Making a HD-2D Final Fantasy game seems like such a no-brainer idea for Square Enix I’m genuinely surprised it took so long for them to actually do it. Now that they have done it, though, it’s shaping up to be a hit on all fronts. I spent the weekend playing the newly released Final Fantasy Resonance demo on Switch 2 and came away thoroughly impressed. And yes, I can’t wait to play even more.
A few housekeeping things to note: Final Fantasy Resonance isn’t actually a wholly new game. It’s based on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a mobile game that winded down quite a while back. I only ever dabbled in it a little, but even as a bit of a gacha game fiend, it couldn’t quite hold my attention as well as Square Enix’s other mobile endeavors — War of the Visions is the one that really got its hooks in me, and I’ve always been more of a Mobius fan than a Brave Exvius fan. Still, Brave Exvius had a strong following and was largely praised for its story, so it doesn’t surprise me that this is the game Square Enix has chosen to adapt.
Basically, it’s a similar situation to last year’s Octopath Traveler 0, which was an adaptation and retelling of the mobile game Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent.
When Final Fantasy Resonance was first announced, I’ll admit I wasn’t a big fan of the way it looked. I’m much more partial to Team Asano’s 2D aesthetic, with smaller sprites and bespoke fonts for dialogue boxes, and Resonance‘s visual presentation felt like a downgrade in comparison. Putting aside those reservations, though, I pushed through the demo and found myself pleasantly surprised by how engaging the characters were.
Make no mistake; this is still a JRPG after all, and it’s going to follow certain tropes. Resonance calls back to the earliest games in the series and sets up its story with some brief preamble about a bunch of crystals keeping the world in balance. You take control of protagonist Rain and his stoic friend Lasswell, who are knights of the kingdom of Grandshelt. When the king orders them to check on the Earth Crystal that they’ve been tasked with protecting, well, I’m sure you can guess what happens next.
Yeah, the Crystal gets smashed, and when they return home, everything’s on fire. Our heroes then go on a journey to seek out the bad guys and protect the other Crystals. Like I said, it’s a JRPG. Everything feels like it was ripped out of the JRPG textbook.
Still, despite the predictable nature of the story, I still found the characters themselves endearing. Final Fantasy Resonance wastes no time in setting you up with a party of three, with the amnesiac girl Fina (another classic RPG trope) rounding out the group as a ranged support character. To make things interesting, Brave Exvius‘ gacha system has also been incorporated into Resonance, where you can summon Visions, which are essentially characters from other Final Fantasy games.
The demo allowed me to summon the Warrior of Light for the first game. Visions can be equipped to characters, and this gives them special abilities unique to that Vision. The Warrior of Light, for instance, gives you access to Light- and Stone-based abilities, while the generic Black Mage and White Mage Visions give you healing and magic spells. Visions can be leveled up to unlock more skills, and your party members themselves also gain more abilities as they get stronger.
Battles play out as turn-based affairs, of course, and you can stagger enemies by depleting their stagger bars as you hit their weaknesses or just attack them normally. Staggering an entire group of enemies triggers Stagger Sweep, where every character gets a bonus turn, and you get to activate a special Vision ability. Staggering a single enemy gives that character one extra turn, so you can see how important it is to keep trying to stagger your foes and exploit their weak points.
The combat system feels like a cool spin on Octopath Traveler‘s Break/Boost system, except instead of using BP to attack multiple times or strengthen your attacks, you’re trying to get extra turns by striking weaknesses. The turn order is helpfully illustrated on the top of the screen too, Octopath-style, which helps a lot when planning your next move.
The combat’s fantastic. I expected as much from Square Enix. What I didn’t expect, however, was how much I enjoyed the characters. Despite being your typical do-gooder shonen protagonist, Rain is surprisingly earnest and likable, and it helps that Lasswell’s more serious nature balances him out too. Fina operates on the same wavelength as Rain, and it’s fun to watch Lasswell sigh as he tries to rein them both in at the same time.
Final Fantasy Resonance also features optional conversations you can check out with the L button, which brings up a list of conversations you’ve unlocked so far. The conversations then play out in dialogue boxes at the side of your screen, and you can freely move around while reading them. I do wish they were presented as vignettes like we got in the Octopath games, but I appreciated them nonetheless.
I doubt I’ll have the same level of emotional connection to the story as I do with something like, oh I don’t know, Final Fantasy X? But I’m still excited to see it through regardless. There’s something very comforting about playing a good, old-fashioned turn-based JRPG (though it does have some modern bells and whistles) with twists and turns that you can probably see coming from a mile away. It’s filling that Dragon Quest-shaped hole I have in my life right now, where I play a little bit of this game before bed every night and treat it like a bedtime story, then go to sleep wondering where my adventures will take me next.
