After three years that felt like an eternity, Fantasian, the RPG from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has ended its Apple Arcade exclusivity. Now, re-released on all modern consoles and PC with more content in FANTASIAN Neo Dimension, more than a select few fans can finally engage in the magical adventure. As someone waiting for such platform exclusivity to end before I jumped in, I am delighted to say that FANTASIAN is well worth the wait.

On the surface, FANTASIAN Neo Dimension seems like any other RPG you’ve played a thousand times over. Players control a white-haired protagonist who’s an amnesiac. At his side are ethereal and beautiful anime women who, along with a series of other companions he meets, help him carve his own path and restore his memories. Also, a bunch of robots are there, and you must stop a force equivalent to God. With that, it’s (obviously) reminiscent of early Final Fantasy games. Peel back the curtain though and you find a thoughtful and sweet adventure.

So much of FANTASIAN Neo Dimension’s charm comes from how bespoke it is. All environments feel perfectly fine-tuned and like they were years in the making with their planning. And that’s because they were! The game sets itself out by having all the environments crafted as real-life dioramas made up of props with which the digital cast interacts. Bustling seaside towns contain streets made of gravel and cobblestone, with the shopfronts looking to be built brick by brick. Futuristic dungeons are home to a mess of technology with robots and wires twisting and winding around each other. Greenery in forest areas feels incredibly lush with soft and spongy shrubbery. With the digital characters that notably aren’t real physical props navigating these environments, they stand out strikingly in contrast. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to call a game textured in feeling before but damn it, FANTASIAN is there.

That wonder and whimsy transfers to every other facet of the game. The legendary Nobuo Uematsu (composer of pretty much every RPG you’ve ever loved) returns to create more memorable and enchanting pieces to drive forward the fantastical adventure laid out ahead of you. FANTASIAN’s main theme that greets you on the menu screen is simultaneously orchestral and alien, containing not just impactful drumming of gigantic bass drums and choir harmonies but synths that thematically cover the breadth of visuals you’ll experience throughout the long RPG. Uematsu has done it again, making a rare and special soundtrack that somehow feels simultaneously grounded and not of this earth. Superb.

FANTASIAN Neo Dimension is a wonderful RPG at the best it has ever been. This new release now brings fully voiced English and Japanese, 4K visuals and a new easier difficulty mode to raise some levity on the gritty and tough challenge players previously had. For extra flourishes (though one could argue this may feel like Square Enix de-emphasising the importance of Fantasian’s wonderful score), you can even swap the battle music to that of previous Final Fantasy games. These include music from the two most recent Final Fantasy XIV expansions, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster and Final Fantasy XVI. Essentially, music from Final Fantasy games of the last five years. These are all fantastic music choices but I wish instead more focus could’ve fallen to this Uematsu soundtrack, giving me the ability to check out the breadth of it in the main menu or whatnot. At the end of the day, all these little bits and pieces are hard to stick your nose up at. They make for the prettiest and highest quality version of an already great game, finally viewable without squinting at your tiny iPhone display.

Immaculate vibes with its diorama environments and Uematsu soundtrack aside, FANTASIAN is already beloved for its unique spin on turn-based RPG combat. Despite not quite being a tactics game, it requires more thought than just pushing the confirm button. There’s also the genius that is the ‘Dimengeon’ system. Turn-based battles play out on more or less the stock standard 2D plane, but they have depth to them. Whether you’re performing a character’s standard attack or one of their spells or abilities, you can control the trajectory. No matter the attack, a majority of them are effectively projectiles or areas of effect-type casts.

These little touches give what would otherwise be stock standard battles that little something extra. FANTASIAN: Neo Dimension becomes a very lateral game when you strategise how to best use these attacks to take out the next foe in the attack order. This only expands with the dimension system, a device that can bank random encounters for you so that you’re not facing battles every 2 seconds. There are some asterisks to that in the sense that you can only bank encounters of enemy types you’ve already met and the amount that you can have banked at one time does have a limit, though it helps to speed the game up a little bit. Instead, only every 10-15 minutes or so (outside of scripted fights) am I having to pop into battle, hopping into a cyberspace area with the Dimengion device. Now all the enemies that you banked come out in numbers and you have much more you can work with.

Dealing with upwards of thirty enemies at once through these Dimengion battles may seem daunting on paper, but it’s fine-tuned incredibly well. After all, with more foes on the field, that’s just more things you can hit at once. The game knows to offer some aid, too: periodically little nodes that will offer buffs (add an extra turn, extra damage or defence, etc) will pop into the arena so that you can make sure your attack path also hits to collect. This makes these stacked battles never too hard unless you’re in the late game and high-level or you’re not careful with your attacks. Still, there’s enough breathing room in there to have you sweat in Dimengion fights every now and then, having players plan their best course of action. At the end of it, it’s over and you get a significant XP boost. It’s such a nice quality-of-life addition to RPGs that I think is begging to be implemented into more ventures like it.

So, I’ve spent lots of words gushing and gushing about this game. What’s wrong with it? Not a lot, but… FANTASIAN Neo Dimension will somewhat lose some players, including myself, because of how starkly different the latter half of the game (Act II) is from the first. The first fifteen or so hours of the game are incredibly straightforward affair. You’re travelling from town to town, recovering Leo’s memories and picking up new friends along the way. Main narrative beats never really pull you back to a location more than maybe once, you’re just constantly on the move. Sure, there are side missions to get you to go about revisiting specific areas but they’re all not that necessary and are essentially fetch quests to inevitably net you more gold or a potion such as an ether. When I discovered that I was already drowning in resources and currencies through natural progression, I inevitably gave up on these side tasks and continued setting sail.

This first Act is incredibly well paced and the frequent nomadic feeling of it all truly highlights the adventure you’re on. Until the turning point between Act I and II, where in the narrative things go awry for the party as you learn more about the true bad of the game and a majority of you get split up. With that, Act II begins and it issues you several main quests to take on at once, each being able to be technically done in any order if you’re skilled enough. Some of these are in new areas. Some of these take you across several areas you’ve already been to. What would otherwise be an exciting second kick-off to an expansive and exciting world is a frustrating slow halt to the story you’ve been experiencing thus far.

It doesn’t help that the level requirements for these missions quickly get higher and higher without much warning. Suddenly, the game that was filled with quality-of-life additions is halted with grinding that slows absolutely everything down to a snail’s pace.

This leaves me between a rock and a hard place with FANTASIAN Neo Dimension. There’s a latter grind that feels nearly indefensible when you compare it to the first half of the game. Still, the story unravels in more and more exciting ways the more you play. Boss fights get more and more challenging and demanding as you have to constantly cycle gear, party members, buffs and debuffs. The cast of characters is rich and charming. The quaint fantastical journey across the lands feels fantastic. It’s unmatched in vibes and if that’s your utmost priority in RPGs then I say take the plunge.