FANTASIAN Neo Dimension

It’s always hard when the heart strings are pulled. I feel preyed upon usually, when nostalgic factors of the past are dangled in front of me. Of course, it can be good in its own way and I can’t complain too much when it’s handled and managed well. Cash grabs and poor portings. Here we are, I have shared that I am a Final Fantasy fan. I’m not one of those cool people who can tote playing every single title or related title. I just have a handful of completions under the belt and toes dipped into many.

I was just blessed to be able to experience the early wave of JRPG’s. So to begin, this game I’ll be sharing my input on. Is an original story that was brought to us, from the Father of Final Fantasy. He’s been making waves in social media over the years recently, just sharing his experience with his excitement of playing some of the newer series. He’s had a couple games after, and may have missed most people’s radar. FANTASIAN was originally released in 2021. It was available to those with access to Apple devices. 

I remember a little of this news and was sad that I wasn’t gonna be able to experience it. Thankfully, here we are. I was excited for this title. Not just because of Sakaguchi, but seeing that the actual background and worldview was made based off of hand crafted models. This was a step above Octopath Travelers to me. You can easily check this out with some Google-fu. Because it’s some extraordinary work. We also have Uematsu, a grand composer of a majority of the FF music on board. Alright, after nerding out over a lot of the back end details. I’m probably missing a few important factors of the past that makes this even more exciting to talk about. We should get on to the actual reviewings of the game.

Again, this was a port from mobile. I understand in most cases it doesn’t really bode well for most games in that route. Not only did they manage to do graphical updates and gameplay updates,  they added voice overs for English/Japanese. Not exactly in part to the changes, but I wanted to mention there are some story moments that relate to the story. Close to a visual novel, the artwork of this telling is very close to the style of FF Tactics. This hits highly for me, because I really enjoy that art style from that series. Curving back to how the backgrounds were originally handmade dioramas. I feel like they shine and can be enjoyed at peak now that they’re available on consoles/pc. 

The story was very fun, fulfilling enough to make me feel like I couldn’t stop. I wanted to get to the next steps as quickly as possible. Also wanting to grind, and explore on top of all that. An interesting game mechanic is the Pokemon monster capturing system. It’s same same, but different. You pile up monsters in your Dimegeon, max 30. I think this is basically to save up for a grind and let you flow through without having to stop every couple minutes to fight. It’s different, but it’s helpful to build up a good experience flood. With that, the fighting is turn based.

I will say, the mobile aspect kind of shows up here. If you’ve played some mobile rpgs. You’ll see it too. It has the layup of any JRPG. Some attacks and spells have this line up where you can hit multiple enemies. Physical attacks do the piercing, and magical ones can sometimes curve. Again, it’s different and can be fun and can make the fights quick. I wouldn’t judge this as a bad perk of the games fighting system, it’s just a note of similarity to mobile games. It still gives the game something to stand out on. 

Some worthwhile mentions. Another additional feature that was added to the game. You can kind of DJ the music. You’re able to swap out a handful of music from other FF series. I’m not gonna lie. That’s a crazy feature to have added. Already blessed by Uematsu composing the game. They’ve given access to previous FF series to mix into it. Overall, if you’re looking to enjoy some classic JRPG experience or experience it for the first time. This is a good starting place. I think a demo is also available now. It’s available on all consoles, and PC. I have heard there were some issues on Switch. Surely those will be handled. Thankfully it’s available now for all to experience. I hope it gets blessed with a continuation, similar to its older sibling.

FGM –