Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has a large and vibrant community. Since the game allows players to take their friend’s most powerful unit with them into battle, it encourages players to communicate with each other outside of the game. This has spawned all kinds of groups to be created across social media platforms and other websites.
An Ode to the Final Fantasy Brave Exvius Community
The Journey Begins
I found the game through an ad on Facebook during its beta. The old-school looking sprites on a modernized background immediately intrigued me. I started the game to characters riding chocobos while the game downloaded. Then, the story started off the with protagonists riding an airship. It was an original story, but I was giddy when I saw that players could summon characters like Terra and Zidane from Final Fantasy titles of the past.
At first, I was pretty casual. I was proud of my free-to-play (f2p) label. But, I knew that I would not be able to clear some content that the high-spending whales made look easy. I worked through the main story, making it a point to keep Rain, Lasswell, and Fina in my party, along with some of my other favorites like Cecil and Agrias. Even though I didn’t have the luck to pull Luneth or Lightning when they came out, it was great to try them out using friend units.
The Vortex stages that let players revisit old Final Fantasy worlds, complete with the battle music was sometimes nostalgia overload!
Getting More into It
As I started to get more into the game, I started lurking the GameFAQs boards. I’d read through pages of threads for what the best budget strategies were or what new events people thought would be coming up soon. I still felt like such a weak player though. I didn’t log in every day and didn’t have any really good units. In fact, my friend unit was a Paladin Cecil. No wonder no one would accept my friend requests!
Finally, one day it happened. I was sitting on my couch using a few summon tickets I had gotten from the Final Fantasy VI event that was going on. When one of the crystals came down, I was greeted by what up to that point was just a myth to a filthy casual like myself: a rainbow. It cracked open to be Trance Terra. She may not have been the best unit, but she took my damage to the next level and finally let me clear events on elite difficulty.
Next week, when the event trial came up, I decided to give it a try. It was Kefka, the main boss of FFVI, and though it took me a few tries, I was successful. I decided now it was time to give back to the community, so I created a GameFAQs account and typed up a guide to Kefka for f2pers. After that I started to get more serious, taking on more and more events.
I became a regular contributor on GameFAQs and felt like I was part of a great, supportive community.
One Year In
Once the one-year anniversary hit, things really took off. This is when I broke my f2p seal and was really able to pull some good units. With the bundles I bought, I was able to pull my first Orlandeau, who was basically a cheat code at that time. I quickly cleared most trials I hadn’t (with the help of my GameFAQs friends). Not long after, I finally broke the magical “1k Attack” threshold. After that, I made it a point of trying to add people lower ranked people to my friend list whenever possible.
After a while, my FFBE fandom found another community on Twitter. I created Twitter mostly to interact with the Fantasy Football and Oakland Raiders community, but I couldn’t help but follow the Brave Exvius Twitter and other people I saw posting about the game. One day, I was added to a Twitter group with a bunch of them. They’re all great people from all around the world! Once I saw just how huge the community is, I found some (huge) Facebook groups I joined as well.
Last Word on My Ode to the FFBE Community
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has been a godsend for me in my on-the-go adult life. Since I can play from anywhere, it is easier to keep up with than other games. I love it so much that it got me to finally start actually posting on GameFAQs and getting more intimately involved with the gaming community. It made me start writing articles and even recording YouTube videos of my gameplay.
The height (so far) of my interaction with the FFBE community came at a meetup held in San Diego. I was initially a bit worried that it would just be a bunch of awkward people getting together staring at their phones but was pleasantly surprised. It ended up being a ton of fun, and I gained some new friends both in-game and in real life. Now I’m looking forward to the Fan Festa in Los Angeles this weekend.
This is a community I am glad to be a part of.
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