My hype for Final Fantasy Resonance continues to build as Square Enix has released a new gameplay trailer showcasing more of its HD-2D pixel art style in its cinematic cutscenes, environments, and turn-based combat system.
I was already sold on the game for bringing back turn-based combat to the Final Fantasy franchise, but this trailer has cemented it on my wishlist.
It's a montage of various scenes from Final Fantasy Resonance. These include exploring towns and a classic open-world map seen in old-school Final Fantasy games from the NES to PS1 era, characters interacting with each other, and scenes of the turn-based combat system where the heroes summon spirits of previous Final Fantasy protagonists to aid them in battle.
All the while, it's all presented in an absolutely beautiful HD-2D pixel art style (a blend of 2D animated character sprites set against 3D animated backgrounds) that was made popular by Square Enix's Octopath Traveler series.
Windows Central's take
As someone who grew up playing 16-bit pixel-art games on the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive and is a fan of other HD-2D games like Live a Live Remake and Dragon Quest 3 Remake, I absolutely adore this game's pixel-art.
It looks so clean, vibrant, and detailed, and superbly animated to boot. Not to mention, it gives the characters so much personality with their exaggerated, intimidating, or silly pixel-art facial expressions depending on the situation.
I honestly prefer this art style to recent mainline 3D Final Fantasy games, which tried to blend realistic graphics with fantastical aesthetics, with mixed results that sometimes either dull the contrast of the environments to make it look boringly dreary (e.g., Final Fantasy XVI) or make characters look bland (or, in some worse cases, look like lifeless dolls, like in Final Fantasy XIII).
In fact, it looks so good that it makes me wish Square Enix used this art style for its modern remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics. Not that it's needed, as its PS1-era graphics have held up extremely well, but I would've loved to see what it would've looked like with HD-2D pixel art and modern animations for its over-the-top special attacks and summon spells.
Though I guess Square Enix wanted to play it safe with Final Fantasy Tactics since it's such a beloved game in the franchise, and they're probably using Final Fantasy Resonance to test the waters to see if people would want more HD-2D Final Fantasy games if it does well; I know I certainly do (here's hoping for an HD-2D remake of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance).
Either way, I can't wait to see more of Final Fantasy Resonance (or hopefully, a playable demo) before it releases on October 22, 2026, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 1 & 2, PC via Steam.
What do you think of Final Fantasy Resonance? Do you think its turn-based combat looks cool, or do you prefer Final Fantasy games with real-time combat, like the Final Fantasy VII Remake series?
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