Fantasian Neo Dimension Review (PS5) | Push Square

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Fantasian Neo Dimension is a little like Japanese role playing game comfort food. There's the slightly androgynous amnesiac hero. He'll go on a quest to reclaim his memories and along the way he'll meet up with a slightly kooky orphan mage with secrets of her own to uncover. They'll befriend the sassy princess, the lovable rogue, the comic relief, and more. Together they'll discover that there's a world, nay, universe-ending threat on the horizon, and only they have the means to stop it.

You're Leo, and you don't remember who you are or why you're in the Machine Realm, a world of metal and robots and conveyer belts and sparks and grey. It's grim. After your daring escape from the metallic hell you awoke in, you wander the human realm trying to piece together your identity. This involves — in traditional JRPG style — talking to people in towns, traversing the world map, recruiting new allies, entering dungeons, and besting villains.

The game's world was created first by making actual dioramas for each location and then 3D-scanning them, effectively using the scans as pre-rendered backgrounds for the more traditional 3D anime characters we control to explore. The results are quite beautiful, lending each location a real-but-not-quite quality. It's a little like looking at a photograph of the interior of a doll's house, or the bit in the old Godzilla movies where he smashes up the cardboard city. You can tell everything is a miniature, painstakingly hand-crafted. It never looks truly real, but we appreciate the work it took to build.

Fantasian's soundtrack comes from the legendary composer of many Final Fantasy games, Nobuo Uematsu, and his work here is splendid. From the jaunty pieces that play during moments of hijinks to the industrial din of the Machine Realm, the elegant pomp of the Royal Capital to the dramatic themes during climactic battles, the soundtrack is unequivocally sublime. The tunes are varied, fitting, and eminently hummable.

There were moments