Make no mistake. fantasy It’s an old school game. The game was conceived when Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was asked to replay Final Fantasy 6 for some promotional live broadcast or other event, and Sakaguchi realized “Hey, this is actually pretty good.” A new project was born.
“It was at this moment that I felt like I was returning to my origins,” Sakaguchi said of launching the seminal SNES classic, for which he designed and crafted the story. “I wanted to design a game in a similar style.”
The result is Fantasian, a staunchly traditional RPG that still has a Sakaguchist (to coin a phrase) sense of arrogance – it may be traditional, but it still wants to challenge the status quo and genre conventions. This time, however, it’s all about art.
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Sakaguchi reflects on the genre that has defined much of his career, and elaborates on the belief that role-playing games have begun to adapt to existing technology and become a story-driven genre. For example, he attributes the rise of action role-playing games to a shift in game mechanics to accommodate the visual effects that modern technology can achieve. This certainly fits with Final Fantasy, which, outside of Sakaguchi’s influence, has spent the past 20 years chasing the battle visuals of spin-off Advent Children.
But with “Fantasia,” Sakaguchi had a different kind of revolution in mind. As the genre moved in one direction, his still-residing revolutionary spirit sent him rushing in another direction – towards a new visual style that was deliberately more static. Although the immersion is not diminished at all.
“Ever since I was little, I’ve loved arts and crafts and handmade elements,” Sakaguchi explains. “I think that love of handmade objects and dioramas is the basis of a lot of what I do.”
From this starting point, the legendary creator began to think in detail about Gundam models, small plastic models of Gundam mecha, and the artistry involved. It’s so well thought out that it sounds almost rehearsed – although you can tell that’s not the case. It’s just deep-seated passion.
“Rather than seeing Gundam in CG or 2D animation… to me, the Gunpla format, or rather the interpretation and expression of Gunpla, is the most exciting,” he continued. “I find very detailed photos of Gunpla very attractive.
“So I think the handmade feel and touch is something that I’m very interested in. I want to bring that emotion and feeling into the world of video games.
The result is Fantasian’s unique artistic talent. Where PS1-era Final Fantasy games used pre-rendered CG backgrounds to great effect, Fantasian puts a new spin on the idea: carefully crafted real-world dioramas, then painstakingly photographed and then Real life images stitched together.
It’s unique, beautiful, and eye-catching. Beyond that, the game’s visual style is intentionally slow and simple. Sakaguchi said he wanted the style to stick with people, so he did away with things like flashy camera moves and combat animations. In my opinion, it’s been streamlined into something more akin to SNES-era Final Fantasy, but with a fascinatingly unique background art setting.
Beyond that, Fantasian is a pretty good role-playing game. Avid VG247 readers and Donaldson followers will know that I’m the co-founder of RPG Site, a website dedicated to the study and celebration of the genre. Fantasian actually released on Apple Arcade back in 2021, and that year, after being largely ignored by other stores due to the exclusivity of its mobile-based subscription service, RPG Site gave it a glowing review and then moved it to It’s called Game of the year. My point is: this is fine.
This new console version, unnecessarily subtitled “Neo Dimension,” is essentially the same game that previously launched in two parts on Apple Arcade – but it has both obvious and less obvious tweaks for consoles.
Driven by FF14 producer Naoki Yoshida (“a very dedicated and honest person,” Sakaguchi says), the publishing partnership with Square Enix means the game is optimized for the console platform and even has some Square Enix-inspired features Features, such as the ability to toggle Nobuo, Uematsu’s new battle music composition for Fantasia includes some classics from Final Fantasy history. But perhaps the biggest change comes in its difficulty.
The original version of Fantasian was balanced for true RPG system geeks, which is probably why the bad guys on the RPG Site loved it so much. This time around, the game offers “Normal” and “Hard” modes – with “Hard” equivalent to the original version and “Normal” for those more normal.
“While making games for Apple Arcade, I thought, that would be okay if Fantasia might be my last game. My final work. A retirement game, if you will. So, I made all the balance adjustments I personally wanted to see.
“In hindsight, though, the difficulty curve was very steep and unstable,” he added, using a very endearing term to describe a game that in its later stages could easily have you smashing your brand-new, valuable Thousands of dollars in iPhones.
“When we started thinking about bringing Fantasia to a wider audience, with Neo Dimension I looked back on my experiences with FF4 through FF6 and even Chrono Trigger.
“I don’t really want to say it’s aimed at casual users per se, but I think maybe having a different difficulty balance or difficulty curve would better appeal to the type of audience that wants to have fun and have a very satisfying experience. So, We took a close look at the entire game in preparation for Neo Dimension’s rebalancing, and tweaked and customized many of the normal mode encounters.
The result should be a more accessible game – one that should help more people experience those lovely dioramas, the charming story, the wonderful music by the incomparable Nobuo Uematsu, and some excellent, crunchy, unflinchingly traditional role-playing Game design.
After about an hour of playing the game on Nintendo Switch, I’m flooded with wonderful memories of the game on iOS. Yes, it has the hallmarks of a game built for mobile devices, but now it’s been condensed and crammed into the shape of a console. No doubt this is also an acquired taste. But it’s lovely – a game full of character, straight from the mind of one of the greatest RPG creators of all time. This is a game that should never be stuck on some phone-driven service, and I can’t wait for more people to play it.
Fantasia: Neo Dimension will be released on Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam later this year.
