YMMV / War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius

• Broken Base:
  • The game's strong emphasis on female characters is a point of contention. Every male Ultra Rare that has been released after launch^note Gilgamesh, Sterne, Oelde, Robb and Engelbert were all available on release has been from a collaboration event^{Another note} Thancred, Ramza, Orlandeau, Delita, Warrior of Light, or tied to Brave Exvius in case of Rain and Lasswell. It took six months for the Japanese version to release a male Ultra Rare Sterne, Knight of Ruin, and even then he was an updated reskin of a previous UR unit. It took eight months to release an original male character, Skahal. Some players think this is a problem, and that most female units are cheap attempts to sell units through sex appeal instead of design or story. Others appreciate having waifus to pull and think the sex appeal is a positive. Most people don't particularly care either way.
  • EX Jobs have split the community. They effectively represent the next level of Power Creep that the game has to offer. It adds new materials and other farming opportunities, but the real power gap for most free-to-play players is the shards. Fully awakening a unit to Job Level 25 costs 400 more shards in addition to the 600 needed to raise a unit beforehand. Some appreciate the higher depth and the thought that new life that it brought to units like Xiza and Robb. Others believe there aren't enough, and that it's just another scheme to force players to spend money.
  • 100-cost units are a very polarizing topic. Some believe they are inherently exploitative due to costing more and taking longer to raise than a regular Ultra Rare unit. Others don't mind, as the game provides shortcuts for dolphins and whales. In Japan, after EX jobs increased the cost of raising units and Gumi ramped up the introduction of 100-cost units from once every 6 months to once every month, the base shifted towards outright hatred.
• Can't Un-Hear It:
  • Daman Mills as Rain. It fits the character so well that it's hard for FFBE players to not hear Mills' voice in his dialogues and even his CG Limit Bursts for Aldore King Rain and Neo Rain, which are not dubbed in the Global version.
  • In a lesser form, Christie Cate as Ayaka. Fits the White Mage and her gentle personality so well that it could very well be her voice in English FFBE if Gumi allowed it.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Anyone who can inflict the Charm status can send even the calmest PVP player into a rage. Units under Charm can still use abilities. Only a select few off-meta characters can do so, but the mechanics make it powerful. The chance of Charm landing are the average of the caster's and their target's Faith stats, usually making the chance of Charm very high to land. The skill made players unironically use Mont's Stone Throw skill, a community meme, as a makeshift Charm cure.
  • While Yuna doesn't have statuses, her EX Job has Aeon Bond. At base power, Yevon's Gift is a mediocre reaction ability that has a 30% chance to buff her Healing Power. Her EX job unlock, however, gives her Aeon Bond, which adds an auto-cure to it. Because of how buffs apply before actions, Aeon Bond effectively gives her a 30% chance to fully heal herself if she does not die in one hit.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Zazan is very popular in both sides due to his comic relief and his design as a man wearing a bear skin with his armor. It doesn't hurt that despite being the only N unit in the game, he has the highest movement stats in the game, along with access to the rare Thief subjob. Being voiced by Patrick Seitz in the story in English also helps a lot with his popularity, and Gumi's first popularity poll had Zazan winning over Elsirelle by a landslide.
  • King Robb of Hourne also managed to get his own cult due to his behavior in the story, being basically the only king in this war with actual common sense (he gave full voice of reason to his daughter Machérie when she told him what happened in Leonis, and he promptly ditched his alliance with Fennes once it became clear that Muraga was setting the entire kingdom for destruction), and a massive badass with high tendencies for Big Damn Heroes, especially for making Dorando and Gargas, who at this point became massive Scrappies, actually run for their lives. He doesn't last the first book, sadly.
  • If a recent poll for the game's six-month anniversary in Japan is any indication, Glaciela Wezette is also rather popular, being voted by players to receive a UR alt before even being playable herself (and as an UR unit at that). Vinera Fennes came in second, despite being a side character with only one event and appearance in the main story so far.
    • The same poll had Little Leela, a throw-away SR known for being Fortem's Butt-Monkey, in 4th place. She was actually less than 20 votes behind Mont, beating every other main character in the process.
  • In both games, Elsirelle, a bit character who hasn't been fleshed out yet, having appeared only by late Chapter 8, is one of the most popular characters. All that's known about her on the Global side is that she's narcoleptic. By the release of chapter 12 Elsirelle is still extremely popular due to her aforementioned personality being backed up by being a memorable character in story and a solid unit in gameplay.
• Fan Nickname: Ever since the trailer for Part 3: Cross Blood was released, fans everywhere began to refer to Sterne's new look as "Gilgasterne" or "One Winged Sterne".
• Game-Breaker:
  • For Trust Mastery Rewards, Xiza's Illusory Bell is in a league of its own. The stats are already top-tier, with 142 HP, 8 DEF, 14 ACC, and 7 AGI. What makes her skill is Revitalize, which automatically restores 25% of your unit's AP for 3 turns. Anyone can equip it. This is a massive increase to your unit's potential, as it allows them to cast their AP skills nearly at will. It's so overpowered that the game will often give a powerful unit Revitalize in challenge content and the Tower.
  • Unsurprisingly, Orlandeau is similarly overpowered to his source game. His most commonly-used skill is Crush Armor, which has a range of 5 and debuffs the defending unit's DEF. Because debuffs are calculated before damage, this makes it one of his most powerful skills. He also has an ATK debuff, HP restore, and a line-based attack in Divine Ruination. His subjob gives him access to Hallowed Bolt, a powerful plus-shaped AoE attack, and Crush Helm, which debuffs the defending unit's max HP. The only problem is that his whole Sword Saint kit has only one TP skill. His Samurai subjob gives him more access, but trades Crush Helm and Hallowed Bolt for more efficient single-target attacks and an expensive defense-ignoring attack. Orlandeau is widely considered to be one of the strongest units in the game.
  • Mediena is considered the best mage and AoE damage dealer in the game. Her Black Mage kit is incredibly strong, having access to the Blizzard tree and Flare. Her subjob skills give her Drain for self-sustainability, while the Green Mage subjob gives her access to strong TP skills. Her Ninja tree gives her incredible movement and agility-based passives that can be equipped on any subjob. Most importantly, she has a powerful (and far-reaching) Limit Burst that she can cast as early as Turn 1. Her well-rounded kit, high-level burst potential and deceptive speed made her the top reroll target and the favorite unit for farming. In acknowledgment of her utility, Gumi made a permanent challenge board where you get Mediena and Shadowlynx for free after a week or so of logging in and doing some extra stuff.
  • Despite being a Mega Mega Rare, Salire arguably surpasses Mediena. She has access to the Ninja sub-job, but instead of Green Mage, she has a White Mage subjob. While she doesn't have Curaga or Full-Life, she has Holy, giving her a 100% accuracy option and great off-healing capability. Her Ninja job gives her more offensive-based TP skills to round out her kit, along with the same Ninja passives that make Mediena so strong. Finally, her AI is much more defensive than Mediena's, adding to her survivability.
  • Frederika may be average in PVE content, but she is arguably the best unit in PVP. Her long range allows her to attack with powerful attacks. She not only has the Ninja sub-job, giving her access to powerful move passives, but she has the Ranger sub-job's Reflex skill, giving her a 25% chance to evade any attack, regardless of accuracy rates. Most of her Gunner skills are fine, but her Ranger set makes her shine. This subjob gives her access to Barrage, a diamond-shaped AoE, and Sharpshoot, a powerful 100% accuracy skill. While she is a bit squishy, she has top-notch agility, evasion, movement, and range, allowing her to pester units from afar.
  • Lu'Cia has similar active skills to Frederika, but sacrifices some of Frederika's agility and range for bulk and offense (including defense penetration).
  • Warrior of Light is the gold standard for tanks. He is the only tank who is able to raise his Hate with a TP skill, Brave Presence. On top of his Hate buff, he has a single-use 60% HP heal and the ability to reduce a party member's physical damage for 3 hits. Finally, he can pitch in damage with Shift Attack, allowing him to move closer to the enemy. His Dragoon skill gives him piercing damage in a pinch, but is best used with his Spellblade or Warrior of Light sub-job. Spellblade gives him more Hate generation and MAG-based slash damage, but his Warrior of Light subjob gives him access to Stop Strike. In PVP, Ayaka is the only unit who can cure Stop, and a well-timed Stop Strike can turn the tide of the battle.
  • Given how powerful the Arithmetician job was in Final Fantasy Tactics, it's no shock that Ildyra is the best mage in the game. Instead of having unlimited range, her spells have a range of 5 tiles. Her skills will hit everyone in range, but will deal more damage or heal more if they fulfill the condition. If the skill is AoE, Ildyra's version's area of effect radius gains an additional tile. Her Watera and Waterga skills become diamond AoEs, while Holy becomes a plus. Damage skills like Level 4 Waterga are nerfed to compensate, but the healing part of her Arithmetician kit is not. In effect, this puts her Cura spell on par with Ayaka's Limit Burst.
    • Halloween Little Leela takes everything broken about Ildyra and ratchets it up a few notches. Instead of being focused as an offensive mage, she is more focused around healing. While she doesn't have Holy, she has access to buffs and Full-Life. Her second sub-job is Ninja, which gives her access to arguably the best passives in the game that further increase her agility. Perhaps her most broken feature is her design as an evasion-based mage. Along with having high AGI and Luck, she has the sixth-highest total evasion in the game. Typhon's Vision Card gives her even more, and Shiva effectively nullifies her elemental weakness. Furthermore, Gumi released her four months ahead of schedule.
  • Kain was the undisputed king of PVP for two months. Along with some of the highest movement stats and agility in the game, he had strong pierce attack and defense penetration, high accuracy, and a wide variety of disruption and debuffs. They not only buffed the Demon Wall Vision Card, but delayed all of the pierce resistance equipment and Vision Cards to make room for other events.
  • Yuna is a fine character at Level 99, but her EX job upgrades make her the undisputed best unit in the game for PVP. Not only is she the first unit with access to Reraise in the game, but she also has access to Curaga, Holy, and Full-Life. Her Holy enhancements give her extra damage against dark-elemental units. Energy Ray is another 100% hit skill, and her Kotodama Wielder subjob gives her. Perhaps the most fearsome part of her kit is Aeon Bond, which adds an Auto-Cure onto her counter that buffs her Healing Power. This skill, provided with the wide amount of dark and slash resistance the light element has, effectively makes facing a Yuna team a Luck-Based Mission if you can't kill her in one hit.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Zazan is by far the most popular character in Global, winning the popularity poll. He is an afterthought in Japan.
• Iron Woobie: Glaciela somehow manages to be strong after being completely broken. She launches a rebellion against her father, who killed most of her relatives, believing she has the help of her betrothed. In reality, she is told by a double agent that he abandoned her to rescue a princess who he just fell in love with, and has no way of knowing the context of why he actually left. Her childhood friends, one by one, abandon her, her allies are slaughtered in battle, and her subjects (including her mother) are captured by her father's men. She still presses on with the resolve to fight and still has faith in her betrothed, even if as just an ally.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • In Japan, the initial release saw negative reviews due to the disastrous first run of the Final Fantasy XIV collab. The raid event was almost unplayable due to the sheer amount of bugs, to the point where it had to be cut from the Global version. In addition, they made Thancred, the Ultra Rare chase unit, a 100-cost UR on top of his limited-time availability. Finally, the Shop never had a rate-up for his shards, and the Collaboration Shop never sold his shard packs. This meant that to max Thancred out, you needed to pull on a separate banner for medals to redeem his shards. In order to guarantee a MLB Thancred, you needed 600,000 Visiore. Since then, the game has recovered, and the Global version largely avoided these shortfalls.
  • The EXVIUS Universe collab, in general. The release of the first Global Original unit, Fryevia, was overshadowed by the backlash from being a limited-time unit. Unlike all other Final Fantasy Brave Exvius units, Gumi and Square Enix decided to make her limited. Players saw this as a diversion from the norm, since none the other units from Exvius (including Rain) were limited. The hype around her immediately died, as most people saw her limited-time status as an arbitrary cash grab.
  • The second part was even less well-received. While they gave a generous amount of rewards, Gumi also took away the Elemental Fragments of Thought from the monthly rewards and the free weekly 10-pull. A misconception also rolled around that the daily 10-pull rewards starting on June 29th were always going to come with Warrior of Light, but it was later revealed that they were from a Japanese YouTube channel campaign. Even the release of Vinera Fennes, one of the most hotly-desired fan favorite units, did little to quell player anger. People considered the second rewards as a bait-and-switch and a redistribution of resources, not a generous gift.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Raid events are the bane of most War of the Visions players' existences due to the long manual grind. For most raids, it is impossible to queue up multiple at a time. You have to run back and forth from event clearing to raids in order to advance through - and that's if you can find other players to help you. If you start late, it is hard to progress without soloing, since most will join the higher-leveled lobbies to advance. In addition, some high-level raids require certain units and setups - usually the latest character Gumi designed the raid for - in order to complete. Unlike most farming-based content, raid events are explicitly designed to be manually completed. The difficulty gate is already high, and rises even higher with each event. To make matters worse, most Ultra Rare equipment is gated behind raids - some of which are required to raise certain characters like Lasswell. The ever-increasing amount, combined with the tedious gameplay aspects and difficulty to cooperate with the community, make raids the least popular event type in the game.
  • Live PVP was originally deeply disliked among players. The match-making system only considers player rank. Free-to-play players can be matched up against whales with Level 99 teams. Conversely, opponents above Rank 80 have trouble finding matches to the point where they have to schedule PVP matches with other users. In addition, the sensitive netcode tends to frequently drop connection. If your live PVP opponent loses connection, you're stuck waiting for minutes on end before getting a win. If you lose connection, your streak is gone. For the first six months of the game, you were also unable to run manual PVP at different speeds or auto. This is especially frustrating because Hermes Sandals (widely considered to be one of the best accessories in the game) are gated behind live PVP battles.
  • The Auto Battle AI brings Artificial Stupidity to a new level, due to its poor movement decisions and tendency to prioritize skill usage above normal attacking. Offensive mages will rush headlong into battle, regardless of their defense or spirit. DPS units, if out of range, will chose to wait in place rather than move in for an attack. The AI also has a rather confusing set of priorities when it comes to selecting skills. This results in incidents such as Mont using up all his AP on Stone Throw, Time Mages (Ayaka in particular when set to this sub-class) spamming a Useless Useful Spell like Immobilize over damaging/healing spells regardless of immunity, or Mediena not being coded to use TP skills. In some cases, units like Gilgamesh and Orlandeau will not use their Shield skills and Fryevia will not use Full-Life because they are simply not factored into the AI. Skill Toggle fixed most of the latter, but the AI coding still is a part of the game, and each unit is patched individually.
  • The crafting system is seen as an overcomplicated crapshoot. Instead of simply crafting a weapon and maxing it like the Excalibur, almost every aspect of crafting is random to the point where they had to reduce the randomness. Originally, weapon types were completely random as well, but now can be inherited. There is very little point to using seals midway through the crafting process, as you lose all progress when you awaken them. Once you get to your ideal equipment variant, you can then use seals to increase the chance of a stat boost per level. If you get a bad roll, you have to disassemble your weapon and use another hoard of seals and hammers all over again. The crafting update helped lessen the time, but the material sink is still high.
• The Scrappy:
  • Dorando and Gargas, while initially interesting villains, quickly overstay their welcome thanks to their underhanded, cowardly methods of handling people. Rather than challenge Sir Owe themselves after claiming they're powerful enough, they throw at him and Helena tons of mooks to wear them down first, almost killing Helena (who they eventually give for dead but she survives and decides to get dangerous), and getting Owe to actually die after he puts up a hell of a Last Stand, then promptly killing all witnesses in order to hide the fact from Sadali. Not happy with that, they also ambush Adelard and Salire, who even with Kitone and Lynx's help can't handle the sheer numbers they hide behind, plus the fact the duo has Rairyuu and Zazan helping them, forcing King Robb to intervene and save the day. With what was seen so far, it's easy to see why players have gotten sick of the duo and just want them to die already. They're redeemed in some eyes after they're shown to have adopted a child from a village the Sanctum controls and they seem willing to go the distance to protect the boy.
  • The fans dislike most characters from Gouga (Mariale and Rairyuu, for example) for the same reasons they did Dorando and Gargas. Zazan even gained a hatedom after the Gouga story event.
  • King Oelde has a noticeable hatedom as well, mostly due to his constant mishandling of his sons. He belittles Mont at almost every turn and refuses to explain anything about his actions to Sterne, eventually driving the younger prince to a murderous rage after leaving him behind while fleeing to another kingdom. It's gotten to the point where many players agree with Sterne's Patricide attempts. It doesn't help that Oelde's reaction to Sterne's willingness to kill Mont to get to him was essentially "let them fight." Even in death, he failed to explain the reason why he acted the way he did.
  • Machérie is positioned as one of the main protagonists (and Mont's Designated Love Interest), and initially described as a Lady of War, but falls flat into Show, Don't Tell. She spends the entire first half of Arc 1 needlessly and endlessly insulting the kind-hearted Mont for his perceived lack of "manliness". In the second half, she barely exerts any influence or agency on the plot, vaguely pining for Mont from (extremely) afar as she repeatedly becomes either a hostage or a glorified messenger for more important characters. What caps this off is Machérie being one of the worst Ultra Rare units in the entire game, with a severely mismatched kit that lands her somewhere between "a subpar mage" and "a subpar tank".
• Squick: Salire's Big Brother Worship comes off strongly as Big Brother Attraction to the point where Adelard tells her people might get the wrong idea. And in the Threat to the West event story, Adelard feels the need to elaborate that they're brother and sister to his opponent who notes that they're fighting with the Power of Love.
• That One Boss:
  • The 20th floor of the White Porcelain Tower has your 5-man party match up against 4 groups of 3 characters - each led by a hero unit. Vinera's group, the closest to you, has sky-high Evasion, requiring Holy, Sharpshoot, or a specific setup of Vision Cards to even damage. Her thieves have Steal Heart (among other painful skills), and Vinera herself has a punishingly strong kit. Aileen's group consists of an archer that rains hellfire down on you (even hitting evasion tanks) and a soldier with Drain Force (which does massive damage to your tank). If you run Engelbert, he's very likely to die here if he survives Vinera's onslaught. Next is Mediena's group, which has powerful black magic spells. Engelbert's group has incredibly high HP, DEF, and SPR, with the spellblades being able to do strong damage themselves. The opponent's sheer numerical advantage, combined with the variety of tactics needed to take down each group, makes this nearly impossible to complete with one party.
  • Floor 19EX of the White Porcelain Tower may be a single trial outside of its limitations, but it will push you to your limits. The fight has you squaring off against Sterne, two monks, and three Iron Giants. Only one of the Iron Giants will advance at first, but the other two of them will join them unless you stay in the back row or hide behind an enemy or a corpse. When they advance, you have 3 turns to deplete their 14,000 HP or Osmose them. If you don't, they buff their DEF and ATK, making them nearly impossible to kill. Killing the first Iron Giant will trigger two ninjas and a Malboro to spawn. The Malboro has Smelly Breath, which now triggers every status in the game. The Ninjas use Shadowbind, which causes Stop. Killing another Iron Giant spawns another Malboro. Meanwhile, Sterne has 10,000 HP and can chew through your party after you deal with most of the other enemies.
• That One Level: The White Porcelain Tower is a grueling 20-floor marathon (which grows with each new instance) that is almost impossible to clear in a single day. Unlike most dungeons, all characters carry over their ability uses and HP from each level of the Tower. If a character dies, they cannot be revived until you fully restore your team. Every 24 hours, you can fully restore your entire team to full health and AP uses. In addition to the 20 normal levels, there are two EX levels, which are more conventional trials with unlimited attempts. The last three Tower levels could stand alone as some of the hardest content in the game, with 20F being explicitly designed to take multiple attempts to clear. The trial originally had Crimson Saber as the Floor 20 in Japan, but the Global version changed its drop to Floor 15 because of how hard it was.
  • The game has Challenge Quests, which are hyper-difficult levels for bragging rights.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: While the game tries to take a note from Final Fantasy Tactics, it's obvious that the writers forced their hand far too much when it comes to how bad a situation can be. The amount of Diabolus ex Machina in the plot is so obnoxious that players find it hard to stomach a story where the good guys never get anything. It isn't until the end of Chapter 5 that something good actually happens, and most players focusing on the story find both their patience and their empathy at a stressful test, with some players just giving up and focusing on the meta rather than the story, finding it just too depressing to watch. It also doesn’t help that in order to make this happen, the writers force the protagonists to act in ways that no reasonable person would (e.g. blindly trusting someone they just met), and either kill off or give comparatively little screen time to the more likeable characters. The writers noticed the complaints and tried to add more levity, but even that fell flat as it came off as filler, poorly timed, or both (such as a small arc where a team helps one of its members with his love life... in the middle of a climactic battle).
• Unexpected Character:
  • Duane came as a major surprise to the playerbase. His inspiration came from a player popularity poll from Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, but his promised 5-star base hadn't come for 2 years. The promise to release Duane in **Exvius** was as old as War of the Visions itself, and everyone thought the developers forgot about him. Furthermore, they released him a month after the last 100-cost unit, after two limited-time banners, instead of Christmas Viktora and Vinera.
  • Christmas Viktora and Vinera themselves had an unexpected release, given that they were released at the end of February.

---