After its release on Apple Arcade/iOS in 2021, Mistwalker’s latest turn-based JRPG finally sees a full console and PC release with Fantasian Neo Dimension! This enhanced edition of the game comes as a complete package containing both parts of the original mobile game along with several additional features and goodies to further enhance the experience.
Fantasian originated mainly from its lead producer and writer, JRPG legend Hironobu Sakaguchi, who was inspired to create a game reminiscent of his work on SNES and PS1 era Final Fantasy games with a touch of modern spin. While the mobile version was originally developed by Mistwalker with help from Arzest, Fantasian Neo Dimension has been brought to the current gen of gaming platforms by none other than Square Enix.
The New Dimension
This updated rerelease of Fantasian adapts an iOS game for modern consoles with plenty of additional features. While you might think a mobile game might have a rough transition to console graphically, most aspects of Fantasian already do a decent amount to mask this. While made in the Unity engine, Mistwalker opted to use pre-rendered backgrounds, a tactic common especially among JRPGs of yesteryear that often made games punch above their weight class visually.
Fantasian features dozens of large-scale dioramas crafted by hand to make up the bulk of the game’s backgrounds, and this painstaking effort shines brilliantly during the adventure. While it at times makes the game have a somewhat oversaturated color palette, Fantasian carries a distinct and pleasant-looking aesthetic that gives it that welcome sense of wonder while exploring its realms. This worked very well for making the game not look cheap or underpowered on mobile devices, but it translates to HD quite nicely too. While the game’s character models may look fairly dated by comparison, the backgrounds make up for this by giving it a visual aesthetic that can be absolutely gorgeous in spots, with a unique and memorable look. It helps that there are a lot of conceptually memorable locales throughout as well.
Maybe I’m a Lion
The story of Fantasian Neo Dimension follows Leo, a white-haired young man who begins the game with amnesia after having warped between the human and machine realms. Along the way, he recruits several allies from all walks of life, ranging from the poor to the rich, from multiple alternate dimensions, all of whom have their own little motivations and backstories. Their goal is to stop a divine being known as Vam the Malevolent, a mysterious ultra-powerful entity from another dimension who has been corrupting the world with toxic machines that run off of dark human emotion.
Ultimately, the main story of Fantasian Neo Dimension isn’t a particularly strong draw. There’s some intrigue throughout involving the nature of humanity, gods, machines, and the like, but it only seldom felt like it was really saying much with it, to say nothing of its at times heavy-handed writing style. Much of the game’s first act operates as a fairly standard adventure with a few encounters with Vam and his creations along the way, and Vam himself is hardly a compelling villain in any regard, whether it be regarding his motivations or any intrigue via his presence in the story. The first act is also rather linear and straightforward.
Fantasian was originally released in two parts, which Neo Dimension combines into a relatively seamless single entity. The game’s second act (the much longer of the two) is a far more open endeavor for several story reasons, reminiscent of some of Sakaguchi’s other works like Final Fantasy VI.
Rather than a linear plot structure, you have a lot more options in how to approach progression before tackling the endgame. This makes the story instead feel more like a series of subplots and vignettes to some extent, and while there is a central end goal that drives much of the narrative in the second half, the tension ultimately felt somewhat low for this section. Many of these subplots are much more intrinsically tied to the characters at the center of each.
I also have to make mention of the game’s method of storytelling: while there are plenty of standard cutscenes, there are also a lot of flashbacks which are written in a more novel-esque format. While I wouldn’t mind them if they occurred periodically, I felt there to be a few too many of them placed in rather jarring spots, which eventually disrupted the flow of the game’s story in favor of often unsubtle and slightly excessive exposition.
Ensemble
I’m of a couple different minds when it comes to the cast of Fantasian Neo Dimension. In some ways, I found them underwhelming. Leo is something of a run-of-the-mill protagonist who doesn’t really drive much of the story, and a lot of his character involves a backstory involving the journey of his father, which made for more interesting developments than any of Leo’s own. It’s a bit of a shame too, because he shows something of a suave side to his personality in a few flashbacks from before he loses his memories, but rarely demonstrates those character traits in the story proper.
His supporting cast has some more personality, but are otherwise fairly unspectacular. A few of the game’s supporting party members have much more interesting backstories of their own, and the game does have a share of genuinely compelling scenes with them, but I can’t say that any of the cast really stood out to me as having especially riveting character arcs or particularly high moments. The potential was there given those better cutscenes, but the character plots rarely hit particularly high marks, and little about the game’s narrative stuck with me in the end.
What does redeem the game’s cast of characters for me is their dialogue amongst each other. At times it’s a bit stiff (particularly early on), but once the game gets going there are a lot of scenes with multiple characters interacting with each other that can be quite amusing. Each character has enough personality to make for some really fun little back-and-forths. Quite a few exchanges between the main party made me unironically laugh, and the comedic nature of these scenes did a lot more to endear me to Fantasian’s cast than much of its main story. Fantasian is not an inherently comedic game and it has some genuinely emotionally compelling parts here and there, but I found its cast most consistently enjoyable during its times of levity.
Battle Mode
Beyond its gorgeous and unique backdrops, the appeal of Fantasian Neo Dimension most lies in the game’s battle system. On the surface, it resembles that of the classic JRPG model with your three party members on one side and a slew of enemies on the other as you take turns smacking each other, with turn order indicated on the bottom-right of the screen, but there’s more to uncover here to actually grasp its depths.
Very few of your skills actually cover the entire screen; instead, any attacks that hit more than one enemy travel in a line or an arc, meaning you have to line them up to be the most efficient. Enemies will also block certain attacks from hitting enemies behind them, though you also have some aerial area-of-effect attacks that can work around this (and which hit clusters of enemies as well). Stuff like weaknesses and buffs/debuffs matter a lot in this game, as only three characters in your party mean every turn is valuable and damage hurts you even more.
Once you get to the game’s second half, you get the ability to swap between the active party and the benched party. It expands the range of options in a given turn considerably yet often carries enough opportunity cost to usually feel like a meaningful decision that warranted careful consideration, giving the combat depth. I think I used this feature in Fantasian Neo Dimension more than I have in almost any other JRPG I’ve played that actually has it simply because of how handy it often was. It helps that every character is fun to use in spots and has at least some context in which they are particularly useful, despite some characters being generally more useful than others (e.g. you get a party member named Ez who I swear would be overpowered in so many other games given how ridiculous his support capability gets). This coupled with the game’s skill trees that you unlock partway through the game gives a pretty solid wealth of options to tinker and work with, and you’re definitely going to need them.
Neo Dimengeon
Fantasian Neo Dimension uses the tried and true random encounters of JRPGs of yesteryear. Where it stands out in its encounter system however is via the game’s Dimengeon Machine, a feature that allows you to store encounters with enemy types you’ve fought before into a pocket dimension in order to fight them later. The Dimengeon Machine has a limited storage capacity though, and you will need to clear every stored enemy at once sooner or later.
This might sound like it would be more difficult to fight dozens of enemies all at once rather than in separate chunks, but I found this to not be the case. Enemies don’t spawn all at once during these fights but rather in clusters, making Dimengeon battles more of a gauntlet. The turn order in the Dimengeon battles is typically a lot more favorable to the player, giving you enough turns to stay ahead of the enemies so long as you dispatch them quickly enough to not let them build up turns. Enemies also spawn in denser clusters, making them more vulnerable to area-of-effect attacks than they would be with their usual battle formations. Since you can initiate these fights on your own terms, you can always wait till you’re at a save point to take them on. Finally, various little crystals spawn in these battles which you can break to get neat little buffs like attack up, status cure for your entire party, and even free actions. These battles are still fun, but a lot easier to deal with than they sound.
As such, I found it a lot more resource-efficient to fight enemies with a full or nearly-full load all at once rather than via individually spawning mobs for nearly the entire game (especially since you heal to full after a level up and these give lots more experience points). It’s also just more time-efficient, as the game’s encounter rate can otherwise be annoyingly high. There were a few points when I found it to be tough to deal with a large mob of stored enemies, but for the most part the mob encounters in this game were pretty easy to deal with even in large waves.
On the other hand…
This Game Is Still Hard
The discrepancy between the difficulty of Fantasian’s regular encounters and its bosses is absolutely staggering. This game earned a reputation for being a very challenging JRPG, and it’s almost entirely to its bosses, particularly those of its second act. They’re beefy, they hit hard, and they often require you to intuit a game plan specifically for each boss to respond to their particular bag of tricks. Many bosses feel like puzzles to solve, as they can easily overwhelm you with very strong skills, status effects, or via summoning troublesome allies. There are a lot of JRPGs out there where you will collect a whole bunch of overly specific and seemingly underwhelming accessories such as those of the “reduce fire damage by 20%” sort. Fantasian is one of the few games where you will likely need to actually regularly use these for your party members just to have even a fighting chance against bosses.
These bosses can be a tension-filled rush to fight. Many bosses have incredibly unique and fun gimmicks to work with, and a couple rank among the most memorable fights I’ve ever seen in a JRPG. Some bosses use really interesting arena setpieces, some bosses require you to manually time certain attacks for a particular part of a boss’s animation, and some of the lategame bosses get creative in ways I don’t even want to spoil here. And while there were some duds (e.g. bosses with rotating shields were a pain), most of the bosses are incredibly fun and filled with hype to fight against. I often pulled off wins by the skin of my teeth; even through careful planning, there were times when I straight up had to take calculated risks and go for broke. Thankfully the game is fairly forgiving with save points and allows you to retry a boss, making failure a bit less frustrating than JRPGs of yesteryear.
The game opens itself up in its second act to several sidequests of varying difficulty, and you gain a welcome fast travel feature partway through, which I would often use whenever I found myself walled by a boss at the end of a sidequest to come back to later. While this more open approach makes the second act quite fun, you’re pretty much expected to do the overwhelming majority of this “optional” content, as the endgame recommends you to be a level that would otherwise require hours of grinding. I still found the endgame to be a little bit ridiculous, being even more of a “stat check” than most of the rest of the game which was otherwise more manageable to overcome with good strategy and party builds. There’s also a lot of stuff to do in the second act of the game, taking up the majority of your playthrough, and while most of it is pretty fun, it can make the game feel slowly paced at times.
One feature Fantasian Neo Dimension added was a Normal difficulty option, toning down the game’s original difficulty from the iOS version (which is now the Hard option). I played most of my playthrough on Hard, but honestly the parts I played on Normal seemed to only tone things down about 10-15% and were still quite difficult. While I like difficult games, I acknowledge that even the game’s Normal option might be quite tough for people less experienced with JRPGs than myself.
Sound
As with past Mistwalker games, Fantasian Neo Dimension’s soundtrack is composed by Nobuo Uematsu, most famous for composing the vast majority of the music in the first eleven Final Fantasy games as well as parts of Chrono Trigger. While I wouldn’t describe it as one of the better scores of his career, it’s still vintage Uematsu. Something I’ve always loved about his work is that his soundtracks are often quite eclectic, featuring a wide array of inspirations, styles, and genres. In the case of Fantasian, you might have a situation where one minute you’ll get a grand orchestral adventure piece, while the next you’re getting a boss theme played on an accordion with an irregular time signature. If I had one negative to speak of, it’s that there are a few areas of the game that simply lack background music, which is unfortunate.
Given this is a Square Enix published game and two of the historic icons of Final Fantasy were key parts of Fantasian’s development, Neo Dimension comes with the ability to replace parts of the game’s soundtrack with iconic Final Fantasy themes if you so feel inclined. I stuck to the main soundtrack since I was already very intimately familiar with Final Fantasy’s music, but it’s a nice little bonus if you want it.
Fantasian Neo Dimension also added voice acting for much of the game, with both Japanese and English audio (which you can switch between on the title screen). I found the English dub to be quite underwhelming. Sometimes characters really sounded like they were reading from a script, and other times the line deliveries sounded like the voice actor wasn’t given the context behind the line they were reading, as there were some odd intonations and less emotion in some scenes than others even when it was called for. The Japanese voice over was generally better handled from what I listened to of it. I also found the use of a narrator during the flashback sections to detract from the scenes rather than benefit them regardless of language, though this is a mostly minor gripe.
Verdict
Come for the beautiful dioramas, stay for the fun and challenging boss fights.
Fantasian Neo Dimension is definitely a game I was left hoping for a bit more out of its story and characters, and it’s not without some frustrations and less-than-stellar design choices here and there, but when things click the game makes for some of the most fun I’ve had playing a JRPG in years. It’s a tough game that requires you to pay attention and be willing to change up your game plan if it doesn’t work, and it can feel like trial and error in spots, but it’s immensely satisfying to progress through and conquer its greatest challenges. While Fantasian Neo Dimension is an experience rooted in nostalgia to some extent, it does more than enough on its own to stand out in a crowded pool of retro-inspired JRPGs coming out these days.
FANTASIAN NEO DIMENSION IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another JRPG combining retro and modern flair, you might want to check out Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake.
Many thanks go to Square Enix for a PlayStation 5 review code for Fantasian Neo Dimension.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
