BODY: The screenshots sold it on looks. The hands-on suggests the systems are what will keep players there.
Japanese games outlet 4Gamer got early access to the retail build of Final Fantasy Resonance, Square Enix's new RPG launching October 22, and came away arguing that the game's much-discussed HD-2D presentation is the least interesting thing about it. The outlet's play report puts the emphasis instead on combat read-and-react โ the Japanese term used, kakehiki, implies bluffing and counter-bluffing rather than raw stat checks โ along with character progression and party construction that reward experimentation.
Resonance is the first mainline-branded Final Fantasy title to adopt HD-2D, the pixel-art-over-diorama style Square Enix has spent eight years refining. That alone made it the most-watched reveal of the publisher's recent slate in Japan, where the aesthetic carries enormous goodwill. But a preview that leads with "it's not just the visuals" is doing specific work: it is pre-empting the assumption that HD-2D is a nostalgia coat of paint applied to a thin game.
According to the report, the appeal sits in how individual character builds interact with overall party composition โ the kind of loop where a single ability choice cascades into which three teammates you bring and how you open a fight. That framing positions Resonance closer to the systems-forward classic Final Fantasy entries than to the cinematic action direction the series has taken on consoles.
With launch now a day away, 4Gamer's impressions land at the moment they matter most for a game whose marketing has leaned almost entirely on its art direction.
The insider take
HD-2D is not a filter โ it's a studio lineage. The style was born at Square Enix's Osaka-adjacent Team Asano with Octopath Traveler in 2018, then proven commercially with the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake and the Live A Live and Romancing SaGa 2 revivals. Handing it to Final Fantasy is a strategic hinge for a publisher that spent 2024 publicly admitting its blockbuster pipeline was too expensive and too slow. HD-2D delivers a distinctive, screenshot-ready identity at a fraction of photoreal costs, and Japanese industry watchers have read Resonance as a test of whether the company's flagship name can carry a mid-budget production. That it reportedly plays well is the part Square Enix needs most.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net โ ๆๆฐ่จไบ (Japanese).