Fantasian Neo Dimension makes an already excellent game prettier and adds FF music to battles - Preview
It’s no secret here at RPG Site that most of us loved Fantasian when it originally came to Apple Arcade three years ago. Hell, it somehow even won our 2021 Game of the Year award which still seems surreal, but it absolutely deserved it. So when developer Mistwalker unveiled Fantasian Neo Dimension back in June for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PC with the help of Square Enix, many of us in our super secret staff Discord chatroom were thrilled. I got the chance to go hands-on with the PS5 version of this new release of Fantasian, now free from its Apple Arcade exclusivity.
In its announcement, some of the new features detailed were 4K visuals for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC versions, along with an easier difficulty option; Square Enix also mentioned that “all cutscenes, and many optional scenes in the game are now voice acted” with support for English and Japanese voices.
One of the new unannounced features that I got to tinker around with in my hands-on session is the new battle music selector. Accessible both in the settings menu and in battle, people can pull up a list of various Final Fantasy games that will play select tracks from them. The titles selectable were Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Final Fantasy VII: Remake, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, and Final Fantasy XVI. There was a random option at the very bottom too, if you want combat to just play a different tune every time you engage into battle.
Honestly, it’s a bit of an odd decision. Fantasian is not Final Fantasy. I know Square Enix is pushing Sakaguchi’s name and legacy to market Fantasian Neo Dimension to the broader market, but it’s difficult to not perceive this as a lack of confidence in Fantasian being able to stand on its own. Rather, they feel the need to have the words ‘Final Fantasy’ somewhere in the game, even if the majority of the titles are projects that Sakaguchi has never touched.
Aside from that, the hands-on demo for Fantasian Neo Dimension fulfilled my expectations for what I wanted from Fantasian; it was no longer confined to the limitations of Apple devices, so the hand-crafted diorama environments looked as crisp as ever. They were already stunningly beautiful in the original Apple Arcade release, but they pop out so much more brilliantly in Fantasian Neo Dimension. It’s very easy to spot all the love put into the little details in these dioramas and I personally wish Fantasian Neo Dimension had some sort of diorama gallery to view all the original diorama models in isolation from the in-game assets.
The demo encompassed Leo, Kina, and Cheryl’s initial arrival to the Ancient Hill region where they encountered Tan, a mysterious solitary figure with a spirit beast named Galf.
It isn’t long until the group is attacked by a group of soldiers who’ve been pursuing them. If you’ve played the original Fantasian, nothing has fundamentally changed in the way it plays. Combat is all turn-based with a visible turn order timeline, so players can always keep track of who is taking their turn next.
Fantasian’s battle system heavily emphasizes hitting multiple enemies at once, so many abilities travel along a path that can inherently pierce through multiple foes. A Fire spell, for example, can be manually aimed in a line and all enemies along that line will be hit; when aiming a spell, they can bend so they can travel in a U-shaped trajectory as well.
Of course, Mistwalker has designed some counters to this strategy. Some enemies can immediately stop an attack or spell’s traversal because their shields will prevent it from piercing them. Players may have to aim from a different angle to bypass those enemies, so it only hits the foes behind them.
There are other abilities that can bypass this counter… so, a counter to the counter. Cheryl’s Knightly Impact skill, for instance, does not travel along an arc. Instead, this ability has her Knight guardian directly strike from above to all enemies in the AoE zone immediately, so shield enemies cannot physically stop this skill from hitting the foes behind them.
During battles, I did notice some slow down in performance when enemies were defeated and their models were fading away from the fight. It stuck out, but I imagine it will be ironed out by the time it fully releases. Keep in mind this is still an in-development build of Fantasian Neo Dimension.
Another distinct feature retained from Fantasian to Fantasian Neo Dimension is the Dimengeon System. Normally, people would initiate battles immediately via a random encounter like older RPGs; people will be running around a map until all of a sudden, the screen will twist, turn, spiral, and move in other ways to indicate that they have run into a group of enemies and the game automatically transports their party into a battle encounter arena right away.
With Fantasian, people can flip on the Dimengeon feature to “store” multiple random encounters to fight them later. The caveat is that the enemies that would’ve shown up in these battles must have been encountered and beaten at least once before. People have to normally fight and eliminate any brand-new enemy types initially, before any subsequent fights with that same enemy type can be put into the Dimengeon.
So if a person has run into every sort of enemy type in a region, they can freely explore it uninterrupted when the Dimengeon System is on. Any battle encounter trigger will show up as light orbs traveling into the Dimengeon. Be aware that the Dimengeon can only hold so many enemies before players have to enter it and dispose of all the enemies they’ve been storing.
The fun aspect of engaging in Dimengeon fights over regular enemy counters on the field is that there will be special temporary modifiers players can pick up to buff their party, such as attack boosts and taking another turn right away. People will have to balance hitting as many enemies as possible with their offensive abilities, or sometimes make a trade-off like sacrificing hitting two enemies to hit a helpful modifier, instead.
I gotta admit that while I do have qualms about the inclusion of the battle music selector, jamming out to “Find the Flame” from FFXVI’s OST made a somewhat lengthy Dimengeon battle more exciting.
Other than that, the Fantasian Neo Dimension hands-on session led up to the conclusion of the golem boss fight in the Ancient Hill area. It was fairly brief, but the existence of Fantasian Neo Dimension alone is exciting because that means I’ll be able to talk about Fantasian to more people and not just the crazy people on RPG Site (including me) who either bought an Apple TV to play it or already owned an Apple device and subscribed to Apple Arcade in order to play it. There’s still no firm release date yet, and is still slated to release some time in Winter 2024.
