REVIEW / GAME GUIDE: Final Fantasy Record Keeper

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Final Fantasy Record Keeper
Assemble a dream team and relive iconic Final Fantasy moments

Final Fantasy Record Keeper has a simple concept: fun. Players progress through the game's Core dungeons to preserve the records of said games by completing dungeons. Collect new characters to use, orbs to create and hone abilities, equippable weapons and armor (called "Relics" here), armor/weapon upgrade items, growth eggs to add experience, and the ever-important Mythril, all along the way.

DISCLAIMER: If you're looking for complex story and character development, stop reading right here. This is not the game for you. Also note: this is not a comprehensive guide to the game. It's more of a beginner's guide and far from perfect.

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STAMINA
Stamina is the resource spent to progress through a dungeon. Stamina itself regenerates at a rate of 1 Stamina for every 3 minutes of real time, whether the app is active or not. Raise the maximum Stamina cap by one for every five Stamina shards collected in the Core game dungeons---i.e. the dungeons from Final Fantasy I through XIII. Special event and daily dungeons do not award Stamina shards.

RARITIES
Every item and ability in this game has its own rarity attached. One-star items (*) are very common while five-star items (*****) are very rare and are generally more desirable.

DUNGEONS
There are three types of dungeons in this game: Core, daily or special event. Core dungeons are your bread-and-butter dungeons that span the Final Fantasy series from its beginning. Every game from Final Fantasy I through Final Fantasy XIII has a Core dungeon with many sub-levels (except for a brief skip of FFXI) that are unlocked gradually as you progress. Special event dungeons roll around once every few weeks, and generally last 8-10 days before they expire. Special event dungeons will eventually repeat themselves, but it will take some time. Daily dungeons are just that---dungeons you can access on any specific day. Some days are more advantageous than others to farm daily dungeons. You are graded based on effectiveness and if you met certain victory conditions. Higher scores equal better rewards.

Any dungeon can be repeated---in some daily dungeons, THEY CAN AND SHOULD be repeated. No matter what type of dungeon it is---Core, daily or special event---each dungeon typically consists of anywhere between 3 to 12 sub-levels. Some of the special event dungeons, like Cecil's "Light Against The Darkness" event (a 10-day limited-time event), can have as many as 12 dungeons with 3-5 sub-levels each. It takes a lot of Stamina to complete some of these dungeons, but most can be done within a day of moderate playing.

To finish a dungeon, fight your way through up to four random battles for each sub-level. Boss levels are marked in red and typically have two or three moderately powerful fights designed to weaken the party before the boss appears. Some bosses can present quite a challenge! Most carry the same gimmicks, strengths and weaknesses from the games they originated, too, so reach into the ol' memory banks for the best strategy.

ROAMING WARRIOR
Players can designate a Roaming Warrior to be the character other players can summon to help out in battle. Think of this like a summon-a-friend spell with two uses per dungeon. Those who exchange friend codes can summon each other, as well.

Oftentimes these Roaming Warriors are high-level and are equipped with Relics that change their Soul Breaks, making them very desirable to counter specific boss weaknesses. When your Roaming Warrior is summoned often, a set amount of gil is mailed for each time he's summoned in battle. It's a pretty cool feature.

SYNERGIES
Taking characters to dungeons from their respective games will increase their stats, effectiveness in battle, and experience gained. As an example, taking a level 19 Sephiroth (yes, Sephiroth is available to recruit!) into a FFVII dungeon will make him feel like he's a level 29 character. Dungeon synergy can be very advantageous to an inexperienced group.

Likewise, items that originate from the same game will be more effective to use in dungeons than an item that is from another game. A four-star Flametongue sword from FFVI may be less effective in a FFIV dungeon than, say, a two-star (**) Mythril Sword from FFIV. Five-star items are generally always more effective. Always optimize your party before a dungeon starts for the best equipment available for that dungeon.

BATTLES
Battles in Record Keeper require a bit of strategy and forethought. Each character can only equip one weapon, one piece of armor, one accessory and only two abilities that have limited amount of uses while in a dungeon. The main character of the game---Tyro, by default---can equip any ability and weapon in the game, but he's pretty average stat-wise. Most characters have limits on what they can and cannot use. Tidus, for example, can only use daggers and swords, as well as combat, support and celerity abilities. He cannot be a summoner. Vivi cannot be a dragoon. You get the idea.

Also, there are no healing/MP restoring items to use on demand in this game, so it is wise to keep a healer in the active party. There is a small chance an enemy can drop a potion or high-potion to restore HP to the entire party, or an elixir that recharges ability uses, but these chance items are not to be relied upon in more challenging dungeons. Conserve ability uses for the boss(es)!

LEVELING
In order to level up characters, the typical EXP gain formula of killing dungeon monsters and doing the victory dance holds true. Sunday daily dungeons award bonus experience for completing and can be repeated as many times as you have Stamina to spend.

Growth eggs can also be collected that, when consumed, can to add a fixed amount of experience to the character of your choosing. These are also handy for catching up a newly acquired character to the rest of the party. The fixed amount of experience awarded varies depending on the growth egg's rarity level.

Characters by default can level up to 50. It is possible to break the level cap with a memory crystal.

ABILITIES & ORBS
Most abilities start off with two uses each. These uses reset after finishing a dungeon completely. If said dungeon has 5 sub-levels, don't use that one-use Ramuh summon spell on the first sub-level or it won't be available for that lightning-vulnerable boss on sub-level 5. Abilities can be upgraded to allow more uses with the right amount of orbs and gil. It's recommended to hone abilities so that your party is more effective in dispatching threats.

The acts of creating and honing abilities both require the collection of the right orbs. Specific orb types can be found in daily dungeons throughout the week on a fixed schedule, but there are many areas in the Core dungeons where orbs can be farmed. Some orbs are also available from completing specific quests.

RELICS
Relics, like orbs, all have their own rarities. Increasing a Relic's level is a little easier as the process doesn't require orbs.

First, choose what weapon or piece of armor to upgrade. Next, choose up to ten upgrade materials (scarletite for weapons, adamantite for armor) and/or other pieces of equipment. WARNING: This process consumes all upgrade materials and Relics selected in this process and will be permanently sacrificed to the Relic gods. A progress bar will illustrate the Relic's “experience bar” and when the piece of equipment has reached its maximum potential. Fortunately, there's a way to raise this limit: combining Relics.

(Also note: scarletite can be used for upgrading a piece of armor, and adamantite for weapons, but are far less effective in doing so.)

COMBINING RELICS
Think of this like the synthesis system in FFIX, in a sense. When a Relic is fully upgraded to the maximum level for its rarity, it can be combined with a like Relic to increase its rarity. For example, a three-star (***) Aegis Shield that's level 10/10 upgraded can be combined with another Aegis Shield to increase its rarity to four stars (****) and its level to 10/15, so that it can be upgraded further. Relics are only able to be combined a certain number of times, however, so try to combine those that are three stars and above for the best results.

SOUL BREAKS
These are very much like the limit breaks of the Final Fantasy series. Every character has a default Soul Break skill to use. Like limit breaks, the Soul Break meter increases in battle for every action that character takes and for every time that character is attacked.

There are certain character-specific five-star (*****) Relics that change a character's Soul Break to something different, which at times can be very desirable. Some of the default Soul Breaks are underwhelming. As an example, paladin Cecil's Mythgraven Blade changes his defensive Rampart Soul Break to an offensive Radiant Wings Soul Break, which does holy damage on three successive strikes---very useful for some of the undead-heavy dungeons. A recent change to the game allows players to choose any of the Soul Breaks available to a character equipping Soul-Break-granting weapons and armor while in battle, in addition to their default Soul Break. It was a welcome change.

There are some shared Soul Break Relics that can be used by anyone who can equip the Relic. The Soldier's Sabre, for example, is a sword that can give the Sonic Buster Soul Break (Cloud's default Soul Break) to Tidus or Squall.

RECORD MATERIA
After getting to level 50, characters unlock what is called a Record Materia---basically, this is a passive ability that does something based upon certain conditions. Like, for example, automatically cast Protect on the character if his or her HP drops below a certain threshold. Only one Record Materia is equippable at a time.

MYTHRIL AND RELIC DRAWS
Mythril is acquired through a few different means: completing some quest objectives, as one-time rewards from completing dungeons for the first time, or as log-in bonuses.

Mythril is a finite resource and cannot be farmed. It can be used for increasing inventory and ability capacity, and healing the party to full life during a dungeon. Most importantly, however, it is used for drawing rare Relics. One can buy Gems with real currency to also draw Relics, as well, but save that hard-earned cash for something a little more important.

For every five Mythril collected, one Relic of three-star (***) rarity or higher can be drawn. Draw x1 Relic for 5 Mythril, a x3 draw for 15 Mythril, or a x11 draw for 50 Mythril---which is basically a buy-10-get-1-free deal. Try saving up to 50 to get the most Relics possible.

Note: Certain special event banners increase the odds of drawing the Relics featured on that banner, so click the banner displaying the Relic(s) you'd most like to have before drawing.

SYNOPSIS
At its core, Final Fantasy Record Keeper is a very addicting mobile game that strips some of the base elements of the series and fuses them into a new, albeit familiar experience. The only cons: the interface can be sluggish at times and there are occasionally disconnect issues. Also, it's frustrating to lose out on a special event character because the dungeon expires, but there are other ways of obtaining these characters in the game. Other than those minor gripes, it's a really solid distraction game.

Final Fantasy Record Keeper takes everything great about the Final Fantasy games of yore---the music, the fighting, the item collection---and sort of mashes it all together to form a turn-based dungeon crawler that's difficult to put down. It's easily recommendable to anyone who is (or was) a fan of the series, especially the early sprite-based offerings. Something about putting together a cross-game dream team of Cloud, Squall, Tidus, Cecil and Locke to take down familiar bosses is very appealing.

FINAL FANTASY Record Keeper receives 5 out of 5 Memory Crystals.

FINAL FANTASY Record Keeper is available worldwide and FREE to download from the App Store and/or Google Play.

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Some general tips:

• Optimize your party before a dungeon starts!
• Saturday's daily dungeon is useful for farming gil; Sunday's is great for experience; orb dungeons are offered throughout the week.
• You can run dungeons as many times as your Stamina will allow, so stock up on gil when you can. It makes the weekly grind more manageable.
• To make your Roaming Warrior more desirable, designate the character for whom you have a five-star (*****) Soul Break weapon. Higher level Roaming Warriors are also chosen more often.
• Check Dungeon Info and plan your abilities/party according to the boss(es) you will face.
• Maximize your dungeon score by completing objectives attached to the bosses. For example, save holy spells for Scarmiglione, who's vulnerable to holy, for a better dungeon score.
• Try and save 50 Mythril for that coveted x11 draw.
• Do not use Mythril on anything else but Relic draws in the early-goings unless you want to get something from a limited-time event dungeon before it expires and need a fully healed party to do it.