I’ve nothing against mobile gaming, but occasionally I’ve looked at a game slated for mobile that looks like it could really use some extra graphical oomph, and it makes me want to wait for a console release. The number one example of this for me is the 2021 game Fantasian from developer Mistwalker. An RPG that has creatives behind it such as Final Fantasy alums Hironubi Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu is an RPG that I need in my life. And not on a tiny screen!
Finally answering my prayers, Fantasian: Neo Dimension is a port of the game with added content built for consoles and PC due later this year. Having gotten to experience a chunk of it at a preview event earlier this year, it will be up many a JRPG lover’s alley and looks to be a beautiful adventure.
Fantasian is peak fantasy RPG. You are a male amnesiac protagonist, in a strange new world filled with monsters. Beautiful, ethereal anime women have joined you on your quest across the lands to help you recover your memory and kill some beasties. That’s all I know thus far, having been chucked into a mid-game slice. Frankly, it’s all I need to be all in.
The world in question is illustrated beautifully. All of the environments seen in Fantasian: Neo Dimension are lovingly hand-crafted props and dioramas. It’s a wonderful way to create a sense of place. Trees and foliage look soft and vibrantly coloured. The water is crystal clear enough you can see the fake fish that live in it. Building interiors are rich in details, whether it’s tapestries or a wooden pillar support in the middle of a tavern. Quite simply, it’s a pretty little world I want to live in.
Having the characters be traditional 3D digital game assets is a great way to have them pop out in the environment. Anime-style rich character details can still be present without losing any of their fidelity. Almost miraculously, there isn’t a disconnect with the way the cast navigates the world. Everything is tactile. That remains true whether it’s climbing sets of stairs and cliff sides, emphasising verticality, or navigating the wilds and coming toe to toe with monsters.
The other hook that Fantasian: Neo Dimension has going for it is the fact that it makes random encounter battles as tidy as you please. With a system known as ‘Dimengeon,’ you can bank those random encounters you don’t currently feel like handling and save them for later. Though this banking has a limit (including the fact this can’t be done with scripted narrative battles or the first encounter you have for a type of enemy) this is really handy for when you want to gain a bunch of exp in one go and make sufficient story progress.
I already knew all this going in, but it was originally hard to visualise. The fantastic news is it works as smoothly as you’d hope, with a symbol pop of a button letting players enter cyberspace and undergo the Dimengeon battles here. These are typical turn-based affairs where you have a timeline preview of whose turn it is next (no matter if it’s a friend or foe). Though these require some strategy. There is plenty you can juice out of Fantasian’s tantalising combat.
For example, you can control the arch of ranged attacks to bypass the protective meat shield at the front and attack the low-defence, high-damage foes that have been giving you trouble at the back. Combine this with the status effect cards that drop throughout battle periodically, and suddenly you’re threading an AoE attack to hit as many enemies as possible while also collecting additional strategic advantages like extra damage to your next turn. It’s a simple, snappy addition that I’ve seen before in games like Tactics Ogre: Reborn, but not as successfully as this.
The Dimengeon system almost works too well. It feels too good to be true. Simply because when I’m engaging in normal turn-based combat on the overworld I’m not playing as strongly and I’m missing being in that cyber space. There are no galaxy-brain moves I can make here. It’s just choose the attack, ability, spell or item option and repeat.
This reached a head when I came face to face with a giant stone golem boss at the end of my gameplay time I couldn’t quite clear. Its hits were so powerful they took down my party members in one to two hits. The problem? Sometimes it’d do an attack that would blow two hits in one go. He was simply out damaging me faster than I could heal and provide damage back. Maybe it’ll click come full release. I hope it does. For now, run-of-the-mill combat encounters will remain more of a mystery and a struggle.
I couldn’t be more thrilled about Fantasian: Neo Dimension nearing its release. It’s a world I’m incredibly eager to get lost in when it comes out later in 2024 on Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. Keep an eye on this one, folks!
Bandai Namco flew the journalist to Sydney for this preview.
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
