Fantasian: Neo Dimension

I don’t know if you know this about me, but… I hate playing games on my phone. Literally, and I’m not kidding, for some reason the idea of using my smartphone to play a full-on video game makes me angry. I don’t know why that is, and I have no problem with anyone enjoying playing games on their phones. This is a deeply personal thing for me is all. It’s such a deep issue that I completely skipped Fantasian when it released on phones several years ago. Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu helped shape the sort of player I am today, so you can imagine the cognitive dissonance I felt as I purposefully avoided their newest game. Time went on, and gradually Fantasian faded into the back of my mind. And then… Square Enix announced Fantasian Neo Dimension. This is the full Fantasian experience, updated for consoles, and I cannot adequately explain how good it feels to play a Sakaguchi game again.

Fantasian Neo Dimension is the story of Leo, a cool guy with white hair who seems to know a thing or two about technology. He loses his memory, because of course he does, and he has to team up with a ragtag bunch of characters to save the world from an infestation of Mechteria, which are like giant bacteria that are… mechanized. I probably didn’t need to explain it, the name pretty much spells it out. These Mechteria are coming from a wormhole that just opened up in the sky one day, which, if the title didn’t already spell it out for you, heavily suggests there are multiple dimensions involved in this story. So, will this end up being a Multiverse of Madness? Or will it be a… an Endgame of… Look, I haven’t seen a Marvel movie in like 10 years, I’m sorry. I just wanted to sound cool. 

My first impressions of the full game were that this FEELS like Final Fantasy. Not the modern Final Fantasy, which has gone in wildly different directions with each new entry since Final Fantasy X, but like an old school Final Fantasy. It makes sense, right? Hironobu Sakaguchi had such a big hand in those earlier Final Fantasies, it stands to reason that a lot of what made them FEEL like Final Fantasy had to do with him. I like to believe that I’d feel this exact same way even if I didn’t know Mr. Sakaguchi was behind it. The story, the characters and their interactions, it’s a very signature style. Even the whole amnesia trope doesn’t bother me in this context. Yes, the amnesiac protagonist thing is WAY overdone, but in the context of a story like this, with characters like this? It WORKS because it helps to further trigger that nostalgia. I sort of wonder if it would have had the same effect on me if I’d given in and played it on my phone. Would the technology I was using have dampened the feeling of nostalgia? I can’t say for sure, but I feel like it might have.

The biggest and most noticeable change to the game from its mobile roots is the addition of full voicework for the story. I have to say, the voice acting REALLY goes a long way toward making this feel like a premium experience. Not only are the actors all really good, but the direction is solid, too – there are almost no awkward line readings brought about by missing context, so props to the team who handled the recording sessions. I always want to give props for things like that, because I feel like it goes overlooked a lot, and it makes SUCH a big difference to the experience to have solid direction along with good voice over.

And the voice work definitely elevates the characters to heights I don’t believe they’d reach without it. Every major character in this game is well-defined and entertaining, you’ve got Leo’s confidence and occasional bumbling, you’ve got Cheryl’s tsundere personality, you’ve got Valrika’s obsession with beards. They all have great interactions with each other, and they all feel like they have a real reason to be there in the group – nobody feels like a tagalong, there are real stakes involved for everyone. It’s a great group, one of those where you’re sad to see the game end because you just want to spend more time with them.

I haven’t really played much from Mistwalker. I played a bit of The Last Story, but that’s really it. However, I know from existing in the JRPG space online that their game Lost Odyssey incorporated a lot of, for lack of a better term, short story segments. These were purely text-based stories that fleshed out the backstory and gave insights into the characters and world, from what I understand. Fantasian Neo Dimension incorporates these short story segments as well, only they’re fully narrated. This does make them feel richer than just simple text on the screen, though I did feel that some of the narrator’s intonations were a bit odd in places. I actually wondered at first if the narration was AI generated, which is not something you want to have to wonder. No disrespect to the voice actor behind it, obviously people signed off on the performance as it appears so they were doing what they were told, but I think this was one small misstep in an otherwise very well-produced dub. Also, some of the short story sequences go on a bit too long, and one or two of them are sort of just… retelling information that you just learned? The way the story is presented is rich and interesting here, but the fact that it’s occasionally redundant means that I was never super excited when a short story sequence began. Some of them are really good, but it’s sort of a crapshoot.

The battle system is pretty unique, and after I overcame the initial learning curve, I ended up really liking it a lot. Attacks are based on a trajectory – your characters remain stationary at all times, and they launch projectile attacks from their weapons. You use the joystick to control the path of the attack. Some attacks target an individual monster, which means you take aim and fire and it’s as simple as that. Some attacks, though, will actually target any enemy within the path of its trajectory. This means you have the opportunity to line up multiple enemies and hit them all at once. Magic spells even have the ability to curve, meaning you can hit a bunch of enemies along the perimeter of the battle arena. It’s EXTREMELY satisfying to knock out a ton of enemies at once with a well-aimed attack. This trajectory-based system is emphasized a lot by the game’s OTHER big battle innovation: The Dimengeon. So, Fantasian Neo Dimension has random battles, again, like an old school Final Fantasy. While you can run through areas and just fight battles like in any other game, in Fantasian you have the option of activating the Dimengeon, which is a device that captures any enemies you encounter in the field – so long as you’ve fought them at least once. Those enemies are stored in a pocket dimension, and you can then choose to face them all at once at a point you choose. This can lead to some massive battles, but it also goes a long way toward speeding up the process of leveling. Rather than having to stop and fight a random battle every fifteen seconds, you can store them up, then take them all out at once. Because of the trajectory system, it actually works in your favor to have a battlefield full to the brim with enemies, because your attacks can hit way more of them at once. There are some caveats about the Dimengeon to keep in mind, though. For one, it has a capacity – if you reach that capacity with the Dimengeon turned on, and then encounter a random battle, the Dimengeon will overflow, and you’ll have to fight all the enemies at once whether you’re ready or not. This is really easy to mitigate, though, because you can just turn the Dimengeon off until you’re set. You can also upgrade it a couple of times throughout the course of the game, to increase its capacity and to give you more battle bonuses, like increased attack. It’s a really cool idea, and it’s one I hope Mistwalker continues to iterate on in future titles, because I think there’s a lot of potential here.

This is also the rare JRPG where status effects are generally effective against most monsters, even bosses. Though not 100% of the time, for the most part you can buff yourself and debuff a boss, and managing those buffs and debuffs is a big part of the strategy. In addition, some bosses have physical shields that move around the arena. This means that you actually have to employ a bit of timing into your turn-based maneuvering so your attack actually connects with the boss. It can be a bit tricky at times, but it’s pretty engaging, and it’s another example of the outside-the-box creativity that makes this game feel so special.

I have some minor quibbles with the battle system, of course. I would have preferred a bit more variety in terms of special moves – almost every move a character does is nearly identical to their standard attack, often with just some sort of elemental effect applied to it. Also, in any game where you have to accurately aim a straight line using a joystick, you can expect it to get a bit fiddly from time to time. I guess they could default to having the targeting automatically aim at the most enemies, but then that would basically ruin the fun of actually being able to line up a killer attack on multiple enemies, so that’s probably not a good solution. But those little annoyances aside, this is a really fun battle system that I honestly would like to see more of. I don’t know how likely Mistwalker is to make this game into a series, but I would be in favor, if for no other reason than to see this alternate branch of turn-based evolution play out.

I want to talk about the aesthetics, and as much as I’d like to do nothing but shower them with praise, there is one major issue that keeps this from being the full-on love fest I wish it was. See, the really cool thing about the environmental design of Fantasian is that the sets were made by hand, in the real world. Like, these are models made using physical materials and photographed. The transitions from one area to another are often animated, with the camera swooping over to follow your character before taking up a static position again. In theory, and even occasionally in practice, this is extremely cool. Unfortunately, these photographs, when blown up to TV size, often look pretty blurry. I’m a bit confused by that, because it’s not as if the original Fantasian came out ten years ago – it shouldn’t have been too difficult to take these photos in a higher resolution. But I’m guessing they went with the smallest size that would still look good on an iPhone, maybe to save space, which does make sense but sadly hurts the cool factor of the console release a bit. It’s not so bad on my PlayStation Portal, where the smaller size lends itself a bit better to the resolution these photos were aiming for, and I imagine the Switch is similar, though I haven’t tried the Switch version myself. 

Now, the music. I have to tell you, I did not fully realize how much I genuinely MISSED having full Nobuo Uematsu soundtracks in my life until I played Fantasian Neo Dimension. I know he’s done soundtracks for other Mistwalker games, but those have been largely outside of my orbit until now. He is truly a master, and there’s something really cool about hearing new music from him. In general, I’m finding that I miss the old days, where JRPG soundtracks were primarily composed by one person – nowadays, it seems most games have multiple composers, which is fine, but there’s a certain singularity that’s missing in those cases. Uematsu was the first game composer I really “noticed,” so to speak. Final Fantasy IV was the first game where I realized, hey, this music is DOING something to me. Like, it’s really GOOD, and it’s really FITTING. It’s enhancing the story, not just playing in the background. Fantasian is much the same. The music is just so darn GOOD. I particularly like the battle tracks – they start out sounding a bit odd, like, are these really the battle songs? But when they get going, they’re just incredibly infectious and I found myself almost wanting to let the battles drag out a bit just to get to listen to the music for longer. With Neo Dimension, they’ve given you the option of swapping the battle music for various Final Fantasy games, which is odd. It’s fine, I didn’t really use it, but my recommendation is to stick with Uematsu’s tracks. Maybe switch it up when you’re grinding, for fun. Or, you know, do whatever you want. Chase your bliss.

Every few months, you hear people bemoaning the death of the traditional, turn-based JRPG. And of course, like clockwork, detractors will immediately bring up several great examples that show turn-based JRPGs are thriving in 2024. This is another to add to the list. Fantasian Neo Dimension basically scratches all my nostalgia itches – the Sakaguchi story, the Uematsu soundtrack, turn-based gameplay that isn’t content to just be run-of-the-mill and actually brings some new ideas to the table. It’s got a light helping of tropes and a heavy helping of interesting world design. It knows its audience, and fortunately, with the console release, it’s now free to reach so many more of them than it could before. 

It’s really, deeply satisfying to have played this game and to have had such a good overall experience with it. It’s clear to me that Hironobu Sakaguchi still has the magic. As I get older, and as the heroes in the game industry that I looked up to start to retire, it’s a really melancholy feeling to think about not having any more games from them in the future. Right? Like, at some point, we’ll have played the last Hironobu Sakaguchi game. I don’t think Fantasian is it, I hear he still plans to keep it going, but still. It will definitely end sometime. That’s why I think it’s important to treasure these experiences when they happen. It’s not everyday the Father of Final Fantasy releases a new game to a wide audience, so I’ll be relishing this feeling for as long as I can.