Following the defeat of Vam in the first half of the game, the team is pulled apart by a wormhole with members scattered to different parts of the Human Realm and beyond. With zero fanfare, the second half of Fantasian picks up with heroes Leo, Prickle, Clicker, and Valrika leaving the Chaos Realm in search of Leo’s companions. If you want more information about the first half and the outstanding Dimengeon battle system, you can check out my review of it here. MSRP: Part of Apple Arcade ($4.99 a month)įor the sake of this review, I’m only going to cover the second half of Fantasian. But once you do get back into the swing of things, you’ll find the second half of this game is just as richly entertaining as the first, making for one hell of a complete package. There’s no recap or “last time on” to catch you up on things, so if you haven’t played since April like me, it may take a bit to jog your memory. It just picks up right where you left off. Because there was no indication how long it would take for the rest of the game to show up, and because the first half had a pretty concrete ending, I was under the impression this game would be two distinct parts, like Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age.īut really, the second half of Fantasian is just that the second half of one complete game. When the game first released on Apple Arcade, subscribers were only given access to the first half of the adventure, an 18-to-25 hour romp around a world under threat from dangers from another dimension. ![]() Right off the bat, I should make it clear there really is no Fantasian part two. ![]() You crafted one of the best RPGs of the modern era, and it deserves to be played and remembered by far more people.I thought there’d be more ballerina hippos Maybe Lost Odyssey, too, if I’m being honest here but at a minimum Fantasian needs to be preserved. So, Mistwalker - if you’re listening - please port Fantasian to PC. Most importantly, it gives players an option to actually own a copy of the game whether they’ve never touched it before, or even if they’d already played the game on Apple’s own service. If Fantasian were to be ported to PC, not only would many more players be able to get their hands on it - I’d personally love to give it a replay on Steam Deck, if that option were available to me - but it would help ensure that the game could be properly preserved into the future, especially if released DRM free on platforms like GOG. While I personally loved the difficulty the game included, it would be nice if a re-release might include options to help smooth things over for anyone who might’ve found the original’s too off-putting. There are other, less altruistic reasons I’d like the game to be ported, of course if possible, I’d like to hope that a PC version of Fantasian might make use of higher-resolution scans of the dioramas that make up much of the game’s world not to mention a higher resolution in general, and a higher framerate. ![]() ![]() Yet as it stands it’s impossible to recommend to anyone outside of Apple’s ecosystem, or who refuse to rent their games on a subscription service. How many players would love Fantasian if given the chance? It’s no coincidence that everyone on staff ended up vouching for it when it came time to crown our favorite RPGs of 2021 so much of what Fantasian brings to the table feels uncharacteristic of what players expect from mobile-only titles, and it really does feel like a game of the SNES/PS1 era of RPGs, albeit with its own modern twists. Time and again I’ve sung the game’s praises to those who would listen, and yet the answer has remained the same while Fantasian is a killer app for Apple Arcade, it deserves to be freed from its prison. It would be a tragedy if Fantasian was merely left to be forgotten on a platform that many of the same people who would love the game if given the chance to play it, will never touch. We’re fast approaching the closure of the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShops, and games preservation is hot on the industry’s mind if one day Apple Arcade were to close its doors for good, as of right now there would be no way for even those who had already played the game to maintain access to it. Over time, I’ve realized that Fantasian is perhaps one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played, and it's only pained me to think that one day the game might be lost to history. A few weeks back, Sakaguchi implied that a PC port of Fantasian might be a possibility and while I’d absolutely ask for ports to other platforms like the Switch as well, I can’t stress enough how much the industry needs any port to happen.
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