task is to gather as many heroes who possess the “light” as possible to fight for you while traveling the world and using that “light” to close Torsions, enormous fissures in the earth with darkness and monsters spewing forth from them. Your journey alternates between cutscenes and battles, and the battles are the main game of Opera Omnia. With three characters in your party, you must defeat set waves of monsters through a combination of Brave and HP Attacks. Brave Attacks sap Brave from the enemy, which you need to execute an HP Attack. The more Brave you have, the stronger HP Attack you can perform.

There are a handful of other mechanics, too. Characters can be equipped with passive and up to two active abilities which may or may not have elemental properties, such as Fire. Enemies will be weak or strong against different elements, meaning who you bring into the fight matters. You’ll need to keep more than just three of your characters well-equipped and leveled at a time, too. Some characters possess special abilities that make certain battles easier, such as Tifa’s strength against zombies or Sazh’s proficiency in actually hitting bats.

I’m pretty sure I’ve played about twelve other mobile RPGs just like this.

Outside of battle, you’ll spend a lot of time puttering about with your weapons and skills to find optimal combinations on your favorite fighters. It wouldn’t be a free mobile game without microtransactions, but Opera Omnia made the smart decision to avoid gating characters behind real money purchases. Instead, you get weapons through a gacha system, with plentiful gems early in the game from clearing achievements that quickly dry up the longer you stick with things. Pay up; you might get the best sword for Cloud this time!

And that seems to be the chief draw of it all: revisiting Cloud, revisiting Kefka, revisiting Cecil, and so forth. Every new character’s appearance is treated with a heavy dose of fanservice despite there being no time and too many characters to create anything of substance from their relationships. The best moments are when a hero goes up against a known villain, such as Terra confronting Kefka, but even those beats are unfortunately muted by the vague nature of the plot and its Kingdom Hearts-esque discussions of “light” and “darkness.”

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What is one to make of all this? With perhaps the exception of the Brave/HP Attack system, I’m pretty sure I’ve played about twelve other mobile RPGs just like this. Enhancing weapons, gacha draws, and finding new characters to add to a roster of one-dimensional party members have all been done over and over again on the mobile store at this point. Opera Omnia perhaps offers a bit more polish than much of what I’ve seen elsewhere, and its systems aren’t nearly as overwhelming. That, combined with the very fact that it is Final Fantasy, should prove enticing enough for plenty of people. But if you’re looking for something new or innovative, you won’t find it here. Nor will you find a sweeping plotline worthy of the Final Fantasy name.

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An early access copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.