It’s a great feature for when you just want to explore without fighting or when you’re in a rush to get to a save point.
#Beloved cat fantasian full#
Whenever you want - or whenever it’s full - you can then take on all of the trapped monsters in one giant brawl. Essentially, when you turn the feature on, any monster you come across gets trapped in this device, and it can hold up to 30 of them at a time. Perhaps the best addition is the awkwardly named dimengeon - a portmanteau of dimension and dungeon - that lets you put off random battles for a short period. It’s really satisfying when you line things up just right.Īpple Arcade finally got the boost it needed It makes battles, particularly bosses, feel more strategic and less mindless. While there are familiar elements - like enemies with elemental weaknesses and bosses that change forms mid-fight - there are also some nice twists, like spells and weapons that you can aim to maximize your attack by hitting as many enemies as possible in one shot. The battles, in particular, do some interesting things. That means random battles, turn-based combat, and a relatively straightforward character customization.
It’s a world you want to linger in.įantasian doesn’t just look and sound familiar it also plays a lot like the classics it’s inspired by. An incredible soundtrack from frequent Sakaguchi collaborator Nobuo Uematsu only adds to the nostalgia. The handmade diorama art style is reminiscent of the pre-rendered backgrounds from the PlayStation era, except with a much finer level of detail. I loved poking around each and every location, seeing the buildings and landscape from different angles. Fantasian is much more about the vibe than the narrative. It’s cute at times, and there are some interesting surprises and worldbuilding details to dig into. I never felt any real sense of urgency as I saved the world, and few of the main cast of characters are very memorable. Fantasian certainly doesn’t live up to its spiritual predecessors in that regard. Fantasian isn’t just an adorable handcrafted game from the creator of Final Fantasy it’s the most approachable Japanese RPG I’ve ever played. But it also takes those ideas and mechanics and changes them just enough to feel fresh, while also making some notable quality-of-life changes. It’s not particularly original, hewing very closely to the Final Fantasy games that Sakaguchi built his career on. It not only looks amazing, but it lends the game’s fantasy world a very particular vibe.įantasian is also just a great game. Whether you’re venturing through a wind-swept desert, luxury cruise ship, or robot metropolis, every area you visit in Fantasian was handcrafted from real-world materials. Mistwalker, the studio helmed by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, pioneered a new technique that involved crafting more than 150 incredible, charming dioramas, which were then photographed to become the locations you explore in the game. Before Fantasian launched on Apple Arcade, most of the discussion centered on how it looked.