![]() ![]() What they’ve done with the visuals, and allowing players to control those characters in that way, is phenomenal. Take the Final Fantasy VII remake for example, which was recently released. And I think a lot of the visual expression and how much we’ve pushed the boundaries is fascinating. ![]() But are there things about modern triple-A blockbuster games that impress you? We caught up with Hironobu-san by Zoom in Honolulu to look back at his career highlights, his inspirations and interests in modern gaming, and his one-time foray into directing movies. The game surprise dropped last week across Apple’s mobile platforms, including iPhone and iPad, as part of Apple Arcade. Inspired by many of the retro games that built his reputation, Fantasian will be instantly familiar to fans of the early Final Fantasy titles. ![]() But this year, he’s returning at last to the genre that made him famous, bringing his classic touch to a throwback 2D RPG title called Fantasian. Hironobu-san left Square Enix and Final Fantasy behind in the early 2000s, and over the course of the past decade, he’s been mainly working on mobile games in Japan. A revered elder statesman of the medium, his place in the annals of gaming history is absolutely secure. His work on the first six Final Fantasy games, in particular, has been so widely imitated that he is arguably among the most influential designers of the 2D console era. The Japanese game designer, director, and producer is responsible for creating a handful of the most famous and acclaimed video games of all time, including the immortal classics Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy. All that long, layered history is noticeable, even if you're not personally familiar.In the world of video games, Hironobu Sakaguchi is a legend. That you're watching your escapades through a god's eye.Īttention and care is the thing with Fantasian. Teeny tiny creations that you romp through, often in ultra close-up, where the brush-strokes, miniature sprigs of feathery moss and little pinprick clumps of artist's putty are visible, the beauty often secondary to the sensation of it all - that the world is overtly authored, specifically hand-placed. There's a faint sense that these are acting as smart cover for a fairly thin budget (there's a recurring sound effect that is absolutely just a recording of a TIE Fighter, for instance, and a lot of laboured text in place of more elaborate cutscenes). The thing you'll know Fantasian for of course, alongside its director, is its extraordinary use of physical dioramas for its overworlds. It also makes for a kind of self-directed difficulty meter - if things are feeling a little easy, use the machine and fight the random monsters a couple dozen at a time. You can choose to battle them at any point, or you're forced to when it gets full, so the convenience of getting around the world without battles is gained, at the cost of a little mind-game you play with yourself about when to take them all on at once. Likewise the wild encounters, which you just start to tire of before being introduced to a very clever twist called a "Dimengon Machine", a doohickey that bottles up enemies you would've encountered, up to a limit. There are a moderate amount of systems here, and they're introduced in layers: turn-based battles, fine, but then positioning becomes important, and then a bit of very casual mechanics become important, as you learn to "bend" spells to get around blocking enemies or hit several at one. A welcoming kind of "onboarding" is not something I've associated with JRPGs, but - maybe because of its launch on Apple Arcade, with the different, presumably quite specific kind of audience that brings - Fantasian does it well. I have more or less no familiarity with any of this though, having dipped toes in a number of Final Fantasies and reliably found their water a little cold - but I'm sinking into Fantasian quite nicely. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |