Fantasian Neo Dimension review – New-ish, not Neo.

This has been a really interesting game track since its reveal and release for Apple Arcade. Creator of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, has helped birth one of the most beloved video game franchises of all time. Fantasian Neo Dimension is the reuniting of Final Fantasy’s IP owner, Square Enix, and the series iconic creator. This is their first time working together after a rather nasty breakup in the early 2000s. Fantasian is even available on all modern consoles and PC. Do we have a return to form? Is this an alternate timeline’s Final Fantasy XI? The short answer is sort of. The long answer is our review of the PS5 version.

I’m not someone particularly enthused by modern Final Fantasy. This is necessary context when talking about Fantasian Neo Dimension. An isometric RPG with pre-rendered backgrounds, harkening back to Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX, but with the twist that the backgrounds consist ofl handmade dioramas. Literal arts and crafts with some lite image editing used to create the world you explore in FND. I have a lot of criticisms about this game but you will never convince me they didn’t make art. This feels like the RPG take on art styles like Ufouria 2: The Saga or Yoshi’s Crafted World with a ton of felt and crafts. It’s clear a lot of detail and effort went into this game and its art design.

Unfortunately what comes with that art style is a mixed bag. By no means is FND bad. It’s just a little undercooked. This feels like a mobile game given an HD remaster, because it literally is. There are a lot of things in the game that bring everything to a “good but not great” vibe and that applies to damn near everything. In discussing the game with another editor, it sort of dawned on me that this feels like a PlayStation 2 era RPG done by a different team than the main studio. It feels like Sakaguchi split after Final Fantasy X and made a different Final Fantasy XI.

But what is the story of Fantasian, the driving force for experiencing the journey? It starts with what I think is a callback to Final Fantasy VII. A cool anime boy fighting a laser-shooting giant robot, the anime boy gets a headache, and then he blows up a reactor before panning the camera back to show the city and game’s logo. The game is now focused on the amnesiac Leo, that cool anime boy, and his journey to figure out why he was in the machine world, blowing up a reactor. He meets a girl in the opening town, Kina, who seems to be one of the only humans who can natively cast magic.

The two end up on a quest across the land, battling monsters, meeting allies, solving problems, and discovering the truth behind the machine world and Kina’s destiny. Along the way you discover that a dark figure named Vam the Malevolent is after the Divine Artifacts for unknown purposes. You’ll meet a colorful crew of delinquents, misfits, and sweeties along the way. The cool anime boy, the naive sweetheart healer, the proper but noble princess, or the old sea captain, and more. None of these party members break new ground in RPG characters but they’re all fun and endearing. I think of it like the 16-bit Final Fantasy games where the story isn’t particularly unique but the character interactions make the journey something a little more special.

The opening being the exception, the early sections of the game aren’t particularly interesting as you spend the first couple hours running around En, a plain dirt town, with little to no answers about what happened. It immediately focuses on Leo’s past and his amnesia, completely ignoring the machine world. In fact most of the plot in the first twenty hours is hardly about the machine world. They occasionally bring it up and there’s some mystery about it being tied to Leo and his family sprinkled throughout but it’s mostly about the characters you meet along the way. Once you meet the character Cheryl, you spend nearly 5-6 hours focused entirely on her and her admittedly bittersweet story but her status as royalty is what moves the plot along. It feels like somewhat of a callback to the encounters with Sephiroth throughout Final Fantasy VII. The problem is that the fights with Vam never amount to anything as you are forced to lose every time.

Occasionally Leo and Kina will team up with other characters like the old sea captain or the mystery spirit beast user. It almost elicited vibes of Final Fantasy IV with a rotating cast, that is without outright killing them. These are real characters that talk to and care about each other. There’s a love triangle between some of the characters and it’s kind of cute. That spirit beast user is a bit of a hardass but he’s appreciative when you help out and has a cute demon dog familiar. I think the moments along the journey are enjoyable but you’re always thinking about why the first 20 hours have very little to do with the demons and the machine world. It’s like spoiling the end game dungeons in Final Fantasy IV or the twist with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII at the beginning of the games and just never talking much about it. That may not be your cup of tea depending on what you want from RPGs.

This may be considered some minor spoilers but I’ll be vague. There’s a point around twenty hours in where two of the characters finally enter the machine world. They’re both given massive reveals to their pasts and that segment lasts about thirty minutes. It then switches back to Leo and he now goes on a five hour excursion involving getting caught by the royal guards, working with a thief to escape a coliseum, and saving the thief’s hometown. What happened to those giant reveals with those other characters? The machine world is constantly dangled along like a carrot as a grave threat that has ties to Leo. But the constant stopping to start a new story with a new character gets a bit annoying. I bring up Final Fantasy VI or IX which I think do a better job pacing out characters and ties to stories, even with split parties.

That actually brings me to the battles. Fantasian Neo Dimension’s special mechanic is the Dimengine (Dimension-Engine) which lets you “store” random encounters and fight them later in one large batch to gain large swaths of items, money, and experience. The problem with the system is the repetition of lengthy standard battles with slightly jank menu controls. L2 is set to standard attack, right on the D-Pad is how you open your menu, and R2 is a quick open for whatever the most recent action you took. Despite being so simple, you fumble around because you just wish you had quicker access to your abilities. But the game has an Auto Menu Open setting but it’s off by default, turn that on. However, unique to Fantasian Neo Dimension is the option to swap some of the uninteresting battle themes with music of the modern Final Fantasy series. I chose the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster option which swaps the standard battle theme with Final Fantasy I’s, midbosses with Battle on the Big Bridge from Final Fantasy V, and I appreciate that as a long time fan.

But to be honest, the length and number of standard battles leaves me feeling exhausted when taking all these detours. The locations you visit are standard RPG fare with nothing out of the ordinary, most of the time. The meandering is kind of boring as you constantly stop for long battles with minimal focus on the aforementioned Vam and machine world. There is one bright side to the battles though: another unique mechanic to Fantasian is the ability to curve certain spells and abilities.It feels good to damage a straight row with Leo and then curve a Holy shot with Kina to take out like five or six enemies. It gets a bit repetitious but there are some very creative scenarios that capitalize on these skills. There’s a series of rival fights with a sibling group who are straight out of a tokusatsu show. Every battle with them has a series of challenges like robots that aim at both parties and change their aim after being attacked directly. All of the bosses are a highlight of this game when played on Normal. They’re definitely where I had the most fun in combat as the challenge is just right.

I’ve had a hard time trying to love Fantasian Neo Dimension but I appreciate what it’s doing. As I said before, I don’t enjoy the recent changes to Final Fantasy. I don’t enjoy the mainline games trying to be Devil May Cry, focused solely on the main character and making sure you’re never far from mashing Square and Triangle. FND speaks to what I’m looking for but it just doesn’t quite make it. I wish a game like this got the kinds of budgets modern Final Fantasy got. It’s artistically intriguing but the occasional blurry background, repetitious battles, and complete ignorance of the overall story, this needed a bit more. What’s here is a pretty good game with an endearing party of characters who are voice acted with a good cast. The Final Fantasy I battle theme doesn’t stop making me smile. When there’s an adorable love triangle or a sick boss fight with Battle on the Big Bridge blaring, it hits me. I miss classic Final Fantasy. I missed goofy groups of misfits going on a journey, meeting a Cid, and sometimes you kill God.

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