It feels like it took forever, but we’re finally seeing a Final Fantasy game receive the HD-2D treatment. Even better, Final Fantasy Resonance is a brand new game designed like an old-school Final Fantasy. We had a chance to play about an hour at PAX West.
Be sure to check out our interview with Resonance Director Hiroto Furuya and Producer Keisuke Nakashima for more details on how Resonance came to be and the philosophy behind its design.
Final Fantasy Resonance is a sort of remake of the mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. It is a brand new experience, created from the ground up to be something wholly new but is based around Brave Exvius’ first story arc. So, things like character and story will carry over but just about everything else is brand new.
Since Resonance is really looking at Final Fantasy I – VI as its inspiration, there’s a lot of classic Final Fantasy in Resonance old-school fans will expect. Things like the large overworld, airships, and turn-based combat.
One of my personal favorite things about classic JRPGs and Final Fantasy in particular is the world map. They always encompassed vast lands with all sorts of unique and interesting geographies and peoples. Resonance‘s map promises exactly that from what I saw.
The map is full of things that draw your eye, whether that be a cave opening, a shrine, town, temple, and more. I was only given access to a small island of the map, but it was full of caves to explore that had hidden secrets and one even had an optional boss to try out.
I did not get to use the airship, but it will certainly be part of Resonance‘s gameplay. Luckily, and I played an early part of the game, I had access to a chocobo to get around the map faster as well.
The map has an obvious care to its design, as even this small island had plenty of interesting things on the landscape that drew my eye. The density of it was wonderful as well, with something interesting to discover always just around the corner.
One particularly refreshing mechanic in Resonance is its approach to random encounters. As you walk around, an aura will pulse on the minimap and change color. The more you walk, the faster it will eventually pulse to warn an encounter. That means you can try to duck inside somewhere to avoid it if you wish. It’s also a nice reminder to prepare if a party member is low on health or mana.
I like this approach to random encounters for two reasons. One, it paces out the encounters. Those old-school classics could get real frustrating with how random encounters felt like a bombardment sometimes. Second, I think it adds more opportunity for interesting player choice. Did I agonize over every encounter coming up? No, certainly not. But in those critical moments? That creates some wonderful tension.
Getting into the combat of the game, I think it’s a great opportunity to also talk about how great the game looks with the HD-2D style as that’s when the visuals really all come together. One thing mentioned by Furuya in our interview was that he always saw an important pillar of Final Fantasy as pushing the limits of fidelity, which Resonance is certainly doing with the HD-2D style. The detailed sprites surrounded by intensely cool particle effects combine together and look fantastic.
One step further, and to some maybe a step too far, comes with Visions.
Visions are the biggest shakeup and most unique aspect of Resonance‘s combat. There are 26 to unlock in all, including the mainline Final Fantasy protagonists. Some others, while we can’t confirm it, may appear as well like Sephiroth (we saw the silhouette of a sprite that looked awful Sephiroth-y). The rest will be unique Visions to Resonance itself.
Think of Visions like another piece of equipment each party member can have equipped. They all come with a suite of spells and abilities, many having enough that it essentially doubles what a character has at their disposal. In essence, you get the toolset of eight characters at once. So, it becomes really easy to have any and all type of spell, buff, and anything else you can think of at your disposal. It will be interesting to see how access to everything is balanced throughout the game.
There is no limit to using a Vision’s abilities, either. Maybe their moveset is way more attractive for a set of enemies and you can just use those the entire fight. With the boss fight at the end of my demo, I did just that with a couple of characters. In the moment, it was nice to have as it avoided the feeling that any one party member felt useless in the fight.
I imagine that choice is intentional, as the Stagger mechanic relies heavily on doing damage an enemy is weak to.
Similar to recent Final Fantasy titles, Stagger is a separate bar you can knock down that will stun enemies and make them take more damage. Every hit will lower that bar some, but attacking their weaknesses is exponentially more efficient.
When all enemies are staggered, even if it’s just the one enemy, you can do a Resonance Attack with any one of the Visions you have equipped. Each of them have their own unique ability that can do any type of elemental damage, physical damage, buffs… You name it, there will be one that can do it.
Triggering that Resonance Attack is when the game gets a little over the top. But, Final Fantasy is no stranger to having extremely elaborate animations for certain abilities whether it comes in the form of summons or some sort of devastating boss attack.
The scenes are incredibly flashy and last maybe at most 20 – 30 seconds, featuring the Vision character doing something cool as hell before the effect of their attack goes off. I imagine it will be one of those things that you view once, then maybe every so often after when you feel like it. They are gorgeous new CGI renderings, however, which is cool to see with some of the older Final Fantasy characters in particular.
Helping out in combat is the only function Visions have in Resonance. Think of Cloud, Terra, Squall, and more as nothing more than simple cameos. They do not play into the story beyond short scenes when they are unlocked.
Final Fantasy Resonance Preview | Final Thoughts
It remains to be seen whether Final Fantasy Resonance will successfully thread the needle when it comes to the frustrations that come with some classic JRPG design and the modern conveniences we’re accustomed to. I have some optimism in that I think the way the game handles things like random encounters is a good indication of some smart design choices as it puts more agency in players hands.
For me, I walked away from Resonance feeling exactly what I wanted. Everything I saw was evidence of a deep love and understanding of what makes the classics classic. There has been a lot of classic JRPGs in the last few years, now we’ll see if Final Fantasy can raise the bar once again with Resonance.
