Fantasian Is the Classic Turn-Based Final Fantasy You’ve Been Craving

Stepping into the weapon and item shop yields a smorgasbord of delightful little details to look at. Dozens of little items to stare at — from a massive shark skull hanging on the wall to a purple bottle with some kind of questionable mixture. A miniature world to explore that never gets boring, and each new area holds some kind of dazzling new sight.

Fantasian Neo Dimension is a dazzling classically inspired RPG with a brilliant twist — its entire world is made up of pre-rendered backgrounds that are actual hand-crafted dioramas. It’s an utterly gorgeous game that feels both nostalgic and modern, capturing the very essence of what made older Final Fantasy games so special but putting it in a shiny new package. It’s nothing short of a masterpiece and one of the best RPGs of the decade, made even better with the enhancement added in this port. If you’ve wished Final Fantasy would return to the good old days of the PS1 era, Fantasian is the game for you.

Finding the Fantasy

Fantasian is the latest game from Mistwalker, the studio founded by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi — and it’s a clear effort from the creator to recapture the games that defined his career. Fantasian feels a bit like if you took Final Fantasy 4, 6, and 9; put them all in a blender; and then gave the final mixture a new coat of paint. For all intents and purposes, this is a “classic” RPG — with turn-based combat, characters that each fill a specific role, a massive world map to run around, an unlockable airship, and a literal god to fight. All the essential pieces are there, but Fantasian is so much more than Sakaguchi and Mistwalker just retreading the past — it’s an investigation of why so many players loved those experiences and how we can modernize them.

The story revolves around a young man named Leo who wakes up in a world made of machines with no memory of his past or even who he is. Leo has to make his way out of the Machine World and into the Human World to try to recover his memories — and along the way, he discovers some shocking secrets about the multiverse and the gods who play with it like a toy.

Fantasian is a character-driven story, and luckily its characters are across-the-board phenomenal. Leo himself is a kind-hearted protagonist with a bit of a goofy streak, who brilliantly plays off the eclectic cast of characters you accumulate. Among that cast is a pair of robots learning to be more humanlike named Prickle & Clicker, a seadog ship captain named Zinikr who uses all the slang you’d expect, and a haughty princess named Cheryl who holds a grudge against Leo. Every single party member has their own dedicated plot line that runs through the main story, and that’s largely because of the game’s fascinating structure.

Breaking the Mold

Fantasian originally released on Apple Arcade in 2021, and that release was staggered into two different parts. While they’re technically two halves of one game, these parts are drastically different in their structure and approach to storytelling, but that shift actually makes the game as a whole more interesting.

The first half of the game is extremely linear and heavy on the cutscenes, taking you through the world of Fantasian by the hand, like a guided tour. But in the second part, the game takes some clear inspiration from Final Fantasy VI’s World of Ruin, completely opening up the game to be an exploratory experience. In that second half, the story is delivered through side quests and character quests that you can tackle in virtually any order, giving you a much richer view of the world and its lore. This shift can be a bit jarring, but in the larger scheme of the game it feels fitting — investing players in the world and characters before getting extremely experimental with nonlinear storytelling. The first half of the game can, at times, feel slow and meandering, but the payoff when you get to the unorthodox second half of the game is incredible.

Another vital aspect of Fantasian, however, are lessons Mistwalker has learned from past games — namely Lost Odyssey. Interspersed throughout the game are delightful little audio stories that help flesh out characters, bits of history behind the story, or even just random side stories. These play out almost exactly like the “Thousand Years of Dreams” sequences in Lost Odyssey, accentuated with gorgeous visuals and emotional music. More often than not, these little stories have messages to impart or themes to ruminate on, and in more than one instance, Fantasian made me cry.

That sentiment applies to the game as a whole — Fantasian is an emotionally charged story that perfectly harnesses its nostalgic look and feel. Each character has enough depth to make you attached but not too much that you have to sit through hours of exposition. Fantasian manages to strike a perfect balance between heady storytelling and grounded characters, and its cast is unbelievably lovable. That’s doubly true with the best addition this port makes: full voice acting.

Across the board, Fantasian’s voice acting is phenomenal, adding so much rich depth and character to an experience that was already vibrantly charming. It enhances the kind of “storybook” feel the game has as you experience these handcrafted dioramas and set pieces, mingled with that classic nostalgic story.

Fantasian is a tremendous success in terms of story and presentation, but astoundingly, that might not even be the game’s greatest achievement. That honor is given to its battle system and boss encounters.

Puzzling Through

Fantasian puts a deliciously engaging spin on turn-based combat, one of the best that I’ve ever seen in the last two decades of playing role-playing games. On its face, combat looks similar to something like Final Fantasy, with your party of three characters taking turns, based on their speed, with enemies. But Fantasian’s unique twist comes with area-of-effect attacks and something called the Dimengeon.

Each character has attacks that can affect a wide area — for example, Leo has a slash that can pierce through enemies in a line, Kina has a holy spell that can be curved to hit enemies in an arc, and Cheryl summons a knight that slams down into a wide area. You constantly need to take into account the layout of battles and how enemies are positioned, on top of status effects, elemental weaknesses, and stat boosts.

But the really brilliant twist comes with the Dimengeon, a device that lets you stock multiple random battles into one massive encounter. As you run through areas, a counter in the top left will add up, showing you the number of enemies you’ve stocked in the Dimengeon, and you can start a battle at any time you want (or when the device is full). This lets you knock out a string of battles in one go, putting those positional elements of combat to full use. Not only does this help cut down on the monotony of random battles, but it also helps you really see the dynamic strategy and variety in battles.

Past that, though, boss battles are where Fantasian really shines. Nearly every single boss, across the game, has some kind of unique gimmick or mechanic that you need to figure out. In this way, boss battles almost feel more like puzzles than actual battles, in a good way. In one battle, you need to time Cheryl’s jumping attack right when the boss’s mouth opens so you can land in it. In another, you need to use Ez’s vacuum ability to pull all the enemies to one side of the screen so you can attack the boss.

Every boss battle feels like a new experience and new challenge, which ultimately makes the combat system shine because the game is constantly subverting your expectations or forcing you to rethink how its systems work. But all this does comes with a massive difficulty spike in the second half, where boss battles are incredibly demanding affairs that can come right down to the wire. I can’t overstate how difficult the second half of the game is, as multiple boss battles had me replaying them a half-dozen times to figure them out. If that challenge is something you enjoy you’re in for a good time, but it’s easy to see how more casual players, in it for the story, could be put off. Luckily, Neo Dimension does add a new “Normal” difficulty that’s a step below the original iOS version, so it’s a bit more approachable.

Fantasian’s combat system starts out strong and absolutely sings by the end of the game, especially when you unlock the Growth Map for each character — a connected web of upgrades that resembles the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X.

Looking Back to Move Forward

Halfway through Fantasian, I’m nostalgically reminded of the games of yesteryear, the classic Final Fantasy titles that introduced so many people to the world of games. But that second half is where the game turns into something truly audacious, taking wild swings with both its combat design and storytelling — swings that almost universally pay off. The difficulty spike and sheer difference between the game’s two halves might be off-putting for some players, but you can’t deny the sheer ambition. But Neo Dimension makes Fantasian easier to play than ever, and meaningful additions like voice acting and controller support really help the game achieve its vision.

With Fantasian, it’s clear that Sakaguchi wanted to take a hard look at the key games that have defined his work, namely Final Fantasy VI, and find a meaningful way to advance his craft — to create something that can appeal to both the old guard and brand-new fans. In my mind, he and Mistwalker have wildly succeeded in that endeavor, creating one of the defining RPGs of modern gaming. It’s an enthralling experience that reminds me why I love video games so much and simultaneously makes me excited for where they can go in the future.

9/10

Fantasian Neo Dimension launches Dec. 5 for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Inverse reviewed the Nintendo Switch version.

INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.