is a 2021 role-playing video game developed and published by Mistwalker for Apple devices via the Apple Arcade platform. The game was released in two parts on April 1 and August 13. The story follows Leo, an amnesiac who ends up traveling multiple worlds becoming involved in a conflict between the forces of Order and Chaos. Gameplay has Leo and his party exploring different environments from an overhead perspective, engaging in turn-based combat. A unique mechanic is the "Dimengeon" system, which allows players to temporarily skip fights with some enemies.
Fantasian began development in 2018 after its producer and writer Hironobu Sakaguchi replayed Final Fantasy VI and was reinvigorated to create an emotional role-playing narrative. The staff featured recurring collaborators including artist Manabu Kusunoki, and composer Nobuo Uematsu. Both Sakaguchi and Uematsu approached the game thinking it might be their last large-scale project due to age and health concerns. The environments were created using real-world dioramas, including designs by veterans of the tokusatsu industry. Upon release the game was praised by critics for its combat and environmental design, though several faulted the second part's difficulty.
A version for home consoles and Windows, Fantasian: Neo Dimension, was released on December 5, 2024 by Square Enix. This version comes with high-definition graphics, gameplay adjustments, and voice acting in English and Japanese. Sakaguchi worked with Square Enix on Neo Dimension at the invitation of producer Naoki Yoshida, whose Creative Studio 3 co-developed the port with Mistwalker. Neo Dimension saw positive reviews from critics; praise continued to be given to its presentation and gameplay, opinions varied on its story and difficulty, while the Switch port was noted for technical issues.
Gameplay
Fantasian is a role-playing video game in which players take on the role of protagonist Leo and a growing party as they explore multiple locations across several worlds including the land of Vibra. Players can travel between different locations using a world map, while explorable locations include a minimap showing important locations and routes; markers on the minimap can be used to automatically take the party to that point. During the story, visual novel-style sequences called Memories are unlocked, showing parts of character backstories.
Battles, triggered through random encounters, use a turn-based battle system with up to three player party members facing either standard enemies or more powerful boss battles. Attacks and skills have different areas of effect depending on character positioning and weapon type, and can be aimed to strike multiple enemies. After facing an enemy type once, the player has the option of deferring random encounters with using the Dimengeon, a space capable of holding up to thirty enemies. Once the Dimengeon is full, the party must fight the housed enemies, with special bonuses available on the Dimengon battlefield for party members to acquire such as additional turns or damage boosts. Winning battles rewards experience points allowing characters to level up, earning Skill Points which unlock new passive and active abilities.
New mechanics are added in the second half of the game, including a character growth system based around a grid used to unlock abilities using Skill Points; the ability to upgrade weapons and equipment with new skills and attributes; a "Tension" gauge which rises by dealing and taking damage, and unlocks special moves; and the ability to swap one character for another during a turn. The original version supported both touchscreen-based controls, and controller peripherals.
Synopsis Leo, a young man suffering from amnesia, escapes from a place called the Machine Realm with the help of two robots, Clicker and Prickle. Arriving in the Human Realm Leo begins retracing his steps, recovering pieces of his memories, and seeking a way to repair his travel device. On the way he joins up with Kina, a girl with magical powers, the adventurous princess Cheryl, airship captain Zinikr, and the child inventor Ez. They also encounter Tan, a solitary fugitive. The human world is being infected with "Mechteria", which is associated with a god-like being of chaos called Vam the Malevolent. Vam takes an interest in Leo, whose father was collecting objects of power dubbed Divine Artefacts after Leo's mother was killed by one. Vam created the artifacts to absorb human emotions to counteract "Order", a force opposed to his "Chaos" that threatens to erase all of existence. During their journey, a voice contacts the group insisting they defeat Vam.
Vam captures Kina and Cheryl, who are bound to two Divine Artifacts, and Leo defeats Vam to save them. The voice, a rival god called Jas, reveals his manipulation of Leo's group to defeat Vam and allow order to spread unchecked, triggering the universe's rebirth. Leo, Clicker and Prickle awaken in the near-dead Chaos Realm, and are saved by its sole survivor Valrika. After she reveals Jas's nature, Valrika joins Leo in his quest to reunite his allies and defeat Jas, who is accelerating Mechteria spread across the Human Realm. He saves Ez, Kira and Cheryl from creatures of the Machine Realm, and finds Zinikr trapped in a coma; waking him, he reveals his recovered memories as the god Taros, a former companion of Vam, Jas and the goddess Yim; Yim's death caused Jas to become fatalistic, determined to restart the universe.
Leo helps his companions gather Divine Artifacts to empower their fight against Jas, including reawakening life in the Chaos Realm for Valrika, and recruiting Tan after he fulfils his mission of helping a spirit animal family who saved him from death. The group confront and defeat Jas, who ultimately welcomes death. His death stops the flow of Mechteria and allows the multiverse to find a new balance between Order and Chaos. After returning to the Human Realm, Leo finds evidence that his father traveled to another unknown realm, and he is joined by the rest of the group on his new mission.
Development
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. 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 modeled on Final Fantasy VI. He was also inspired by Final Fantasy XIV, describing the game as "[honoring] the legacy of earlier Final Fantasy games while also enhancing them". 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. Production began in June 2018 with Sakaguchi as producer. Other staff included Takuto Nakamura as director and lead programmer, and assistant producer Saho Nishikawa. Arzest assisted development with concept art and character modeling. 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. Outside the game needing to run on Apple operating systems and platforms, Mistwalker was given complete creative freedom.
Production lasted three years with a staff of thirty people, with the team using the Unity game engine. The final year's work was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which required all staff to work remotely. Sakaguchi described it as stressful as they were needing to scale models to environments, but felt there would have been a worst impact if the pandemic had struck during pre-production. The team transitioned to working remotely for the rest of development. The structure, narrative-focused for the first part and quest-driven in the second part, was directly inspired by Final Fantasy VI. This structural shift made it a natural breaking point for the two parts. Apple were also keen to release the game on their platform as soon as possible, encouraging the team to release Fantasian in two parts. 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.
The proposal included environments created using real-world diorama models scanned into the game with 3D characters exploring them. This caused difficulties, as while computer environments could be changed quickly, the dioramas could not and so needed to be planned in advance. Battle director Masahito Inoue was left in charge of designing and programming the combat. The gameplay was designed to be traditional, incorporating several elements comparable to Sakaguchi's work on Final Fantasy. He attributed this traditional design to its planned Apple Arcade platform, which hosted games more similar to home consoles than mobile platforms. In the spirit of innovation he remembered from early Final Fantasy titles, Sakaguchi created the Dimengeon system as both a convenience for mobile players, allowing for prolonged exploration and incorporating an innovative battle mechanic. The attack aiming was also designed with touchscreen controls in mind. 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. Sakaguchi approached the game's design as he did with earlier projects, and described the combat as "skewed heavier on the more difficult and challenging side". In hindsight, he felt that it was too difficult.
Scenario and art design Sakaguchi created the story and co-wrote the script with Atsuhiro Tomioka and Masaru Hatano. Sakaguchi drew inspiration for the worldview from Hayakawa Bunko-published science fiction and fantasy he had read during high school. During the early stages, the story was to have focused on dragons. The final story focused on the theme of order versus chaos, with Sakaguchi making Leo an amnesiac a much-used story device outside Sakaguchi's work to better introduce players to these abstract themes. 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, with in-game conflicts reflecting real-world situations. The number of characters was decided during a rewrite after Sakaguchi received feedback from the team on the first draft. The character Valrika was created in response to art director Jun Ikeda's criticism of a lack of female characters. 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). Shunsuke Kobayashi acted as event designer.