Final Fantasy creator Sakaguchi wants to bring his Apple Arcade exclusive to PC
Dioramic JRPG Fantasian could get a PC port
Most JRPG fans on PC probably know Hironobu Sakaguchi as the creator and grandaddy of the Final Fantasy series. After he left Square Enix in 2003, Sakaguchi opened his own studio and worked on turn-based adventures like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey - games that arguably matched his genre-defining classics - but PC gamers have been largely unable to experience them, until now. Maybe. Sakaguchi recently took part in a Q&A (reported by IGN Japan, translated by VGC) where he expressed the desire to bring his Apple Arcade exclusive Fantasian to PC.
Speaking of Fantasian, Sakaguchi said, “We have received many requests to release the game on PC too, and there have also been requests for a sequel,” before adding, “so we would like to continue working as hard as possible to meet their expectations.” It’s not clear if he was referring to sequel requests or a PC port, but I’d be happy with either.
Fantasian was a delightful JRPG with tons of contemporary twists. Fantasian’s most instantly striking quality was its environments, which were mini dioramas, sculpted in real life and then scanned into the game. Every area had this uncanny, fairytale resemblance to the real world, but it also worked as a throwback to the pre-rendered painterly backgrounds of older Final Fantasies.
Fantasian wasn’t just a looker though, its combat thoughtfully remixed the tropes we’re all familiar with. At the start of every turn-based battle you can choose to send enemy monsters into an alternate dimension, delay the fight, and take on waves of interdimensional monsters another time. This procrastination feature was called “Dimengeon Battles”, a smart move for the game’s portable nature that also opened up exploration and negated the grind found in other RPGs. That’s all without mentioning how fun battling could actually be here; enemy positions and the trajectory of spells were all important factors to consider, so taking on waves of baddies was always a priority.
Mix in another all-time OST from legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu, and you have a JRPG that’s on par with the classics and deserves a port to other systems. Fantasian wouldn’t be the first game to escape the Apple Arcade dimension as Lego Brawls was ported to PC and consoles last year, and the chill city-builder Outlanders (also very good) is coming to Steam next week.