Final Fantasy Resonance is Bringing Back the Magic

It’s been far too long since we’ve had a true, turn-based Final Fantasy. Depending on who you ask, you’d have to go back as far as the Final Fantasy X games, or perhaps the spin-off, World of Final Fantasy. Since then, we’ve got many different combat systems in this legendary series, be it the hybrid system of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series or the full-on action combat system of Final Fantasy XVI.

Still, this is something that fans have been wanting for a while now, and Square Enix felt that the time was now right with Final Fantasy Resonance. As a massive fan of all things Final Fantasy, I was delighted to get the chance to go hands-on with the game.

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Final Fantasy Resonance will let you fight with characters from past Final Fantasy games, such as Terra.

A Tale of Crystals

While I can’t go into too much detail surrounding the story, I did find myself in control of Rain, Lasswell, Fina, and Lid, giving me a party of four. My destination, the nearby Wind Shrine that I was dropped outside of. It was quite nice to see that I had access to party chat, which I could access by hitting a button and bringing up a menu with the available chats. This was handy because the gang would then chat while I was going about my business.

Before heading into the shrine, however, I took a look around the part of the world map I found myself in and was encouraged by what seemed like a variety of side activities I could have undertaken, and the world seemed a decent size. Regardless, for now, my priority was to get through the Wind Shrine.

After the initial scenes in the shrine, the first thing that jumped out to me was just how gorgeous the HD-2D visuals were for Resonance. Distinctly different from recent titles like The Adventures of Elliot, which had a pixel look, the visuals here were striking (as we’ve come to expect by now) and helped the shrine look far grander than the playable space was.

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The world map looks to have lots of optional areas you can visit.

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Each member of your party can equip a Vision.

Turn-based Goodness

The Wind Shrine played out as a typical 2D Final Fantasy dungeon would: you have multiple paths to explore, chests hidden around, and monsters to slay. I was delighted to see that the chests contained useful contents, such as new weapons and armor that were immediately pertinent. More importantly, though, the majority of my time with Resonance was with the combat system, one that I got to grips with immediately and fell in love with.

At the top of the screen is a timeline, which shows when you and your enemy will act next and can be influenced by using spells and staggering your foe. When you take a look at your available skills, both learned naturally and via your Visions (more on that later), you’ll see two indicators: how much damage and how much stagger damage the skill will deal. The goal, then, is to inflict Stagger on an enemy to lower their defenses and stun them for a turn, then go all out with your harder-hitting skills. To help with this, you want to target the elemental weaknesses of your foes, a big part of the way battles play out. This is a much-welcome addition for me, as I’ve been let down on some of the more recent Final Fantasy games where elemental spells and skills have no real bearing, and something that other more recent turn-based games make use of.

At the end of each combat round on the timeline is a bonus round; anybody who managed to inflict Stagger in that round will get a chance to have another turn before the next round rolls around, and it’s here where you can get the chance to pull off a Resonance, a special attack that each Vision has access to, playing out in flashy style (which you can skip, thankfully!) and dealing massive damage. The boss battle at the end of my time with Resonance required me to put all of this to use, and it was nice to see that I had to take care to heal and buff myself.

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There is a large variety of skills to make use of in battle.

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Stagger enemies to get an extra turn during the Bonus Phase.

The Power of the Visions

As has already been revealed, the Visions system is a large part of Final Fantasy Resonance, and they offer a massive degree of customization to your party. The Visions are all characters from past Final Fantasy titles, and for the sake of our hands-on, we had access to the Warrior of Light, Cloud, Terra, Zidane, and Noctis.

For the most part, each Vision can be considered a Class, and equipping one allows you to start earning MRP (Mastery Rank Points) after battle. As your Visions level up, not only will they learn new skills (both active and passive), but you’ll also be able to equip some of them when not equipping that Vision. Of course, each character will have a total AP cost they can’t exceed, so you have to make a choice about which skills you equip.

Beyond this, the characters themselves will learn new skills at specific levels, adding even more customization to each party member. At this early stage of the game, I was surprised by all of the available skills to me in battle, be it buffs, debuffs, support, or attack. All of which came in handy in the boss battle at the end, and I could already see some strategies, like raising the defense of one character and having them taunt the enemies.

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Every party member has their own Limit Bursts.

Admittedly, this was only a very small slice of what to expect when Final Fantasy Resonance launches at the end of October, but I’m incredibly encouraged by what I’ve seen and played so far, and I can’t wait to get my teeth into the Visions system and play around with all of the options available to me.