Final Fantasy: Record Keeper is a mobile battling history lesson

Square Enix is finally remaking Final Fantasy 7! By which I mean a few key scenes from Final Fantasy 7, in a sprite-based mobile game called Final Fantasy: Record Keeper!

Wait, don't let those awful memories of Final Fantasy: All The Bravest start flooding back. That's not the kind of nostalgia Record Keeper is trying to cultivate. Instead, the game's original campaign will follow an unassuming archivist who gathers heroes from across Final Fantasy canon to ward off history-erasing darkness. How will they do that? By reliving their moments of glorious battle, duh.

That means you could bring Tidus and Lightning to help Cloud take down the Sector 5 Reactor, or to help Cecil cure Rosa's Desert Fever. The narrative-crossing campaign will let you play out each of these memorable encounters in classic Active Time Battles, complete with full gear, spell, and summon customization for each character. Let's just hope the battles are a bit more involved than All The Bravest's finger-jamming tap fests.

Final Fantasy: Record Keeper will be available for free on the iOS App Store and Google Play in spring 2015. If a million fans register early on the official website, everybody who signs up will get free access to Tidus.

The game has had more than 5 million downloads since it released last year in Japan as a collaboration between Square Enix and mobile publisher DeNA.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.