An Expert And A Noob Play ‘Final Fantasy Resonance’

While there are many fantastic Japanese role-playing game (JRPG, for short) series out there, and with apologies to Dragon Quest and Persona, Final Fantasy is the biggest and most important of them all. Every numbered entry in the main series is an event, and since almost every game is its own story (to date, there have been two main games to get direct sequels: X got X-2, and XII inexplicably got two sequels), there are swaths of new gamers dipping in every time a new game releases.

Despite that, it’s safe to say that Final Fantasy has somewhat lost its way, or at least what was once its identity. What started as a turn-based RPG has evolved, first into a more active-style combat system and then more recently into something bordering on an action game. This makes sense for Square Enix, the series’s developer, as turn-based combat has mostly, though not entirely, slipped from an important game genre into something more niche. Chasing the action trend that took over turn-based RPG’s spot with the Soulsborne games made financial sense, and it kept Final Fantasy from growing stale.

That said, there’s still a hunger for turn-based RPGs, and especially turn-based Final Fantasy games; the last mainline game to be strictly turn-based was 2001’s X. With that in mind, we arrive at Final Fantasy Resonance, the recently released (and relatively successful) spin-off that is a sort of remake/re-using of assets of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a mobile gacha game. Resonance is not asking the player to part with any money besides the initial price tag, and instead is a fully fleshed-out 30-to-40-hour turn-based RPG adventure through time, space, and Final Fantasy history.