The release of a PC port for Fantasian is something many JRPG players have been requesting since its release in 2021, albeit with little hope due to Apple owning the rights on its mobile Apple Arcade Platform. Well, those requests have finally been answered as Fantasian Neo Dimension combines the two mobile releases with added English and Japanese voiceovers along with 4k support for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam.
While Fantasian initially received generally favorable scores from both critics and users on iOS, whether it can live up to the hype on PC is another story altogether. For the most part, the game itself is the same but has a few additional perks added such as an enhanced soundtrack with options from Final Fantasy titles, upgraded resolution and voice acting. Despite these upgrades, the experience is still mixed combining excellent combat mechanics with dated graphics and a story that’s all over the place.
Convenient Forgetfulness
Fantasian Neo Dimension starts with one of my least favorite tropes in video games… amnesia. The main character, Leo, wakes up after an explosion in a robot factory only to realize that he doesn’t remember a damn thing. He seems to be the only person in the world who actually knows what’s going on, but since he doesn’t remember a single person or event, you’ll spend the entire first half of the game wandering around being drip fed memories until the second half.
Although I don’t care for the delivery, there are a lot of elements to the story that I found interesting. Essentially, the human world is being invaded by a god of Chaos who is spreading Mechteria around like a plague, sucking up emotions and transporting them back to his world. Meanwhile, Leo and his father are inventors who managed to create transportation devices that allowed them to bring artifacts back from other worlds.
During the first half of Fantasian Neo Dimension the game is a completely linear JRPG with a handful of sidequests and there isn’t really a lot of grinding or exploration needed. However, once Leo regains his memories, the world opens up and the game offers quite a few more choices, such as rescuing certain party members, continuing the main story, or doing some of the more rewarding (and difficult) side missions. I personally preferred the first half as I don’t care for grinding in single-player games and enjoy JRPGs for the story, but there’s clearly an audience for more open RPGs.
Enter the Dimengeon
For the most part, Fantasian Neo Dimension is a typical turn-based RPG. However, there are 2 unique mechanics that make it feel unique. The first is that most attacks use a physical trajectory and can either be a straight line, arc, or blast area. This reminds me slightly of Lost Sphear, except your party remains stationary, but it does add to the depth of combat strategy that a lot of JRPGs miss by focusing on only single-target or multi-target attacks.
The second gimmick is the Dimengeon and honestly one of my favorite parts of the game. The Dimengeon is an item acquired fairly early on and it allows you to transport enemies to a prison realm instead of having to fight random battles. The catch is that it initially only holds 30 monsters and if you hit that limit you’ll have to fight them all at once.
Of course, you can turn it off at any time or choose to fight the monsters you’ve currently collected. Depending on my party composition at the time, I typically unleashed the Dimengeon when I had between 15-25 monsters contained and usually didn’t have too much trouble dispatching them, however, there are specific parts of the game where it’s unwise to use it.
Outside of a few fringe scenarios, it feels great using the Dimengeon. First, it saves a ton of time. Not having a random battle every 10 steps makes traveling significantly less annoying. The second benefit is that I personally found these massive Dimengeon fights a lot of fun. Normally, random encounters are mostly just an annoyance or necessarily evil to level up, but having to take on 30 enemies makes it actually feel like a challenge and it rewards a significant amount of experience.
The final benefit is that it saves resources. Throughout the fight, buffs such as increased attack or additional turns will appear on the field to make the fight easier and reduce the amount of mana or items needed to dispatch enemies. You can also choose to fight the monsters outside of an Inn for quick healing instead of having to use precious Heal Stones.
Shortcomings
Despite enjoying much of my experience with Fantasian Neo Dimension, there are a few areas where it really falters. The first, and personally most important, is that the story is slow, especially at the beginning. There’s a lot of repeated dialogue, conversations that don’t make any sense, and uncomfortable dialogue decisions that aren’t necessary.
For example, Kina is the first party member you’ll encounter and she has a healing ability. This will come up a few times in the story and you’ll likely use it dozens of times before Leo will start a conversation about how he’s seen that spell before. Of course you’ve seen this spell before Leo, we’ve already discussed this. Pretty much all of the dialogue between Leo and Kina is super awkward, so I guess this can be excused but it doesn’t really add value.
There are also a lot of situations where Leo, out of your control, just makes poor decisions either due to his memory problems or being overly confident. He’ll regularly set off alarms (that he created) and even floods an airship. None of this really adds to the story, but it does make it unnecessarily longer. Finally, there are a handful of cringe worthy dialogue decisions, specifically when you catch Regent Garland going through Princess Cherly’s underwear drawer, especially since it was pointed out that she was not yet old enough to become queen.
Another issue is that while the port technically does support 4k, the visuals are still PlayStation 2 era. While some of the environments are nicely detailed, most of the character models are awful looking and many of the zones are rather basic. This probably looked fine playing on a phone or tablet, but it’s not even close to current generation graphics. Personally, low-quality 3D models bother me and would prefer retro graphics (Octopath Traveler) or simple, colorful 3D visuals (I Am Setsuna) if there are platform limitations.
Finally, despite recommending players use a controller, Leo steers like a boat. I used a Windows Xbox One controller during my playthrough and it was unnecessarily difficult to go where I wanted. There were too many times where I had to stop and think about how I needed to press my stick to get where I wanted to go.
In the end, Fantasian Neo Dimension is an alright JRPG with fun combat that doesn’t quite hit the mark with its story or port on the PC. Despite being somewhat interesting, the story never struck an emotional chord and the awkward dialogue made it difficult to really care about the characters. The big Dimengeon fights and boss battles were really enjoyable and it should be no surprise that Uematsu added great music, but none of this was enough to carry the game to greatness.
