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Bunny-masked Ariana Grande will appear in ‘Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius’

By Gabe Gurwin January 3, 2017

FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS Trailer(English)

The Final Fantasy series has plenty of characters that will go down as gaming history as all-time greats. Sephiroth, Cloud, Kefka, and Squall are still discussed nearly two decades after they were first introduced, and it appears that Square Enix has found its next classic hero: Ariana Grande.

Yes, that Ariana Grande. The pop singer and former Nickelodeon star shared the news on her Instagram page, which included a photo of Grande surrounded by a group of Square Enix employees discussing her character’s inclusion in the mobile game Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius.

“I’m so excited to finally share that I’ll be featured in Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius,” Grande said. “Check out my character in the game. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life and I’m so excited and in love with it [that] I cannot contain myself.”

Grande refers to the character as “DW” on her Twitter account. Unfortunately, this likely isn’t Arthur’s sassy aardvark sister, but rather the “Dangerous Woman” persona that Grande has used since the release of her most recent album. The character sports an S&M-inspired bunny mask, and her in-game sprite appears to have multiple magical abilities. In addition to a charged-up energy attack, Grande can shoot musical notes at her enemies and break into an impromptu song-and-dance number.

Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius originally launched in 2016 for mobile devices. Using the pixel art that made the first six games in the series famous, Brave Exvius was designed specifically for touchscreens in mind, delivering an easy to use, swipe and tap-based gameplay system.

It isn’t the first title in the series designed for mobile, however. The similarly named Final Fantasy: All the Bravest was released in 2013 to scathing reviews, criticizing its gameplay and egregious implementation of microtransactions. Though reviews for Brave Exvius aren’t glowing, the game has been received considerably better than its predecessor.

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Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…

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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: Queen’s Blood tips and tricks

Queen's Blood

After Fort Condor arrived in Final Fantasy 7: Remake Intergrade, you may not have expected an entirely new minigame to be introduced in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. However, after the opening hours, when you're let loose in Kalm, you will automatically be given your very first deck of Queen's Blood cards. While this minigame is entirely optional after you play your first game to learn the basics, you would be missing out on a ton of content and secrets, let alone fun, by ignoring it. Still, we understand if you feel you didn't sign up for a strange new card game in your Final Fantasy adventure. Plus, there is a lot more depth to the game than is properly explained. If you want to rise up the ranks and be a Queen's Blood champion, but are unsure how to start, we'll show you the ropes.
The basics

The tutorial for Queen's Blood does a decent job explaining the basic rules of Queen's Blood, but it goes by rather quickly and may leave some things a little unclear until you play a few rounds.

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PSA: Don’t burn yourself out on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s open-world activities

Cloud from FFVII

I'm normally a completionist when it comes to games, but I wish I had told myself to push that mindset to the side before I started Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

I get the desire to do it all, I really do. In the critically acclaimed sequel, we're finally let loose outside of Midgar. Square Enix has laid a huge, lush set of biomes to stretch our legs in after being stuck in the cramped hallways and tunnels of the drab city. Despite most of the world activities in Rebirth being standard open-world fare (activating towers, scanning points of interest, and hunting down specific monsters), there's an undeniable novelty to doing it with Cloud and the rest of Avalanche. What I wish I had known before starting was just how easy it was to burn out on that feeling.

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The best armor in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth

Cloud from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Just like in Remake, you only have one valuable armor slot per character in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Deciding on what you want to put there is more complicated than you think, since each piece of armor has multiple factors that determine how effective it will be, and you may want to prioritize different things for different characters. New armor will become available as you go deeper into the world of Gaia, and you can even make some yourself with the new Transmutation system, so comparing and contrasting them all can be a major chore. We get it, you're just a merc looking to get the job done, so let us worry about figuring out the best armors so you can just put them on and get back to the action.
The best armor in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Armor in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth have three major factors to consider when you're equipping some: the physical defense rating, magic defense rating, and Materia slots. The best armor will either focus heavily on one of these or have a strong balance of them all. Here are our picks.
Garm Bangle

The Garm Bangle is an amazing piece of physical-focused armor that becomes available once you hit the Nibel region. It has a fantastic 59 rating for regular defense, aplus a decent 28 for magic defense to keep you from being totally vulnerable to spells. Offensively, it has two pairs of linked Materia slots plus a spare, so you can still make plenty of killer magic combos for your mages.
Hades Armlet