After finishing up Fallout 4 I faced and all-too-familiar conundrum: When I play something that I like I am almost certainly not going to like whatever I get into next. This has been the case with the first 3 games I played after walking away from Fallout 4.
Thankfully, there are some types of games out there that will hold my interest just enough because it is a tried and true gaming method that dates back to my childhood. Final Fantasy turn-based games by Square-Enix almost always manage to fit the bill when it comes to this and that is exactly what Resonance is.
Many people might look at this game and think it is a lazy repack by Squenix where they just lump together old attributes from older FF games and give it a new soundtrack and a slightly altered story and if you think that, you are correct. I don't know if it was lazy, a lot of the spoken dialogue seems pretty budget, I'll say that much. But this isn't really all that surprising when we have games that are designed in Japanese and later have to be translated for the rest of the world. This is especially true with FF games that aren't trying to break the mold with cutting-edge graphics and this one definitely isn't doing that.
The game starts out with a short intro and I was happy that they kept it brief. I do like how they will have high definition backgrounds and pixelated characters as if they were intentionally going for a retro look. They didn't HAVE to do this, it was intentional for nostalgia's sake. I enjoy the look of a N64 sort of environment but with crystal clear sound and music mixed in with an experience that reminds me of my youth. I think this is the audience that they were going for.
As is often the case they start you out as some sort of ultra-powerful character to intro you to the story and then put you down to a level one character that needs to rectify what this person was trying to do. It's typical of Final Fantasy stories and I am ok with that.
Everything that happens during the tutorial kind of reminds me of the simplicity of RPG's back in the days before we had 27 buttons on a controller and this appeals greatly to a casual gamer like myself. In combat you have all the time you want to select your attacks and after the tutorial this is pretty easy to work out because you don't really have a lot of skills to throw around.
After the hero that I'm guessing is the woman on the box art gets trapped in a crystal you take on the role of someone that is level 1. The name "Rain" sounds familiar to me but I am not up to speed on my FF lore anymore so we'll just roll with it.
You go through random encounters over and over and the first couple of levels that you advance through make a huge difference in your damage output. This is completely normal for old-school Final Fantasy games and is something I don't mind doing. Embrace the grind I guess.
Nothing is all that complicated about combat: you have your basic attack, your list of spells that grows with time and every now and then you encounter a save spot that has a boss after it that is meant to be challenging. Rushing through dungeons instead of exploring is punished by you not being powerful enough to defeat said bosses and this reminds me oh so much of how these games were back on the Super Nintendo by design. It's a nice, albeit unnecessary throwback to what I consider to be "simpler times."
While it might not appeal to the younger people playing I enjoy the pixel-filled graphics mixed with modern-day crisp animation sequences. Again, Squenix did HAVE to do this, there is no technological reason for it to be like that but I think they were just having some fun with nostalgia and I like that a lot. Newer, younger gamers might find this lame but there's something out there for everyone, isn't there?
I only played for about 40 minutes and got past the first part of the story. According to online responses this is about a 30-40 hour game and that's fine by me.
As someone that has NOT enjoyed the "modern" Final Fantasy games including the 7 remake, this throwback appeals to me immensely. I do think the game is overpriced at $30 but since when does Square Enix care about a good value?
This is available on all major consoles as well as PC. I am playing it on Nintendo Switch
All non-credited images are from my own gameplay