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Square Enix Announces Final Fantasy Resonance, First HD-2D Game in the Series

Final Fantasy Resonance marks Square Enix's first attempt to adapt a discontinued mobile game's story into a full console RPG using HD-2D, a format previously reserved for original titles like Octopath Traveler and remakes of classic entries.

Reporting from 8 sources: Anime News Network, GAME Watch (Impress), 4Gamer.net, Denfaminicogamer, and 4 more.

Square Enix Announces Final Fantasy Resonance, First HD-2D Game in the Series

Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Resonance, a new HD-2D offline RPG based on the first story arc of the defunct smartphone game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, during a Nintendo Direct livestream on June 9. The game will launch on October 22 for Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store on Windows. The Steam version follows on October 23. This is the first Final Fantasy title to use HD-2D graphics, which blend pixel art characters with 3D backgrounds. The story follows Rain, commander of an airship squadron, and his childhood friend Lasswell as they investigate a weakened magical barrier and confront a mysterious armored man who shatters the Earth Crystal. The game rebuilds the smartphone original's first season for console, with producer Keisuke Nakajima stating that everything except the broad story outline and characters has been changed. The battle system is turn-based command with a job system, and players can borrow the power of past series protagonists through a Vision system. A Collector's Edition including an artbook, soundtrack, and trading card is available for pre-order.

Producer Keisuke Nakajima first proposed the plan at the end of 2020, about six years before release. The core development period was shorter, with the first one to two years spent purely on research into how to make pixel art and 3D backgrounds blend together. Development studio Lancarse Co., Ltd. is handling production, with Kaito Furuya as director. Scenario work is by Synthese Co., Ltd., and sound is by Elements Garden. The original FFBE scenario writer Yukinori Kitajima rewrote the scenario for Resonance.

Nakajima said the team changed "everything except the broad story outline and characters" from the smartphone original. Dialogue, plot points, and even the order of events were restructured to work as a console RPG. Side quests are entirely new scenarios. The main scenario is fully voiced. Playtime for the main story is 30 to 40 hours, and with side content it reaches 60 to 80 hours.

The battle system uses random encounters rather than symbol encounters. Nakajima said random encounters make battles "more memorable." A speed-up function (1.5x and 2x) is included. The team deliberately did not add auto-battle. "If we made auto-battle possible, it would become too simple and not very interesting," Nakajima said.

26 characters from past Final Fantasy titles appear as Visions, including protagonists from every numbered entry from FF1 through FF16. For FF11 and FF14, Shantotto and Y'shtola represent those games. Each Vision has a role in battle, and abilities were designed from scratch while keeping iconic skills like Cloud's "Braver."

The world map was revived for this title. Director Kaito Furuya said it was "absolutely necessary" to create the sense of an adventure to save the planet. Touching a city symbol on the world map transitions to the city map, similar to Final Fantasy VI.

Synthesized by Yomimono from the 8 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.

Square Enix Announces Final Fantasy Resonance, First HD-2D Game in the Series

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