What would happen if you tried to get the creator of some of the most popular JRPGs to make one for a device which has a bit of a reputation for casual gaming. A device that you might say is pretty good at doing lots of different things but not specifically designed for anything, certainly not gaming. Whether the iPhone, iPad or i-whatever is really an appropriate platform for a AAA game is a question we’ll leave for another time, but we can be certain MistWalker thought so.
Fantasian is the latest game, but not the first, created by the MistWalker studio famously headed by the Hironobu Sakaguchi; Director and Producer of many Final Fantasy games up to about 9. The game will come in two parts each promising around 20 hours of play and at least the first part seems to have taken at least 3 years to develop. The music alone taking over Nobuo Uematus’ life for over a year for 13 hours a day, and it shows.
The effort and depth in the game is present and will hopefully show a new bar for other games released on apple arcade to aim for. The scenery is stunning, created from 150 real life 3D modals or diorama’s. For those not well versed in the hobby (me), they are small sets often used for battle scene reenactments or strategy games with fantasy characters you have to paint and remortgage your house to buy. They make up the various towns, forests and docks that your adventurers explore on their quest to banish the Mechteria infestation from their world whilst also restoring the memory of the princess jilting Leo. Leo, who whilst on a FF7 reminiscent mission to a machine dimension, suffers a head injury thus removing all knowledge of his previously worse dates and everything else. That Diorama is soon on the bonfire and your off to continue your adventure somewhere vastly more sandy and to make some new friends who could also do with reevaluating their life choices.
The story plods along well and a convincing world is created with the usual snippets of conversation from, random person stroking cat/lost girl friend/hanging out none playable, together with passible character back stories. Beyond that the dialogue is fresh and humorous while most often then not failing to take it’s self too seriously. Cut scenes are long for game mostly available of a mobile platform but not tedious and all can be skipped and watched again at your leisure through the total recall memory system; at least that’s what I like to call it. Where the evolution of the genre really comes from is in the monster battles. Some sacred JRPG laws have been broken in such a way, for the sake of progress, that hard jail time must be in the creators future. At an early-ish point, for this type of game, you come across a Dimengeon Machine which let’s our heroes store up monsters they would normally encounter in random battles every 2.34 seconds (by law). This innovation lets you wonder around the vivid scenery like a tourist in time square, allowing you to battle all the collected baddies at once when you feel like it. This sounds dangerous but there are many other gameplay factors that make this the best way for taking on said hordes. Firstly, in all of the battles you can use magic attacks that can pass through directly or curve through multiple enemies causing a chain of damage. Secondly, the game helps you out even further by dropping skip turn and power ups bonuses during these battles.
Segueing myself neatly onto the difficulty level of the game; I’ve played a few Final Fantasy games and FF type games in my time and I’ve never found them to be much of a stroll in a Diorama park. I’m currently over 9 hours in and I can’t say I’ve found it particularly challenging. I have no idea what level my characters are at or what weapon or items they are holding. Mostly because I’ve not had to pay much notice to get this far, certainly no grinding was required.
All together a few important questions have been answered here. Am I getting better at JRPGs, probably not. Do I now know what a Diorama is after being hopelessly in the dark for all these years, sadly yes. Are Apple’s Everything/Gaming devices a viable alternative platform for AAA games, I’d say in the this case yes.
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