[[2026 Games]]  ## 2026-10-23 I wasn’t *that* interested in **Final Fantasy Resonance** when it was first announced. It’s not that I thought it would be bad or anything, I've just been burned by [[Square Enix]]'s previous HD-2D offerings. The only thing I've enjoyed about the **Octopath Traveler** games is the music, I don't give a fuck about any **Dragon Quest** that doesn’t have “Monsters” at the end of the title, and the **Live-A-Live** remake is only good because because it’s **Live-A-Live**. It doesn’t help that **Resonance** is a repurposed gacha game. I appreciate this as a concept, as I did with **Octopath Traveler 0** — but gacha games aren’t exactly known for their quality, because gacha games are trash. So imagine my surprise when I tried the demo for **Resonance** and ended up being hooked. The plot is absolutely nothing at this point, and from what I understand it’ll only ever pick up in a sequel if it ever comes out. But this game has the *sauce*. The [[Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain|goop]], as it were. I’m enjoying it deeply. **FFR** does something that I wish more JRPGs did, which is make the average random battle more interesting beyond managing your resource economy during a dungeon. This is yet another Square-Enix game that uses a Stagger mechanic, but unlike in the **Octopath** series, this is actually good. Staggering an enemy doesn't require a certain number of hits — instead, every attack does a variable amount of stagger damage and direct HP damage, with each attack generally being better at one thing or the other. I never found Boosting in **OT** all that interesting in comparison. On top of this, staggering an enemy does more than finally making an enemy actually take some fucking damage, it gives the character that did the stagger another turn. And if every enemy in a battle is staggered, you get a Sweeping Stagger, letting every party member get an extra turn and capping it off with a Resonance Ability. These are your ultimate abilities which are determined by the Vision you have equipped (we’ll get to them in a second). Cloud will do a high-damage crit on a single enemy, the Warrior of Light will hit all enemies with non-elemental damage and buff his user, your white mage will do a team heal, etc. This creates a wonderful tempo in every battle, encouraging you to use your various abilities instead of mashing attack all the time. It also ties in well with the Vision system I just mentioned. You can collect Visions of various **Final Fantasy** protagonists, each fulfilling various roles in your party. Some are tanks, some are damage dealers, others are good for debuffs, and others still are there to help you stagger enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible. Yes they’re basically Stands from [[Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure - Part 4|JJBA]]. Equipping a Vision will level them up for that particular user. And doing so gives you abilities and passives that you can keep equipped even when you swap to a different Vision. This is the part that made me start salivating at the possibilities. Five hours in, and I’ve already had my Breaker — the class good at staggering — Lasswell equip the Black Mage vision to get the skill that lets him gain MP back whenever he staggers, effectively giving him 0 cost for low-MP moves that are effective for staggering. My White Mage Fina is able to also cast Debuffs, which increases her Limit Break gauge way faster so she can pop holy damage as frequently as possible. You see the vision.[^1] This is a mechanically dense **Final Fantasy** in a series that — unless it has the numbers “V,” “XII,” or “XIII” — isn’t exactly known for its complexity. Like, outside of boss fights, you can mash your way through most fights in these games and be generally fine. Not so here, especially on Expert difficulty mode. A JRPG that lets me use my brain is few and far between, so I’m locked in for the foreseeable future. [^1]: deadass this pun wasn’t intentional I realized it after finishing this post. My bad lol