Square Enix has a habit of burying good ideas inside phones. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius ran for the better part of a decade as a gacha game most Western fans never touched, quietly building an entire cast, an entire cosmology, an entire “Lapis” storyline — and now, on October 22, all of that is getting exhumed, rebuilt in HD-2D, and shipped as a real, premium, turn-based RPG called Final Fantasy Resonance. On Switch, Switch 2, PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S, no less. That’s not a small bet on a mobile spin-off nobody asked to see again.

Wait, why does everyone call this “FF7 Resonance”?

Because of the one mechanic doing all the marketing work: Visions. Mid-battle, you can summon apparitions of classic Final Fantasy characters — Cloud Strife chief among the ones Square keeps putting front and center in trailers — to unlock extra abilities for your active party. It’s not a crossover, and it’s not FF7 in disguise; Resonance’s actual leads are Rain, Lasswell, and Fina, protecting the last of the world’s crystals after Veritas of the Dark shatters the Earth Crystal. But dangling Cloud in front of every trailer is exactly the kind of thing that gets a JRPG mistaken for a numbered entry, and Square clearly isn’t in a hurry to correct anyone.

The pitch, stripped of the nostalgia bait

Underneath the Visions gimmick is a combat system that’s actually trying something: proper turn-based structure instead of the ATB tug-of-war the series usually reaches for, built around filling enemy stun meters to trigger combos and special attacks. That’s a meaningful design choice, not a nostalgia checkbox — it reads like a team building for clarity and pacing rather than trying to out-ATB Rebirth.

The visual pitch is arguably the bigger deal: this is the first HD-2D Final Fantasy, full stop. Square Enix co-developed it with Lancarse (director Hiroto Furuya, producers Kei Hirono and Keisuke Nakashima), and everything shown since the June Nintendo Direct reveal leans into exactly the sprite-and-lighting look that made Octopath Traveler and Live A Live punch above their budget. If Resonance nails that aesthetic on a story that was, by all accounts, one of Brave Exvius’s better arcs, this could be the rare “actually, the mobile game had a good story” redemption project.

Square is also not skimping on the audio side: the soundtrack drops October 28, six days after the game, at a genuinely absurd 120 tracks — 87 pulled from Brave Exvius and War of the Visions, 33 new compositions from Noriyasu Agematsu. For a project built on rescuing a gacha game’s back catalogue, that’s a real statement of intent, not a token gesture.

What I’m actually watching for

  • Does the Visions system stay a hook or become a crutch? Summoning Cloud is a great trailer beat once. If every tough fight boils down to “which cameo do I burn,” the combat system underneath won’t matter.
  • Can a “Lapis” newcomer actually follow this? Rain, Lasswell, and Fina come with a decade of gacha-game backstory. Resonance needs to stand on its own for anyone who never opened Brave Exvius, and that’s an adaptation problem as much as a game-design one.
  • HD-2D fatigue is real. This look has carried three or four high-profile Square Enix releases now. Resonance needs its own identity inside that style, not just another game wearing it.

I’ll have a full verdict once it’s out on October 22 — this is everything worth knowing before then, not a review. If the combat holds up and the story earns the HD-2D treatment instead of just borrowing its shine, this could be the most interesting “second chance” project Square’s put out in years.