FANTASIAN Neo Dimension

Whilst the dioramas are unique, the story (at least at 22hrs in) is very generic JRPG fare and the characters are all very 2-dimensional. I must admit, the dioramas are what predominantly drew me to this game, and unfortunately I ended up finding the execution of them disappointing. Certain areas (cities and wilderness locations) look great, but closer up environments often let the aesthetic down - objects often have a bit of a weird, cartoonish scale, and whilst I could look past that, the photography work for some of the sets is abyssmal. Tell me, what is the point of lovingly hand crafting an area, and then taking a poorly lit, half blurred photo of it, to then poorly segment out for the game, with weird, blurred pixelated edges, and calling it a day? As someone who has dabbled in stop motion animation and small set building, it's so infuriating to see hard work being let down at the last step! Aside from that, the battle system is a fun twist on turn based battles, the trajectory system is very satisfying and I love being able to save up random encounters and battle all of the monsters in one go when I feel like it. Story/ characters are usually what keep me into a JRPG at the end of the day though, and this game did not intrigue me or get me emotionally invested in the characters. Maybe one day I will pick it up again and try to continue with my save, but for now, I can't really recommend it.

For me, this game is a miss. I like a lot of what they have done with this game, and it's impressive for what it is, a mobile game. What drives me crazy is the story just gets going and, boss fight. Turn a corner, boss fight. Open your invnetory, boss fight, more than 2 lines of dialog, boss fight. The entire game is pretty much a boss rush, and that's fine if that's what you are into. But for me, it cheapens every boss batte because they don't feel epic, they feel tedious. Maybe if you love all things jrpg give it a go, but only on sale.

I'm absolutely mixed about this game because it's way, way too expensive for what it is. - The story and characters is generic, often boring and confusing. - The battle system is mid; there are true novel ideas, but they were not exploited to their fullest and feel limited and repetitive. - The music is really good, thanks to Nobuo. The Final Fantasy remixes are a truly nice touch. - Again, I think I'm playing this just to experience the music. Thanks Nobuo. The price point is what really makes me post a negative review, The gameplay and 3D elements feel like an indie title. it's 2x too expensive. Don't buy this unless it's at least 65% rebate, else you'll feel ripped off.

[h1]魅力より退屈さが勝ってしまったJRPG[/h1] 3DビューのスタンダードRPGとして、全体の作り自体はよくまとまっています。 ただしバトルのテンポの悪さがとにかく足を引っ張っており、そのストレスが勝ってしまい、個人的にはおすすめできないタイトルでした。 ボスはもちろんザコ敵も状態異常付与、デバフ付与、HP回復行動、仲間を呼ぶ行動が多く、 プレイヤー側がとにかく後手に回され、対処するターンがかさんでしまい、バトルがダラダラと長引いてしまいます。 他の方のレビューにも多くありますが、中後半のボスはギミック（特定の手順・行動をプレイヤーに強いる）バトルが多く用意されています。 しかし実際には、前述の行動をコンボのように組み合わせているパターンが多く、ワンパターンな印象が強かったです。 同じマップを何度も行き来させられたり、同じボスと何度か戦ったり、プレイ時間ばかりやたらかかるのに物語は単調で退屈です。 パーティキャラ以外の脇役的なキャラクターがほとんど登場しないなか、 無理やりでもお話を盛り上げようとそれっぽい感動的な雰囲気や情緒的な雰囲気が組み込まれていましたが、 気持ちが全然ついていかず「はぁ、そうですか」のような印象しかありませんでした。 コメディシーンとして面白いと思っているのでしょうが、 娘のタンスを漁ってハァハァしている王様のシーンや、髭フェチの女性キャラクターのシーンはかなりキツかったです。 強くてニューゲームに入るための仕組みがゲーム内に盛り込まれており、 物語上の「自分の意識・精神を過去に戻すことで時間を逆行できる」というアイテムが、 何の演出もなく宝箱からあっさり入手できるのも気になりました。 その設定があるなら、物語上の問題もそれで解決できるのでは？というモヤモヤが残りました。 ひょっとしてオリジナル版のプラットフォーム側から、プレイヤーの滞留時間を出来るだけ伸ばすようにみたいな意向があったのか？と勘ぐってしまうくらいに全体を通してテンポが悪く物語の印象が薄いです。 冒頭にも書きましたが、3DビューのスタンダードなRPGとしてはちゃんとまとまっています。 酷いバグや、破綻したストーリーなどはなく、やや水増し感はありつつも時間をかけて遊び込めるような要素もあります。 その点は、さすが長年RPGを作り続けてきたクリエイターだなと思いました。

There's things that are great about this game. The pre-rendered backgrounds, turn-based combat, the targeting system and storing multiple enemies to battle them all at once are all things I really like. However, the game itself feels horribly bland and uninspiring. It's very obvious this was rushed and underfunded with zero passion put into it. It all feels very uninspired, flat, and cheap. But the writing and story is the worst offender: -Yet another meek princess with healing abilities -Yet another generic chaos vs order plot -Yet another lecture about how "it's your destiny" to save the world or whatever -Yet another teenager saving said world and learning the meaning of friendship along the way Why do so many JRPGs fall back on this banal, inoffensive slop writing?

I started off liking the game and really wanting to root for it, but at 30 hours and a good bit into the second act, I'm ready to put it down. First off, I LOVE the dioramas. They are well made, charming, and the promise of seeing new ones was one of the main things driving me to continue the game. The difficult puzzle bosses are fun. I don't think they're THAT hard. The game expects you to switch characters, occasionally respec, switch out your gear, etc. If you're willing to do that after your first loss to the boss, you will almost certainly win on your second try. The story and characters are occasionally charming. The music is not Uematsu's best work, but still enjoyable. Now onto the main points that kind of killed the game for me. The Bosses: I do like them individually, but the game has so, so many of them, and they are all of the same type of challenging puzzle boss. Some more variety in challenge and type of boss would go a long way to alleviating the tedium. It doesn't help that retrying bosses often means rewatching unskippable cutscenes, and bosses get longer and longer as the game goes on. Even worse, almost all bosses, easily over 95%, are just generic monsters that have no story relation. I can count one one hand out of dozens of bosses how many of them even had a name or any story relevance. The Story: Not without its charms, but it's very thin. There's barely any real conflict in it, the villain of part 2 barely has any presence, and the world is very roughly sketched. This feels like a rough draft that got pushed through and never iterated on. That won't stop the game from dumping these story book style expositions on you for every character's backstory though, which have painfully child like story book writing. Because in Part 2 the game won't know what character's you've re-recruited yet, they do not exist at all in cutscenes outside of their own side-stories, totally killing any inter-party dynamics that the game had built up in the first part. The Dungeons: This game is not for us dungeon-heads. There is no challenge to be found here. The dungeons are just winding corridors with occasional branches to a chest with random garbage in it. Puzzles are few and far between, and when present, have no substance or challenge. Random encounters are complete pushovers. The game tries to alleviate them by letting you stock them up and fight them all at once, but these are even more braindead and now take five minutes to mow down. Overall an obsession with QOL kills all tension and adventure by letting the player teleport back in and out to heal and restock whenever they want. The world map is laughably small, and any sense of wonder and mystery is shriveled by how little there is to discover, as well as every point on the map having a labeled recommended level like we're walking around a theme park. No wonder the bosses are so hard; if it weren't for them the game would be COMPLETELY frictionless. Overall Fantasian has some great parts to it, like the dioramas (which are unfortunately kind of mangled by poorly cut-out foreground elements) and challenging bosses (which are overused to the point of tedium). But the total lack of any substance to the story and world rob this of having any of that special magic of Sakaguchi's earlier work. Get it on sale if you like dioramas or puzzle bosses. Otherwise, you're not missing much.

A lot of JRPG bosses tend to exist as damage sponges which exacerbate the issue of many JRPGs following the gameplay loop of "buff and deal damage until forced to heal". However, Fantasian breaks the mold by interrupting this flow in a unique way with each boss. This can range from dealing with frequently-spawned minions, to having to guard against strong party-wide attacks, to having status effects dealt every turn. With excessive EXP gain heavily restricted, the player is expected to use the moves and resources provided to them in order to win, rather than mindless grinding and using strong attacks with no strategy. No two bosses feel the same, and this strong boss design makes this a must-play for any JRPG fan. Difficulty is too easy for the first 3 hours (even on Hard), but it slowly picks up as the game progresses. Once at the halfway point, bosses become much tougher and expect the player to fine-tune the party in order to deal with the scenario, which in itself becomes an interesting game loop. One major blemish in this implementation is the inability to know anything about the boss without having to either get a manual party wipe or exit and reopen the game. This issue would be solved if the player could Run from boss combats to just before the encounter begins, much like Chrono Cross. Enemy encounters, after the first 3 slow and tedious hours, become streamlined into one simultaneous battle with a large horde, which integrates the unique AoE attacks available to each party member into gameplay varience. While they're not super tough, they provide the user with experience with using the gameplay tools before facing bosses, as well as in preventing the player from entering new areas too quickly without the skill to do so. This is the whole point of enemy encounters in JRPGs--a lot of titles forget this. This is a good game.

I could not finish this game. As of writing, I'm about halfway through part 1 and I am bored to tears. I may pick it up again at some point, but I just can't force myself to play it anymore. The story is just way too slow and it's just plain boring. The characters and the world are stock JRPG archetypes with stock JRPG backstories, and that wouldn't have to be a bad thing if it were at least told in an interesting way, but it's not. The plot is frequently interrupted by wild goose chases and filler crap, no doubt a consequence of splitting the game in two halves originally. In addition, sometimes the plot just gives up and dumps exposition into these text slideshows which go on forever. This is not the kind of RPG where you can voice all the characters with your girlfriend, because these sections are like reading a novel. There is optional voice acting available, thankfully, which makes it slightly less dull, and the voice acting is at least well-done. The battle system is innovative and it can be fun, and I like the way it handles random encounters, but it's lost some of its appeal in the transition to PC and console. On mobile, it had touch controls, meaning you had to use your fingers to properly align your attacks, which feels cool and maybe even challenging. Now you just use the mouse or analog stick, and it's just not the same. The environments are obviously the most impressive part of the game, and they look beautiful. It's just too bad that the player models and animations look so, so cheap, even by Apple Arcade standards. And many screens unfortunately have blurring on the edges, which look unsightly when walking over them. I had thought this kind of photography was an excellent alternative to the pre-rendered environments of PS1 titles, but I guess it's not without its drawbacks. The music is...well...Uematsu is the greatest video game composer who ever lived next to Koji Kondo, but his golden years are behind him. The soundtrack isn't bad, and it does have a couple of bangers, but for the most part, it's just unmemorable. The fact that there's an option to replace the battle music with stuff from FF should tell you how dull the actual battle themes really are. This is just not Sakaguchi's best work.

battle speed setting would have been nice