We’ve never been so back.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over my many years of playing RPGs, it’s that you should never doubt Hironobu Sakaguchi… that is, unless you can’t play his games. Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker studio released FANTASIAN Neo Dimension on Apple Arcade in 2021. It was critically acclaimed but also really difficult for the average person to play. No longer.
With the help of Square Enix, the house Final Fantasy (and Sakaguchi) helped build, FANTASIAN Neo Dimension is finally coming to every modern console, and PC to boot. I sat down with the new version of Sakaguchi’s latest during a behind-closed-doors session at PAX West. And man, I was really impressed.
First things first: FANTASIAN Neo Dimension came into this world as a mobile game, and you can see the remnants of that in its UI. Sometimes that means a couple extra taps on the d-pad holding a button to get to the menu option you want, but overall the experience works well. So don’t worry about that.
If you’re not familiar with FANTASIAN Neo Dimension, it follows Leo, who — all together now — has lost his memories and is struggling to recover them. Along the way, he’s going to have to deal with a world overrun by a machine infestation. Crazy. My demo didn’t give me a ton of time with FANTASIAN’s story, but I did enjoy the characters I met and the exchanges I witnessed.
But the real draw, dear reader, is the combat. Lord, this combat system is cool. FANTASIAN’s battle system is actually, no foolin’, FFX-style turn-based, and you can see every upcoming turn laid out before you. That’s cool, but what’s cooler is the actual combat itself. The big draw here will be Skill Trajectories. See, abilities (and spells) in Fantasian don’t just go in a straight line. You can curve their trajectory, bending them so they’ll hit different enemies or, sometimes, several enemies at once.
Got an AOE spell you want to drop on a whole group? You can move it around to make sure it hits everyone. FANTASIAN’s combat system is awesome, and it ensures you’ll always be making interesting decisions during an encounter beyond just choosing who to attack or managing your health and mana.
Then there’s the Dimengeon. When you run into enemies you’ve previously encountered, you can choose to store them in the Dimengeon, a dimensional dungeon (get it? Do you get it?) to fight later. You can challenge the enemies of the Dimengeon at any time, but once the Dimengeon Machine (the thing that allows you to capture these enemies and stick them in the Dimengeon) is full, you’ll have to fight all of them at once, ready or not. In my case, that meant fighting 30 enemies at once, which was both fun and challenging.
You’ll also run into Dimengeon Gimmicks in the Dimengeon. Use one of your skills to snag them by touching it, and you’ll be granted temporary buffs for your party. It’s a neat system that somehow feels both distinctly Final Fantasy and also like an evolution of standard turn-based combat that RPGs like this have desperately needed. I loved every second I spent with FANTASIAN’s combat, which isn’t something I often get to say about turn-based RPGs.
The other cool thing about FANTASIAN is the hand-crafted dioramas that make up the backgrounds you’ll navigate while you play. They’re absolutely gorgeous, and the 3D character models simultaneously provide a nice visual contrast with the intricacy of the dioramas while managing to feel like they fit right in. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the way the PS1 Final Fantasy games look, just with much prettier backgrounds.
This makes FANTASIAN feel unique, and I adore it. The only downside to these environments is that the camera sometimes rotates and changes which direction will take you where when you reach a new screen. This isn’t a big deal; I figured it out after I spent a few seconds going back and forth between the same two areas, but it is worth mentioning. If that’s the price for backgrounds that look like this, however, I’ll gladly pay it.
Square and Mistwalker want this to be the definitive version of the game, which means new English and Japanese voiceovers and an extra difficulty option. Nice touches, certainly, especially the voice acting, but what’s really cool are the options you have for battle music. There’s an original soundtrack composed by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, yes, but there are also a lot of tracks from several Final Fantasy games, including Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy XIV, among others. I ran around with what I’m pretty sure was a version of Bombing Mission playing during fights. It ruled, and you can change it on the fly during combat if you want something new. It’s truly the little things.
My time with FANTASIAN ended with a boss fight against a golem that put everything I’d learned up to that point to the test, forcing me to destroy his arms and limit his attacks before I finally dealt a finishing blow to his body. It was a tough fight, and I used a lot of Ethers and Phoenix Feathers to get through it, but manipulating the turn order and making smart choices got me through it. It’s exactly the kind of thing you want in a boss fight in an RPG, and it was a perfect place to end it.
I ended my time with FANTASIAN satisfied but hungry to experience more once the full game releases this winter. When it comes down to it, that’s all you can ask for, and I’m glad more players will finally be able to play it. It’s been a long time since a Mistwalker game graced something that wasn’t a phone or tablet, and you don’t realize how hungry you are for something until you finally sit down with some good food. If my time with FANTASIAN Neo Dimension is anything to go by, this looks like quite a meal.
Like I said: never bet against Sakaguchi. I know I’m not.
