In 2012, Square Enix released a fantasy card collecting game for iOS called Guardian Cross. One year later, the Android-version was released. In this fantasy world monsters, which are called "Guardians", suddenly reappear after one thousand years and are starting to threat the fragile peace. Bran and Athran, two Guardian Masters, are sent by the Empress of the land of Northern Cross to capture the Guardians, stop them and uncover the mystery of their reappearance. During their travels they're joined by an adventurous princess and encounter a mysterious masked man who has something to do with the Guardians. After a first full chapter of adventures, SE decided to change the game and make it into a series of missions and sub-missions where Bran and Athran needed to escort people, fight through dungeons (a simplified dungeon crawler) and hunt for rare Guardians. The game was extremely popular and got millions of downloads. Maybe this was because the plot was similar to the original Pokémon Red and Blue, but with Final Fantasy-monsters. When Final Fantasy XIII was released, a couple of monsters from that game became "Guardians" in Guardian Cross. Many players dueled against each other with their decks of captured Guardians. Alas, since this was an online mobile single player game, everything had to come to an end eventually. SE explained that they failed to "satisfy all of the players" and the game servers were shut down on January 10, 2017. And now since 2016, SE has released Guardian Codex, a spiritual sequel to Guardian Cross, boasting with "beautiful" 3D graphics and 4-player multiplayer where players can cooperate with each other to battle bosses. This game is about a conflict between an Empire and a resistance movement (Final Fantasy VI-vibes anyone?) where Guardians are the key to victory. So now you know a little bit about the mythology of the Guardian-series. And I'll be honest with you: I'm seriously not interested in Guardian Codex at all. If SE failed to provide a conclusion to the first game and had to shut it down after less than five years, how can I trust them not to do the same with the sequel? I'm currently playing Mobius Final Fantasy a lot despite the risk that SE someday will pull the plug like all the other mobile game developers. SE is seriously focusing on too many f2p projects simultaneously... LINKS: Square Enix shutting down Guardian Cross [Important] End-of-service Notice for GC 'Guardian Codex', Square Enix's RPG Sequel to the Card Collecting Hit 'Guardian Cross', Is Out Now on the App Store GameZebo's review of Guardian Codex
