I've been playing Final Fantasy Resonance for the past week or so and in case you don't know, it is the latest installment of the Final Fantasy universe. You'll have to ask lore nerds about where it falls in the grand scheme of things but I am guessing that it happens after most of the other tales because they constantly reference the old characters.
This 2026 game looks intentionally old school in a lot of ways such as the intentionally pixelated characters that don't have to look like that and don't look like that in some of the cutscenes.
The animations are not as stiff as these games HAD TO BE back in the 80's and 90's but there are some times when I feel like they are intentionally doing exactly that, just to bring back the memories.
if that was their intention, it worked, at least on this guy.
My very first exposure to the Final Fantasy world was FF2 on the SNES. The graphics back then were even basic back then, but there was just something about the game that still appealed to everyone in such a delightful way. The turn-based stuff was kind of new as far as consoles was concerned and it could end up being very complicated as the game moved onward in the hours. You had to dedicate a lot of time to knowing various afflictions and how to use them to your advantage and how to avoid letting the enemy get you with them as well. It could be frustrating at times but they had a very good QC department because very little of it ever seemed unfair.
You walked around from town to town talking to everyone figuring things out and then you would proceed to the next dungeon to complete the next step in a very long fantasy adventure.
Along the way you would discover hidden passages that would lead to chests and upgrades and these occurrances encouraged you to continue to explore each every single "block" of space that was ever around your crew when you are walking around.
In FF2 this would happen by walking into a black space on a wall that was completely unmarked and then realizing you can walk into the void, which would result in a chest on the other side, or sometimes it would be a shortcut.
Me and a buddy discovered one day that some of these hidden corridors could be discovered by turning the brightness on the TV / monitor all the way up so guess how we played the game any time we were in a city?
In Resonance they are a bit more creative with their hidden items as they will just hide them out of the camera view behind a building or something like that. It's modern "3D" tactics that weren't possible in the early 90's.
Of course these days you can just go to a website, such as this one and find out where every single hidden chest in the game is and yeah, that's cheating. Back in the early 90's there was no widespread internet and if you did actually have access to it you probably used it to (very slowly) look at pictures of girls with their tops off. Nobody was putting a hidden treasure chest guide including screenshots for a niche game on the rarely-used internet back then but boobs, yeah, that was always going to happen.
I think back to the enormous nature of these maps and how we just had to remember them. Or if you were really a nerd (my friend was) you would get out some graph paper and redraw every castle on your own. It was a fun little side hobby for people of our ilk back then.
The reason why we enjoyed these games so much is difficult to put into words but I think that this is best exhibited in the fact that Square Enix confidently released a game in 2026 that is essentially the same thing and people lined up like crazy to buy it even though it is the same style of game (with quite a few upgrades to graphics and sound) that we had in the 90's.
It's nuts to me to think that I first played Final Fantasy over 30 years ago. I guess I am getting old.
This kind of game will always be entertaining to me though and while I am not quite prepared to be one of those guys that loads up an emulator to play a 90's game today, I do think that the memories of having played them is something that is going to stick with me for the rest of my gaming life.
The system simply works and people like it.
So while I still stand by my previous statement that I do believe that Final Fantasy Resonance is overpriced at $60, it is still a damn fine gaming experience, especially if you were alive at the time when the entire notion was first introduced.
