Our previous report for Final Fantasy Explorers likened the game to Monster Hunter, another series that is extremely popular on the 3DS. Now, we’ve gotten the first of the weekly Famitsu leaks, and it sounds like the game is a lot more robust (and similar to Monster Hunter) than we thought.

The game will have at least 20 playable job classes, alongside the previously confirmed Knight, Monk, White Mage, and Black Mage. The new classes that are confirmed are the Dragon Knight, the Paladin, the Thief, the Ninja, the Red Mage, the Time Mage, and finally the Bard.

You can pair a total of eight abilities to each face button for use in your adventures in the game. Final Fantasy Explorers is very reminiscent of the monster hunting genre, but Famitsu is describing it as a “lite” version of Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy XI – whatever that means. They do point out that your physical position in game is important, and that chaining your abilities together is being planned for the game. Sounds like your position might put you at a disadvantage, or help you uncover a weak spot?

If you master a job exclusive ability, you can use that ability with other jobs, allowing you to interchange  them and create your own particular job to your liking. The abilities in game will have varying costs, which depend on what job the character is currently using.

The story within Explorers is set on an island that has a multitude of regions, allowing players to explore freely as they see fit. Here there be monsters, and you can even train and tame the monsters you encounter in game. If you want to go solo and play with monster friends, you can do so by filling the other three slots (usually used for other players in co-op) with monsters.

Just how long will Final Fantasy Explorers take to totally complete? Famitsu is saying between 100 to 200 hours, which by Monster Hunter standards is a paltry number. However, Square Enix is reportedly aiming to set this up into a new action RPG spinoff for the Final Fantasy series.

A release date was not confirmed, but we’ll keep you guys posted.