Final Fantasy XIV mobile closed beta has started in China, and luckily there are some players uploading footage to Youtube, so we get to have a peak. Square Enix’s reputation on the mobile market is not exactly great, as most of their mobile games got closed down after 5 years or so, which prompted most players of FFXIV to look at this new mobile version of the game with some scepticism.

So far the game which is being developed by LightSpeed studios and supervised by Yoshi-P’s team at Square Enix looks promising. The graphics are absolutely stunning, and the areas showcased in this gameplay trailer look exactly as we have known them from the retail game.

This video also features the first look at a boss fight, where we see some familiar mechanics from Titan, including his famous landslides, but we also see some updated ones. So in case you were wondering how movement and mechanics are going to work on mobile, I have bad(?) news for you: you still have to get good at dodging.

FFXIV has gone through many changes since the release of A Realm Reborn, so players were rightfully wondering how the jobs are going to look like on mobile? Are we going back in time and playing ARR as it was 10 years ago or would it be more in line with the current job designs? The answer lies in this class showcase trailer, which got analysed by many FFXIV creators.

To summarise it, the jobs very much look like they do now in the retail game, with certain skill effect changes (like single or multiple target damage) and abilities becoming available on a much lower level then they do in the retail version. I haven’t seen any creator reviews lamenting on this too much, since the mobile version will be its own standalone game, not cross-playable with the current PC and console version, but since we know that they are planning to develop the mobile game past ARR and add further expansions to it, that raises the question how can you upgrade jobs further if they already have a full toolkit at level 50?

I have my own analysis coming on this topic, which will be released in the coming days so please look forward to it. I will link my video in the comments for those of you who are interested, but here is a little teaser: I think some of the job changes and quality of life updates we see in the mobile version might be foreshadowing how 8.0 is going to look like. 

Here is another footage showing the character creator and some scenes from the main story quest:

I’m not a mobile player myself, but would love to check the game out when we get the global beta, compare all the changes and share my thoughts on what features would be great to see imported to the retail game as well. In case someone from Square Enix is reading this, please give me a hint if anyone can apply for beta access or is there going to be some creator program? 😇

According to the announcement interview with Yoshi-P, the game is going to be free to play, with some form of monetisation, but not the gatcha type. The monetisation is also being experimented with in the beta, so probably we will have more info on what they are planning as we get more footage from China. Will be interesting to see how community feedback will be taken on board, and if there will be a difference between the Chinese and global version of the game, like there is in retail.

What do you think? Would you play an MMO on mobile?

Thank you to Chan and Gaming Mobile for providing us with footage from the Chinese beta so we can all have a look, you guys are legends!