To evoke the classics is also to hold yourself to the high standard set by them. With Final Fantasy Resonance bringing the venerated series back to its origins with turn-based combat, and wielding Square’s HD-2D art style to modernize nostalgia for the pixel art era, it plucks at something I've longed for as someone who grew up in the SNES generation. While I've expressed my love for the Octopath Traveler series time and again, Final Fantasy has of course crystalized into something meaningful over the past several decades. But as much as Resonance looks like a torchbearer for classic RPGs, it also goes for a style of storytelling that often rings hollow. So, I think of it as a game of moments – when a genre-fusing boss theme graces your ears, when you execute a turn perfectly and watch all your spells fire off with big damage numbers, and when a cutscene brings HD-2D to life in a way you've just never seen before.
Resonance adapts the story and characters from the now-shuttered mobile game Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius by packaging them into the structure of a traditional RPG; no gacha mechanics, no microtransactions. It's quite similar to what Square Enix did with Octopath Traveler 0 and it's a brilliant way to bring existing stories into a format I'm a lot more inclined to play. With that comes an overworld with towns to represent each region, random encounters, an airship for roaming free and discovering pieces of land that feel like secrets, and full voice acting throughout the main story.
It largely sticks to the events of the first season of Brave Exvius, which follows the knights from the Kingdom of Grandshelt, Rain and Laswell, the mysterious magical girl born from a crystal, Fina, along with additional friends on a quest to stop the armor-clad Sworn Six from destroying the world's crystals and plunging it into calamity. Of course, there's more beneath the surface. That said, a lot of dialogue and interstitial events have been added to fill out the journey, which took me about 45 hours to complete (including all of the side quests marked on my map and poking around the overworld for optional minibosses who offer intense challenges). While chunks of Resonance's story aren't very riveting, the production value here had me forgetting that this was built on the bones of a mobile game – not that Brave Exvius was any lesser of an achievement for what it was.
That retooling extends to gameplay, which retains concepts and mechanics that work extremely well as an engaging turn-based combat system – and hearing "turn-based" and Final Fantasy in the same breath after all these years released those good chemicals in my brain, too. This is not an ATB system with an active element, but a straightforward turn order along a timeline. And the way you either plan accordingly depending on which units are up or manipulate the order to your advantage had me employing similar strategies as I do in the Trails series or the Octopath Traveler games.
It's all about elemental affinities and staggering enemies in Resonance, however. Each party member has their own set of elements covered through magic spells or element-imbued physical attacks, but they also equip what are called Visions that function somewhat like a Job system directly inspired by Final Fantasy V. This is what provides flexibility in party composition, giving you the tools to make sure you either cover all the elements or go all-in on a specific type so you can streamroll bosses. While every attack chips at an enemy's stagger meter, hitting their weaknesses is, of course, the strategy demanded of you.
I'm of two minds with this system: while it’s nice to have flexibility as you swap Visions between party members to constantly change their overall movesets, it can sometimes trivialize your combat approach. For example, going into a water-themed boss fight, I knew purely electric builds were going to be the optimal strategy. So, while it was rad as hell to watch chunks of stagger and HP get chopped off as I spammed electric attacks, I often didn't feel the need to think much harder than that. Having the foresight to anticipate the right element before a fight isn't quite as rewarding as being pushed to scheme with what you have.
Compare this to the boost and break system of an Octopath Traveler, where the tools you're given are more dynamic and free-flowing even with elemental affinities involved, which then lets you get more creative rather than just having you hammer away with one specific element. I cruised through the first half of Resonance since most enemies and bosses were pushovers. But thankfully, things got tougher in the late game where they hit harder and inflicted more status ailments to work around. Key moments where I was challenged to think steps ahead culminated in some real hard-fought battles toward the end.
Overall, it still provides enough of the puzzle-esque tactical thinking that's required of a good turn-based RPG. Party members level up alongside their mastery of equipped Visions, but you have to manually rank up Visions then apply passive perks and support spells, which gets into some interesting buildcrafting that gives a little extra depth that mattered for those big fights. And I enjoyed Resonance's combat system because it still captures the satisfaction of teeing off on a staggered enemy with your nastiest spells, especially because their animations look so good and hit with emphatic impact.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-resonance-review
