Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, or FFBE, is a Final Fantasy spinoff mobile game about to launch in world wide including North America. It was launched in JP in October 2015. Although it’s not available in Google Play or the App Store yet, you can pre-register, or just download it from QooApp.
People who played the Brave Frontier before will find the game familiar. They are from the same developer A-Lim. Compared with FFRK, FFBE is more of a traditional turn based RPG with collections. There is a story line in it, although it’s not very attractive. And you can do exploration which is like a dungeon crawling. The exploration part is not particular fun though, because sliding on the phone to move is just awkward. A controller is much better for this task.
The game isn’t really about exploration though. It is still a F2P game with tons of FF characters waiting for you to summon use hard to earn in game currency Lapis. You can of course buy lapis with real money.
FFBE has a better graphics than FFRK. Character development is fun. You bring them in battle to earn EXP. Besides level-up which is relatively easy with the EXP dungeon etc., you will consume a lot of time earning trust if you want a really strong team. Each character comes with some reward for you after earning 100% trust. Once obtained, you can use the reward on any characters. Sometimes it’s a skill, or a strong weapon. It seems easy, but the trust is not easy to earn. You can earn about 0.1% trust in battles randomly. Expect to earn the 100% trust in 10,000 battles.
For lucky or heavy IAP players, there’s an easy way to earn trust. You can upgrade a character with other unit. If you use the same one, regardless of rarity, you will earn trust fast. 2-3 of the same unit can net you about 10% trust.
So you see, the developer did all the things to make you spend money. To some extend FFBE’s developer overdid it that they got lots of complaints in App Store / Google Play for the Japaneses version. People mainly complained about how ridiculous the drop rate is to obtain their favorite characters. There are 5 levels of rarity when you summon a crystal. In the paid pool, it’s guaranteed to be 3 stars. However 3 star characters are mostly useless. You want the diamond crystal, which is 5 star. Square Enix didn’t announce the stats, but based on my experience in several days of re-rolling, the rate to see a diamond crystal is only about 1%. And seeing a diamond crystal doesn’t guarantee it’s a real 5* rarity either. Some characters can be upgraded from 3* to 5* or even 6*. You may see a diamond crystal, but it turned out to be Kefka who can be obtained from a blue crystal which corresponds to 3 star characters. My advice to you if you want to start playing this game, is to ensure you have a good start. I learnt this a hard way that I eventually abandoned my old account, and started rerolling at the current event, in which Lightning has a higher rate to drop. So far, Luneth and Lightning are the well known best characters to start. They can use dual wield, have the best stats and boosts or elemental skills.
You can check the JP wiki for characters ranking to decide which characters to develop. To save you some time translating Japanese, I can tell you the top 5 characters here:
![]() オルランドゥ, Orurandu of FFT |
12.5 | 5~6 stars | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() 魔人フィーナ, Majin Fina of FFBE |
12.5 | 5~6 stars | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() エクスデス, Exdeath of FF5 |
12.0 | 5~6 stars | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ライトニング, Lightning of FF13 |
12.0 | 5~6 stars | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ルーネス, Luneth of FF3. |
12.0 | 5~6 stars | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Note that the best rated characters may not always be good for new players. Some of them requires trust to shine. The best starting characters are Luneth and Lightning. It’s best if you can get an account with 2 of Luneth, Lightning and Paladin Cecil. Cecil may not have the best attack stats, but his trust reward (120 ATK duel wield weapon) is a must for Luneth or Lightning. Cecil can be star 3~6.
![]() セシル |
10.5 | 星3~星6 | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Well, once you have a good start, enjoy the game! More tips coming soon. Please check back.