Ever since the wizards at Square Enix gifted the world the HD-2D aesthetic, fans have been clamoring for a classic 2D Final Fantasy in the art style. That wait is over, as Final Fantasy Resonance is here, and I will just cut to the point: this is my favorite Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy XII. This RPG whisked me back to bygone days of being a kid, of carefree summer days grinding away for hours, and just sailing around the world in a cool airship, seeing what secrets I could find. I didn’t realize how much I needed a game like this again.
Final Fantasy Resonance adapts the first arc of the previously available mobile title, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, which has since been shuttered. Following the destruction of the kingdom’s Earth Crystal, Knights of the Kingdom of Grandshelt, Rain and Lasswell, are tasked by their king to track down the mysterious culprits, the menacingly armored Sworn Six, and attempt to stop the other massive crystals from being destroyed. For anyone like me who grew up with the 8- and 16-bit entries of the franchise, what follows over the course of the 35-45 hour adventure may not have the same political intrigue, gravitas, or emotional impact as more recent numerical entries, but captures the retro Final Fantasy story vibes. You will traverse the open world on the back of a chocobo and from the deck of your airship, gathering powerful allies, standing firm against powerful foes, and being shocked by twists and revelations (some better hidden than others).
The cast that rounds out the roster alongside Rain and Lasswell is one I largely enjoyed, from the spunky airship engineer Lid with her pet/creation, the mechanical chocobo robot Mechabow, to your typical stoic magic-wielder Nicol. The flirtatious Jake (who is basically just Edgar from FFVI) and his interactions, especially with Lid, would always result in a smile on my face. Out of the whole cast, the one that I wasn’t quite so high on, surprisingly, was Resonance’s main protagonist, Rain. I thought he was fine, just rather boring compared to the others, in general coming off more as a sort of generic shonen protagonist, suffering not from being a bad one, but one that simply was made less interesting thanks to the colorful cast surrounding him.
Fans have been treated to various ports of these 2D Final Fantasy games over the years, so playing a “new” one in 2026 just hit different. Resonance instantly scratched many of the same itches that IV, V, and VI did, especially V. Battles played out in classical turn-based fashion, though it incorporated some hallmarks of more recent entries, like the Stagger mechanic and a turn order bar, similar to the one in FFX, which is always on display, allowing you to plan your turns perhaps a bit better than you could in the old days. Still, even with the various modern conveniences, Resonance radiates nostalgia, and the first time that I heard the victory fanfare and my party just struck a pose, it hit home just how long it’s been since we’ve had that in a new Final Fantasy game, and it genuinely brought a small tear to my eye. I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed all of this.
These sorts of realizations and reflections were common, where I would just get a giant grin on my face and feel like I was 10 again, lying on the ground playing these games where my only worry in the world was how long I could play these games before I’d have to turn them off and go do homework. Moments like taking off in the airship Enterprise, exploring the newly opened world again, or summoning mainstays like Bahamut and Ifrit and watching their giant attacks play out on screen.
Perhaps what surprised me the most during my playthrough was just how much Resonance reminded me of Final Fantasy V, the entry that I have replayed by far the most times (with the exception of the FFVI Open World Randomizer). From similar story beats (elemental crystals being destroyed), more jovial and silly interactions between the cast (Lasswell getting chased and run over by Mechabow being a personal favorite), and even some familiar faces, Resonance almost felt like an evolution of Bartz and company’s adventure from 1992. This connective thread continues to flow through to the system that gives Resonance its name—the Visions and their Resonance Attacks.
Behaving a bit like a job system, the Visions are sort of like the spirits of past Final Fantasy heroes and heroines that you can equip to your party, allowing them to appear and pull off attacks alongside your party in fights, leveling them up to unlock new abilities and powers. Instead of equipping a Black Mage job, for instance, I would instead set Shantotto from Final Fantasy XI to someone, or if I wanted Rain to hit really hard, he would get Cloud. Each Vision can be leveled up to unlock stronger and additional attacks and abilities themselves, but also a character will gain mastery with the various Visions while equipped, granting them skills that they can take with them after the fact. This lets you mix and match abilities, buffs, and other bonuses, allowing you to tailor each character how you see fit. As an example, I made Lasswell my big stagger builder and damage dealer, who by the end of the game could take multiple actions as well as unleash his limit breaks every turn. As someone who will devour any job system an RPG gives me, this alone would have endeared me to Resonance, and I spent many hours just relaxing and grinding mastery levels to tinker around with my party just how I wanted them.
As I touched on a moment ago, Visions come with one more nifty ability—their Resonance attacks. During combat, when all enemies on the screen are currently staggered, it will trigger a bonus phase where all of your characters get a free action and concludes with you getting to choose one of your Visions to perform their Resonance Attack. Think of these as a cross between a Summon and a Limit Break. Each Vision’s attack will have different properties, such as dealing different elemental-type damage or physical instead of magic damage, or no damage at all, with some serving as great healing options. For all of the Visions that are from previous FF games, you are treated to fully 3D-rendered video, and some, like watching Squall load a chamber and then let loose his Blasting Zone attack or Bartz and Boko going off on someone with a flurry of blows, never got old. Having all these tools in my arsenal—the Visions, summons, and Resonance attacks—I had to really rely on them, as playing this game on Expert mode gave me the serious challenge that I’ve been missing from these games for a while now.
On Expert, I died a lot. I had to learn and master the systems. I had to strategize and really nail my character builds. Often, on the endgame and post-game fights, I would start the fight just to cast Libra or learn what the enemy’s weaknesses and resistances were before restarting my game (Resonance is gracious with its autosaves) just so I could retool and reallocate my Visions and skills around. It. Was. Glorious. I actually used my items! Me, someone who completely falls in the “I can’t use that Elixir because I may need it for the final boss” guy category, would actually use good items on normal bosses. It felt like what I remember Kefka’s assault on Narshe being back when I first played FFVI. If you want a more relaxing experience, just enjoying the story, side quests, and characters, Resonance still has you covered with both its Casual and Normal difficulty options, too.
Visually, Resonance adopts a similar HD-2D representation to the Dragon Quest Erdrick Trilogy HD-2D remakes from the past couple of years. Nearly all the gorgeous, detailed pixel art focuses on the character, monster, and Esper summon sprites, while the rest of the world uses more traditional 3D models and textures. While it’s not my ideal approach (give me everything in an HD-2D art style similar to Octopath, please), what they’ve done looks absolutely jaw-dropping. Seeing nostalgic Final Fantasy creatures like Marlboro’s or summons like Bahamut and Ramuh reminded me of the first time I saw the beasts back on my SNES. Some of the rendered videos also use a filter to give a rough sense that they’re made with pixels, too. It’s neat, I suppose, but I wouldn’t lose sleep if it’s an approach they don’t revisit.
Even with my adoration for Resonance, it isn’t a perfect game—no game ever is—and there were occasional issues or criticisms I had with it. Perhaps the biggest one is that the rendered videos for the Visions’ Resonance attacks and big Summons have some noticeable artifacting or just look a bit odd. These are the same ones used in the original Brave Exvius mobile game, and the resolution doesn’t hold up, and some of the models look rough. I don’t know what happened to Tidus’ face, but yeesh. Resonance’s story features some elements that haven’t aged as well and aren’t quite as endearing, such as the final big bad sort of coming out of nowhere or moments that I just wasn’t a fan of. One particular moment involved one of the main party breaking down due to them kicking someone’s ass too hard, and thinking they were just too good. All I could think of during this scene was, “Well, that’s kinda dumb.” Moments like these were rare and far between, thankfully.
Lastly, something I’d like to see added in a patch is the ability to make Visions appear only when using one of their attacks during combat, instead of being a constant hovering presence. They look awesome, but I find they detract from the main cast, and I’d love for them to come off more like a JoJo Stand, called out when needed, rather than a ghost watching everything you do.
Final Fantasy Resonance feels both like a celebration of this beloved series’ bygone 16-bit era and a potential rebirth of its classic style, as though someone just summoned Phoenix. Seeing familiar monster and boss sprites redone in the more richly detailed HD-2D style, finding my happy place grinding for mastery levels for hours, and tackling the plethora of side quests all filled my soul with happy feelings. I want, no, need, more of this style of Final Fantasy game to make a comeback, and considering Resonance is only a quarter of the story Brave Exvius told, I have every finger and toe crossed that the rest will eventually come. For every Final Fantasy fan like me, who finds themselves no longer in the spry ages of the youthful protagonists and instead have long passed grizzled mentors like Auron and Cid, even if you have been out of the fight for a long while now, do yourself a favor and hop on this airship for one more adventure. You won’t regret it. For everyone else, Final Fantasy Resonance will show you why us old folks all fell in love with these games in the first place.
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We were provided a review code by the game’s PR firm for this review.
