FINAL FANTASY RESONANCE is a turn-based role-playing game developed by Square Enix and LANCARSE and published by Square Enix. It is the first FINAL FANTASY title to join the HD-2D lineup, and it is based on the first story arc of the mobile game FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS, refined and extensively rebuilt as a full-fledged console-quality RPG. The game is scheduled to launch on October 22, 2026 for Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store on Windows. The Standard Edition costs $49.99.
Square Enix announced the game on June 9, 2026 during a Nintendo Direct presentation and opened pre-orders the same day. Its tagline is "Hope resonates within the crystals." The game is single-player only, carries a logo illustration by Yoshitaka Amano, and runs about 30 to 40 hours for the main scenario on Normal difficulty, or 60 to 80 hours with broad completion, according to the producer.
Story and Setting
The story takes place in Grandshelt, the Kingdom of Knights, in a world where Crystals bless the people. When the barrier of the Earth Shrine wanes, a man in black armor known as Veritas of the Dark, one of the Sworn Six of Paladia, shatters the Earth Crystal and attacks Grandshelt. Rain, a knight of Grandshelt and the young commander of its airship squadron, and Lasswell, his deputy commander, who was orphaned young and raised by Rain's family, set out to protect the remaining Crystals scattered across the world. They are joined by Fina, a mysterious girl who appears from the Earth Crystal itself. She remembers nothing but her own name, excels in white magic and archery, and can communicate with espers.
Two more characters round out the announced cast. Charlotte is an active-service knight of Grandshelt, a peer of Rain and Lasswell, who appears early in the story. The fifth is a mysterious woman whose name Square Enix has not revealed; she holds a deep enmity toward Veritas of the Dark, travels alongside the esper Bahamut, wields offensive magic, and likes to tease Rain. The main scenario is fully voiced, with English and Japanese audio.
Combat
Battles are turn-based command battles. A timeline at the top of the screen shows the action order of allies and enemies through the next turn. Every enemy carries a Stagger Gauge under its HP bar: each hit shaves the gauge, and hitting an elemental weakness shaves it faster. When the gauge empties, the enemy staggers, losing its action for the turn while its defense drops, and the character who landed the staggering blow earns an extra action in the bonus phase at the end of the turn. Staggering every enemy on the field triggers a sweeping stagger that grants bonus actions to the entire party, capped by a single Resonance attack, a cinematic Vision ultimate that costs no resources once the conditions are met. Encounters are random, the party fields up to four members, and the game offers Casual, Normal, and Expert difficulties plus 1.5x and 2x battle speed settings.
Visions
Visions are items holding the crystallized essences of characters, obtained by completing character events. Each party member equips one Vision to gain its stats along with that character's skills and magic. The bond between a member and an equipped Vision deepens through battle, unlocking abilities that, once learned, stay equippable across Visions within a cost limit. The developers frame the system as an evolution of the classic FINAL FANTASY job system, and fighting with a Vision equipped also raises its Mastery Rank for permanent stat boosts.
The game features 26 Visions in total. Sixteen are legacy heroes, one for each mainline entry from FINAL FANTASY I through XVI, with Shantotto representing FINAL FANTASY XI and Y'shtola representing FINAL FANTASY XIV. Confirmed legacy Visions so far include the Warrior of Light, Cloud, Terra, Tidus, Shantotto, and Y'shtola. The remaining ten Visions come from the game's own cast, including Charlotte, the white mage Leah, and the black mage Tronn. Legacy heroes wait inside vision crystal sanctums, the Shrines of Light scattered across the world, where players revisit the stories of the original games. No Vision is sold as DLC; all of them are obtainable in-game.
Espers
Espers return as summons unlocked through the story and side quests. A summoned esper fights alongside the party for three turns, delivers a powerful finishing move on the final turn, and then disappears. Summoning carries a large MP cost, which makes espers a tide-turning option against strong foes. Siren, Ramuh, and Bahamut are confirmed so far, and moogles are woven into the story.
World Map and Exploration
Resonance revives the walkable world map, with towns and dungeons placed directly on it. Chocobos can be ridden in the field, ships ferry the party between continents, and an airship obtained as the journey unfolds can be flown directly across the world map, unlocking airship-only dungeons, enemies, and events along with previously visible but unreachable spots. Hidden passages and chests reward thorough exploration. Named locations so far include the Town of Mitra, the Earth Shrine, and the kingdom of Grandshelt itself.
Side Content
The world hides the wandering swordmaster Gilgamesh, a Colosseum with deadly monsters and rewards to match, the Chamber of Arms with formidable foes sealed within legendary weapons, and a showdown with Ultima Weapon. The producer has also described superboss-class enemies and an endgame system in which carrying a base item while defeating strong foes empowers that weapon. Roughly 30 to 40 side quests, all of them new scenarios written for this game, spotlight the main cast and supporting characters, and some mix in puzzles or minigames.
Presentation
As the first FINAL FANTASY in the HD-2D lineup, the game blends pixel-art characters with 3D environments, then layers on a technique the team calls Cinematic Pixel: 3DCG footage pixelized for the opening movie and event scenes. Dynamic camera work drives event staging that earlier HD-2D titles rarely attempted, legacy heroes' ultimate attacks and some esper cinematics render in full 3D, and the character sprites use a higher head-to-body ratio than other HD-2D games. The whole project answers one question the developers set themselves: what if FINAL FANTASY had continued to evolve in pixel art?
Relationship with Brave Exvius
The game retells the first story arc of FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS, the mobile RPG that launched in Japan in 2015. The developers say everything except the scenario outline and the characters has changed: the original scenario writer rewrote all of the dialogue, parts of the plot were re-sequenced, every side quest is a new scenario, and the gacha mechanics are gone. Square Enix positions the result as far richer in both quality and scope than a straightforward port or remake. No knowledge of the mobile game is needed to follow the story.
Development
Keisuke Nakashima, previously an assistant producer on FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS, produces the game, and Hiroto Furuya directs. Nakashima pitched the project around 2020, roughly six years before release, and development ran inside the Square Enix division responsible for the company's other HD-2D titles, with LANCARSE as co-developer. Yukinori Kitajima of the scenario company Synthese wrote the script. The music comes from Elements Garden, the composer group led by Noriyasu Agematsu that scored the mobile game; the soundtrack pairs returning melodies with 33 newly recorded tracks.
Editions
Three editions are on offer. The Standard Edition costs $49.99, with physical releases on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 5 and digital releases on all six storefronts. The Digital Deluxe Edition costs $59.99 and adds the Magitek & Grimoire Deluxe Pack, a set of in-game items headlined by a magitek armor skin for the chocobo and a grimoire that teaches a Limit Burst. The Collector's Edition costs $209.99, sells exclusively through the SQUARE ENIX Store, and bundles the game with a Digital Deluxe upgrade code and a Collector's Goods Box containing an acrylic block set, a Pixel Art Book, a 120-track soundtrack CD, and a FINAL FANTASY TRADING CARD GAME promotional card. Pre-orders on every storefront add the Magitek Airship & Squire Starter Pack.
Versions and Support
The Steam release is Windows-only, uses Denuvo Anti-tamper, and supports controllers fully; the system requirements top out at a GeForce GTX 1650 class GPU for 1080p at 60 frames per second on the Highest preset. Console versions support five languages while the PC and Xbox versions support eight, and both Steam and PlayStation 5 list accessibility features such as adjustable difficulty and play without timed input. Common pre-release questions are collected on the frequently asked questions page.
July 2026 Update
Square Enix published a second trailer on July 16, 2026, alongside the largest information release since the announcement, and opened digital pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch versions the same day. The trailer is built around the game's stated concept, what FINAL FANTASY might look like if it had kept pushing the limits of pixel art, and shows a world and battle scenes where pixel art and three-dimensional space are combined.
What the release confirmed:
Two cities: Dilmagia, the engineering city where airship technology and the title of Cid originated, and Olderion, the water-blessed capital of the Olderion Federation.
Two party members, Lid and Nichol, and two more members of the Sworn Six of Paladia, Veritas of the Heavens and Veritas of the Waters.
Six more Visions: Aileen, Cecil, Bartz, Squall, Zidane, and Tidus, plus the Sanctums of Light where vision crystals are collected.
Three more espers: Ifrit, Shiva, and Titan.
The completionist layer: the Colosseum, the Twelve Legendary Arms, tablet-shard collection, and town minigames including a jump-rope timing test and Mog Tag.
The Resonance trigger: staggering all enemies in one turn. See Resonance Attacks.
Separately, the game was rated Steam Deck Verified on July 13, 2026, and is verified for SteamOS and Steam Machine as well. It carries a CERO C rating in Japan, for ages 15 and up.