Legends unite

A new Final Fantasy spin-off has joined the party and this time, with a whole cast of famous characters from the historied franchise.

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I'm about to rain on these enemies' parade

In FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE, you meet protagonist Rain and his childhood friend Lasswell when they're tasked with defending a weakening Earth crystal. Once they reach the crystal, they discover a dangerous enemy who takes one look at them and proceeds to effortlessly smash the crystal. The pair go on a mission to protect the remaining crystals and solve the mystery of who the iron-clad stranger is. Although Rain is more of a blank slate and a generic main character, you'll meet plenty of other more interesting allies, especially Fina, a young unassuming lady who has mysteries of her own. 🧙‍♀️ v1d30chumz cyzttywqtybt

Even though the main characters that make up your party of 4 are new to the franchise, each one can equip a vision to aide them in battle and most of the visions are characters pulled from the Final Fantasy franchise. This combination of new meets old is a theme throughout FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE and it does a good job of delivering something new but with a sprinkle of nostalgia. Visions come with their own skills such as Titus' water-based attacks and basic healing abilities. 🌊

It's always rewarding to climb the ranks

Visions add to the skills each character already has so you can choose to either enhance someone's strengths such as by expanding their dark magic elements or choose to complement their attack abilities by adding on healing skills. Given there are bonuses for hitting enemy weaknesses, this system often requires you to swap out your visions when you enter a new dungeon because hitting weaknesses is sometimes the only way to finish a fight without burning through all your MP. I always like when games give a good reason to try out different party members and FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE is a great example of this. You're also treated to a cinematic rendering of each vision when they pull off their special move which is a real treat, especially for those characters that are from some of the older titles. I only wish their voiceovers were in English and not just Japanese as it makes them stand out from the main cast. 💬

When a vision is equipped, each time they level-up, they unlock stat boosts or abilities for the party member who has them equipped. These are lost when you unequip them unless you spend points to keep them around. When you get a vision to its maximum level, you also get the option to assign all their abilities at a discount when you unequip them, giving you incentive to at least stick to a vision long enough to get that bonus. My main gripe with the visions system is that I ended up feeling like each character just had way too many abilities to choose from. In the average battle, I'm wading through 2 long lists of abilities on every turn with a lot of them being very similar and only differing by name. This ends up creating a feeling of visions being more of a tacked-on mechanic than something core to the gameplay; perhaps a result of the fact that there are just so many of them. Maybe with fewer visions, the set of skills could have felt more intentional. 🔥

World maps like this really take me back

The turn-based battles of FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE have quite a few mechanics going for them which, combined with the banging soundtrack and visceral sound effects, makes for quite engaging fighting. To find out an enemy's weakness, you need to try out different elemental attacks and discover what hits them hard but before that, you'll probably want to focus on staggering them so when you do hit them hard, it does extra damage. If you manage to stagger all the enemies in a battle, you'll unlock special resonance moves and limit burst which grants you extra turns. You can also use a lot of skills on multiple enemies or allies at once with the damage or healing divided by the number of targets. I quite enjoyed the battle system and found that juggling the mechanics felt rewarding, especially when you get just the right combination of attacks working during a long boss fight. 🤹‍♀️

You'll meet many characters on your travels such as the unapologetic Lid, a mechanic who uses a hammer to fight, and some unsavoury people like Jake the womaniser. I really hated this character because what he's doing with his life is noble but he has to be a total ass while he's doing it and it never lets up. In general, the writing of FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE is a juxtaposition of unique and engaging storylines and interesting antagonists with poor quality writing that feels forced and outright over-the-top at parts. The voice acting quality is also a mix in the same way. Thankfully, the soundtrack saves the audio as it sits perfectly in the famous orchestral backdrop of the series. 🎵

How did these jerks get tickets anyway?

Exploring the world of FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE brought me back to the old-school Final Fantasy games in the franchise, complete with the classic upgrade of traversal from walking to chocobos then to ships on the water and finally, air ships! There's nothing like finally unlocking the ability to explore every area of a map and there's a lot to find including new visions, dungeons with difficult bosses, treasure chests, and a good number of side-quests. Main story and side-quests are tracked for you and the side-quests do a great job of making them worth your time while also giving you an excuse to revisit areas you've moved on from. 🧭

I liked revisiting areas because some of the locations are very attractive such as the tall mechanical city of Zoldaad that sits on an island next to a volcano and the Aquapolis of Olderion surrounded by water. Most dungeons and towns also have little secret offshoots and when you find one, you can follow it and be rewarded with a hidden chest which is always rewarding. Some dungeons contain mechanics that require you to think a little such as teleporters and switches although most of them are quite straightforward and some are even surprisingly short. 🤏

Can we just put the doc out of his misery already?

The mix of new and old in FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE makes for an engaging story with a visceral battle system and a world that's a joy to explore. However, I wish the visions mechanic was more central to the game and its writing can be eye-rolling at parts.

Watch Mary play FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE 16:29

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Filed under: Reviews › PlayStation 5.