There is absolutely nothing original about Final Fantasy Resonance.
I don’t say that because this is an adaptation of the mobile, gacha game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. And it’s not even because you summon and equip characters from previous Final Fantasy games. No, instead it’s because this game isn’t even interested in doing anything new. The story is chock-full of characters and plot beats we’ve seen before and frequently references other games in the series. The HD-2D look is lifted from Team Asano‘s games. And the primary combat mechanic? Staggering your opponent, something dozens of RPGs adopted over the past decade, even in this very series.
But none of that matters. Final Fantasy Resonance knows it doesn’t have anything new to say, but it embraces that familiarity with confidence and panache. It knows exactly what it is, and the deeply stylish presentation helps to execute that vision beautifully, even if I found it a bit too derivative for its own good at times.
If there’s one way Final Fantasy Resonance moves the ball forward a little, though, it’s the presentation, where the visuals do a ton of the heavy lifting. Sure, on the surface this is yet another HD-2D game, and at first blush it might just seem a mild refinement. The thing that distinguishes it isn’t the improved fidelity, though. Instead, it’s how cinematic everything feels.
Cutscenes use multiple camera angles, sometimes pushing things in and out of focus. And it’s this constant dynamism that keeps Final Fantasy Resonance feeling bold and interesting throughout, even with the narrative’s constant callbacks, references, and twists you see coming from a mile away.
Seriously, let me know if you’ve heard this one before: hundreds of years ago, a powerful summoner and a knight clad in black armor faced off, almost destroying the world. Now, the world is protected by six crystals. When the Earth Crystal comes under threat, Rain, a young airship commander, and Laswell, his lieutenant and childhood friend, are sent to investigate.
There, they encounter the dark knight from many years ago, and he shatters the crystal, promising to destroy the rest. Of course, Rain and Laswell set off on a journey to protect the crystals. Oh, and lest I forget, they meet a girl who lost her memory and bring her along, too! You can probably guess where things go from there; there’s a chocobo, moogle, or epic betrayal around every corner.
To be clear, the story in Final Fantasy Resonance isn’t bad. In fact, the simplicity is part of the appeal, and the cast is delightful. Each party member brings their own charm and personality, and the game even manages to make a womanizer like Jake likable. The dialogue is well-written and fun, and the characters play off of each other well.
Sure, the narrative never elevates itself beyond a classic Final Fantasy-infused Saturday Morning Cartoon, but it knows that and it owns it, from the ever-changing visuals all the way down to the sometimes hammy but always on-point voice acting. Even when some arcs don’t quite land, like the rivalry between Rain and Laswell, it doesn’t matter because the style kept me invested. It’s proof that what matters most is not what a story is but how it is told. The fantastic music also brings a unique flair, with just enough references to help it still feel like Final Fantasy.
The story in Final Fantasy Resonance isn’t the only thing that will feel familiar. In fact, the gameplay loop is about as simple as it gets. If you want to follow the main story, you can do that, moving from town to dungeon back to town and then onto the next continent and so forth. But who wants to do that when you have a whole world map to explore, chock-full of items and dungeons with challenging bosses? Side quests to complete? Dungeons with little nooks and crannies you can only find if you look very carefully? More collectibles than you can shake a stick at? We even get an airship!
Final Fantasy Resonance knows how to give us those simple pleasures we associate with traditional JRPGs and dial them up to 11. Sometimes they go a little too far with everything you can do, like a mechanic that lets you hit a button to check if there are any hidden items nearby, which feels too random and aimless. I’m nitpicking, though. The world almost always feels rewarding to explore, doling out those little dopamine hits along the way.
My favorite discoveries, though, are the Vision Shrines. Here, after a brief summary of a previous Final Fantasy, you get access to the protagonist from that game. Each party member can equip one “Vision” at a time, and they grant individual abilities, bonuses to stat growth, and other passives to whoever has them equipped. When you master abilities, you can toss them on permanently even when you switch to another Vision.
When you stagger all the enemies in battle, you can also summon a Vision to do a super move coupled with a fun, over-the-top cutscene, which I was always excited to see for the first time. I suppose I should also mention that you get some Vision characters who aren’t from earlier games, but let’s be honest, who is going to use them in place of seeing Cloud shred some buildings?
Really, Visions function like a job system with a heavy sprinkle of nostalgia on top. Like with any similar system, some jobs are much more powerful, and others have essential abilities that every party member will want to master. This, coupled with individual skills and limit breaks from different characters, gives you a ton of options for how to build out your kit. I’ll admit that it’s sometimes tedious to level Visions on a character just for one ability, like throwing the magic-focused Terra on my physical DPS because she’s the only way you learn the ability to break the damage cap. It makes for some awkward party compositions until you have everything you want in the endgame.
You’re going to need to pay attention to those loadouts, though, because the combat in Final Fantasy Resonance can present some real challenges. I won’t go into much, since Scott already laid it out well in his preview, but I will say that you need to pay attention and use the tools at your disposal. You need to hit enemy weaknesses to break them quicker, employ buffs and debuffs, and heck, you even need to use your items this time. Noting and manipulating turn order can be the difference between life and death.
For the most part, I had a good time with combat in Final Fantasy Resonance, especially in the early game. On paper, it has a lot going for it. Even if it’s all been done before, I love figuring out weaknesses, putting together the right strategy, and then blasting even the toughest enemy down in a burst phase. It was particularly fun to take down some enemies that should have been too high level for me.
Unfortunately, the combat never quite lives up to its inspirations, and I eventually found battles a bit taxing by the endgame. Especially on expert difficulty, many bosses’ stagger bars go down far too slowly, and even with accessories and other moves that allow you to break them faster, things just take a really long time, and many fights felt like battles of attrition, draining your resources without enough variation.
The best way to fix this is to overlevel—stagger builds much more quickly if you’re a higher level than the enemy—but that seems antithetical to actually engaging with the systems of the game. This also pushes you into some pretty narrow builds unless you want fights to take forever. If you’ve played games like these before, you’ll figure it out quickly, though it removes some of the variety and individual strategy the Visions system promises.
You can also tell that the developers are proud of the battle system because a lot of the side and end-game content involves increasingly spongy boss fights, and eventually I was just tired of it. Unfortunately, it’s the one place where the lack of originality works against Final Fantasy Resonance, and since you spend so much time doing it, the game suffers as a result.
But it’s sort of amazing that slightly frustrating combat is my only significant complaint. After all, I’ve barely mentioned that Final Fantasy Resonance is an adaptation of a mobile game. Frankly, looking at the screenshots of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, I’m astounded at the care and thought that went into this love letter to the classic Final Fantasy games. As I discovered recently, these can go really wrong.
It would be easy for the game to feel awkward or like it wants to be something else. It doesn’t. And nothing about it feels like a retooled gacha game. Instead, Final Fantasy Resonance’s masterful presentation, along with its understanding of why people yearn for a return to those games, makes for a fully realized, confident experience that stands on its own, originality be damned.
