This Week In Mobile Games - Duellum of the Fates

Hello, and welcome once again to This Week in Mobile Games, your bimonthly-ish look at the latest in mobile games. Due to a run of crunch time at the day job I've been far away from mobile games, staring at bad screen for far too long and missing Fate/Grand Order's White Day event in the process. I've little attachment to the Fate version of Charlemagne (first revealed in the Fate/Extella LinkMusou-style action game), so I was more annoyed that I couldn't squeeze some more Saint Quartz out of the proceedings ahead of the game's upcoming Witch on the Holy Night crossover.

Speaking of a mobile game with multiversal tendencies, let's begin this installment with a look at something new!

A Day With Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy

By the time you read this, Square Enix's Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy will be a matter of hours from going live (or already live), but I had the chance to spend a few hours with the game courtesy of an online preview event held a few days ago. There, I played through a fair chunk of the early game in live matches, as well as experience a bit of its seasonal and monetization model (an all-too-important facet of checking out any new free-to-play title, mobile or otherwise). The results were intriguing, showing off a new take on the Dissidia formula with a slightly out-of-left-field premise.

Where previous Dissidia games summoned the heroes and villains of various Final Fantasy games to do battle in some sort of multidimensional otherworld beyond the bounds of time and space, Dissidia Duellum throws its protagonists into multidimensional otherworld beyond the bounds of time and space called "Tokyo, Japan." There, led by the original Warrior of Light, these "Ghosts" live as superheroes of a sort, hiding their Final Fantasy identities behind stylish streetwear. The tutorial levels throw you right in with Final Fantasy VII alum Cloud Strife as the newest arrival from across the dimensional divide. Before long he - and you - join the fight against weird crystals that spawn massive bosses from Final Fantasy's extensive bestiary, eliminating threats to Tokyo's people while digging for clues to unlocking a way home.

The story unfolds over the course of Duellum's seasonal cadence, with battle points gained from playing matches going towards unlocking goodies on a season pass. Each pass tier unlocks rewards and story cutscenes for free players, with extra cosmetics and other unlockables reserved for those who purchase the premium tier. The cutscenes alternate between in-engine skits with full Japanese voice acting (including actors like Takahiro Sakurai reprising their game roles) and conversations between the crew members in "FINE," an in-game knock-off of Japanese messaging app LINE.

For fans of the series, it's these bits that are the tonal highlight of Duellum, feeling for all the world like a cozy modern AU fanfiction romp given the full weight of Square Enix's endorsement. The characters hang out around town between missions, and interact with each other in fun ways that reference not just their personalities but the relationship between their Final Fantasy game and the real world. In one early scene, Prompto is seen marveling at the resemblance between the twin-towered Tokyo Metropolitan Government building and the royal palace in his home of Insomnia. It's a fun reference because Final Fantasy XV's capital city is pretty much a carbon copy of central Tokyo. 

Beyond that, the text exchanges between the cast highlight their personalities in a playful, lighthearted way. It very much feels like what you'd get if you did in fact hand various Final Fantasy characters smartphones and told them to get chatting. 

The characters' modern ensembles are also a visual highlight, though this initial batch didn't contain too much variation outside of simple color swaps and options to don the game-original costumes in combat.

Speaking of combat, fans of the original Dissidia games may be relieved to hear that Duellum takes more from those games than the most recent Dissidia title, Opera Omnia, which used a turn-based combat system. This is very much a real-time combat game with a bit of a competitive edge, putting a spin on the three-player team structure imposed by the arcade-based Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. 

Players will match into sessions alongside two others, pitted opposite another team of three. Once in the match, they'll race to be the first team to defeat a massive boss that lands on the field. In order to damage the boss, players will need to defeat NPC monsters and purify crystals at set points around the map to charge their Bravery meter. With full Bravery, players can trigger a Burst phase that allows them to damage the boss. Timing skill cooldowns and burst phases just right is crucial to downing the boss within the match time limit, and all of that has to be accomplished while avoiding both the boss' attacks and the attacks of the other team. If you play Destiny 2, it's not unlike a match of Gambit, but with a Final Fantasy twist.

The characters are pretty differentiated as well. Though you can put the abilities of your choice into any of a character's five available slots, each character's stats and unique skills are tailored towards a particular role in combat. Cloud and Gaia are bruisers who can deal a lot of damage to both bosses and other players up close, while Terra and Prompto are ranged damage dealers who support the team or concentrate fire from safe positions. Lightning and Zidane are speedy assassins who can harrass enemy teams, knocking them out and preventing them from building up enough Bravery to coordinate a burst phase. I quite enjoyed playing as Lightning and focusing most of my efforts on messing with the enemy team while my comrades went after the crystals and boss.

The game's gacha system is also focused around acquiring skills. Rather than characters, you'll spend your "MogPay Coins" on rolling for skills to slot into each character. Not unlike trading cards, the skills feature bespoke art and differing effects, allowing you to build towards the style you prefer. Some high-rarity skills are also locked to specific characters and can only be used on them, such as Cloud's Omnislash. Rolling on the skill gacha also awards Character Tickets, a free gacha of sorts that unlocks new character outfits and new playable characters. Further characters and outfits will be added over time with the Onion Knight, Firion, Balthier, Clive Rosfield, and Rikku all set to join the playable roster soon.

Given that it's a multiplayer-focused title, Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy's fate is going to depend a lot on whether players connect with it and its take on throwing FF's protagonists into the modern world for a spell, but in this early stage, it feels like a fresh way to spend some time with old favorites. 

At the same time, as the above interview series with various FF luminaries suggests, Duellum has some big shoes to fill. Opera Omnia, which shut down in 2024, was so well-liked for mining that very "Final Fantasy characters interacting with each other and having conversations" vein that one fan spent years archiving all the game's cutscenes ahead of its closure. The Warrior of Light and his buddies are going to have to do a lot of group chatting on FINE to live up to that legacy.

Honor of Kings: World Sets Chinese Debut for April

You don't see a ton of talk in the English-speaking world about Honor of Kings, despite it, by most measures, being one of the most popular games in the world on any platform. This might be due in part to the fact that MOBAs are a relatively niche genre despite their wild success, leaving consistent, detailed coverage in the hands of specialist scenes and within the game's own community, seldom breaking out into the wider world unless some spin-off ignites mainstream interest (case in point Arcane and League of Legends). 

TiMi Studio Group and Tencent are betting on that to change somewhat with Honor of Kings: World, a brand-new open-world MMORPG set to launch in China this April, with the PC version set to enter open beta by April 10th, and mobile editions later. TiMi also launched a substantial 15-minute gameplay showcase that also showed off the mobile UI.

Unlike the modestly specced aesthetic of the core Honor of Kings MOBA (which celebrated its 10th anniversary late last year), Honor of Kings: World is heavily detailed 3D open-world game. At an earlier time I'd draw comparisons to Genshin Impact but the more timely touchpoint here is NetEase's Where Winds Meet. Both games trade heavily in fantasy aesthetics, though Winds' is more consciously inspired by wuxia and traditional Chinese motifs, while World takes the glossy gilded - and I'll be blunt, slightly generic - fantasy look of the core Honor of Kings setting, adding the kind of depth and sense of scale you can only get out of an MMORPG. 

The trailer also highlights the breadth of activities players can perform, from interacting with others and setting up what looks to be everything from weddings to playing instruments, building a personal home complex, and farming. There's even PVP combat and a mode that looks a little bit like a 3D version of the Honor of Kings MOBA gameplay.

It'll be interesting to see if TiMi and Tencent can stick the landing where it comes to bringing Honor of Kings to the broader gaming audience, but I'm also wondering if the "huge glossy MMORPG" space isn't approaching some kind of saturation point yet. In any case, there'll be time to wait before non-Chinese players get their hands on Honor of Kings: World, seeing as no global release date has been set as of yet.

Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero Launch New Updates This Week

Given they're launching quite close together and that there's some amount of overlap in the player populations for miHoYo-developed games, I'm sticking the news of Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero's upcoming updates together into one big HoYograph (that's a "HoYogame paragraph" in tired column-writer parlance).

Honkai Star Rail's 4.1 update will launch on March 25th. Titled "Unraveled for Daybreak," the update continues the Astral Express crew's exploits on Planarcadia, as the planet's CEO, Pearl, opts to hold none other than a celebratory festival to honor the Trailblazer and company's adventures. Players will essentially walk through a parody recap of their journey through the various Honkai Star Rail update storylines, complete with giant inflatable balloon replicas of the main story bosses, as well as explore a new area, Pearluxe Tower. They'll also be able to roll the gacha for Detective Ashveil, a new Hunt-path playable character. The trailer also teases the appearance of a Super Sentai-style group of heroes that transforms into giant mecha suits.

I'm far from caught up with Honkai Star Rail (I more or less had to suspend my play just after Amorpheous was launched) but viewed from the outside, the Planarcadia chapter's been a fascinating thing to observe, not just for the events of the storyline, but for the rumors alleging that the entire update was reworked aesthetically from its original intent, supposedly due to rising political tensions between Japan and China. Now, no official confirmation about that has ever come out, but there's enough evidence from datamining and the unexpected delay of 4.0's debut to its late February launch to suggest that, whatever the reasoning, some plans changed midstream to bring Planarcadia about in its current form.

Meanwhile, Zenless Zone Zero's 2.7 update, "Champions Never Fall to the Past," launches a day before Star Rail's, on March 24th. If you're playing both games, that gives you a little under a day to get to know the game's new playable characters, Nangong Yu and Cissia, as well as participate in the Hollow Champion Competition, a contest that draws seekers of fame and fortune, particularly from New Eridu's Outer Rim. 

Nangong Yu is the third (playable) member of the Angels of Delusion, the idol/streamer group introduced in the previous update, and runs as an Ether-element Stun character. Given that her bandmates Sunna and Aria are Support and Anomaly characters, respectively, she seems tailored to fit in a full-faction team, enabling some powerful Anomaly damage (which, naturally, happens to work real well against the update's new boss enemy, Black Wolf Romeul). Meanwhile, Cissia represents a new faction of the New Eridu police, the Metropolitan Order Division. 

I haven't played any major HoYoVerse games in quite a while, but if I had a magic wand to spontaneously find the time to do so, I think I'd pick ZZZ to catch up with. To me it's the most unique-looking of the HoYogames, and I've always been a sucker for really fun combat animations, which the game has in spades.

Let's close out this week with a few more bits of news:

• Speaking of popular Chinese MMORPGs also available on mobile devices, the next chapter of Where Winds Meet's free Hexi expansion launches on April 2nd. The second of the three new areas, Liangzhou, will debut alongside the chapter, along with new stories, and the new Heng Blade weapon.
• Wuthering Waves launched its 3.2 "Resolution to Illuminate the Shadows" update on March 18th. The update included a new main story update, the new playable character Sigrika, and some endgame-level updates, and new boss challenges.
• Playism has officially launched Petit Depot's Gnosia on iOS and Android (after a few years available on Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC, and even the PS Vita). It's a bit premium-priced at roughly $25 USD (though there are no additional purchases required), but its adaptation of the kind of social deduction you get from nominally multiplayer games like Werewolf and Among Us is one of the best around. It's an utterly unique experience, that you can now have on your phone or tablet. You can also watch the show, which the ANN staff nominated as one of the best anime of Fall 2025.
• If you've got some spare cash left over from picking up Gnosia mobile, you can also pick up the newly-launched mobile edition of Urban Myth Dissolution Center on Android or iOS. Developed by Hakababunko and published by Shueisha Games, Urban Myth Dissolution Center made its name last year on consoles and PC, but caught attention and awards for its aesthetic, as well as its occult vibe, which puts players in the shoes of investigator Azami Fukurai, a rookie agent tasked to unraveling supernatural cases.

That should do it for me. It's been a long couple of weeks on my end, and I'm looking forward to taking a bit of time to decompress and get back to what approximates a normal groove in benighted times, hopefully with some games on the side to boot. Be back soon!