Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier Review – Straining At The Seams

The first time I dropped into a game of Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, my main opponent was the clutter on my phone’s screen. The game’s smattering of touchscreen controls include an analog stick for moving around, a button to shoot, another button for a melee attack, one for jumping and parkouring, and one for crouching and hiding. Get close to a treasure chest and you can open it with another button. There’s the inventory menu for swapping between weapons, and the one for using your consumable items to heal. And there’s the section of the screen dedicated to Materia, the little orbs you can find that give Final Fantasy VII characters the ability to use magic.

Because The First Soldier is a mobile game, all that stuff sits on the screen, occupying the same space you’re expected to fight off other players in. It’s cumbersome–half the time, my thumbs were in the way of the action. The other half, I couldn’t remember which button to hit to call down some lightning bolts in a fight or to dash my way out of danger in a pinch.

Plenty of battle royale games, including big-market favorites like Fortnite and PUBG, have mobile versions. And plenty of players enjoy them, even though they reach a similar complexity to The First Soldier. But Square Enix’s Final Fantasy take on the genre throws even more systems into play than those other games with the addition of classes, magic, and mounts. It all feels like too much for my little phone screen to handle. And that’s a shame, because The First Soldier is a compelling take on battle royale. A Final Fantasy version of last-player-standing is great fun–provided you can hit the buttons you want to and see the enemies you’re fighting.