Fantasian

Last updated

Fantasian
Fantasian Cover Art.png
Fantasian: Neo Dimension artwork featuring the game's cast
Developer(s) Mistwalker [lower-alpha 1]
Publisher(s)
Director(s) Takuto Nakamura
Producer(s)
Designer(s)
  • Shunsuke Kobayashi
  • Masahito Inoue
Programmer(s) Takuto Nakamura
Artist(s)
  • Jun Ikeda
  • Takatoshi Goto
  • Manabu Kusunoki
Writer(s)
  • Hironobu Sakaguchi
  • Atsuhiro Tomioka
  • Masaru Hatano
Composer(s) Nobuo Uematsu
Engine Unity
Platform(s)
iOS
Release
  • Part 1
  • April 2, 2021
  • Part 2
  • August 13, 2021
  • Neo Dimension
  • December 5, 2024
Genre(s) Role-playing
Mode(s) Single-player

Fantasian [lower-alpha 2] is a 2021 role-playing video game developed and published by Hawaii-based studio Mistwalker for iOS, macOS and tvOS through Apple Arcade. It was produced and written by Hironobu Sakaguchi with music by Nobuo Uematsu, best known for their involvement in the Final Fantasy series. The game was released in two parts. An enhanced version named Fantasian: Neo Dimension will be released by Square Enix for additional platforms in December 5, 2024.

Contents

Gameplay

Screenshot showing the diorama style used in Fantasian and the HUD that appears during a battle Fantasian screenshot.jpg
Screenshot showing the diorama style used in Fantasian and the HUD that appears during a battle

Exploring the world of Fantasian involves players tapping on a location, which Leo will then navigate his way to. As the player navigates the world, random encounters occur where the player must fight a small group of enemies. During these battles, the game changes to a turn-based RPG. [1] When in combat, the player controls a small party, where during the player's turn, the player can deal physical damage to a single enemy, use items to aid themselves or cure status ailments, or use skills that require magic points such as offensive magic attacks or attacks that hit multiple enemies. When playing on a mobile device, players can swipe on the screen with their finger to select multiple targets to attack. [2] Characters earn experience points after battles that automatically increase their stats when a character "levels up", and a skill tree is accessible towards the end of the first part of the game.

Equipment can be purchased from various stores or obtained by treasure chests scattered throughout the world to increase a character's attack or defence stat. The game features checkpoints and save points that save the player's progress. [3]

A unique element to Fantasian is the "Dimengeon" system which allows players to skip battles against previously encountered enemies. [4] When the "Dimengeon" system is enabled, players do not fight enemies immediately – instead, the enemies are placed into the "Dimengeon", thus allowing players to explore the game's world without interruption. However, the "Dimengeon" can only hold a certain amount of enemies, and once this capacity has been exceeded, the player is forced to fight all of the enemies they have accumulated at once. Various enhancements are available during these "Dimengeon" battles, such as increased attack power or the ability to steal a turn from an enemy, to help the player fight the large amount of enemies. [5]

The original version supported both touchscreen-based controls, and controller peripherals. [6] An update in 2021 to the original release added a post-game superboss, and a New Game Plus option unlocked at a certain point late game, carrying over levels, unlocked skills and equipment into a new playthrough. [7]

Plot

The game's plot revolves around Leo, a young man who becomes amnesiac after entering an alternate universe known as the Machine Realm. Various characters join him in his quest to recover his memory and discover who he is, while also confronting the mysterious Vam the Malevolent along the way. [8] [9]

Development

Hironobu Sakaguchi in 2015 (16102150083) (cropped).jpg
Nobuo uematsu 001.jpg
Fantasian was produced and written by Hironobu Sakaguchi (left), with an original score by Nobuo Uematsu (right): both approached the game feeling it would be their last large-scale project due to age and health concerns.

Fantasian was developed by Mistwalker, a Japanese-American video game company founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi, known for his work at Square (later Square Enix) on multiple properties including the Final Fantasy series. [10] [11] In March 2018, Sakaguchi participated in a livestream with fellow developers playing Final Fantasy VI (1994). Reliving those memories, Sakaguchi became inspired to create a traditional RPG inspired by Final Fantasy VI. [12] [13] The project was greenlit following meetings with Apple representatives who were fans of Sakaguchi's work and wanted him to create a title for their upcoming Apple Arcade platform. [12] [14] Production began in June 2018 with Sakaguchi as producer. [12] Other staff included Takuto Nakamura as director and lead programmer, and assistant producer Saho Nishikawa. [15] [16] Arzest assisted development with concept art and character modelling. [17] Due to his advancing age, Sakaguchi approached the game with the mindset that it might be his last large-scale project before retiring from the industry. [10] [11] Outside the game needing to run on Apple operating systems and platforms, Mistwalker was given complete creative freedom. [18]

Production lasted three years with a staff of thirty people, [14] [19] with the team using the Unity game engine. [20] The final year's work was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Sakaguchi described it as stressful as they were needing to scale models to environments, but felt that worse effects could have occurred if it had occurred during the brainstorming phase. [14] The team transitioned to working remotely for the duration. [21] The structure, which had a tightly focused narrative for the first part and a quest-driven journey to reassemble the party in the second, was directly inspired by Final Fantasy VI. [22] Due to the story's structural shift at this point, it was seen as a natural breaking point for the two parts. [14] Apple were also keen to release the game on their platform as soon as possible, encouraging the team to release Fantasian in two parts. [23] The second part, originally planned as a series of short stories for the characters, turned out much larger than planned due to added gameplay content. [22]

The proposal included environments created using real-world diorama models scanned into the game with 3D characters exploring them. [12] This caused difficulties, as while computer environments could be changed quickly, the dioramas could not and so the environments were carefully planned in advance. [24] Battle director Masahito Inoue was left completely in charge of designing and programming the combat. [15] The gameplay was designed to be traditional and included several elements comparable to Sakaguchi's work on Final Fantasy. [25] He attributed this traditional design on a mobile title to its presence on Apple Arcade, which hosted "conventional" game titles. [24] In the spirit of innovation he remembered from early Final Fantasy titles, Sakaguchi created the Dimengeon system as both a convenience for mobile players, allow for prolonged exploration of environments, and incorporate an innovative battle mechanic. [25] The attack aiming was also designed with touchscreen controls in mind. [26] The denser structure of the second part, with new gameplay elements and an expanded skill system, was attributed to a strong commitment to providing a polished experience inspired by the need to work remotely. [27]

Scenario and art design

Sakaguchi created the story and co-wrote the script with Atsuhiro Tomioka and Masaru Hatano. [15] Sakaguchi drew inspiration for the worldview from Hayakawa Bunko-published science fiction and fantasy he had read during high school. [12] During the early stages, the story was to have focused on dragons. [12] The final story focused on the theme of order in conflict with chaos, with Sakaguchi making Leo an amnesiac−a much-used story device outside Sakaguchi's work−to better introduce players to these abstract themes. [18] He wanted to portray the characters as human at the mercy of universal powers greater than themselves in a world where will and emotion have power. [12] Sakaguchi wanted the game's portrayal of conflict to reflect real-world situations. [18] The number of characters was decided during a rewrite after Sakaguchi received feedback from the team on the first draft. The character Baurica was created by Sakaguchi in response to art director Jun Ikeda's criticism of a lack of female characters. [27] For the Memory sections, Sakaguchi used a similar approach of combining text with illustrations and sound as "A Thousand Years of Dreams", a series of short stories within Lost Odyssey (2007). [14] Shunsuke Kobayashi acted as event designer. [15]

The characters were designed by Takatoshi Goto. Sakaguchi described Goto's designs as doing a good job expression the multiple worlds featured, noting that each lead was given a color theme and tied into the story themes. [12] The in-game character models were designed to fit in with the diorama environments, having realistic proportions and a soft doll-like texture. Character animations were done by hand to reinforce this style. [16] The concept art and Memory illustrations were created by Manabu Kusunoki. [9] [15] Ikeda described working with real-world dioramas as a refreshing change in design. [15] During pre-production, concept dioramas were created by Walnuts Claywork Studio's Tomohiro Yatsubo, who had worked on similar environments for Terra Wars which had similarly used dioramas and clay models. [16] A Terra Wars diorama kept in the studio was used for early testing. [20] Due to the design approach, the team had to be certain of their goals as changing anything that required environmental redesigns would be a lot of work. [25] Nishikawa was in charge of coordinating the dioramas. [20] The original plan to 3D scan the dioramas into the game proved unworkable, with Nakamura creating an alternate method of extracting 3D information from photographs, allowing the team to recreate the environments in-game. [12] This proved challenging for flat environments compared to hilly or building environments. Due to limitations with camera size and angles, some environments had to be redesigned. [20]

Not counting smaller variations, over 150 dioramas were created by ten companies across Japan that were veterans of the tokusatsu industry. [19] Several of the modellers had never worked on a video game project before, encountering some difficulties creating objects and environments from the illustrations provided. Yatsubo remembered them modelling their environment "down to the milimetre" to properly reflect Sakaguchi's plan. The Quail airship was created by Marbling Fine Arts's Hiroshi Ihara based on the concept of "a boat with beautiful curves". [28] LED lights were used in the models as light sources, such as interior lights and fires in the Quail. [21] A notable contributor was Akira Toriyama, with whom Sakaguchi had worked on a number of projects, who submitted a diorama under a pseudonym. [29] As the dioramas took shape, Sakaguchi drew inspiration from them for some elements of the design. [30]

Music

The music for Fantasian was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, who had worked on the Final Fantasy series and a number of Sakaguchi's projects at Mistwalker. [13] Uematsu composed the entire soundtrack himself. [31] The tracks were arranged by Uematsu, Hiroyuki Nakayama, Tsutomu Narita, Kazuhira Degawa, Michio Okamiya, and Yuria Miyazono. [32] At the time he was approached, Uematsu was having health difficulties, and Sakaguchi feared he would not be able to take on the commission. Uematsu accepted, though hinting to Sakaguchi that Fantasian might be his final full game score. [13] Uematsu described it as like Sakaguchi wooing him into work again. The original number of songs provided by Sakaguchi was 50, but Uematsu ended up expanding it to nearly sixty, with him taking the longest time writing the main theme. While many of his scores had a melancholy tone, Uematsu wrote the score of Fantasian around the theme of hope, inspired by Sakaguchi's scenario. [31] The entire score was completed before the game's first part released, with around thirty songs being exclusive to the second part. [22]

The soundtrack had no set genre, with Uematsu allowed to create whatever music he liked. Rather than a purely orchestral soundtrack, Uematsu composed most of the score for a synthesiser, feeling he could get a broader range of sounds and effects out of that than a standard orchestral. It also gave him greater control over different parts of the music. [31] Wanting to break free of conventional music found in the JRPG genre, Uematsu experimented with elements like dissonance and ethnic instruments. [24] He also incorporated improvised music in the form of a jazz track, something he had never done before. [33]

Choosing battle themes for the game was a struggle as Sakaguchi and other team members liked them equally. For the final boss, Uematsu decided to write it like a "four-party opera", making Sakaguchi fear they would need to add an extra phase to accommodate the music. [22] The main ending theme "Kina (Destiny)" was performed by Miyazono, with lyrics written by Sakaguchi. [32] [22] One combat song featured vocals by Yasuo Sasai, a veteran of Uematsu 's Earthbound Papas band, and he wrote the song with Sasai's broad vocal range in mind. [31] Additional choral vocals were performed by the choral group Barzz. [32] Uematsu felt that Fantasian contained some of his personal favourite melodies, while Sakaguchi admitted to crying upon hearing some of the tracks. [33]

A physical CD album, Nobuo Uematsu × Hironobu Sakaguchi Works - Music from Fantasian, was released by Dog Ear Records on July 28, 2021. [34] The song titles were kept deliberately simple so people would have an easy time finding them for listening. [22] This release included an additional CD and booklet script for the bonus sound drama "The Tale of Blik-o". [34] Uematsu had previously written "The Tale of Blik-o" for a fan event, and included it in commercial form at Sakaguchi's suggestion. [31] The soundtrack album was released digitally worldwide on August 2, 2021. [35]

Release

Fantasian was announced in March 2019 during a showcase of in-development titles for the Apple Arcade platform. [36] The team were originally aiming for a 2020 release, something Sakaguchi described as naive, and ended up releasing it six months later than planned. [27] Explaining the title Fantasian, Sakaguchi described it as a clear statement of the game's fantasy worldview and portrayal of travel between worlds. [12] The localization was handled by a five-person team spread across Japan and North America including Jessica Chavez, who worked on The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky . Chavez, who had previously worked on Mistwalker's The Last Story (2011), was contacted by a former coworker about the project after starting freelance work and joined the project in 2020. Localization happened parallel to the game's development, with Chavez coordinating with Nishikawa over the details. [37]

The first part released on April 1, 2021. [38] The game is compatible with iOS, macOS, and tvOS, being playable on associated devices. [6] [10] It was self-published by Mistwalker. [39] The second part released on August 13. [40] Following the September patch, Sakaguchi described Fantasian as being complete. [7] Sakaguchi later voiced his wish to both bring the game to other platforms, and develop a sequel. [41]

Fantasian: Neo Dimension

A high definition port of the game, Fantasian: Neo Dimension, was announced in June 2024 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows. [42] It will release on December 5, with physical editions made available for PlayStation 5 and Switch. [43] The port was co-developed by Mistwalker and Square Enix, which also acted as publisher worldwide. [44] It was Mistwalker's first title released on PlayStation hardware, and its first home console release since The Last Story . [14] [45] It was also the first time Sakaguchi had worked with Square Enix since leaving the company in 2003. [46] Neo Dimension included enhanced graphics, an easier difficulty option, gameplay balances, and voice acting in English and Japanese. [42] [23] Balancing updates added to the original version post-release were incorporated. [23] It also included a feature where the battle theme could be changed to ones from selected Final Fantasy titles. [47]

While Sakaguchi had previously left Square Enix on poor terms, and had wanted to make a name for himself away from its properties, the situation had softened and he had become a fan and regular player of Final Fantasy XIV . During a dinner with Final Fantasy XIV producer Naoki Yoshida in 2021, Sakaguchi voiced his wish to bring the game to other platforms, and Yoshida offered to have Square Enix publish the title. [46] Yoshida successfully persuaded Square Enix's upper management to greenlight the collaboration, a process Sakaguchi remembered took a long time. Creative Studio 3, which had worked on Final Fantasy XIV and XVI , helped with development. [44]

While the original release featured no voice acting, a common feature in Sakaguchi's games, Yoshida pushed for its inclusion in Neo Fantasian due to both fan demand and a wish to increase the story's impact. While major story sequences and important conversations were voiced, smaller exchanges were left silent to conserve the game's pacing. The full-motion cutscenes had to be adjusted to incorporate the voices. Responding to feedback on the game's later sections being too hard, adjustments were made and the new easier difficulty added. The original version's difficulty was retained as a Hard mode. Nakamura was happy at the plan to release the game across a large number of platforms, and worked with Square Enix to adjust the game to work on each platform. [44]

Reception

Fantasian received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic. [48] Particular praise was given to the "Dimengeon" system, the diorama sets, the soundtrack, and the gameplay during battles, while criticism centered around the game's story being a typical JRPG story, navigating the world being somewhat cumbersome via the touch controls, and the game's graphics being subpar when playing the game on higher-resolution devices such as through macOS. [1] [50] [3]

During the 25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Fantasian for Mobile Game of the Year. [57] At The Game Awards 2021, Fantasian was nominated in the Best Mobile Game category. [58]

Notes

  1. ↑ Additional work by Arzest. Neo Fantasian co-developed with Square Enix Creative Studio 3.
  2. ↑ Japanese: ファンタジアン, Hepburn: Fantajian

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  19. 1 2 坂口博信×鳥嶋和彦 対談──31年前の出会いが『ファイナルファンタジー』を変え、『クロノ・トリガー』を生み出し、そして『ファンタジアン』という名の遺言が完成した. DenFamiNicoGamer.jp (in Japanese). August 14, 2021. Archived from the original on August 14, 2021. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 『ファンタジアン』ついに後編配信！ 攻略のポイントを坂口博信氏＆中村拓人氏が伝授する“完成”記念インタビュー. Famitsu (in Japanese). August 13, 2021. Archived from the original on September 8, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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  30. ↑ Klepek, Patrick (March 10, 2021). "Why the Designer of Final Fantasy Is Still Making RPGs, Now With Dioramas". Vice . Archived from the original on March 11, 2021. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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  36. ↑ Pineda, Rafael Antonio (March 27, 2019). "Mistwalker Announces Fantasian Game for Apple Arcade Service". Anime News Network . Archived from the original on March 27, 2019. Retrieved April 4, 2021.
  37. ↑ Madnani, Mikhail (April 16, 2021). "From 'Trails in the Sky' to Writing Books and 'Fantasian', an Interview with Localization Specialist Jessica Chavez". Touch Arcade . Archived from the original on April 16, 2021. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
  38. ↑ Romano, Sal (April 1, 2021). "Fantasian part one now available". Gematsu. Archived from the original on February 6, 2023. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
  39. ↑ "Fantasian". Apple. Archived from the original on June 18, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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  41. ↑ Krabbe, Esra (February 27, 2023). "Hironobu Sakaguchi Considering PC Port and Sequel to Fantasian". IGN . Archived from the original on August 27, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
  42. 1 2 Romano, Sal (June 18, 2024). "Fantasian Neo Dimension announced for PS5, Xbox Series, PS4, Switch, and PC". Gematsu. Archived from the original on June 22, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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  44. 1 2 3 『FANTASIAN Neo Dimension』坂口博信氏＆吉田直樹氏インタビュー。『ファンタジアン』がスクウェア・エニックスで発売されるのは"同窓会で帰って来たような気持ち". Famitsu (in Japanese). September 16, 2024. Archived from the original on September 17, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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  46. 1 2 Schreier, Jason (July 3, 2024). "'Final Fantasy' Creator Reunites With Square Enix After Two Decades". Bloomberg News . Archived from the original on July 3, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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  57. ↑ "D.I.C.E. Awards By Video Game Details Fantasian". Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on April 23, 2024. Retrieved July 21, 2023.
  58. ↑ Bankhurst, Adam (December 10, 2021). "The Game Awards 2021 Winners: The Full List". IGN . Archived from the original on May 30, 2024. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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