Any JRPG fans sleeping on Fantasian Neo Dimension need to wake up. Created by Mistwalker, the developer founded and run by the genius creator of early Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi. Throughout the whole game, I stayed just as engaged as the opening scenes. Not a single element of the game was in any way tedious or frustrating, only rewarding. I could write entire gush articles on any single thing that makes it stand out whether it’s story or gameplay. But today’s gush article is on the element that I think hit me the most, how Fantasian perfectly feels like a JRPG from the mid-90s to early 2000’s, what I would call the ‘Golden Era’.
I must admit my bias. Final Fantasy X is my favorite RPG. I don’t think I’ve seen a single JRPG recreate the quality of FFX since it came out. A lot of modern JRPGs put an emphasis on multiple game mechanics or variety of play. All FFX had was one of the best stories ever written coupled with battle mechanics that keep you engaged throughout the whole thing. And I would argue that’s why it’s the best. There were no distractions from the game’s strongest qualities. This is exactly what Fantasian Neo Dimension understands.
The Formula for One of the Best Stories in the World
Fantasian does everything it needs to to be an amazing story. I acknowledge that storytelling is a subjective art form. What you deem to be the best will most likely be different from my classification. But as a guy trying to write his own best story in the world, it seems quite simple. Write something that captures people’s hearts and minds and then transforms them, giving the observer a completely new perspective. And you have to make sure that you’re presenting the story in a way that makes it easy for the observer to grasp. This is usually where people screw it up, especially me.
Having a profound idea can come from any whiff of inspiration but being able to actually express that idea effectively is not so rudimentary. One great method is one that old-school JRPGs used all the time, they delivered their often extremely complex stories to you through the lens of capable and likable characters.
Fantasian characters have depth and agency
The Importance of Great Characters
I’ve mentioned Final Fantasy X but Final Fantasy has had great characters from the start. My first introduction was Final Fantasy VII which has characters so recognisable that even people who’ve never played it know who they are. Chrono Trigger is another one with great characters, Xenogears too. Hey, would you look at that, the creator of Fantasian worked on all of these games. The one thing Hironobu Sakaguchi always brings to the table is his impeccable quality of storytelling.
Back when games dared to go no further than a bandicoot jumping on plants, Sakaguchi was making games depicting the complete deconstruction and reconstruction of one’s psyche and identity. And he delivered that story in a way that changed my seven-year-old mind forever.
The villains are menacing and intimidating
The characters in Fantasian radiate with detail and charm. And they provide the perfect conduit for expressing deeper ideas in the plot like the balance between order and chaos in the universe. Each character is important to the plot in their own unique way and has gripping emotional attachments and motivations. Sakaguchi just knows how to write compelling characters and that’s the key he uses to unlock such brilliance for satisfying story-telling. But the harken to great old-school JRPG storytelling is not the only thing tethering Fantasian to its golden era roots.
Visuals
One thing I love about PS1-specific JRPGs is the art of the pre-rendered backgrounds. Glorious pieces of art upon which become the stage you play on. Some other games like Resident Evil had them too and they were just as beautiful. When 8-bit and SNES-style sprite art started to come back into fashion in the indie world, I started getting excited for it to evolve into the pre-rendered background era. Alas, that never happened. But Mistwalker read my mind and instead of making a game with beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds, they thought of a way to evolve the idea. But why do I like pre-rendered backgrounds in the first place?
The dioramas are so detailed
The Majesty of the Pre-rendered Background
What I love about pre-rendered backgrounds is that they were a way to make game worlds look real at a time when tech limitations made it pretty much impossible. Nowadays, games can be almost photorealistic. This is probably why no one has seen a need to revisit pre-rendered backgrounds. This is a shame because I feel like there’s a certain charm missing from high-fidelity 3D environments. I liken it to the difference between looking at a really nice painting and watching a movie with really good effects. They’re both great but fundamentally different experiences. You wouldn’t say that because movies exist, there’s no point in appreciating a good painting.
Fantasian isn’t afraid to get goofy at points
To some, I bet seeing the low-poly 3D models of characters from Resident Evil 2 or FFVIII on these painted backgrounds might be a bit jarring. But as a kid, when these games were peak graphics, it didn’t feel weird. It felt like I was really in a piece of art, traversing the brushstrokes.
I have a painting of a Japanese beachfront on my wall and I’ll often find myself just staring at it. Visualizing myself standing in the water or sitting on the bank. Games like FFIX turn that feeling into an actual experience. It’s different from playing a game where I have full control over the camera. There’s something mystical about it. Mistwalker knows that feeling well. Well enough to innovate on it and modernize it. Perfectly recreating that feeling but with something new and unique.
A Completely New Style
Every environment in Fantasian Neo Dimension is a real-life, handmade diorama that they digitized and turned into in-game 3D environments. And I love it! It harkens back to a time of playing Warhammer on a battlefield I made with my cousin out of polystyrene. It also perfectly captures that same feeling I get from pre-rendered backgrounds.
It’s that blending of in-game assets with real-world assets that give it its charm. A type of immersion you can’t get from high-fidelity games because you know that the environments were literally made in the real world. That feeling of staring at a painting and visualizing yourself being there is present in Fantasian but with more depth. This melding of early PlayStation era and modern graphics makes Fantasian one of the best art styles I’ve seen in a game.
It looks so amazing!
Gameplay
Though great turn-based games – like Sea of Stars and Baldur’s Gate 3 – are still coming out, they’re definitely not as prevalent as they used to be. Even Final Fantasy ditched turn-based combat a while back. This has given turn-based a kind of old-timey feel. Turn-based was once the pinnacle of RPG gaming. And one thing I loved about the era of turn-based combat is that no game played the same. It’s not like other genres.
In every shooter, you’re expected to point a gun at something and shoot it. In every platformer, you’re jumping on platforms. Every hack ‘n’ slash has you attacking enemies with a sword or axe or whatever. In every turn-based RPG, you’re playing a completely different game.
Yes, there is an airship and you can pilot it!
Some mechanics are in every game, like choosing your attacks from a menu and waiting for your opponents to attack before getting your next go. But that’s it. How you strategize is completely different for each game. Turn-based RPGs are the perfect merge of action and puzzle games. Because no puzzle game is expected to be the same, they need their own unique way of solving the puzzles or else they’re just a sequel to whatever game they’re copying. Fantasian’s combat system follows this same logic.
Fantasian Is No Push-Over
Following turn-based traditions, Fantasian can both feel like a game from the early 2000s while also being completely its own thing. It sounds paradoxical but that’s what makes turn-based such a good genre. You can’t get away with making some carbon copy, you have to have a battle system that’s intricate enough that your players feel like geniuses when they find a winning strategy. And boy does Fantasian facilitate that feeling.
Never before has an RPG had me fully staring at nothing while running through tactics in my head for minutes mid-battle. Some of the boss battles had me feeling like I was playing chess. Trying to find the perfect combination of actions with the turns I have left just to survive the next attack.
You can’t find better bosses
How the Battles Work
Every time you get into a random battle, there will be several enemies in specific locations. You have a plethora of different types of attacks that hit the battlefield in certain ways, and the goal is to hit as many enemies as possible per attack to maximize the amount of damage.
If there’s a bunch of enemies in a straight line, use a straight attack and it’ll hit them all. If a bunch of enemies are grouped together, use an area attack. And a lot of your attacks can curve, so it can be tricky to find the perfect attack that hits the most enemies per move. This method of battle engages the perfectionist in me. I would spend way too long trying to tweak every arc of my attacks to make it fit in just one more enemy.
Look at that nice curve
This type of combat makes your moveset so much more involved. In most turn-based RPGs, your moveset doesn’t really change that much as you progress. You’ll unlock more magic and abilities but they’re usually only upgraded versions of the abilities you already have. In Fantasian, most skills have a unique way of affecting the battlefield, so it isn’t always the best strategy to just use your most powerful attacks.
If you groaned earlier at the mention of random battles, Mistwalker heard you. Random battles have been a jump-scare annoyance in turn-based games from the beginning. This is another area where Mistwalker innovated and with one of the best ideas yet.
The Dimengeon
How the Dimengeon works is that instead of getting into every battle at random, it stockpiles every enemy you encounter so that you can choose to battle them later. As the Dimengeon fills up with enemies, it eventually gets full and you have to choose between fighting all the enemies you’ve collected so far, or turning the Dimengeon off and going back to random battles.
The battles are so satifying
This is a genius way of getting around the annoyance of random battles. Instead of being forced into a fight, Fantasian gives you options. Do you want to fight these enemies now or wait until you’ve accumulated more so the battle is harder? You have to fight them eventually but this option pretty much acts as a variable difficulty setting that you control on the fly. Do you think you’re good enough to fight a full Dimengeon? Every time you get to a new area with stronger enemies, you have to cater your expectations to the environment.
In Fantasian, the very act of getting into battle needs you to strategize. This mechanic blew my mind. As much as I love turn-based RPGs, random battles were always a chore. I would sigh every time I got to Mihen Highroad in FFX because I knew it was time to get into a tonne of random battles. At no point did I feel like that in Fantasian.
The simple act of giving you the choice of when to enter battle fixes the entire issue. What’s more, the game incentivizes you to push yourself and accept harder battles because of how the battlefields work. If there are more enemies on the battlefield, all your attacks will be more effective because there are more targets. The whole combat system is built around having more enemies on screen.
This makes every encounter so satisfying. And the boss fights are some of the best and most challenging I’ve ever seen in an RPG. Each one uses the combat mechanics to provide you with a unique puzzle. You can’t just brute force your way all the time, you have to truly find the right strategy.
I’m already feeling the allure back to Fantasian and I beat it only a month ago
The Most Familiar Aspect
Fantasian does a lot to make itself feel like a golden era JRPG but it doesn’t stop there. Everything it does makes it not only reminiscent of those games I love but elevates the areas that make them great.
All those old-school games are still great to play today but I have to admit my bias. I have immense nostalgia for those early FFs and games like Chrono Trigger. But I haven’t responded as much to modern turn-based games. I loved Sea of Stars but I couldn’t get into Persona 5. I feel nothing for any modern Pokemon games.
There are only so many random battles you can get into before you feel like you’ve tread this territory too many times. The most satisfying thing about Fantasian is that it didn’t just feel like one of those old games. The experience of playing it felt new. Just like those old games felt when I played them for the first time. The most reminiscent thing about Fantasian Neo Dimension is that I can already tell that I’m going to be just as nostalgic for it in twenty years as I am nostalgic for FFX now.
