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Fantasica

Fantasica is a free-to-play MMOTCG with a combat system based on tower defense. There are constantly events for players to participate in, with rewards and new units galore. Collect thousands of beautifully drawn units and build the ultimate army to protect the world from evil. Team up with others to take down huge bosses and grind through endless floors.

Publisher: Mobage, Inc
Type: Mobile TCG
Release Date: August 7, 2012
Shut Down: March 31, 2019
Pros: +Trading cards is integrated well. +Great community of players. +Beautiful art.
Cons: -Lots of grinding. -Balance of rarity of cards is unstable.

Fantasica Shut Down on March 31, 2019

Overview

Fantasica Overview

Fantasica is a FTP mobile MMO trading card game (TCG) where most of the combat is tower defense. Players command their units against onslaughts of enemy monsters to defend the world from evil. The collectible cards feature different and dazzling art styles of characters, from cute magical girls to heroic warriors. Go on quests, train, battle, and trade to obtain the thousands of cards. Enhance your favorite units to make them more powerful. Team up with others to form guilds, to assist in quests, and take down monstrous bosses together. Participate in the events, which pop up every few days and really push players to compete to become the best.

Fantasica Key Features:

  • Tower Defense – strategically place your units to deal with the relentless onslaught of evil monsters in various forms of tower defense. Each event offers a new variation on combat!
  • Thousands of Cards – from 1-Star to 10-Star, the higher the rarity, the more difficult it is to find. Collect them all, or simply build your team from the strongest you can find and battle to the top.
  • Trading Community – one of the friendliest trading card communities for mobile games. Hit up fantasitrade.com to exchange units with other players, to check on a card’s value, or simply to chat.
  • Endless Events – participate in all of them, or just in the ones you want. With twenty two different kinds of events, there are constantly things to do in Fantasica. Strive for awesome rewards, based on your power and contribution.
  • Beautiful Art – Final Fantasy artists contributed in the first cards released in this game. Players will not be disappointed with the newer cards, which offer character art of all kinds. You’ll find monsters, magical girls, heroic men, cute wizards, and more, drawn in distinct styles by different artists.

Fantasica Screenshots

Fantasica Featured Video

Fantasica - Official Trailer

Full Review

Fantasica Review

By Chanel Hwang

Fantasica is a free-to-play mobile MMOTCG that was first released on August 7, 2012 by Mobage. Players can choose to collect the thousands of cards available, or trade with others to obtain specific characters they want. The combat system is mainly tower defense, with simple stat elements that balance the cards’ strengths and weaknesses. Fantasica received much praise for the art of their characters, as it was released with the collaboration of some Final Fantasy artists. It still continues to use beautiful art, though the balance of the gameplay is being torn apart by the ridiculous rarity releases.

Let’s Go to Boot Camp

Most players will start off at Mina’s Boot Camp. This tutorial really holds players’ hands through the basics of the game. It will familiarize you with what all the buttons and menu options mean. Then there is Helmut’s Boot Camp. This second tutorial teaches players about the cards themselves. Every unit has a rarity, type, Air damage, Water damage, and Ground damage. Most cards also have a Unit Skill and an Arena Skill.

Card rarity ranges from a 1-Star to a 10-Star. When the game was first released in 2012 the rarity only went as high as a 5-Star. It is a little alarming that the developers continually push this limit higher, because players constantly strive for the highest rarity. After investing hundreds of hours of gameplay to get that 5-Star to reach the peak, the developers release a 6-Star card. Within a few weeks or months that 5-Star is no longer worth the effort you originally put in. Needless to say, the higher the rarity, the more powerful the unit (and usually, the better the art).

Units can also vary in type, from Missile and Magic, to Melee. Enemy units have weaknesses to each of these stats, and also have a type (Water, Ground, or Air). This dual triangle system makes the stats of combat easy to understand, yet complicated enough to allow some balance in the game.

Unit Skills and Arena Skills are usually for higher rarity units. Unit Skills are used in most combat situations. For example, skills like Knockback will push enemy units backwards, allowing players to damage them more. Slow will reduce the speed at which enemy units rush by. Arena Skills are used for specific event battles, like PvP scenarios where a unit can land a Critical Shot.

Create Your Own Army

One cool aspect of Fantasica is unit enhancement. Most cards have a level cap around 80, 100, 120, or 140. You can sacrifice other units to feed your favorites, or go on quests to gain unit experience. Once a unit reaches that cap, players can “level break” their cards to achieve another 20 levels above the cap.

You will need more than one card to take on your enemies as well. Players usually keep six to eight units as their main army. Make sure to vary the types and the damages to cover all bases. In order to remain strong players will need to strive to get higher rarity units. These can be obtained by drawing from card packs (for a minuscule chance of drawing something like a 8-Star or a 9-Star) and from rewards for events. Players can pay money to draw from the various different kinds of card packs. Feeder units, such as 4-Star and lower, can be obtained through training or the Brave Point Card Packs (which are essentially free cards).

Players can also strengthen themselves! There are Skills that players can obtain, such as increasing the unit list capacity or increasing the ground damage on all units by a certain percentage. Players can level themselves up through PvP, training, and participating in events. But players must be Level 31 to unlock PvP trading!

Grinding Gameplay

Most of the gameplay in Fantasica is grinding. Even though combat is tower defense, and variations of such, because the game works off of a timer system, players must grind to rank higher than others. For example, the Tower Events – players begin at Stairway 1. To progress to Stairway 2, you must fight a monster with your unit and the help of allies. However, players may only choose to fight once every ten minutes. Thus, in order to stay ahead of the curve, players must jump into battle every ten minutes on the dot. Of course, the higher into the tower a player goes the stronger the monsters. You will need powerful units and allies to climb to the top of the rankings of the event.

Fantasica thrives on grinding. There is no real skill involved in most games, just the mashing of a button and a lot of time. Timers are everywhere. Players must be ready to jump right into battle as soon as they can in order to rank at the events. Of course, there is also the option of purchasing the in-game currency to obtain a boost. Though you do not need to spend money on the game to rank, the in-game currency offers a large advantage to whoever uses it.

Trade Me!

One of the best features of Fantasica is the trading. It truly feels like a trading card game, because unless you’re a millionaire, there’s no way you’ll be able to obtain all the cards without trading. Fantasica allows players to have five open transactions at all times. Players post on each other’s walls in-game, or meet at third party sites like FantasiTrade.com. You can always review what the other side is offering, confirm or reject it, and send your own offer. The community of Fantasica is also very friendly. You can ask players for help in pricing, or ask to trade or “album” a card (“albuming” is when a player simply wants the card to appear in his/her album, showing they have obtained it at one point or another in the game).

The currency of the game is Potions (PO) and Time Elixirs (TE). There are also lesser versions of PO and TE that players cannot trade, and are denoted in-game by a “(P)” next to the item. Players can trade 1 to 2 PO or TE for a 7-Star unit right now.

NOTE: Some units are untradeable (most 8-Star and higher units). While this status can be changed by the developers in the future, players should keep in mind that some units can’t be obtained without drawing them from a pack yourself. To make sure that these units do not take up space in your inventory when you don’t want to use them, Inns have been introduced to “house” them.

Final Verdict – Good

Fantasica is a lot of fun, if you don’t mind grinding. It’s easy to play casually, especially because it is a mobile game that you can carry with you everywhere. The community is very friendly, the trading card game aspect is pretty polished, and the art is quite appealing. However, the biggest downfall of the game is the rarity balancing. Too often, new cards are being released as “higher” rarities. It has already made 5-Star and 6-Star cards obsolete. Soon, 7-Star cards will join them. Hopefully in the future developers will stop stretching the card values to solely make money, and balance the game to keep players engaged in Fantasica itself. Otherwise, we may soon find ourselves looking at 20-Star cards.

Screenshots

Fantasica Screenshots

Videos

Fantasica Videos

System Requirements

Fantasica System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Android 2.3.3 or later, iOS 6.0 or later

Music

Fantasica Music & Soundtrack

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Additional Info

Fantasica Additional Information

Developer: Silicon Studio
Publisher: Mobage, Inc.

Platforms: Android and iOS

Release Date: August 7, 2012 (NA and EU)

Shut Down: March 31, 2019

Development History / Background:

Fantasica was officially released on August 7, 2012 for the iOS and Android in NA and EU. Developed by Silicon Studio and published by Mobage under DeNa, the game was met with much praise for its art. Final Fantasy artists teamed up with the developers for the first set of cards in the game. The game is still known today for its character art, with a large player base in the world of mobile games. On January 27, 2019 it was announced that the engine Fantasica relies on was being discontinued and that the servers would shut down on March 31, 2019.