Final Fantasy dips back into the SNES golden era with Resonance

Final Fantasy is a lot different than it used to be. While many of the early Final Fantasy titles look and play similarly to each other, the series has since grown to encompass blockbuster games like Final Fantasy XVI and the gargantuan Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, which don’t play much like the classics. But there’s still an audience for retro RPGs and old-school Final Fantasy games, especially thanks to the HD-2D style that mixes gorgeous pixel art with detailed 3D graphics to great effect. Square Enix has made a bunch of HD-2D games already, like the remakes of early Dragon Quest titles, but this week, it’s launching the first HD-2D Final Fantasy game: Final Fantasy Resonance. Resonance, thanks to the HD-2D art, kind of looks like what the classic Final Fantasy games feel like in my memory, but I was surprised at how old-school Resonance feels to actually play, too — which, for the most part, is a good thing. In Resonance, I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around a big world map to get from place to place, tackling random battles along the way and investigating little sparkles to pick up items. The towns have a familiar feel, with the classic inn, item shop, and weapons shop setup. Similarly, battles are traditional turn-based fights, so I’ve found myself spending a lot of time in various battle menus to plan out my attacks. Enemies even flash right before they attack, just like in older RPGs. [Image: At times, Resonance can almost feel rudimentary; I’ve recently been working my way through Final Fantasy VII Remake again ahead of Revelation, and Remake’s action-heavy fights feel much more contemporary. But there’s something soothing about Resonance’s familiar patterns. I really like just grinding through some random baddies to level up. The story is pretty standard fare, at least during the 10 hours I’ve played. You play as Rain, a plucky blonde hero who is morally pure and fights for those less fortunate than him. After a great magical crystal is destroyed, you and your best bud Lasswell head out on an adventure to stop the destruction of other crystals. So far, Resonance’s story hasn’t done a lot to innovate on a familiar formula — I’ve already come across two people who have amnesia, a JRPG staple — but it all moves along breezily enough that it’s not a huge deal. Resonance isn’t all old-school, though, as there are a lot of modern touches. In fights, enemies have health bars and stagger bars, forcing you to be strategic instead of just mashing basic attacks; it’s usually smarter to whittle down a stagger bar by exploiting weaknesses through magic and skills. You can speed up fights and even skip long attack animations (of which there are many). On the world map, you can fast travel to any location you’ve already visited, which is especially useful during the multipart side quests. In dungeons, you can teleport from a save near a boss fight back to the entrance if you need to resupply before a big battle. [Image: Resonance also lets you bring in characters from other Final Fantasy games to aid you in battle. (It’s a holdover from Resonance’s roots as a mobile title; the game is an “adaptation” of the first story arc of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, which was shut down in 2024.) As you move through Resonance, you’ll recruit “Visions” of characters like Final Fantasy VI’s Terra Branford or Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife, and each of the game’s characters can “equip” one Vision to give them new moves in battle. Over time, while using a Vision with a Resonance character, you unlock more moves and abilities that you can use even when you don’t have that Vision equipped. It’s a clever system that offers a lot of possibilities for interesting builds, making the hunt for more Visions feel like more than just a way to get a hit of nostalgia. But I’m already getting sucked into Resonance like I used to with classic Final Fantasy titles. At one point, as I was nodding my head to heart-pumping music during an intense boss fight on a moving train, I realized I was completely absorbed by the game in a way that only a Final Fantasy can pull off. The game’s old-school structure with modern improvements lets Square Enix have it both ways, as the old-school approach sits comfortably alongside a big-budget game like Final Fantasy XVI. The series has come a long way since the games that Resonance uses as inspiration, but it pulls in enough from newer titles that playing it feels like enjoying the best of both worlds. Final Fantasy Resonance launches on October 22nd on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.