Fantasian: Neo Dimension – Preview

When Fantasian was first announced, my initial thought was that it looked cool for a mobile game, but as many will know JRPGs are just not my thing. Upon learning that the game used actual real world models for its game world, I started to look more into the game, but was always turned away by the need to play on mobile. That is what made the news that the game was coming to consoles very exciting, so with physical buttons to press, a new subtitle to its name and a complete lack of background on the story, it was time to sample this new adventure.

In the game, players take on the role of Leo, who is journeying across the world in order to recover his lost memories and solve the mystery of why a strange mechanical infection is destroying his world. Along the way, new friends join his journey, each having stories of their own to experience and together they hope to find out what Vam the Malevolent is truly after. As the game was locked to Apple Arcade for the longest time, there are going to be a number of folks who know the story, but many more who don’t, so in the interest of spoilers, I will stop there with story. Sadly by time with the game didn’t dive into any story beats, it was more gameplay, but I got enough of a tease to learn more about it.

But the gameplay is what I wanted to know more about, because of a system that is called Dimengeon, a portmanteau of Dimension and Dungeon. The system is interesting because any enemies you encounter in the world are sent to the Dimengeon and they wait there, but once full you are pulled into fight. The system can be turned off, so if you want the more traditional fight every 10 steps, you can do that, but for the interest of the preview, it was turned on for me. Once I was pulled into the realm, I had to defeat all of the enemies in order to leave, fleeing was not an option. Now as someone who is not a fan of the old school JRPG, I was worried when the game was made by Sakaguchi-san, who wanted to go back to his roots, thankfully I was worried for nothing. Now, the battles are turn based and you have to issue commands to each member of your party, but it was quite fun.

Ok, so how does combat work in this game, well each member of your party has two options, basic attack or use of a skill or item. The basic attack is just that basic, but the skill can be anything from holy magic, to fire magic and beyond. As those skills use MP, you will need to use items in order to restore your magic as you go, because when you need to fight 30 enemies or so, in order to leave, it takes a lot of magic. Once you have decided on the type of attack you are going to do, if you are attacking this time around, you will see a line appear on the screen, indicating where your attack will go. These attacks can be strong enough to go through multiple enemies, but there are some that will bust out a shield, so you need to check for them. Thankfully you can curve your attacks, like Wanted or in a game of Snooker, so if an enemy is blocked you can just go around. In the bottom right corner of the screen is a schedule for who is up next on attacks, which adds another layer of tactics to the fights. But that is also modified by the random abilities that spawn in the middle of the enemies, should you collect one, you might power up your attacks or steal a turn from an enemy.

While I did a few of those Dimengeon battles, I did also explore the world and honestly, the dioramas were one of the aspects I was looking forward to the most, which is why I feel weird about it now. The camera shifts around the place, which resulted in my running in a different direction to what I was doing before. It is not an issue exclusive to Fantasian, it happens in all games that used a fixed camera, that moves on its own, but it is something that bothered me. Now I am sure that if I was playing for hours, I wouldn’t have that issue, or I would just get used to it, but it stood out in this version I played. Of course, there was a point to playing the build, take on a giant golem at the end of the area I was in, Ancient Hill. Sadly before I got to that fight, I was dragged into a normal looking fight, but this time it was against a weird talking pot. Thankfully, it did not require me to fight it, rather it wanted to help me, so by ‘donating’ some items and then powering it up with some attacks, it rewarded me with something. The actual fight against the golem was hard, it landed a few good pummel attacks and the result was my defeat. I could easily blame this as not being my game, not knowing the system all that well, but I suspect it was just because I was bad at the game.

Fantasian: Neo Dimension is going to be a great game on Switch, given its origins in mobile gaming, but even on other consoles it will be fun. The Dimengeon system will likely catch many players off guard, but I really like it, as it keeps the game moving at a decent pace, instead of stopping every 20 seconds. Playing with a controller was fine, which I know is something some mobile games have not done well when going to consoles, so worry not there. I only wish I had more time to learn the mechanics better, and my characters skills, so I could have put up a decent fight against the golem, but oh well. If you are someone who likes a more traditional JRPG experience, but not one locked in the past, then Fantasian: New Dimension is one to look out for.

Fantasian: New Dimension is due out on consoles, including the Nintendo Switch and PC on December 5th.