© MISTWALKER/SQUARE ENIX
I have been playing games designed by the father of Final Fantasy for over three decades—and it did not prepare me for the boss I faced in FANTASIAN‘s Tokyo Game Show 2024 demo.
FANTASIAN Neo Dimension is the newest game from Hironobu Sakaguchi. Released originally on iOS, the game is finally making it to consoles later this year. It’s a throwback to his games of the 80s and 90s and an attempt to improve on a nearly four decades old formula.
On the throwback side, FANTASIAN has all the trappings of a classic JRPG. It’s the story and world design you’d expect. It’s also got things like random attacks and a standard turn-based battle system.
However, it’s got plenty of new additions as well. Instead of painted or sprite-made backgrounds, it’s got reproductions of incredibly detailed and hauntingly beautiful dioramas that give the game a whole new ambiance. On the battle side, instead of taking each random attack as it comes, you can store up to 30 enemies worth in a pocket dimension—fighting them all at once when you want. The trick is that most of your characters’ attacks can hit multiple enemies. Some hit everyone in a line. Others hit everyone in a group. There are also various buffs spread across the field that, when hit by an attack, make your characters even stronger.
I was so enjoying the quality of life changes in the demo that I was unprepared for the boss fight at the end of it. I’ve been playing turn-based RPGs since the 90s—many of them by Sakaguchi. I thought I was prepared—even when the people manning the booth warned me that the boss would be challenging.
I’ve been asked not to spoil the boss’ gimmick (and had to cut the moment I figured it out from the embedded video of my playthrough.) Still, I will say that you cannot win the battle if you can’t figure it out. And even after I did, I was barely able to claim victory—only surviving because the demo’s item menu included way more phoenix feathers and elixirs than you would ever have at that point in the actual game.
If this is standard practice for each boss—that each has a specific game mechanic you must fully understand and exploit to gain victory—I’m excited to play the final release of this one. If classic Final Fantasys are your jam, and you want to put your turn-based battle skills to the test, you’ll be blown away by FANTASIAN Neo Dimension.
FANTASIAN Neo Dimension is scheduled for release on December 5, 2024, for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
