'Final Fantasy Resonance' has that old-school flavor, but it can't hide its mobile roots

You don't have to look very far on the internet to find someone, somewhere, who is really upset about Final Fantasy games not having turn-based combat anymore.

Final Fantasy games haven’t had it for 25 years, to be clear, but that doesn't stop people from yearning for a time before you had to get good at combos to finish a Final Fantasy. I totally get it, too, as turn-based combat kicks ass. On top of that, the recent success of games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is, if nothing else, a sign that people still vibe with it on some level.

Final Fantasy Resonance, which launches on every major platform on Oct. 22, feels like it exists for two reasons: to please longtime FF fans and to make sure the mobile game Brave Exvius — which Resonance is based on — lives on in some form.

I have not played Brave Exvius, but after playing roughly an hour of Resonance at a preview event a couple of weeks ago, I can confirm that the foundations on which Final Fantasy was originally built are still structurally sound. As to whether or not it can transcend its mobile game origins, well, we'll have to wait and see.

Final Fantasy Resonance has all your favorite guys in it

First, some context is in order. Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius came out on mobile devices about a decade ago, and it's one of those phone games where you use currency to do fake slot machine pulls to unlock characters, many — but not all — of whom are plucked from the rest of the FF series. My understanding is that Resonance is largely an new game built like a traditional console RPG, but it's definitely been built using some assets and systems from Brave Exvius.

The demo I played didn't give me a great idea of what to expect from the story, but from what I can tell, the main character is a blonde dude with a big sword named Rain. That's the most Final Fantasy thing possible. They should start naming characters in the mainline games after weather again.

Anyway, you have a conventional party of original characters, but characters from older games in the series are present in spirit form. You can unlock them by finding shrines in the overworld and completing little trivia challenges based on the game each character comes from. In the demo, I unlocked Noctis from Final Fantasy XV, but looking through the menus, I could see that they have characters from good games in there, too.

When you're not fighting — we'll get to that shortly — Resonance plays like an RPG from yesteryear. You run around an overworld full of towns, dungeons, and random battles. There are side quests to complete and a big icon that always points toward the next story objective. I played through one major story dungeon that was fairly linear and simplistic, but the demo also seemed to take place early in the game, so I imagine the dungeons aren’t all like that.

Resonance is also rendered in Square Enix's now-signature "HD2D" look, which was most recently used in Octopath Traveler 0 and The Adventures of Elliot. Based on what I played, this is one of the better-looking HD2D games, but there's one caveat: There are pre-rendered CG cutscenes in combat that very clearly come from the mobile game.

On the one hand, I think it's kind of cool for the game to briefly play a video in a completely different art style during fights, but on the other, the cutscenes really look like they came from a phone game. They don't even have English voice acting, despite the rest of the game having it. The transition from mobile free-to-play RPG to console game isn’t totally seamless here. That's forgivable, but it is noticeable.

The combat mixes old-school sensibilities with modern design conventions

Let's talk about fights, which seem like they will make up the bulk of Resonance's gameplay. That's a good thing because I really dug what I played at the preview.

If you've ever played Final Fantasy VI or one of the other games from that era, you'll be right at home here. Fights are turn-based with zero real-time elements, so you have all the time in the world to strategize and make decisions. Each fight is an exercise in figuring out which elemental spells your enemies are weak against. This requires either a slow trial-and-error process, or using a turn to cast Assess and just have the game tell you.

One of my favorite details is that Resonance lets you use every single offensive or restorative spell either on individual characters or groups. That's a holdover from the old games that fell out of favor decades ago, but I always thought it was cool that you could use a healing spell on every ally instead of just one, at the expense of some potency.

As for why all of those old FF characters are in this game, their main function is to provide statistical buffs and additional combat skills to your core party members. You can, for example, assign Cloud from Final Fantasy VII to any character, such as Rain. Cloud has his own set of skills and stat bonuses that will be available to Rain for as long as Cloud is attached to him. Each classic FF character can be freely swapped among the new party members, so figuring out the best fit for each encounter seems like it's going to be a major part of the combat experience.

Lastly, because it's a modern Square Enix RPG, enemies all have stagger meters that fill up when you attack their weaknesses. Stagger an enemy and they'll be stunned for a turn while taking more damage than usual. Stagger every enemy in an enounter simultaneously, and you can unleash a big, screen-filling super attack from one of the classic FF characters, which triggers the CG cutscenes I mentioned earlier. I like this feature in pretty much every Square Enix game that has it, but it definitely stands out as a modern idea inserted into an otherwise old-school game.

The best thing I can say about Resonance's combat is that it seems genuinely challenging. I fought a story boss that took around 15 minutes to kill, and there were some close calls throughout the fight. I like a turn-based battle that makes me sweat a little bit.

My time with Final Fantasy Resonance was largely positive, but there are still some unanswered questions. Is the story any good? Will I find myself caring at all about Rain and his friends? Will it overstay its welcome with a bloated runtime like some modern RPGs, or will it be more akin to its 8 and 16-bit inspirations in that regard? We'll find out together in October.