Final Fantasy Resonance Review Round-up! | Ep. 146

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Today is Friday. It is October 23rd. It is 8.02 a.m. on the East Coast. This is episode 146.

It's been a very wild week for me personally, but we made it.

It's Friday. We're here.

I have to quickly tell you all what I did the other night. I broke out my Nintendo 3DS XL and I started a fresh Ocarina of Time save.

I don't know why I opened up this game specifically. I honestly couldn't tell you. I've got the new one pre-ordered.

It's arriving in just a couple of weeks, but I think I wanted to just like hop back in to this world and get it as a, you know, just a reference point.

I played Ocarina of Time on 64. I played the 3DS XL version. I'm sure I've played it, in other places too i just wanted like that recent comparison points right i don't intend to beat it i did do the the deku tree a lot of fun uh but i just kind of did that real quick and i'll probably i'll probably like log maybe four or five more hours uh just to give myself a taste before the new one comes out then i started playing pocket card jockey which i've had on my 3ds but never played before it's a solitary game uh that, it's like solitaire but also uh.

Horse racing very interesting game very interesting uh i don't know why i'm bantering because we have so much to cover uh just a quick programming notes i decided i'm going to save the switch sports review uh, switch sports resort reviews for tuesday's episode otherwise this episode would explode in time It would be like 20 minutes.

Hopefully, it's a quiet weekend and I can just drop all that on Tuesday.

If you were waiting for my review roundup to decide whether or not to pick up sports resorts, I don't think you would be, but I apologize.

There are a lot of reviews online that you can check out, and I'm sure the podcast commentary is starting to roll in too.

But today is all about Final Fantasy Resonance. I read through a bunch of tabs of reviews. I had five, six, eight open tabs. I don't know. And I read a bunch.

I took a lot of notes. I want to give you a roundup on how critics felt about this game.

Then we will speedrun just like four, three or four quick headlines before I let you get on with your weekend. So let's just get into it.

So we talked a lot about this game in previous episodes, covering previews and when it was first revealed, but here's the quick deal.

Final Fantasy Resonance released yesterday, Thursday, October 22nd.

It's on Switch 2 and the original Switch.

It's on PS5, Xbox, Series X and S, PC. You can get it on Steam Deck.

It is $49.99 digitally and physically. Physically, it is a game key card.

There is a digital deluxe version for an extra $10. I honestly don't know what that gets you. I did not read into it.

If you haven't been following along, this one has an interesting backstory.

So this one was built on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, which is a free-to-play mobile game that initially launched in 2016. I think it shut down a few years ago, 2024, 25 maybe.

Uh square enix took the story from that game's first season, and rebuilt it as a traditional console rpg there are no free-to-play gotcha mechanics there's no microtransactions it is a standalone self-contained uh adventure uh, with you know standard rpg fare.

It's the same playbook that they just followed for Octopath Traveler Zero last year.

We've seen this with other developers as well, turning free-to-play games into console RPGs with varying success.

I'm thinking of that Another Eden Begins game that didn't review that well from the creators of Chrono Trigger and maybe Xenogears.

That game came out in just lackluster reviews. It was basically porting over a mobile game to Switch.

Um this is also the first final fantasy done in square enix's hd 2d style and they actually called that out they promoted that when they announced this game, that's that you know pixel art meets 3d look uh it's kind of had some like vignetting on the sides uh like the blurriness, um the same look from octopath traveler i think it was made famous by octopath traveler we saw in the dragon quest hd 2d remakes as well too very beautiful very beautiful uh and this game has a classic Final Fantasy structure.

You have overworld, you have towns, you have dungeons, you have an airship, you know, random encounters, turn-based battles, all the things, you know, summons, basically.

And the story is also traditional Final Fantasy fare.

This one follows Rain and Lasswell, two knights from the kingdom of Grand Shelt and Fina, a mysterious girl who comes out of a shattered crystal.

Together, they're trying to stop a group of villains called the Sworn Six from destroying the world's crystals.

I did not play this game. I'm just compiling a summary based on all the things I read.

The big hook is a mechanic called Visions, These are spirits of heroes from past Final Fantasy games.

So if you've watched any of the trailers or previews for this game, you'll see Cloud and Tidus and Lightning and Noctis and all these other Final Fantasy characters.

They're kind of like summons, right? You equip them on your party members.

They unlock new abilities, passive bonuses, so you can use them to kind of create your builds.

Several reviewers compared it to the job system from Final Fantasy V.

I think I saw some comparisons to Espers in previous previews as well.

But this, if you're looking at this game at a whole, it is a full RPG in terms of length.

Game Informer had it at around 40 hours, I think.

IGN's playthrough took about 45. So I think, give or take, you're looking at maybe 35 to 45 hours if you do all the side quests and the optional bosses.

I'm sure people will speed run this, get really good at just kind of blazing through it. But if you're just doing a regular playthrough, you're looking at a solid 40 hours.

I was expecting this review wise to kind of be like a solid seven just by watching trailers. And then the demo came out and everyone raved about it.

So I wasn't sure what to expect.

So the reviews I read landed mostly in the seven to nine range, which is pretty good. So we'll start high. Game Informer gave it a nine out of 10.

This was from Game Informer's Nadia Oxford. she opens by giving final fantasy or by giving a square enix credit for rescuing its shut down mobile games and turning them into four rpgs instead of letting them disappear so you know thinking through the octopath playbook right and i i think you know, just being aware of final fantasy brave exfius i think she was happy to see that this game exists uh she loved the visuals her point is that the detailed character sprites and occasional pixel art cinematic scene.

Make this feel different from Octopath and the Dragon Quest remake.

So there's elements, the cinematic elements definitely are a standout here.

And I've read that in other reviews too.

I'm personally a big fan of Naughty Oxford. I listen to the Acts of the Blood

God podcast, one of my favorite shows.

I've been listening to that for years. I've been reading her writing for over a decade. And here's a quote from her review.

In a time when mainline Final Fantasy is still figuring itself out,

Final Fantasy Resonance is easy to recommend. It has one foot planet on the solid foundation of Final Fantasy's history.

But with its rich graphics and likable cast of characters it builds up from that history instead of merely pillaging it, nadia does a good job just kind of connecting the different game and battle mechanics to the final fantasy games that came before it obviously she's familiar with you know the series and the heritage of the series a couple criticisms uh and i'm just paraphrasing these uh the world is a little thin between the towns like the overworld uh the dungeons are a little flat I believe the word she said was they lack pizzazz and she'd have liked.

Perhaps an auto battle option for random encounters, which we're seeing more and more in RPGs, especially traditional lengthy ones.

Nintendo Life's Mitch Vogel gave it an 8 out of 10. His take is that it feels like a missing chapter from the series past.

He pushes back on calling it just a retooled mobile game. He says that oversimplifies what Square Enix did here with the development of Resonance.

He walks through the combat really nicely he's got a pretty good walkthrough every enemy has a stagger bar and hitting its elemental weakness will drain the stagger bar pretty fast and apparently if you stagger every enemy on the field your whole party gets an extra turn, then you kind of finish the round off with a big super attack so there's some strategy just in terms of.

Using elemental attacks you know you're certainly familiar with staggering if you've played Octopath Bravely Default games like that,

For Switch 2 owners, he says it runs at a smooth 60 frames per second with more dynamic camera work in cut scenes than past HD 2D games.

So I'm just going to read his joys and cons. His joys, gorgeous upgraded HD 2D graphics. Visions are a great take on a job system. Overworld exploration and side quests ensure there's plenty to do.

And his con story is kind of so-so. So...

The screenshots for this game really do look amazing. If you haven't seen this game, I definitely recommend just taking a minute to Google Final Fantasy Resonance and just check it out.

Real quick, IGN's Michael Hyam gave it an 8 out of 10. He's got a line that

I loved in the beginning of the review.

He wrote, with Final Fantasy Resonance, bringing the venerated series back to its origins with turn-based combats and wielding Square's HD2D 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.

So me personally, I'm showing my age, but I also did grow up with Super Nintendo

RPGs and later 16-bit style RPGs on GBA and DS and all that stuff. This is a real thing.

I would argue though that it's more than just nostalgia for the art and the gameplay style. It's really like the whole package. So it's like everything coming together. It's got like a coziness to it. Maybe that is nostalgia, I don't know.

He wrote about how the story is not incredibly consistent though.

He's kind of said larger chunks simply are not as riveting or compelling.

Here's how he closes out his review.

In retooling Brave Exvius for the classic RPG format, Final Fantasy Resonance sets a new benchmark for HD 2D visuals alongside solid turn-based combat and incredible music, which carry an underwhelming story.

So that's a theme I've read in a lot of the reviews.

Nintendo Insiders, Cullen Black gave it a 7 out of 10. And he reviewed it on Switch 2 explicitly.

I remember personally Final Fantasy games being very hard growing up and RPGs in general. So this quote was a good one from Cullen.

Resonance is trying to harken back to classic Final Fantasy.

So of course I was delighted to find the really steep difficulty spike in the back half of the experience.

Even on normal enemies and bosses put up a real fight. And I actually felt punished for going into boss fights without optimal party setup.

Okay, now for the other side of the coin, Polygon doesn't score its reviews, but Willow Rose review was probably the most critical one I've read.

Worth noting here, she played it on Steam Deck and she did play Brave Exvius for a couple of years. She said that. So maybe that might have colored her opinion on this game because she had previous experience playing the original.

She opens up with a fun bit. She says, if crystals are what make a game Final

Fantasy, then this is the most Final Fantasy game ever made.

Her angle really is that Resonance spends a lot of time reminding you of other

Final Fantasy games, and it never really gets to stand on its own, the game itself, kind of thin.

Plot beats trace back to earlier games.

She thinks the story plays it safe as a holdover from the mobile game.

So there are a few lows, but there are also few highs. So it's just kind of like flatline.

And that is a vibe that I definitely got from other reviews as well, not just this one. They just didn't say it as directly.

I did like the closing line here. Resonance is a popcorn game best experienced on a handheld with a snack and something playing on the TV.

Okay, this episode is already creeping well above the 10-minute mark, so I'm going to try to wrap things up quickly. Nintendo Life always does a good job with their review roundup. Polygon put one together this time, too. I'm going to have links in the show notes.

You know, Vux, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, Eurogamer, they all gave it varying scores. 4.5 out of 5 4 out of 5 7 out of 10 3 out of 5 so it's all kind of around you know the 7 7 to 9 marks as I mentioned earlier as of recording the Metacritic is 86 for.

Final Fantasy Resonance and for Switch 2 specifically it is 82 so I'm curious if you are picking this one up if you're eager for this if you're ready to get into it I'm on Blue Sky and Instagram at Switch 2 Pod that's Switch with the number 2 Pod if you want to share your thoughts you can shoot me a message,

I'm definitely going to play this. However, it's going on my 2027 list.

I think that I'll probably grab this when it drops to like $30 to $40 and play it when I can.

I'm just too excited for Ocarina of Time right now. And I have Final Fantasy Tactics to finish.

I have a few RPGs that I bought and haven't tackled yet. I still have Octopath

Traveler 2 on Nintendo Switch 1 from years ago, right? So I can get my HD 2D fix from a game I already own.

I'm excited for this though. I'm glad it exists. I will definitely play it eventually.

All right, let's speed run through a few quick headlines, and then I will let you get on with your weekend. Not really Switch 2 news, but BioWare is closing.

EA confirmed it's shutting down BioWare after more than 30 years, and early development on the next Mass Effect game is ending too.

BioWare was founded, I think, in 1995 before it was bought by EA.

This is the studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Star Wars Knights of the

Old Republic. I think their last game was a Dragon Age game.

I don't know that it hit EA's sales expectations. A few of those classics from

BioWare are available on Switch, so you can play some of these games.

I know Mass Effect's on there.

As much as I respect Bioware, I admit I haven't played a lot of their games.

I've been wanting to forever, but it's always tough just to see studios shut down, especially ones with rich history and kind of legacy.

Tomb Raider Shadow dropped yesterday. Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition is out now on Switch 2 from Aspire. $39.99, you get all seven DLC challenge tombs and two-player online co-op.

I think there's a 10% off sale going on right now.

Uh, three Game Boy games are coming to Nintendo classics. That's going to be this Tuesday, October 27th on Nintendo switch online.

Uh, there are some good ones here. So avenging spirit is an action game where you play as a ghost who possesses its enemies.

Mole mania is a puzzle game published by Nintendo and revenge of the gator is a pinball game.

I can't really speak for avenging spirit and revenge of the gator.

I've heard good things, but Mole Mania is one of the greatest Game Boy games ever released. I will stand on that hill forever. It is a must play.

I love Mole Mania. I've played it recently, so maybe I won't rush to play it, but I'm so glad that it's available for more people to discover this game.

And in case you missed it, the Monster Hunter Wild Prologue demo is on Switch 2.

It's on the eShop now if you want to check that out. It covers the opening of the game, character creation, chapters one through three, I think.

It's offline only, but it supports local play if you want to play with a friend.

Your save carries over to the full game.

I think this is launching in December. so if you have 12.8 gigabytes of free space and you want to try this out it is there to check out this weekend uh that's it for today on tuesday we'll dig into the reviews for switch sports, resort uh and whatever news might come our way i'll link to all the uh reviews that i've mentioned in the show notes uh if you want to go deeper i'm also going to link to a couple of reviews for steins gate, uh the crew motor fest and dynasty warriors 3 we just ran out of time for those today i want to thank you so much for your time and your attention if you've got 10 seconds before you close, whatever your app of choice is, and get on with your weekends.

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You don't have to write a single word if you don't want to. If you do,

I'll read it on the show. The show really runs on zero ads, zero promotion.

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A rating is genuinely the easiest thing you can do to help new listeners stumble onto the show. It really does help.

You can find everything at switch2pod.com that's switch with the number two pod.com.

Uh i'm on blue sky and instagram as i mentioned earlier same handle uh there's bonus content at patreon.com slash switch to pod but i really haven't been able to publish anything yet i'm hoping that life settles down and i can get on that quickly, um i apologize if you like these episodes short and sweet because this one's creeping up to 20 minutes which is absolutely insane i was not planning on that but there's just a lot to say about Final Fantasy Resonance.

Hopefully, hopefully you have an amazing weekend lined up. Make the most of it because Monday comes fast. I'll be back on Tuesday. Much love. Now go play some games.