To evoke the classics is also to hold yourself to the high standard set by them. With Final Fantasy Resonance bringing the venerated series back to its origins with turn-based combat, and wielding Square’s HD-2D art style to modernize nostalgia for the pixel art era, it plucks at something I've longed for as someone who grew up in the SNES generation. While I've expressed my love for the Octopath Traveler series time and again, Final Fantasy has of course crystalized into something meaningful over the past several decades. But as much as Resonance looks like a torchbearer for classic RPGs, it also goes for a style of storytelling that often rings hollow. So, I think of it as a game of moments – when a genre-fusing boss theme graces your ears, when you execute a turn perfectly and watch all your spells fire off with big damage numbers, and when a cutscene brings HD-2D to life in a way you've just never seen before.

Resonance adapts the story and characters from the now-shuttered mobile game Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius by packaging them into the structure of a traditional RPG; no gacha mechanics, no microtransactions. It's quite similar to what Square Enix did with Octopath Traveler 0 and it's a brilliant way to bring existing stories into a format I'm a lot more inclined to play. With that comes an overworld with towns to represent each region, random encounters, an airship for roaming free and discovering pieces of land that feel like secrets, and full voice acting throughout the main story.

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