Mobius Final Fantasy (Japanese: メビウスファイナルファンタジー, Hepburn: Mebiusu Fainaru Fantajī) was an episodic role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for iOS, Android, and Microsoft Windows.

The players could control Warrior of Light (Wol), a man who wakes with amnesia in the world of Palamecia, and must help conquer the dark forces attacking its people.

Common themes were also drawn from the original Final Fantasy title, such as "warriors of light" and their fight against chaos and darkness.

Multiple staff from previous Final Fantasy titles were involved in development, including producer Yoshinori Kitase; director Motomu Toriyama,[6][7][8] project leader Naoki Hamaguchi, character designer Toshiyuki Itahana and composer Mitsuto Suzuki.

Square Enix cited Mobius Final Fantasy as one of the most successful mobile titles they released in 2015, having over three million downloads in Japan before the end of the year.

[14] Mobius featured a tactics-focused, turn-based battle system, in which the players were able to activate attacks by tapping enemies on screen.

If an enemy's weakness was struck enough times, their "break gauge" meter was drained and they were weakened, allowing the player to attack freely.

[17] Chapter 2, entitled "Prediction and Hope", includes Wol and Mog adventuring through the Ishtar desert and Rune Temple.

[21] In chapter 3, Wol is traveling to see Princess Sarah, who is waiting at her castle when she is attacked and held captive by the armies of chaos.

Once there, they discover that the purpose of the world and the prophecy is to generate and accumulate the "Light of Hope" and transfer it to another faraway world; and this process would continue in an endless cycle, having Chaos resurrect each time, unleashing a flood of darkness that erases everyone's memory, then re-using the first Warrior of Light's journey as a blueprint for the narrative of the prophecy with each loop.

Knowing this, Wol chooses to end the cycle by killing Chaos and preventing its resurrection, freeing the inhabitants of the world from its laws.

Meanwhile, Wol lives a relatively calm and repetitive life helping out with the everyday problems of the village of Omega, primarily as a fiend hunter.

While creation of some artwork and graphics was outsourced, most of the concept work and development was done in-house by Square Enix's Business Division 1.

[31] Development began in early 2014,[5] and prompted skepticism from both Square Enix staff and its prospective platform managers, who were more used to the dominant 2D-based mobile games.

One of the problems cited by project leader Naoki Hamaguchi was creating realistic facial expressions equivalent to those used in the 2013 film Frozen.

[20] The budget was far lower than graphically equivalent console titles, so the team were reluctant to buy in helping tools and had restrictions on staff numbers: one person was working on all the game's backgrounds, while three were in charge of character designs.

However, since they also wanted to maintain a direct level of control over the development and operation of the title rather than outsourcing it like Square Enix usually does, the global version was delayed by a year.

[34] After its reveal, some changes were made to the character's initial costume: due to negative player feedback about the amount of skin shown, the Onion Swordsman outfit was adjusted to be more covering.

She did not change her working style for Mobius Final Fantasy: all the assets were designed in high definition, and only adjusted slightly when they were brought into the mobile environment.

When he was first asked to compose for the title, his impression was of a whole new setting that retained nostalgic elements from earlier games in the series, which he sought to incorporate into the score: a piece that encompassed this was his reorchestration of "Prelude".

A concept present from an early stage was changing the battle music depending on what job was equipped by the player: Suzuki created an initial battle theme that acted as a base for other themes, then added elements like electronic elements and vocal work to give derivative tracks variety.

It was later released for Microsoft Windows via Steam in Japan on November 1, 2016, and worldwide on February 6, 2017, in English, Traditional Chinese and Korean.

Events with Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's Terra Battle and Square Enix's Dragon Quest of the Stars also occurred in the game.

[60] Speaking after release, Kitase said that Square Enix considered the game a success as it introduced the mobile community to AAA-style graphics.

[61] In addition, Mobius was among the finalists for the 2015 Unity Awards for mobile games in the "Best 3D Visual Experience" category, and was named among Japan's "iTune's Best of 2015" by Apple Inc.[32][62] Dengeki Mobile, in a pre-release review, praised the gameplay and strategy present in early random encounters and boss battles, although the reviewer had minor reservations about the quality of the entire game as they were not able to play through all of it.

One thing they noted was that the performance needed to be adjusted for different mobiles as running the game rapidly drained the phones batteries when on its highest settings.

[63] Western reviews were similarly mixed, with TouchArcade praising the games visuals but calling the user interface an "overly busy nightmare".

[64] Kotaku examined the game in July 2015 and called the gameplay "monotonous" and lacking in plot, though it noted that many chapters were still to be released.

[65] Victoria McNally from MTV.com questioned the developers' earlier decision to change the design of the male protagonist to make it less sexy and noted that numerous female video game characters, including Cindy Aurum from Final Fantasy XV, are still routinely depicted as scantily clad.