Given its rich legacy spanning almost four decades, it’s something of a surprise that Square Enix has taken its time to give Final Fantasy an outing in HD-2D, the retro-modern aesthetic that clearly harks back to the pinnacle of pixel art from RPG classics of the 16-bit era, including Final Fantasy VI. But rather than introduce this visual style to the franchise with a brand-new title, Square Enix is using the HD-2D treatment to reimagine and preserve a now-defunct mobile game. Final Fantasy Resonance is a reimagining of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius that’s similar in scope to Octopath Traveler 0, an enhanced console adaptation for Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent.
Although Final Fantasy Resonance is a retelling of Brave Exvius’s first season, casting you in the role of Rain along with party members Lasswell, Fina, and Lid, the mobile title was played with just touch controls, and so there’s naturally been an overhaul to the control system to suit a console experience. But from hands-on at Gamescom 2026 plenty more has been overhauled and added to transform this from the mobile game’s streamlined structure and limited exploration into something you would expect from a classic Final Fantasy title that can be enjoyed at a leisurely pace, including traversing an overworld map, where you can also summon a chocobo for getting around.
At a glance, the turn-based battle system shares some similarities with Octopath Traveler, with a timeline at the top showing the order of party members and enemies’ turns, as well as a stagger system, albeit not like that series’ puzzle of chipping away at enemy weaknesses. But being a Final Fantasy game, it has many of the series’ classic tropes too. There are phoenix downs for reviving fallen party members, magic spells have elemental properties that can be exploited–the demo I played involved exploring the Wind temple, so characters with Blizzard spells had a huge advantage–and you can also choose between having spell used on a single target or all, diluting the effectiveness when choosing the latter.
Resonance also impressed me with how it utilizes recent improvements to the HD-2D aesthetic that were first introduced in other franchises. Character sprites are larger and more realistically proportioned compared to classic Final Fantasy sprites–a style that the Octopath games adopted, where the enemies are also larger and more detailed. Plus, characters are more expressive thanks to the addition of hand-painted portrait illustrations, a feature used in The Adventures of Elliot. Those portraits, along with voice acting, reimagine Brave Exvius’ characters to be easier to differentiate and appreciate.
Another meaningful addition comes from simply more dynamic camera work. Rather than just sticking to a distant top-down angle, Square Enix decided for a tilt up look to get closer to the sprites, and give the game a more cinematic presentation in its cutscenes. That also makes for some more dazzling Limit Breaks from party members, like when Lid calls upon an army of mecha chocobos or Fina takes to the air and rains down a light attack of holy rays.
A crucial element carried over from Brave Exvius are Visions, which allow you to summon a huge cast of characters from across Final Fantasy’s history. These were unlocked through a gacha system in the original mobile game, but they work differently in Resonance. In the remake, Visions act as companions alongside each party member. They can be freely equipped with their own set of spells and abilities that you can use during a turn. In other words, they’re almost like personas in the Persona series, except rather than being summoned each turn they stand side-by-side with their party member. As you play, you’ll also be able to level up Visions with magical shards that unlock new abilities or enhance existing ones.
For this demo, I already had many familiar faces to choose from, including Final Fantasy XV’s Noctis, Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud, and Final Fantasy VI’s Terra. In the final game however, the way to acquire more Visions will involve seeking out Vision sanctums in the world. Although I didn’t have time in the demo to find one of these myself, a Square Enix PR representative told us it will involve being asked a number of questions related to the Vision, sounding almost like a quiz to see how well you know your Final Fantasy characters. It’s a fun and novel solution to bringing over a key element of Brave Exvius’ content without trying to adapt free-to-play mechanics into a paid game, although it’s not yet known just how many of the mobile title’s 250+ Visions will make it into the final release.
The most powerful use of a Vision comes from when you manage to stagger all enemies on the same turn, which gives you the option to unleash a Resonance Attack. Essentially, these are the Visions’ Limit Bursts from Brave Exvius, which are presented as these over-the-top CG sequences. Yet while there’s an upgrade in presentation since you get to see these on a large widescreen view instead of on your phone in portrait mode, I also couldn’t help but find these cinematics to be distracting.
These moments would take me back to the days of the original PlayStation when games would transition to expensive CG sequences then back to your low-poly in-game character model–they were pretty jarring. I felt that same sensation in Resonance, where the visual upgrade to the HD-2D animations in the gameplay is not applied to the Visions’ Limit Bursts. It would have been cooler to see these moments adapted to the new visual style, rather than recycling old CG animations. These older animations are also only voiced in Japanese, so there’s a weird dissonance without solely sticking to Japanese voice audio.
One other nitpick of mine about Resonance Attacks is that while you select to do the attack immediately after all enemies are staggered, you’re still forced to select your other party members’ actions and then wait for their attacks to play out before finishing on the Resonance Attack. On one hand, I get you want the most stunning visual moment to be the finisher, but during the times I was able to trigger this all-out attack, it was also against a group of already weakened foes, so by the time the Resonance attack arrived it felt like unnecessary overkill that I was ready to skip. That said, it may also have been because I was already overpowered, as we had been informed that our party level had been adjusted to be a few levels higher in the demo than what they’d likely be at that point in the story in the full game.
Despite these minor quibbles, Final Fantasy Resonance is shaping up to be a terrific-looking HD-2D debut for the franchise, which not only pushes Square Enix’s trademark aesthetic to bold new dimensions but also gives fans who had been put off by Brave Exvius’ free-to-play system a way to experience that story in the best way possible, and which will still be accessible for years to come.
Final Fantasy Resonance is releasing on October 22 for Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
