I've been really enjoying Final Fantasy Resonance so far. I'm only about five hours in thus far, but already I can tell this is going to be a good time. And I hope it's not an isolated example of what it represents.
For the unfamiliar, Final Fantasy Resonance is an adaptation of the defunct mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. This was, it will not surprise you to hear, a free-to-play gacha game, but when I gave it a try on its original release, I actually found it had some redeeming features — most notably the fact that it didn't seem ashamed of being a video game, which a lot of mobile titles do, inexplicably.
Anyway, I always thought it was a bit of a shame that what, in my limited experience, appeared to be a surprisingly decent Final Fantasy story was trapped in free-to-play gacha hell — particularly as the soundtrack was awesome. Alas, though, it was not to last; the worldwide game shut down in 2024 and the Japanese version a year later, leaving the tales of Rain and company forever consigned to oblivion.
Except! They aren't! Because Final Fantasy Resonance takes the first main story arc of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and adapts it into a proper, non-gacha, non-free-to-play game. And boy, they've done a great job with it, too — to such a degree that this stands up remarkably well as a possible future direction Square Enix might want to (but almost definitely won't) take the mainline series in for its next installments.
Final Fantasy is a series that has never been afraid of reinventing itself. Supposedly Hironobu Sakaguchi's attitude to the series could be summed up as "if it's not new, it's not Final Fantasy", and this would explain why every entry in the series to date has done something fairly to radically different from its predecessors. I, personally, love this, and have had great fun with the whole series, even the entries that "popular opinion" (spit) won't stop whining and moaning and crying about, like VIII, XIII, XV and XVI.
What Square Enix has basically done with Final Fantasy Resonance is go "all right you whining fucking babies, here is a very traditional Final Fantasy with random battles and little dudes lining up to take it in turns to whack monsters, only with very pretty modern visuals and an amazing soundtrack, are you fucking happy now?!" And I sincerely, absolutely hope that anyone who has ever complained about "the way Final Fantasy has been going" at any point over the last 30 years has picked this game up, started playing and gone "…well, all right, then, fair play". Because it is absolutely what people have been clamouring for, for decades at this point. So if they're not playing this, they don't get to talk about Final Fantasy ever again.
It's not just noteworthy for this angle, though. It's also just a damn fine RPG, and incorporates a lot of the elements I really like in a game like this. The turn-based combat is just turn-based combat without any QTEs or parrying or other bullshit like that. (I liked Expedition 33 well enough, but I could have absolutely done without its Souls-inspired elements.) It has a fun progression system that takes elements from Final Fantasy V, VI and IX, whereby you learn abilities from having "Visions" (actually characters from other Final Fantasy games) equipped, and once an ability is learned you can equip it independently of having the Vision equipped, allowing you to build your characters as you see fit. It has optional fast travel, allowing you to either journey between locations the old-fashioned way, getting into random battles on the way, or simply zapping to a location you need to get to for a quest. And it has Tales-style skits where your party members chat about things while you wander around on the world map.
The story also seems solid so far. It's oddly jarring to have a protagonist that is very… 16 to 32-bit in terms of how idealistic and positive he is, but it's a welcome, nostalgic feeling after so many games that are deliberately dour in tone. That's not to say the game doesn't have any darkness, either; indeed, I'm still in the first chapter, and there has already been one impressively fucked-up moment that I can only assume will get resolved more conclusively at a much later time.
Anyway, I'm having a blast with it so far, and thus I'm going to go and spend a bit more quality time with it right now. Cue That Fanfare…
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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