As much as everyone said they hated universes beyond, being able to play Tifa and Cloud in mtg quickly changed a lot of mind. The Final Fantasy series holds a special place in a lot of the hearts of gamers in the 90s and 2000s. For myself, I kind of a wayside fan at this point, where I play one of the games every now and then and follow news, but I'm not as hyped at every announcement.
With the announcement last year of the Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I like the idea of them making cards based on that universe. The IP gives collectors a chase that goes beyond the MTG community. Already with the initial spoilers, I'm seeing a lot of non MTG player taking either their first or second look at the game with this set. But then I think about the larger picture, do I want to see Cloud Strife being gifted a sword from Nahiri the Lithomancer? That kind of cool actually when you think about it. But more importantly, how well do the cards capture the flavor of the Final Fantasy Universe? This is where all my thoughts stem from.
With spoilers already underway, there's a lot to unpack. This will not be a set review as the set isn't out yet. What we are looking at is the how well they captured the lore of the Final Fantasy universe in the cards and how the set is shaping up, which is why I opened up this article the way I did.
Uncertain Times
The most pressing was this set is meant to go into standard and WotC wouldn't be wrong for taking a more conservative philosophy on design as a bunch of newer players would naturally flood into the game. (We're already seeing Lilypichu talk about getting into the game.) They could easily slap a Final Fantasy skin on a generic magic set and we'd still buy it up. Who wouldn't want Bahamut as the Ur Dragon? (I originally wanted to say Sephiroth as Atraxa since she's the most popular commander, but it's a reality already)
The second is how they handle rarity distribution. I understand not everyone can be a rare, but now it comes down to who can be? I remember with the Baldur's Gate set, many of the important characters in the lore got shafted and were placed at uncommon to make way to promote Baldur's Gate 3. For those not in the know, Abdel Adrian and Sarevok were the hero and villain in Baldur's Gate 1. I expect this to happen, but I would want that each main villain and lead protagonist get a rare or mythic slot. This is going to be difficult as there are so many characters, but do we need a slew of the most popular characters (Tifa, Cloud, Sephiroth, and more Tifa) ever to be at rare and mythic for the whales?
Related to this, I was also concerned with the balance of how every mainline game will be represented. 7 and 14 are the most popular in the series and they can easily lean into this by overrepresenting those games. There's a lot of charm and quirks from the other games that have a high potential of being miss (WotC please make Sabin suplexing Phantom Train a card).
With spoilers already underway, there's a lot to unpack. This will not be a set review as the set isn't out yet. What we are looking at is the how well they captured the lore of the Final Fantasy universe in the cards and how the set is shaping up, which is why I opened up this article the way I did.
Dark World
Let's look at the bad first.
The commander cards that got previewed sometime had me concerned as that was our first look into the set. Many of the cards felt like they were designed as popular mechanics first and had the most talked about FF games of our generation slapped on them. By no means are they generic, it feels like WotC is stretching to make it lore accurate. This was later vindicated with the commander decklists having been spoiled as I was writing this. Obviously there are some outlier, but most of the commander cards are not that.
Monks being land based is something else that is baffling to me. I don't remember anytime where the monks were tied to land or nature. Final Fantasy does have land based magic with geomancy being present in the Tactics games, but to tie them with monks? Maybe they could have had something by tying the landfall theme to the crystals. Maybe it was too early to tell, but having prowess or power matters if they want to keep it in gruul would be the decision I would have made. As it stands, I want to see the design process for this.
Lastly, the over representation of FF14 is kind of insane for me. It seems like FF14 got a card or 2 for every card representing another game. Like I understand the popularity of the game especially with the release of Endwalker, but we got 15 other games that make references to eachother. So why elevate the FF14 iteration when possible?
These were the thorns from this set for me and in the grand scheme of things they are minor when compared to all of the set's upside.
Victory Theme
When it comes to the draftable part, there seemed to be a ton of forethought that went into the creation of the cards. WotC hit it out of the ball park in trying to capture the feel of the Final Fantasy Universe in a card game. The best part is that none of these mechanics are unfamiliar to the existing playerbase at all and you have to commend the design team for their innovation. I liked that they added as little as possible between cards types and machanics to help them fit in with the rest of the Magic ecosystem. The cards themselves look playable while maintaining their lore. As someone who curates cube, there is a lot of weird in their designs and I like weird. It opens up different pathways for curation and deck construction allowing for more creative expression.
Having transform/DFCs return was the best way to represent the final bosses (when was the last time FF had a single phase final boss?) and characters who changed. The design is masterfully done with each card having their own transform conditions, perfectly capturing the lore behind their character. I could go on and on about each one and why, but that would be too much for a post like this.
Summons as Saga creature was a huge surprise and the perfect form for them. I remember I didn't understand them at first, thinking they were just sagas until I did a double take to see the creature stats. It captures the nature of summons being powerful effects as they are in the game, but they can only exist temporarily. I do think a lot of these cards need haste because you only have a single opportunity to swing with them and then they are gone, but maybe that final trigger is more than enough. The only other complaint is the visual look of the cards, they look cluttered and make it hard to appreciate the artwork on the card.
And last thing to really bring up is the artwork. What more to say other then it's good and faithful. They could have taken the easy route and just took screenshots from the games and movies (there's 30+ years of history to draw from), but instead they commissioned their top talent to recreate our favorite memories and highlights from them. Reimagining iconic magic cards as moments and creatures from the games only added to how good this set will be where even if I wanted nothing from it, there were amazing art I could update my decks with. With the icing on being the iconic artists like Amano and Nomura to creating new pieces of art for this setespecially since Nomura mentioned how he contained spoilers for FF7R pt3 in the artwork for Sephiroth, One Winged Angel.
Crossing the Big Bridge
This has me the most excited I've been for a Magic set. This is a near perfect combination of nostalgia and gameplay. Its making me contemplate being active for a season and playing in person constructed, just to get all of the goodies. In addition, the collector in me has finally shown himself and trying to pry my wallet from me. This set will probably be the worst thing to happen to me financially and I really could just not spend the money, but that also mean I really could let everyone else play Bahamut. So I'm not doing this. In the wider MTG ecosystem, this set is coming right off another good set as I really enjoyed Tarkir:Dragonstorm. This is a good time to be a Magic enjoyer as everything is looking sweet coming off of last year's sets. They weren't as exciting as they should have been, which is where the disappointment lies.
The major concern for this set is going to be the availability and price. High demand is going to leave to shortages that I don't think WotC is prepared for again. I just hope everyone gets some type of joy from this release.
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Last bit, I just want to share some of my history with the franchise.
Favorite Game: Final Fantasy Tactics/ Mainline 6
Favorite Cast: The cast of 6 is probably the best
Favorite Protagonist: Between Terra and Cecil
Favorite Boss: Barthandelus FF13 - his first introduction is something to behold
Favorite Song: Premonition FF8
Least Favorite Game: 14 A Realm Reborn. This was a slog, but 14 picks up so hard afterwards
More Recent Game: Final Fantasy Strangers of Paradise/ 8 for mainline games
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