Video Game / Mobius Final Fantasy

Despair has cast a long, dark shadow across this land. The winds have stopped, the sea churns, and the earth rots.

The people await for a hero to appear— the hero foretold in an ancient prophecy: "When darkness shrouds the land, the Warrior of Light will come. Hope rides in his wake."

After a long journey across the Ether, castaways without pasts appear on the shores of Palamecia.

One of them is destined to become the warrior of legend.

You stand among them.

Are you the hero whom the prophecy foretells?

—The prologue^note If you think it sounds strangely familiar...

Mobius Final Fantasy is a Defunct Online Video Game entry in the Magicite-farmingly popular Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan in June 2015 on mobile devices, and worldwide in August 2016, with an official PC release via Steam in February 2017, and ended service on March 31st, 2020 in Japan, and June 30th, 2020 globally. It is the fourth Final Fantasy mobile game released internationally.

Palamecia — a world of boundless hope, where life springs eternal. A world where only the strong survive to ascend to legend, and where the weak are destined to fade into obscurity. It is this world whereupon a Warrior of Light will rise and save it from the evil of Chaos.

You awaken upon the shores of Palamecia with many others. Although there are many men, they all share something in common: they have no recollection of their past save for their name. The name that you and these men, dubbed so-called "Blanks", share is the name foretold in a prophecy to become the legendary Warrior of Light, the savior of Palamecia. However, only one Blank can become the Warrior of Light. Guided by the enigmatic Vox and your companions, the Moogle Mog and Fairy Companion Echo, your quest to fulfill the prophecy begins...

Unlike past mobile endeavors for the franchise, which were simple pick-up-and-play titles that had few complications, Mobius strived for the full Final Fantasy experience on the smallest gaming device. The game featured high-resolution visuals rivaling that of seventh-generation Final Fantasy titles, coupled with a complex battle system and intricate lore surrounding the mysterious world of Palamecia.

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Mobius Final Fantasy contains examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Ultros tries to flirt with Wol to annoy him. Wol responds by accepting the compliments and flirting back in kind. The octopus is immediately repulsed.
• Affectionate Parody: Of the tropes and concept of Final Fantasy itself, and the concept of a lone hero plucked out of obscurity to follow a vague prophecy, with the prophecy being so vague, practically everyone's actually forgotten what it is, and you're just one of the more successful Warriors Of Light.^note Every single player is the Warrior Of Light. Literally.
• The All-Seeing A.I.: Bizarrely, the AI can cheat for you. The Elements of Cactuars is usually hidden, forcing you to play a guessing game with its element in order to achieve Breaks the fastest. Auto Battle seems to ignore the fact that its Element is hidden and will act as if it had always known the Cactuar's Element despite the fact that the player can't know right away.
• And the Adventure Continues: Despite permanently killing Chaos (and, indirectly, Vox) and liberating Palamecia, Wol, Meia and Sarah still have a lot to do to protect Palamecia from slipping ever further into darkness. Moreover, a post-credits singer show the three apparently being transported to another world, while indicating that the Chaos/Vox storyline is but the first chapter.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: You can buy Echo variants or new Spirits from the Garden with Spirit Tickets. These have no effect on how Echo functions and are purely cosmetic.
• Anti-Grinding: Ability Cards have a Level Cap (the better the rarity, the higher) which only rises through completing chapters, encouraging you to play with the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors and Break Meter instead of simply min-maxing (and even if you try to, good luck with the punishingly high learning curve).
• Anti Poop-Socking: If you have the game open for two hours straight, a message will pop up when you're next on the area map suggesting that you take regular breaks. This message pops up every two hours, sometimes with the only option being to close the game, although there's nothing stopping you from opening it back up again.
  • While the game has a stamina system like many other mobile games of its ilk, instances of the game stopping you are infrequent. Early on, you regularly get refills of stamina from constantly leveling up. Later, your stamina can carry you for a while before it empties, and you can easily amass hundreds of Elixirs that completely refill your stamina without trying.
• Arc Number: Eight, and multiples thereof. The 8th, 18th, and 28th of each month are Mobius Day, where players get various bonuses. There are eight chapters in Season 1. Special events frequently give out 88,888 of different skillseeds, with varying amounts of 8's. Areas meant for grinding typically have eight battles and require eight stamina. After completing the final chapter, the max level you can get cards to is 88, with overboosting.
• Arc Symbol: The infinity symbol, to represent an endless, perpetuating cycle.
• Arc Welding: The "Dream Within A Dream" event is a (canon) story event bridging the gap between the ending of Final Fantasy X and the Golden Ending of Final Fantasy X-2, detailing what happened to Tidus after the end of his game and how he made it back to Spira.
• Artificial Brilliance: The Auto Battle function is really good at this game. It makes a few mistakes, but otherwise it's smart enough to fight bosses for you.
• Artificial Stupidity: Despite the above, it does have its flaws that have shown as the mechanics have shifted over time. For example, it's not really efficient; it prioritizes hitting Weakness over most anything else, which often leads to moments when it uses an Ability on an enemy that would have died to a normal attack anyways, or it spamming a break-focused ability on an enemy that's already broken when anything else would be more effective, simply because of elemental weakness. It's also rather unsavvy with Element Drive; it tends to use it when your Element Orb stock is almost full. While it prioritizes using the Element Drive of the Element that your opponent is of, this can lead to situations where it doesn't really use Element Drive at logical instances.
  • It also tends to prefer Healing by using Healing Element Drives, even when you have cheaper and more effective Healing abilities equipped (such as Cure and Song of Life). Also, it doesn't seem to detect when you do have those abilities, so it tends to let them gradually fill out its stock, and/or allow it's health to get into the red, completely ignoring that it could heal it easily, and often causing times where you only can use Healing because of how many Healing Orbs you have.
  • If the Auto Battle AI gets the Cleaving Hit buff, it will prioritize using normal attacks over everything else. This makes sense with Monk jobs, that rely on using such buffs to augment their basic attack, but this happens with any job, leading to the AI completely wasting any chances it has for good damage.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Boss Tyro is gigantic, absolutely dwarfing Wol in size.
  • Chaos is absolutely massive, and is always fought on a cliff where you can get close to its face. The final form of Chaos is just as tall, towering over you even as it bends down on all fours so it can swipe at you.
• Badass Cape: The devs certainly believe so. Every second upgrade of an advanced job class seems to sport it.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the finals of the Tournament Arc, you are pit against a dangerous Dark Knight with the same name as you, who is said to have never been defeated. The moment you clash weapons, he jumps back, then keels over due to an injury he sustained in his last fight. The judge interprets this as the Prophecy coming true and automatically deems the player the winner of the tournament due to purely coincidental happenstances.
  • At the end of Chapter 3, you approach, as usual, one of the communication crystals Sarah normally uses. As soon as you do, you see Moogles running around looking for her, as she slips out from BEHIND the crystal, and literally sneaks out of the back of the shrine with you so you can both head off to the next location.
  • Near the end of Chapter 4 Part 1, The Moogles claim that the Earth Temple is blocked, and insist you go to Mogheim. This is purely so they can bring the princess under their protection. The moment you're reunited, they admit they lied about the whole thing.
• Barrier Change Boss: The boss of Chapter 2, the Lich, presents a challenge through abilities that change his element from Earth to Water, and vice versa. In his first appearance, the Ability that does this also changes all of your Element Orbs to that Element. He wises up by the second battle, and by the third those abilities give him buffs.
  • Garland, the boss of Chapter 7, uses this at the end of the fight. He keeps switching to whichever element you attack him with, meaning you can't damage his break bar unless you hit him with something he's currently weak to.
• Battle Theme Music: Mobius is unique in that the battle theme is usually Job-dependent, in that the default music changes based on what Job you have currently equipped. If you have some of the Final Fantasy Character Jobs, equipping those will change the battle theme to that game's theme instead, such as "Force Your Way" playing when the Mercenary of Balamb Job is equipped.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Vox is effectively all-seeing, since he can witness everything that happens in Palamecia, as well as communicate with the Blanks. Wol finds him annoying.
• Blank Slate: Everyone who arrives on the shores of Palamecia has no memory of whom they used to be except for their name. Vox calls them as such, and from this derives the term "Blanks" for all who arrive upon the shores of Palamecia.
• Bonus Dungeon: The Chaos Vortex is a gauntlet of difficult battles accessible as early as the end of Chapter 1. Challenging it right away is not a good idea though; battles in the Chaos Vortex have high round counts with grueling enemies that deal obscene damage and usually show up in packs. You can't continue with Phoenix Downs or bring Rental Cards, but accessing the Chaos Vortex costs no Stamina, giving you infinite tries.
• Break Meter: The key to dealing huge damage against enemies involves depleting an enemy's Break Gauge by throwing an Ability at it, then attacking it to rapidly decrease the Gauge. Once depleted, the enemy will become disabled for a set number of actions, during which your damage to that target is multiplied.
• Bullet Time: After performing a normal attack, time temporarily slows to a crawl to perform a follow-up. If you take too long to follow up, Wol will return to his idle stance.
• Cap: The damage cap is, as usual, 9999. If you unlock Passives on certain Cards, you can enable those chips to exceed the standard damage cap. This allows them to hit for up to 999,999 instead.
• Canon Name: NPCs will refer to the Player Character by whatever name they choose, though it is canonically Wol.
• Class and Level System: The game plays with this concept, as Job levels are actually very fluid and depend on those of the equipped Ability Cards, with the exception of Skill Panel abilities.
• Combos: You can perform a three-step combo by chaining three normal attacks. The last hit of your combo will hit slightly harder and give out more element orbs.
• The Chosen One: According to the Prophecy, a Blank with a special name will rise to become the fabled Warrior of Light. The main character bears this name. Problem is, so do a ton of other Blanks.
• Critical Hit Class: Ranger-type jobs tend to have high Critical Hit Ratio values. This is especially pronounced with Ranger-type Cards, whose Passives provide a slew of bonuses for landing a Critical Hit.
• Crossover:
  • The September 2016 update introduces Tyro from fellow F2P mobile game Final Fantasy Record Keeper as a boss battle, wielding his signature Grimoires.
  • The February 2017 update has the world of Gaea come over from Final Fantasy VII as cross-promotion for the remake, having you team up with Cloud to shut down Shinra's reactors. A later revival of the event in January 2018 also added a new story arc dealing with Cloud's famous rivalry with Sephiroth.
  • April 2017 introduced a Terra Battle collaboration, with the level taking the game's silent narrative style instead of Final Fantasy's conversation style, while also adding a few of the game's heroes as powerful cards. Terra Battle itself had a Mobius collab event, featuring Echo as a hero.
  • September 2017 had Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII team up with you to try and remember what defined her and gain her resolve again, and included variations of the Paradigm Shift and Crystarium mechanics.
  • August 2018 has Tidus washing up on the shores of Palamecia, adventuring with Wol as he tells his story and attempts to find a purpose in this strange new land. Unlike other crossover events, this is canon to the source game, detailing what happened to Tidus after the events of Final Fantasy X.^* Mobius FF has some of the development talent from FFX behind it, including Kazushige Nojima as a scenario writer for both titles.
  • The next crossover event will be with Final Fantasy VIII, which is set to have its 20th anniversary in 2019.
• Deconstruction: Of the Excuse Plot concept. A prophecy states that The Chosen One will rise and become a hero! Become the hero and save the world from evil! Except the hero happens to be a snark who quickly deduces that this concept is inherently flawed due to the actual records of the prophecy being lost in time, forcing potential heroes to simply wander the world with no aim in sight, and for those faithful to it to give up everything, including their lives, just to see it fulfilled, regardless of whether or not it actually makes a difference and ignoring its impact on those around them. Over the course of the story, the princess turns out to be a Pretty Princess Powerhouse and also it turns out the Black Magician Girl is actually on your side.
• Deus ex Machina: In-universe. See Bait-and-Switch above.
• Developer's Foresight: Whenever you need to talk with Echo, Garland or the near-endless retinue of Moogles while you are using a Legendary Job Card, Wol appears using a basic version of the same job as the card is for. This only does not happen during Chapters 6 and 8, during periods where you are playing as Meia or Sarah.
  • If you start the game with a music app running in the background, it won't load any music so you can play with your own tunes.
• Developer's Room: The second world has an area to speak to the game staff and voice actors.
• Difficulty Levels: You can set the Battle Difficulty to either Normal or Hard in the Options menu. Hard difficulty increases the strength of enemies, but slightly boosts EXP and Skillseed gain and grants better drops from enemies..
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • If you played during the Launch Promo period, you get a free Brotherhood. If you play Onion Knight, this'll be your only 2-Star Sword for a significant amount of time, and its ability, Ultimate Charger+2%, makes racking up Ultimates significantly faster by applying Ultimate Gauge accumulation to normal attacks.
  • Also from the same event, you get a Yuna: FFX card. If you bother to unlock its hidden abilities, it is the single-most potent heal in the launch version of the game short of Element Driving with 8 Life Orbs.
  • Similarly for those who started playing with the Steam release the Final Fantasy VII Event gives you a Masamune simply for playing while the event is going on, even at 1-Star it is of comparable power of the "Advanced" Job Weapons and the abilities of pulling Life Orbs and recycling any consumed orbs as Prism Orbs synergize extremely well with the Aerith Supreme Card (Which you can still rent even if you do not pull it.), the fact that aside from the Mobius Reactor (and very end of Midgar) the event goes by Player Level means a new player arguably have a easier time then "veterans" to get it to 3-Star, and you can potentially brute force the Mobius Reactor using Phoenix Downs and get it to 4-Star to allow weapon customization where upon it is effectively one of the best and most versatile weapons in the game, possibly before you even unlocked your first "Second Tier" weapon.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: The basic principle of getting high scores through usage of Ultimates. The game tells you that breaking enemies increases the damage dealt towards them. What it doesn't tell you is that the highest score multiplier comes from the hit that depletes the Break Meter, and abilities (your main source of damage most of the time) cannot deplete the break gauge, only make it easier to plow through. The solution? Drop the break gauge as low as possible with normal attacks, apply debuffs that increases damage the enemy takes (mainly unguard, which negates defenses), buff your attack, then go to town with your Ultimate.
• Early Content Weirdness:
  • Jobs from the start of the game came with alternate jobs that were unlocked as you levelled them, that were reskins with better stats. Around the end of the first act, this was phased out in favor of alternate jobs having different elements, or multiplayer roles.
  • Meia becoming playable also came with several cards having "Meia Synchro", making them slightly more powerful if used with a Meia job. Meia Synchro cards quickly stopped coming out, and other playable characters didn't get their own Synchro cards.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Certain pairs of elements are strong against each other — Fire/Water, Wind/Earth, and Light/Dark — while using the same element to the enemy can be resisted or even absorbed.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The starting Ultimate for the Mage Job series, Rain of Ruin, throws Ruin spells into the air that rain down and explode on enemies.
• Exponential Potential: Your basic fighting build is composed of a Job Card with four Ability Card slots. You can level up both (the former through the Skill Panel, the latter through basic grinding), which makes for nigh-infinite combinations.
• Foreshadowing: When you first see Princess Sarah's portrait in chapter 2, Wol mentions it smells of rot, which he brings up again when meeting her in chapter 3. She isn't human, and is actually as old as the prophecy.
• Friendly Enemy: Of all characters, Wol and Typhon (Ultros's non-speaking partner from Final Fantasy VI) form a respectful rivalry over their shared annoyance of being the muscle for loudmouths who can't back up their words in battle.
• Genius Loci: While it doesn't speak, Palamecia is discussed as if it were a living organism. Palamecia itself is the one behind the unending prophecy so it can repeatedly bask in hope, and at the end of the first act, Palamecia puts the three main characters in crystal stasis, finding them dangerous for breaking the cycle but also potentially useful in the new world they've created.
• Genre Motif: Each of the main Job types has their own genre for their battle themes — orchestral for Warriors, electronic for Mages, dubstep for Rangers, and house/oriental for Monks. In addition, certain jobs have their unique themes — folk Japanese for Samurai, orchestral rock for Paladin, house for Adept and Occultist, jazz for Viking, and samba for Dancer.
• Guest Fighter: "Ultimate Hero" Job cards function as this, allowing you to play as various characters from Final Fantasy as a sort of skin, but with bonus stats and their own powerful Ultimate. Ultimate Heroes include Lightning, Cloud Strife, Sephiroth, Tifa, Y'shtola Rhul, and Tidus.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Plenty, even when taking into account its F2P mobile game nature. A lot of things aren't explained (the example on Do Well, But Not Perfect, for one) or explained rather poorly (e.g. the in-game explanation for unguard).
  • If you don't do the optional tutorial map after finishing the mandatory tutorial (and the game doesn't even tell you this is an option), you're likely to hit a Beef Gate relatively early on and might wrongly assume you've run into a pay-to-win paywall. In fact, the optional tutorial map gives you several high-level cards as well as the 3 main job classes and teaches you how to level up your job class, and the game is pretty much balanced around you having these.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Princess Sarah is an ranged-type character, while most of Wol's jobs boil down to hitting the opponent with a random implement.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can input any name and change it at will. This game avoids the Final Fantasy X problem by never referring to the main character directly, and when your name does come up, it simply goes unvoiced.
  • Hilariously though, Every male character in the game has the same name, because it's the name of the Warrior Of Light... which they all claim to be.
• Hive Mind: All Moogles of Palamecia share their memories and experiences with one another. This functions as a pseudo-network of information that allows one Moogle to gain the knowledge of another Moogle in mere moments.
• Invisible to Normals: Echo cannot be (usually) seen by anyone except for the person that she allies with, and can only be seen outright by people who are not native to the world. It is commonly told that no one has actually seen her.
  • Notably, This becomes a plot point, when it's brought up that Meia can see Echo.
• Jack of All Trades: Strangely averted for the Onion Knight Job, who is known for being this trope in the series. Onion Knight in Mobius is simply the starter Warrior Job.
• Lampshade Hanging: Wol or Echo will do this every time a plothole comes up. The problem? The flimsy plot barely makes sense at the best of times!
• Leitmotif: Each of the playable characters has a melody that appears in their unique battle themes.
• Level Grinding: As you progress your Skill Panels, it becomes exponentially harder to unlock more Panels. The first few Panels start off between 10 and 60 Skillseeds, with your Ultimate buff costing 100. By Skill Panel 3, you may be paying 3000 Skillseeds to unlock Panels, and by Skill Panel 4, you may be paying 10000 Skillseeds. In order to unlock these in any reasonable amount of time, you'll either have to go out of your way to farm the Skillseeds for them, or save the Magicite to buy Panel Openers.
• Lethal Joke Character: The costume-themed Jobs, such Wol's Tonberry^* terrible offensive stats, but its Ultimate always charges a little each turn and deals 99,999 damage. and Moogle Suit^* Zero Magic bonus whatsoever, but high Attack and Break on top of being a Stone Wall.. They're absolutely absurd, both in stats and appearance, but still pack a huge punch.
• Limit Break: Known as Ultimates, these are extra-strong abilities that you can cast after filling up a gauge by performing actions. Each Job has a unique Ultimate, and as you obtain more Advanced Jobs, you'll unlock even stronger Ultimates.
  • Act 2 adds an action gauge that fills based on what you do during fights, and you can spend some of it to job change or use an ability from your other job without needing to switch or pay orbs. Letting it fill completely puts you in Mobius Zone, where you have eight actions to do whatever you want, and can cap it off by using both of your jobs Ultimates if your ultimate gauge is full.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Casting Element Drive temporarily decreases your odds of drawing Element Orbs of that element. You can take advantage of this by casting Element Drives of elements you don't want to quickly gain extra Orbs of the Elements you do want.
• Master of None: All three starter Jobs effectively count, due to their unique trait of switching between various main Jobs. Their biggest weakness is that they're not specialized and are still ultimately stuck with whatever statistic and behavioral traits that the starter Job has, and ultimately lack "Job Medallion" item^* a 1 million gil item unlocked upon fully upgrading a Job that allows you to keep the stats at their highest parameters, regardless of which sub-Job you use, which means that they'll ultimately pale in comparison. If you want the more specialized traits and stronger stats of any job, you'll have to obtain it through the Summoning gacha.
• Metal Slime: Cactuars have rather high Defense and thus take minimal damage from any attack. However, they are easily Broken if attacked with the proper element and die instantly once Broken. Cactuars drop the rare Cactuar Cards, which can be used as valuable Fusion fodder (or for Gold Cactuars, selling fodder).
• Microtransactions: You can purchase the premium currency, Magicite, with real money. You can use Magicite to roll on the gacha without spending Tickets, alongside many other things.
• Mythology Gag:
  • This game's story and world can be considered a somewhat loose Adaptation Expansion of Final Fantasy, with massive Lampshade Hanging on the fact that a good half of the plot is never actually told to you directly.
  • In the tutorial, the two "friends" you can pick from are named Biggs and Wedge.
  • The Four Fiends from Final Fantasy, Lich, Marilith, Kraken, and Tiamat all appear as bosses, now being Chaos's Lieutenants.
  • The Sicarius, multiplayer bosses which drop materials with which the player can create ability cards bearing their likenesses, are generally described as being summoned from other worlds, hence their appearances derive from prior appearances in past Final Fantasy games from the PS2 era onwards. So far, the roster (Japanese and Global alike) stands at eighteen, and includes Ifrit, Shiva, Anima and Valefor from X, Leviathan from XI, Belias, Hashmal, Ultima, Famfrit, Adrammelech, Zalera, Chaos and Exodus from XII, and Odin, Hecatoncheir, Bahamut, Alexander and Brynhildr from XIII.
  • Gilgamesh, hoo boy. He summarizes his past cameos in one cutscene and references most of the protagonists he's met in another. He even teases Echo with the possibility of claiming his Genji equipment after he is finally defeated, only for Wol to suggest he'll just Steal or Mug him for it anyway. About the only reference missing here is Enkidu.
• No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Averted. Characters show up in cutscenes with whatever jobs and weapons you last used with them, which can lead to problems with bulky outfits and weapons obscuring things.
  • Played straight with Ultimate Heroes, which act as skins on top of existing jobs. This gets awkward with the Dawn Warrior, an Ultimate Hero in the form of a new outfit for Wol in Act 2 that doesn't show up in most cutscenes.
• Non-Elemental: Ruin. All things considered, this makes it rather unhelpful.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Tyro's cartoony design from Final Fantasy Record Keeper contrasts heavily with Mobius, where characters are realistically designed and proportioned. It also doesn't help that he's also a little Super-Deformed and several times normal size.
• One-Man Army: Wol can tackle the armies of Chaos all by himself. Echo's presence is just extra.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Averted on a rather large scale. There are tons of Blanks with the same name as the main character, and every single one of them hopes to become the fabled Warrior of Light. You happen to be the better candidate.
  • Also averted as far as Jobs are concerned. You can acquire Basic Jobs that are the same as Advanced Jobs found on other Jobs. For example, you can acquire a Warrior Advanced Job from the Onion Knight line, but you can also acquire a Warrior Basic Job from the gacha. The Basic Jobs function near-identically to their Advanced counterparts, but have completely different Skill Panels.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: The Shrine of Trials has dungeons in which Cactuar are the only bosses. These Cactuar drop cards that give a ton of EXP when defeated, allowing you to quickly farm EXP by heading down to the Shrine and wailing on a few Cactuar.
  • Within the same region is the Gigantuar Terrace, a map with only three nodes that are three battles long consisting of dust enemies (fodder for various support cards), a normal Cactuar, and a Gigantuar. On the first clear, these nodes also benefit from an area-wide skillseed multiplier of about 20x. With correct setups of high seed producing 4* and higher cards, one can easily amass skillseeds by 10000s per battle. With how much skillseeds newer job panels ask for, however, it will be almost necessary to use this area.
• Pinball Scoring: At the more advanced stages of the game, the scores skyrocket to mind-boggling values.
• Plot Hole: In-Universe. The Prophecy itself is a walking plot hole that's riddled with Hand Wave shenanigans. There's a realistic reason for this: the Prophecy's been recounted from so many perspectives by so many people for so many years that whatever it originally was is effectively gone from any living memory, with only the basic outline remaining.
• Power Creep: Very much so, with new jobs and cards both getting stronger as time goes on. A good example would be with prismatic orbs; Originally introduced with Aerith, a super-rare Supreme card introduced early on that, among other things, shifted all your orbs into prismatic ones that can be used for any ability. By the end of Act 1, many jobs had prismatic shift with their Ultimate abilities, along with other ways to get prismatic orbs such as a chance to draw them, or a chance to get back used orbs as prismatic ones.
  • However, Supreme cards, extremely rare and powerful cards, are consistently kept above the curve with their exclusive attributes, and are occasionally buffed. Aerith, for example, will always be the only card in the game that provides Prismatic Shift^* With one exception being a joke version of Aerith that only provides Prismatic Shift, and has had the other buffs it provides made more potent as they became commonplace.
• Prestige Class: You can unlock Advanced Jobs by completing a Job's Skill Board. These Advanced Jobs share the same Skill Board with their lesser counterparts, but are statistically stronger and have better Ultimates.
• The Prophecy: The overarching quest of the plot involves attempting to follow a Prophecy foretelling of a man who will become the Warrior of Light and save Palamecia from Chaos. Problem being that 1) Most of its details have pretty much vanished as the result of millennial decay, and 2) The Prophecy states that man with a certain name will become the Warrior of Light... except since The Chosen One has amnesia alongside at least a few other thousand men, no one has any idea who The Chosen One is, and thus a bunch of people start running around claiming that they're The Chosen One without knowing if they're The Chosen One.
• Regional Bonus:
  • The Global version has the Job Summon feature, a function not in the Japanese version that allows you to draw a random unowned Job for 6 Summon Tickets. However, the rarity of Summon Tickets and Magicite was increased as a result.
  • The Mobius Gift Box in Global costs twice as much as the Japanese version^note In Japan, the Gift Box costs 1500 Magicite. In Global, it costs 3000 Magicite. However, shortly after launch, the Global Gift Box was boosted to contain much more stuff, as well as a few extra-rare goodies.
• Reused Character Design:
  • Barring the basic Mooks, several boss-tier enemies are derived from Final Fantasy XIII.
• Scenery Porn: The game has Final Fantasy XIII-style graphics on a handheld device — if your device is even strong enough to render it at maximum quality.
• Schizo Tech: Mostly fantasy until discovering a satellite dish or a high tech city full of floating skyscrapers. Some of the crossover events include futuristic elements.
• Scoring Points: In battle, a Score is kept track of as the battle progresses. You can earn points for various actions such as attacking an enemy, Breaking, resisting an attack, and so forth. You can also lose some points by taking hits. Your highest score for that week's rankings is kept track of and ranked on a global leaderboard. Your position on the leaderboard determines a variety of bonuses; maintaining a high rank earns more Skillseeds and bonus EXP, while low ranks grants a Score multiplier.
• Standard Snippet:
  • Certain stamps and magic from previous FF games are associated with a jingle of a few notes of something from that game's soundtrack, although in a distorted tempo that makes it quite hard to tell sometimes.
    • Dr. Mog's stamp plays the first two bars of the Moogle theme.
    • Firion's stamp plays the first eight notes of the melody of the Final Fantasy II battle theme.
    • Luneth's plays the riff from the Final Fantasy III overworld theme.
    • Kain's plays the first bar of the melody of the Final Fantasy IV battle theme.
    • Gilgamesh's plays the opening synth whirl from "Battle on the Big Bridge".
    • Edgar's plays the first four notes of the Figaro castle theme from Final Fantasy VI.
    • Cloud's plays the famous Final Fantasy VII "seventh interval" Leitmotif used throughout the game.
    • Rinoa's plays the first melody line of "Waltz for the Moon", complete with the waltz tempo.
    • Using Yuna's card plays the first four notes of the "Hymn of the Fayth" from Final Fantasy X.
    • An attack with Lightning's card plays a sample of the horn riff from "Blinded By Light" from Final Fantasy XIII.
  • The Final Fantasy battle theme shows up in story-based boss themes, reinforcing the game's connection to that story.
  • Legend jobs are accompanied by music associated with that character - Ace Blitzer and SOLDIER 1st Class get the Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VII battle themes respectively, while Hero of Despair gets "One Winged Angel"... switching to it mid-battle from a normal Warrior Job (with its light, whimsical theme) can be pretty chilling when the marching string riff starts.
• Shout-Out: Count Echo, Echo's October 2018 Halloween costume, contains the following flavor text:
  "Eight! Eight supreme cards! Ah ah ah!"
• Stripperiffic: While rather modest by average Stripperiffic standards, Echo is this according to Wol.
  Wol: And put some clothes on.
  • Wol himself is like this in plenty of his outfits. His original Onion Knight costume was revealing enough that the developers eventually covered him up more after player feedback, though the end result is still pretty bare.
• Strangled by the Red String: One In-Universe subplot tied to the fate of Palamecia is the requirement in the Prophecy for the Warrior of Light to court Princess Sarah, regardless of their actual feelings. In Chapter 6 it is revealed that in a previous lifetime Meia and a black-haired Warrior of Light candidate were killed for not only falling in love with each other (and with Sarah's blessing, no less), but for daring to profess that there can be more than one Warrior of Light. In Chapter 7 Wol and Meia discuss that even if Sarah has no romantic feelings for Wol, she is still bound to the role set to her by the Prophecy.
• Temporary Online Content: Missed an event that ran for about a week? Too bad.
• Took a Level in Badass: Cyclone Grimoire. Considered one of Tyro's worst Soul Breaks in Record Keeper due to being outclassed by the Sentinel Grimoire and the Healing Grimoire, which have far greater utility, it gets upgraded in Mobius to a terrifying Desperation Attack that deals non-elemental damage (meaning you can't Drive against it) and negates your Defense, which can easily kill off a Wol or two if you aren't prepared to face it.
• Tournament Arc: In Chapter 2, you must enter into a tournament in order to claim the 4th Runic Key. You only have to clear the prelims. After that, the tournament pretty much finishes itself.
• True Companions: By Chapter 2, Wol confesses that he places great trust in Mog, and would remember him even if the rest of the world forgets.
• Turn-Based Combat: This game uses standard turn-based battle as opposed to ATB. What constitutes a "turn" is a given number of actions that each unit in combat can take each turn. For example, you get three actions per turn, while each enemy gets one. The number of actions in a turn can be augmented by status effects such as Haste (adds one action) or Stun (removes one action for each stack you have).
  • Act 2 changes turns to work similar to FFX's CTB system, with each turn consisting of your enemies actions evenly spread between your own. Enemies that are broken can be "overwhelmed", letting you take any actions they would have had, while enemies that are stunned or killed have their turn completely skipped over.
• Useless Useful Spell: Ruin-class Ultimates for the Mage series. While their power is high, they can be easily outpowered by Cards that have half the power rating but hit for Weakness damage. Ruin being Ruin can't hit Weakness at all.
• Verbal Tic: As is tradition, "kupo" for Moogles. Wol has an interesting reaction to it.
  Wol: (What's a kupo?)
• Vicious Cycle: Chapter 8 reveals that Palamecia has been enduring one repetition of a worldwide Hope Spot after another. Every time a Warrior of Light successfully defeats Chaos, Vox will invite him to pass through the Gate of Hope carrying the sparks of hope generated by the people of Palamecia... in order to get rid of him before he becomes a liability. Meanwhile, Vox will revive Chaos, wipe the memories of his deeds from the people, force Sarah to play the role of the world's focus, and repeat the whole thing again. Wol ultimately defies the cycle by choosing to stay and inspire Sarah to help him defeat Chaos once and for all, in the process killing Vox along with his system.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 5. There's a really good reason no-one remembers anything, and the Prophecy Wol is following... might not even be a real prophecy at all!
• We Have Reserves: The Blanks in general regard towards the Prophecy. Since The Prophecy isn't straight in anyone's mind anymore, dozens upon dozens of Blanks just start pursuing it in completely random places, so there's virtually no end to candidacy for the Warrior of Light from pretty much every angle.