Ever since Hironobu Sakaguchi left Squaresoft and it became Square Enix, the company has never been the same. The most notable changes were felt in the company’s flagship JRPG series, Final Fantasy. Moving forward since Sakaguchi’s departure, every entry lacked his guiding vision and input, resulting in the franchise losing its identity and becoming generic Square Enix products.
Where was Final Fantasy‘s sacred line? It may have been in Sakaguchi all along. He established Mistwalker and produced two of some of the last AAA JPRGs of their time. Everyone who played Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey in the late 2000s would argue that they felt more like Final Fantasy games than the actual Final Fantasy XIII released around the same time.
After waxing nostalgic while streaming Final Fantasy VI, Sakaguchi returned to making epic JRPGs with Fantasian on Apple Arcade in 2021. Like most games on Apple, it didn’t reach its target audience, but now it has been given an enhanced port for all platforms. Can Sakaguchi make an epic JRPG with miniatures? Is this Nobuo Uematsu’s swan song? Find out in our Fantasian Neo Dimension review!
FANTASIAN Neo Dimension
Developer: Mistwalker
Publisher: Square Enix
Platforms: Windows PC, Apple Arcade (as FANTASIAN), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: December 5, 2024
Price: $49.99
The moment Fantasian Neo Dimension begins, you feel like you’re in good hands. Leo, the protagonist is introduced in a bombastic action sequence and awakens with amnesia, surrounded by a mechanical metropolis. The camera pulls back to reveal the epic scope of the industrial nightmare as Uematsu’s music swells and the title drops.
Leo finds himself in the machine world with no clue what he is doing or how he got there. All he knows is that he’s talented with a blade, and a couple of droids are here to help him out. The player will be as confused as he is, thrusting both into a strange world and a compelling mystery to uncover.
After a thrilling introductory sequence, Leo finds himself in the backwater town of En. It does not take long for the mystery around his identity to expand and meet up with characters who already know him. He becomes a bodyguard for Kina, a mysterious girl with a nose for detecting evil, and a cute short dress.
Kina’s past is one of the many driving questions in Fantasian and it motivates her to go out into the world with Leo. As they find their destinies, they uncover the truth behind a mechanical parasite infecting the world, and a powerful entity known as Vam the Malevolent.
The “mechteria” (bacteria+machine) harvest energy from the people of Vibra. This reads like a metaphor for technology taking over our lives. Those infected become listless, hollowed shells of their former selves, as well as making the wildlife go insane with rage.
Mechteria’s true purpose plays true to what makes a compelling Final Fantasy-esque story. Its explanation is both surreal and makes complete sense in a metaphysical way that only Sakaguchi can make work. Without spoiling too much, the stakes are very high with the fates of two worlds hanging in the balance.
Many RPGs may rely on the “amnesiac protagonist” as a lazy shorthand to make the hero a blank slate for easy exposition. Fantasian Neo Dimension reimagines the cliche and uses it to create intrigue. Leo may have lost his memory, but he has a lot of personality. The story relies on the unlikeness of amnesia as a critical plot point and adds to Leo’s arc as it progresses.
During the adventure, Leo encounters many characters, a few of which become party members. Kina will win the hearts of gamers. She is an amalgam of Terra and Aerith from Final Fantasy VI and VII as evidenced by her panache for healing, staves, holy magic, and longing to find her place in the world.
Cheryl is a delightfully bratty and proper princess with a tsundere streak who isn’t afraid to get down and dirty in a scrap. She turned out to be my favorite character for her goth-like dress and for being the funniest character in the game. Her attack stats are some of the highest, but she can barely take a hit due to her dainty frame. Talk about beauty and the beast… she’s both.
There are more likable and well-written characters that join the party like Prickle, the warm-hearted robot who was inspired by Robo from Chrono Trigger. There is the affable burly Capt. Zinikir, who is more than an airship captain, and the enigmatic Tan who uses a vicious dog-like creature to attack, like Shadow from Final Fantasy VI.
The pacing is superb. There is no overly structured template for how the story unfolds, which makes the game exciting. Players will be sucked into the setting as they are invited to dive deeper into its mysteries. The first part is fairly linear but opens up gradually, and Leo can teleport to any previously visited locations.
Teleporting and fast travel are not just convenient quality-of-life features in Fantasian; they are instrumental to the plot. The story hinges on Leo’s ability to get around Vibra and travel to the robot world in an instant. It’s a feature that won’t always be available, and the writing justifies when it is taken away.
Fantasian was originally released in two parts for Apple Arcade, and the seam between the two parts is still apparent. In part 2, new party members appear after the story makes a dramatic turn that feels like the World of Ruin sequence from Final Fantasy VI. Players will also have to search for their friends in an open-ended and nonlinear style.
Most basic battle encounters won’t pose much of a threat, but bosses will ratchet up the tension. Many bosses can be lengthy and grueling fights where victory comes by the skin of your teeth. Some bosses are puzzle-like in their design and being over-leveled won’t make it easier. You will need every resource, especially consumable items.
This is also one of the few JRPGs that allows bad statuses to be a viable strategy against enemies and bosses. Battles are fast-paced with quick animations and the trajectory system makes targeting multiple foes satisfying when the damage values explode onscreen.
Thanks to the helpful Final Fantasy X-like queue system, players are given plenty of information to make measured and strategic choices. There is never a mistake about who’s turn is next and manipulating the turn order proves to be another clever tactic. Fantasian Neo Dimension has a solid turn-based battle system that’s as reliable as can be.
Sometimes the random encounters can be a bit much, so Mistwalker came up with the ingenious Dimengeon. This pocket-dimension device allows players to skip and store random encounters like a rising debt. Eventually, the Dimengeon gets full and gamers will have to battle every foe stored all at once, but the option to battle its contents whenever is always there.
There is never a reason to not use the Dimengeon because it spaces out fights further apart and Leo and the gang can gain stray buffs when battling in it. This mechanic is so genius that it should be applied to all future turn-based random encounter JRPGs moving forward.
The only signs that Fantasian was a mobile game lie in its ugly UI design which reeks of touch-screen aesthetics. Everything is organized like it was a mobile game with flat and minimalistic graphics. It does not fit the maximalist and highly textured, hand-crafted diorama worlds that look and feel tangible.
The backgrounds will impress fans of PS1-era Final Fantasy games. They evoke the same kind of prerendered charm that made those backgrounds appealing and picturesque. The only issue with the dioramas is that they don’t always work as intended. Moving between shots makes the camera transition with an artificial motion that gives away the flatness and some foreground elements don’t always stay in the foreground.
Sometimes the dioramas were shot with a shallow depth of field and the effect is not applied to the characters which breaks the illusion that they exist together. Other times some shots are low-rez which looks rough during some scenes because the 3D characters are always razor sharp. Using diorama photography for RPG environments is an inspired choice, but they could have some finesse in the future.
Square Enix has been making Final Fantasy games for decades since Sakaguchi left Squaresoft. Final Fantasy has since been enduring an identity crisis. These are games that cost tens of millions of dollars and have hundreds of staff and countless resources behind them, yet still fail to underperform. The company has been desperately trying to make Final Fantasy into anything, except be true to itself.
Mistwalker proves that an epic fantasy JRPG can be achieved with a modest budget on the Unity engine and a few dioramas. It turns out they didn’t need all those resources. It needed a confident vision. Fantasian looks, plays, sounds, and feels more like what Final Fantasy should be than anything Square Enix has produced since Sakaguchi left the company.
Fantasian Neo Dimension is the third Mistwalker JRPG that feels like a missing Final Fantasy. If you squint your eyes, it could resemble a fourth PS1 Final Fantasy. Nobuo Uematsu’s music will bring the boys home and cement this game as being an honorary Final Fantasy game. It may not be his most epic score, but his signature sound is iconic and gives Fantasian its identity.
One of the extra features in this updated port is the addition of other Final Fantasy scores to play during battles. The choices are odd since most of them were not composed by Uematsu or were rearranged by someone else. It’s amusing to have during grind sessions, but it feels wrong to not play the intended music he composed for this game, especially since it might be his last.
The production values are inherently modest since Fantasian Neo Dimension was probably made on a shoestring budget, but that doesn’t stop it from aiming for the stars and reaching them. This was a very responsibly made JRPG that has an epic vision and scope with a sweeping adventure, mystery, and a cast of lovable characters. It scratches that very specific itch that only a real Final Fantasy can scratch.
FANTASIAN Neo Dimension was reviewed on a PS5 using a code provided by Square Enix. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. FANTASIAN Neo Dimension is now available for PC (via Steam), Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
