A turn-based HD-2D Final Fantasy, huh. It’s hard to believe it’s real. As someone who grew up on old-school Final Fantasy games and JRPGs, it’s also hard to believe I was able to play Final Fantasy Resonance for about three hours at Square Enix as part of an IGN exclusive. From the struggles of finishing Final Fantasy IV and VI when I was just five years old to the hundreds of hours I continue to happily invest in Final Fantasy XIV, and everything in between, the series continues to help shape me. So, to see it kind of horseshoe back around to its origins here in 2026 with turn-based combat and expressive pixel art for a full, traditional-style RPG is wild to see. I have a ton of details to break down, but I’ll preface this by saying in a year packed with promising games, Final Fantasy Resonance is the one I’m looking forward to most.
To set things up a bit, Resonance is an adaptation of Brave Exvius, the Final Fantasy mobile game that shuttered in 2025, which had a 10-year run. Now, you might be thinking this is like how Octopath Traveler 0 was a revamp of the mobile game Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent – however, Resonance is a lot different. This is not a port or even a remake of Brave Exvius, rather it serves as the narrative foundation with a whole new combat system and overworld. Its story has been tuned for a traditional RPG that’s informed by Brave Exvius’ first season with everything else built from the ground up. It’s got airships, chocobos, the summons you know and love, and an HD-2D art style that’s more detailed than what we’ve seen before.
This is not a port or even a remake of Brave Exvius, rather it serves as the narrative foundation with a whole new combat system and overworld.
Resonance follows the main protagonist Rain, a good-natured knight from the Kingdom of Grandshelt who has a complicated relationship with his father who is also the king. And early on his group of friends join the fight to protect the world’s magic crystals from being destroyed by the Veritas of the Dark. This group includes Lasswell, a no-nonsense knight and Rain’s childhood best friend, Lid who’s an aspiring master engineer following the footsteps of every Cid before her, and Fina an amnesiac who’s a summoner tied to the crystals that preserve the world. It’s some real Final Fantasy setup going on here, and if you’ve played Brave Exvius, then this will all sound familiar.
In the demo I played, I got to explore a bit of the overworld which is split into multiple continents divided by water, visit the town of Dwarves Forge where you’re greeted with a hearty Lali-ho, complete a full story dungeon along with a big boss fight. It seems like a more lighthearted and colorful adventure off the bat and the more playful voice acting also supports this notion of a brighter kind of drama. It also reminds me of the recent Dragon Quest remakes in HD-2D in terms of its tone, and Resonance plays up its goofy side quite a bit, although like all things Final Fantasy, I’m sure it has a darker side around the corner.
The dungeon I completed had me tracking down Borin, a master engineer who Lid has an affinity for, since he’s gone missing from Dwarves’ Forge. The Dwarves say he’s been kidnapped, and you already know he’s being taken for his talents and being coerced to do some mysterious evil deeds. This leads you to the Mobliz Shipyard, a maze-like dungeon that has some light puzzles, story cutscenes, a timed escape sequence, and a sick boss fight against a massive motorbike with laser cannons while riding on a speeding freight train.
So, let’s talk about combat itself. Resonance does not use an ATB system, and instead opts for a straight turn order displayed at the top of the screen. Enemies have a stagger meter that builds with each hit, and they take on more stagger damage when you hit their elemental weakness. It’s kind of like a turn-based twist on what we’ve seen in Final Fantasy XIII or VII Remake. Elemental affinities are a huge part of combat, so having the breadth of elements covered in your party composition is important. But you’re not just swapping in the right party members to cover this; instead you have what are called Visions – you can think of these as personas from the Persona series or JoJo Stands that each character can equip, all of which come with their own skillset to bring additional powers to each party member.
While many of the Visions are original characters, one of the big appeals of Brave Exvius and ostensibly Resonance, is that each mainline entry in Final Fantasy is represented by a star character who shows up as an equippable Vision. For example, Y’shtola from Final Fantasy XIV is a Vision who brings water and healing spells, while Cloud from Final Fantasy VII comes with a variety of thunder spells and hard-hitting physical attacks. They do not replace the movesets of party members who have them equipped and instead add depth to what they’re capable of.
So, in a battle, you should be aiming to stagger enemies because party members who stagger an enemy are granted an extra turn in a bonus phase. And if you stagger all enemies, you can also call upon one of the four Visions equipped in your party to do the all-out attack-style Resonance to inflict a ton of damage or bring some much needed support in tough situations. When you line up all the right spells and attacks along with staggering enemies and calling upon Visions, battles can snowball into a relentless series of big damage numbers.
Each mainline entry in Final Fantasy is represented by a star character who shows up as an equippable Vision.
Calling upon Visions is accompanied by these bespoke CGI cuts, like the animations that play when using summons in older Final Fantasies, but I find them kinda awkward – not because they don’t look cool, but it creates this weird uncanny valley between sudden CGI cinematic playing and amazing pixel art of the actual game. It feels out of place, but it’s one of those things where you watch it the first few times, but ultimately skip every time afterward. However, the actual pixel art for Visions is fantastic – seeing their ethereal presence backing up each party member looks pretty sick, but also their in-engine animations bring them to life in a new way that you didn’t get in their original games. In addition to Y’shtola and Cloud, I also saw the Warrior of Light from Final Fantasy I, Terra from Final Fantasy VI, and Shanttoto from Final Fantasy XI. And I can’t wait to see the rest of the series’ stars manifest as Visions in Resonance.
Another interesting twist to combat is that Fina is a true summoner, the only one who can call upon Espers to come into battle, making her a truly unique party member. While I was only to use Siren from the start, the songstress who can heal and support like no other, I also got to recruit the lightning god Ramuh. In Resonance, you unlock new Espers by finding them in optional dungeons and fighting them in a tough boss battle. They’re tucked away in corners of the overworld, and it’s one of the ways it taps into the old-school exploration. You’ll want to do this not just because they look cool in combat, but because they deepen Fina’s capabilities and can turn the tide when called into battle.
The same goes for the Visions from Final Fantasy’s legacy. You find these shrines in the overworld and are treated to this dream-like montage of scenes from the very Final Fantasy that Vision is from. You’re then asked to answer a series of questions related to the story of that character and their game before unlocking them, as this kind of ode to the series. I’m not entirely sure how the answers affect things, but it’s a neat little quiz that contextualizes your answers to test your memory of the series (beware of spoilers if you haven’t played them, since they summarize the story and show scenes from those games).
So much revolves around Visions and strategically equipping them for battle. Each one levels up individually the more you use them and have progression tracks to unlock additional spells, attacks, and passive buffs. While every Vision can be attached to any party member, there’s some clear advantages to finding a good pairing that can complement a character’s core abilities. If there’s one entry to point to as inspiration, it’s Final Fantasy V – in an interview with producer Keisuke Nakashima and director Hiroto Furuya which you can read here on IGN later, they frequently pointed to Final Fantasy V as one of their personal favorites and how much they loved its Job system. These games share a level of flexibility that I really enjoy in RPGs, and I hope this leads to a deeper experience that evolves beyond simply accounting for elemental affinities.
As I said at the top, I’m looking forward to Final Fantasy Resonance more than anything else in the year so far. Not because I’m convinced that it lives up to the legacy, but because it’s a fascinating move that many of us have been looking for – a turn-based Final Fantasy with slick HD-2D stylings. It’s got music with classic series leitmotifs, the whole Brave Exvius soundtrack along with 33 new songs as well. Octopath Traveler has more or less taken up the mantle as the modern-classic RPG, and if you know me, you know that I won’t shut up about how much I adore Octopath 2 and Octopath 0. The Final Fantasy name comes with certain expectations, however. And not that I’m expecting it to hit me emotionally like Octopath or the mainline Final Fantasy games, but this idea of adapting stories from mobile games to a traditional format is so smart in preserving those stories and bringing them to an audience that wouldn’t have experienced them otherwise – I mean, I’m devastated at the thought of missing out on the story Octopath 0 (and maybe Nier Reincarnation is due for the same treatment).
But hey, for now, Final Fantasy Resonance seems to be doing something the series has needed for a while. It’s got the sauce from the three hours I played of what’s said to be a 30-40 hour game (or 60-80 hours for completionists), and I can’t wait to play more when it launches on October 22 this year for PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch 1 and 2.
Michael Higham is an editor at IGN who regularly contributes with reviews, previews, features, and news in written and video form. He’s usually entrusted with covering long RPGs and tech products, but he’s got range when it comes to games. You’ll also catch him at events and hosting video content, including IGN’s weekly podcast Unlocked.
