Final Fantasy Resonance review – HD-2D graphics at their best

Square Enix return to turn-based combat and 2D graphics for the latest Final Fantasy game, with an enjoyably retro spin-off featuring multiple heroes from the past.

The ironically named Final Fantasy, has spawned an almost unparalleled quantity of sequels and spin-offs since its first entry launched in 1987. You’d need to be a dedicated aficionado to remember all the numbered outings, CGI films, and offshoots that have appeared since, but unlike many long running series, Final Fantasy rarely reuses main characters and settings, even if there are familiar names and species that make up its background ecosystem.

There you’ll find the rideable, birdlike chocobos; Moogles whose speech is peppered with the word ‘kupo!’; a person called Cid who flies and maintains airships; and more often than not some sort of intrigue involving magic crystals. Other than that, new Final Fantasy games tend to inhabit their own worlds that have little crossover with past instalments. Contrastingly, Final Fantasy Resonance, the latest non-numbered release, positively revels in its cameos and callbacks.

This is a ‘retelling’ of free-to-play mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, which means it uses that game’s heroes, setting, and portions of its story, while changing the fundamental mechanics that drove it. So it now features free roaming open world exploration and its gacha underpinnings have been removed. It does retain some of its faux 16-bit pixel art presentation though, and to excellent effect.

The story features a party of spiky haired heroes trying to save eight mystical crystals, whose continued existence prevents the world falling into chaos. A big bad is out to destroy them and in order to prevent that you engage in the time honoured tradition of exploration, side quests, and levelling up, fuelled by random monster encounters. This may be a reinvention of the mobile game that inspired it, but it’s also a doggedly traditional Japanese role-player.

That extends to characters that speak with total, unironic sincerity at all times. In a world otherwise full of knowing cynicism, its ingenuousness is welcome, and somewhat touching, with brave knight Lasswell regularly moved to tears. It even has a sense of humour, albeit a very gentle one, and its themes of idealism and sticking to your principles are as warmly familiar as Disney films’ support for facing your fears and being yourself.

Combat is turn-based, with the expected status effects and elemental weaknesses complemented by enemies’ stagger bars, which you whittle down to leave them briefly open to extra damage. Each party member can also equip a Vision; a hero drawn from across the whole canon of Final Fantasy games. Unlocked in crystalline Sanctums of Light, each comes with a three question pop quiz about the hero’s actions, and the closer your answers are to what they actually did in their game, the greater affinity they’ll have with your party.

Each Vision’s character class governs the skills they bring to the party, and they level up alongside team members, gradually adding new perks and abilities to be deployed in combat. You can also summon godlike Espers, another long term feature of the series, also known as aeons or eidolons. They act autonomously once conjured, becoming a useful damage sink for tougher enemies, and deploying their own graphically intensive powers.

Visions’ special moves are similarly screen filling and give an excuse to render some of their heroes in 4K, contrasting nicely with the blocky HD-2D styling of the rest of the game. It gives combat extra visual flare, although the ability to skip those deliberately excessive animations is also welcome, with most battles fairly workmanlike and straightforward, apart from the odd spike in difficulty.

Those mostly occur during boss fights, and when you recruit new Espers, each of which you’ll have to beat into submission to prove your party’s worthiness. Those are times you need to think more carefully about elemental attacks, healing, and timing, using a bar at the top of the screen to see the order of play, and whether any enemies are charging a special attack. You can defend against those, but even better is to stop them in their tracks by hacking away at their stagger bar.

Music and voice acting are both high quality and while side quests are text only, conversations in the main story are fully voiced, a higher resolution anime style portrait of characters accompanying their dialogue. It works well, and while we didn’t find ourselves getting too swept up in all the emoting, its characters all have discernible personalities and their own agendas within the over-arching mission.

There’s a reason the popularity of Japanese role-players is so enduring, and that’s because their gameplay remains compelling, their sprawling maps and narratives happily sucking up entire weekends. They may have predictable elements, but that’s part of the fun, the familiarity of the format working with the fresh plot and characters, and in Resonance’s case, a whole load of fan service callbacks to Final Fantasy heroes past.

Its combat lacks the immediacy of more recent Final Fantasies’ semi-real-time Active Time Battle system, and if you’re looking for innovation, you’d best look elsewhere, but if you’re in the mood for a polished and unapologetically old school role-playing game, this is exactly what you want.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix and Lancarse
Release Date: 22nd October 2026
Age Rating: 12

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