Square Enix has always had something interesting to show at Tokyo Game Show, with one example from last year being Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake. Yet, it hasn’t always been one hundred percent focused on its JRPG projects. Last year, the publisher was also showing off Killer Inn, and in 2023, it was doing its best to push FoamStars. Neither game managed to hit, though, leaving many a fan concerned about the direction the company was headed in.
It was a different story at TGS 2026, though. There were no distractions from Square Enix’s greatest strength: its much-beloved JRPG titles. There were three in particular that the company was keen to show off this year, and Hardcore Gamer got hands-on time with all of them. Final Fantasy VII Revelation was the obvious standout, but both Final Fantasy Resonance and Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United held their own as well. Read on to learn more about what’s going on in each!
For those unaware, Final Fantasy Resonance is something of a remake of the 2015 mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, with its story being an adaptation of that game’s first arc, then titled “Lapis.” In the TGS demo, which was about 25 minutes of combat gameplay with a very brief opportunity to walk around beforehand, there are a few small hints at this origin.
The 3D backgrounds, for example, do look quite good, but they are basic in the way that one would expect from a mobile game from the mid-2010s. The idea of collecting characters itself also calls back to the original’s gacha structure. All that said, Square Enix has already confirmed that Final Fantasy Resonance possesses an entirely different system and does not have anything resembling the original’s gacha mechanics. Indeed, there were no signs of such a system in the demo.
As for what I actually played, it consisted mainly of a high-level arena fight against a powerful monster. I got to fight it using a party of six or so characters, each of which had their own “ghost” attached to them. Some notable ghosts included Clive from Final Fantasy XVI and Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII. There was no ATB system, with the game instead favoring a system based around character speed and trying to stun enemies to skip their turns.
The demo’s boss had a weakness to earth-based attacks, and the little mobs it spawned didn’t handle lightning well either, so my strategy was to use both to either paralyze or eliminate them outright with lightning to keep incoming attacks to a minimum and then go for damage with earth attacks or with the Titan summon.
It was a drawn-out battle, but between the music, flashy effects and bonus round mechanics, Final Fantasy Resonance kept it interesting throughout. It’s perhaps not as deep of a game as some of Square Enix’s other offerings, but it is entertaining, and I can see people enjoying the potential interactions between their favorite Final Fantasy characters. So yeah, maybe keep an eye on this one.
Just like with Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, Square Enix’s developers took great care to make the world and its characters look as good as possible in Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United. One would never guess that the original was a 2D pixel art game just by looking at the remake. The areas shown in the demo were once again beautifully rendered and fully explorable, and the characters both looked good and were fully voiced.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://hardcoregamer.com/square-enix-keeps-its-eye-on-the-jrpg-prize-at-tgs-2026/
