A Little More Than Just Nostalgia

Nostalgia for the olden days of Final Fantasy is on no shortage. Trading card games, merchandise, and even spin-off games have dipped into the well, including the 2016 mobile title, Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius, which is serving as the base for Final Fantasy Resonance.

With Resonance, Square Enix and Lancarse are following in the footsteps of Octopath Traveler 0: taking a former mobile game and giving it a premium game treatment. And while it's certainly a little strange at times, the results have so far turned out well.

The big draws for Final Fantasy Resonance are immediately apparent. For starters, it's a new HD-2D game, an aesthetic that's become a trademark of the retro side of Square Enix's portfolio. There are some new advancements, including some 3D mapping using pixels that makes for incredibly gorgeous story moments. And the Visions you can call upon unleash their biggest attacks in elaborate 3D CGI cutscenes, in ways that strangely reminded me of Square's movies like The Spirits Within and Advent Children, though not in a bad way.

Those Visions are another draw. During my demo at Gamescom 2026, I had an established party of characters specific to the story of Resonance, but each of them could equip a spiritual Vision of famous Final Fantasy characters from throughout the series, augmenting their move sets. Final Fantasy XV's Noctis was invaluable in accessing more Blizzard attacks for my boss fight, for example, while the Warrior of Light from the original Final Fantasy served as a perfect companion for my party's vanguard, healing and casting protective magic.

Combine that with a classic turn-based system, with a stagger bar setup that encourages you to press an enemy's weakness for extra turns, and you've got a pretty well-rounded RPG setup. It would have been easy to stop there: make an RPG, fill it with Final Fantasy references, slap a coat of HD-2D paint over the top, and you've got a decent entry for the fall release season.

Oddly though, it wasn't the nostalgia that hooked me the most. I'm an avowed Final Fantasy enjoyer; I've collected the aforementioned trading cards, played numerous mainline and spin-off games, and spent likely hundreds of hours in Final Fantasy XIV. What I enjoyed the most in Resonance, though, was the promise of what will be fresh.

Some additions are small but meaningful, like the conversations your party can have while wandering around a dungeon. I really like options like this – the Tales Of series' skits are a great example – and they naturally flesh out the lore and world of Resonance, as well as the relationships between my four party members. I didn't get a big intro to their backstories leading into the dungeon I played, but even just hearing them discuss the ethics of summoning a primal entity to play a bedtime lullaby for the party was a fun way to get to know this crew of adventurers.

The battles, too, add a lot of interesting strategy to your conventional turn-based combat. Clever management of the stagger bar against tough enemies, especially the wind-wielding boss of the dungeon I faced, was the difference between a victory fanfare and a full party wipeout. Chipping away at the bar meant constantly balancing who was attacking, defending, healing, and using items to keep the magic flowing.

Final Fantasy Resonance falls into an interesting spot, as Square Enix's trend of revitalizing former mobile games into standalone console releases continues. There are some upgrades and quality-of-life changes built up over the narrative framework and building blocks of Brave Exvius, with plenty of series iconography draped over the top; a towering sundae of RPG. The cherry on top, though, is a solid new RPG built on both new and old. I might have shown up because of the Final Fantasy moniker, but now I'm just interested in a good ol' fashioned RPG to dig into this October.