Final Fantasy ResonanceA story from your phone, a fight fit for the living room

How many years have we been waiting for a Final Fantasy to put on the HD-2D outfit, anyone remember? Ever since Octopath Traveler everybody has been saying the same thing: "Come on, make a Final Fantasy that looks like this, for crying out loud!" Square Enix finally did it, but there's a surprise in the mix. The story wasn't written from scratch. They took the first story arc of the mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and rebuilt it from the ground up for a console-length game. Interesting, isn't it? The whole verdict of this review really comes down to the gap between those two pieces. The game itself is rock solid. The story still gives away where it came from.

First, the credits. The game came out on 22 October 2026 on every platform on the same day: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam and Xbox on PC, plus two separate Nintendo versions (Switch and Switch 2). I have to open a parenthesis here: those two Nintendo versions are sold separately, and according to the US eShop page your save file doesn't carry over from one to the other. Anyone planning to start on the old Switch and move to the new machine, take note. (It's 2026 and saves still can't hop from machine to machine, what can you say..) The publisher is Square Enix. The Steam page lists LANCARSE Ltd. as developer alongside Square Enix. The price on the US eShop is $49.99, with the Deluxe upgrade at $14.99. On Steam's Japanese store the base game is 7,678 yen. The Turkish price isn't fixed yet, and I'm not going to guess at it either. On Switch it takes up 8.6 GB and it's single-player. There's also a free demo, and its save transfers to the full game on every platform. For anyone on the fence, that demo is the most honest advice I can give.

On to the story. Rain, a knight of the kingdom of Grandshelt, was the commander of an airship fleet, so the tale goes. At his side was his childhood friend Laswell. The crystals were in danger, and the world along with them, naturally. Yes, this is the most familiar Final Fantasy mould there is. Airships, crystals, espers, moogles, whatever you're looking for, it's right where you left it. Familiar isn't the real problem. The people praising the game and the people trashing it say two things in almost the same words: the story is predictable from the start and the dialogue is weak. That sits at the top of the critics' complaint list, and the same note pops up again and again in the Steam reviews. Stretching a mobile script written to be played in short chunks across a thirty-to-forty-hour console game is no easy job. And by the look of it, the seams show, and pretty badly at that.

The "collect the characters" logic from the mobile game has escaped the payment screen here and turned into a real tactical layer.

Anyway, the game's real business is somewhere else. Combat is turn-based and built entirely around finding the enemy's weak point. Hit the right element or weapon and you stagger the enemy. A staggered enemy hands you extra turns, and you spend those turns on Resonance attacks. In other words there's a chain where every turn sets up the next one. If you know the shield-breaking logic from Octopath, you'll feel at home right away. Then the "Visions" come into play, and in my book that's the smartest idea in the game. Visions are echoes of old Final Fantasy heroes: Cloud, Tidus, Warrior of Light and the like. They fight alongside your party with their own abilities. On paper it looks like a cheap nostalgia trick, I'll admit. But going by what players report, the Visions weren't put there for decoration. Which one you take into which fight changes how you build your weak-point chain. The "collect the characters" logic from the mobile game has escaped the payment screen here and turned into a real tactical layer. And to me that's the game's biggest achievement. This isn't one of those productions that sticks famous heroes in the shop window and leaves the back room empty: they've woven them into the combat system.

There's not much to say about the graphics, because HD-2D has proven itself by now: sprites drawn pixel by pixel inside lit, three-dimensional environments. Using it in a Final Fantasy for the first time is an event all by itself. The music gets mostly praise from critics and players alike. And the fact that Square Enix sells the soundtrack as a separate DLC (3,800 yen on Steam) shows how confident they are in it.

Now for the flaw paragraph, because there's one more. Random encounters are back. Walking from one end of the map to the other and getting dragged into a fight every three steps doesn't sit well with everybody in 2026. Add to that plenty of backtracking through the same places. The two complaints feed each other: walking down the same corridor a second time and getting snagged by a random battle on top of it pushes your patience pretty hard. Fans defend it as "that classic Final Fantasy feeling." But it's hard to take a combat system you rack your brains over to build weak-point chains seriously in your thirtieth fight with some run-of-the-mill critter. I couldn't find in my research whether there's an option to adjust the random encounter rate, so I won't say there is or there isn't. If you know, write in!

The optional content, on the other hand, is generous. There are hidden bosses, there's a Colosseum, there's the Chamber of Arms. And at the end of it all, a showdown with Ultima Weapon is waiting. This is where people who love the combat system will have the most fun, because where the story falls short, the difficulty curve takes over.

And what do the numbers say?? On Steam, 97% of English reviews are positive (1,767 reviews as of 28 October), so "Overwhelmingly Positive". On Metacritic the PS5 version got 86 from 52 critics, without a single negative review among them. It's also 86 on Xbox, 83 on PC and 82 on Switch 2. The original Switch version has no score yet, so if you're curious about its performance, hang on a bit. On OpenCritic the average is 85, with about 90% of critics recommending it. Scores run from Eurogamer's 3/5 to DualShockers' 10/10, with the middle bunched between 7 and 8. The Metacritic user score is 9.1 from 219 votes. According to GamesRadar, citing SteamDB, the game hit 27,933 concurrent players on Steam on day one. That figure isn't from a primary source, let me note that too.

Now on to the score. Why not above 90? Because one of the things that makes a Final Fantasy a Final Fantasy is its story, and here the story is the weakest link. On top of that there's the random encounters and backtracking double act. Why not below 80? Because the combat system is genuinely well thought out, the Visions are more than a marketing gimmick, and both the visual style and the music are spot on. That's largely why 97% of players are happy, too. Dressing a story that came from a phone in a game this solid is work that deserves credit. If the writing had been given a bit more care, it would have been one of the series' new classics.

Don't expect an out-of-the-ordinary plot. But if you love hunting weak points, counting out extra turns and figuring out how to beat Ultima Weapon, download the demo first. The save carries over to the full game anyway, so if you like it you just pick up where you left off. And Switch owners, decide up front which machine you're playing on, so you don't end up regretting it..

Weeell, that's it for this month's Final Fantasy session. Those of you who've played it, what do you think of the random encounters? Write in and let me know. Love to you all..