Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Fantasian Appears on SteamDB

 Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Aug 022023
 

Fantasian is a game I’ve had my eye on ever since it was first announced.

The most recent game to come from Hironobu Sakaguchi’s company Mistwalker, Fantasian is a turn-based JRPG reminiscent of classic Final Fantasy, and it looks fantastic.

However, it’s currently exclusive to Apple Arcade.

Back in December, when we learned of a new Mistwalker game in development, I mentioned that I finally had a device capable of playing Fantasian. Indeed, I used the Apple Arcade free trial that came with my new iPad to start Fantasian a few months ago.

I really like what I’ve played so far… and I really dislike playing it on a tablet.

It looked like there was no port in sight, but now that might finally be changing. Fantasian has appeared on SteamDB, the site that tracks everything in Steam’s database. While there’s no official announcement yet, this could mean an impending Fantasian PC port.

Since I’ve only played the start so far, I’d be more than happy to buy Fantasian on PC and play it there instead. Having it on consoles would be even nicer, but I’m just excited at the possibility that it might be finally leaving Apple Arcade exclusivity.

Will you play Fantasian if it’s finally ported?

Fantasian Sounds Much Longer Than I Expected

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Mar 242021
 

The more I see about Mistwalker’s upcoming JRPG Fantasian, the more excited I am (and the more I wish it wasn’t exclusive to Apple Arcade).

Fantasian is a turn-based JRPG where the environments are all hand-crafted dioramas, and it looks great.

A features trailer released earlier this month showed off some of its gameplay mechanics, such as how you can save up random encounters to fight the battles in a chain later on instead, and the story trailer really does remind me of classic JRPGs.

The soundtrack is composed by Nobuo Uematsu, and it might be the final game he composes the full soundtrack for.

Now, up until now I’d expected Fantasian to be a short JRPG. Yet a recent Famitsu preview, translated by Gematsu, suggests it will be much longer than I expected.

Fantasian will be released in two parts (which seems to be common for Apple Arcade games for some reason), both of which are due out this year. The first part has an estimated playtime of 20-30 hours.

Even taking into account that developers tend to exaggerate game lengths, that’s longer than I expected and it’s only the first part. It won’t necessarily be split perfectly in half, but if the length of the second part is similar, we could easily be looking at 40+ hours of playtime for Fantasian. The second part will reportedly have a more quest-focused, open structure.

Unfortunately, Fantasian is exclusive to Apple Arcade, and after looking at its page on the App Store, I’m not sure my old iPad will be able to play it anyway. On the other hand, the official website FAQ confirms that once it’s downloaded, you can play Fantasian offline, a major point in its favor if I do get to play it.

Several games have started on Apple Arcade and come to other systems later, so I can’t help but hope Fantasian will be ported once both parts are out. It’s looking like a JRPG I don’t want to miss.

In other JRPG news, Kazushige Nojima has a mobile game called Zodiac: Orcanon Odyssey that is now being reimagined for Switch, PS4, and PS5, so I’ll be keeping my eye on that.

Meanwhile, there have been a lot of rumors going around lately that I’m not going to write a full post about until we have something more official. I’m planning in case the PSP/Vita/PS3 store is really shutting down, but we don’t know that for sure yet. And as much as I’d love to believe the claim that “Lost Judgment” is a Judgment sequel, I want to see it from more than an anonymous source.

Getting back to the matter at hand, what are your thoughts on Fantasian? Are you surprised by its potential length, and do you expect we’ll see it on platforms other than Apple Arcade in the future?