Releasing a whole 13 months after its Sony debut, World of Final Fantasy was the perfect way to celebrate the year that saw the entire Final Fantasy franchise celebrate its 30th anniversary. Arguably released a year too soon (with the original Final Fantasy turning 30 next month), the PC version arrives at just the right time. But does it go above and beyond your typical PC port?
Before we begin, familiarize yourself with the test rig being used in this report - AKA; my tiny ATX machine shoved behind my screens. It may have gotten a little 2017 pick-me-up lately, but the GPU and CPU still represent a modern 'mid-range' machine;
Test PC Specs
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 4-Core/4-Thread (3.5GHz)
- GPU: AMD RX 480 8GB
- RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2666
- Boot Drive: 120GB Samsung EVO SSD
- Game Drive: 240GB Crucial BX300 SSD
- Monitor: AOC 4K 28-inch VN panel
So does World of Final Fantasy offer to push our machines to their limits? Not really, no. But at the same time, I see no reason to complain.
Having picked up World of Final Fantasy at launch last year, I had nothing but praise for the title (as you'll see in this review). It's a bright and colourful title with a turn-based battle system, random encounters and load screens, so while it may be locked at 30FPS on PC, I really see no reason why Square Enix should have wasted their time and resources in making it something it never was in the first place. It's a light-hearted game with an intentional slow pacing; 'responsive' frame rates offer no real benefit here.
As with a few recent PC ports from other companies, World of Final Fantasy offers little to no graphical tweaks in the game itself. Likely pulled straight from the PS4 version of the game, the only additions here are some game-breaking cheats thrown into the middle of the Settings menu - like turning off random encounters or having unlimited AP to burn in battle. While I personally condone their existence, wrecking your enemies after a 100% completion won't hurt the experience; but at that point, you should probably play one of the many other brilliant JRPGs available on Steam and elsewhere.
Getting back to it, the only options you can tweak with ease happen to be Resolution, Shadow Resolution, Post Processing and the window type. Resolutions are supported all the way to my panel's max at a native 4K. I can't confirm whether 21:9 resolutions are supported without a screen of that degree, but expect only standard 16:9 aspect ratio support at best. Shadow resolution is the same, offering values of 4096 and every half division before that.
The game itself looks very crisp and nothing like the low-resolution images used on its Steam page. They honestly look more like the Vita version, and their inclusion likely won't help the game's reputition on a platform where only the best is typically good enough.
Maxed out at 4K, World of Final Fantasy stayed at its locked rate of 30FPS with no graphical glitches or boot issues to speak of. Load times are blisteringly fast, and with areas and encounters being split by loading screens, I can imagine SSDs really make the difference here. Without officially confirming that suspicion, the best I can say it that load times seemed considerably faster than the PS4 version I played last year and far better than the almost unplayable Vita version.
One instance of a slow-loading battle did appear around 2 hours into testing, however, but it was an isolated incident that hasn't been replicated since. As much I would love to know what caused it, I can't say whether this was some fault of the game or, potentially, my recording software. Similarly, AMD Relive had trouble recording longer clips in 4K. Both attempts resulted in footage being randomly out of sync when entering an encourter. It usuaully wasn't the first fight causing this, either, so it's hard to say where the problem sits. Either way, the game itself ran just fine whether recording or not.
The only other thing to note here is the strange need to manual swap in-game buttom prompts. Rather than just switch automatically depending on the input device in use, World of Final Fantasy starts with keyboard mode on (as expected) with controller users having to switch to controller-mode through the in-game settings to have menus display the relevant button icons. Battle-type settings and Japanese/English voices can be swapped in-game at will, and coming with the entire DLC set is just icing on the cake.
All in all, World of Final Fantasy is a basic port that (almost) works out of the box. Its colourful aesetic benefits greatly from higher resolutions, but will always look as intended due to its lack of graphical options. Supporting cards like the GTS 450 from back in 2011, you won't need much force to run this joyous RPG to an acceptable point. Its slow pace means even running at 15 FPS won't 'break' the game, but it probably won't feel too good, so there's enough reason to think any DX11-capable PC should handle this to a playable degree.
Weird recording glitches halted any attempt to give some viable 4K footage for the space down below, so enjoy a 4K 30FPS capture of... capturing. The 'glitch' here means the video has no sound, but sound was absolutely present in the game at the time. Whether AMD ReLive of World of Final Fantasy is to blame here, the game itself was running fine at the time. Enjoy copious amounts of DoF and Bloom that can be in no way changed by the average user.
