Final Fantasy Resonance Gamescom 2026 Hands On Preview

Final Fantasy Resonance Is Already The Prettiest Game From Square Published Sep 3, 2026, 10:16 AM EDT Sam Woods is TheGamer’s Senior Reporter. He’s been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 2,500 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, got context around some AI drama, and revealed how Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on more than one occasion. He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times. Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. Square Enix is the undisputed master of the HD-2D art style. It pioneered it with Octopath Traveler in 2018, and the company has since adopted it for more titles, inspiring other studios along the way. Titles like Dragon Quest have received the HD-2D treatment, and to much delight recently, Square announced Final Fantasy Resonance, the first Final Fantasy game to receive the same. We got to go hands-on with it at Gamescom, and it’s shaping up to be the best-looking Final Fantasy game ever created. I’ll start my preview with the obvious. Final Fantasy Resonance is a stunner. If ever there was a Square series that would benefit from the HD-2D treatment, it was Final Fantasy. It’s a series known for its deep worlds, and shifting the art style to HD-2D was an instant winner. The switch was worth it for the world map alone, but diving into the cities and dungeons really brought it to life. It somehow felt utterly nostalgic and also like one of the most futuristic-looking Final Fantasy games to date. It did some really fun things integrating 3D scenes, too, which we’ll touch on later. The trailer tells you what the game looks like, but what does it play like? Resonance is based on the story arc Lapis, from the 2015 mobile gacha Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. We were assured by a Square representative that knowledge of this game is not a prerequisite for our enjoyment, which was especially reassuring, as I’m not sure how many people actually played it. My demo consisted of a short section of the game. I could recruit Final Fantasy 15’s Noctis as a summon, explore a little bit of the map, and then tackle a dungeon and one of the game’s bosses. It all felt very much like a typical RPG, with a gloss of beautiful HD-2D paint. My first port of call was recruiting Noctis to aid me in battle. Elemental affinities return in Resonance, and we were pre-warned that our first boss would have a weakness to Ice. Noctis would help with this. I set off to his Sanctum, a mini-dungeon where his “Vision” was contained, completed the recruitment requirements, which involved answering a handful of questions, and then was greeted with a full 3D cutscene, featuring the character in his Final Fantasy 15 prime. These “Visions” could be equipped by my party, one per member, and added a range of attacks made famous by the characters they represented. It was a fun way to include older Final Fantasy characters, appeasing long-time series fans, without detracting from the main party and their escapades. I exited the Sanctum and traversed through the world map, which was littered with random encounters (make of that what you will), before entering the main dungeon. We were, by Square’s admission, thoroughly overleveled for the part of the game we were playing, so I blitzed through the dungeon with ease. I barely had time to stop and take it in, but it was very much what I expected: enemies, puzzles, hidden chests; the type of thing where, if you’ve played an RPG before, you’ve run a dungeon like this. It culminated in a giant boss battle, which gave me by far my best taste of Resonance’s combat. It is, for the most part, your standard turn-based battle scenario; however, it throws in a couple of neat twists. A timeline at the top of the bar, seen recently in other titles like one of my favorites, Star Renegades, shows you the order in which you and the enemies will attack. It allows for an extra layer of strategy, giving you hints at when your best opportunities to attack and defend are. Each turn, you can choose to attack with your main party member or their equipped Vision. Depending on the enemy you’re facing and their elemental weaknesses, it affords you the ability to hit harder than before. You may be facing an enemy weak to Ice, and your main party member has no Ice spells or attacks, which would usually put you in a tricky situation of defending or hitting for meager damage. By equipping a Vision that covers their elemental blind spots, though, you can hit their weakness, damaging them way more than you usually would. There is also a major emphasis on staggering. If you can damage an enemy enough, they will skip a turn. By having all four party members lined up on the timeline next to each other, you’ll be able to unleash a devastating attack. These, often involving your Vision, play out in full 3D, adding an interesting juxtaposition to the gorgeous HD-2D stylings. Summons, a staple of the Final Fantasy canon, also return, and their attacks play out in much the same way. Final Fantasy Resonance doesn’t look like it’s set to reinvent the wheel, and that’s alright. From what I played, it’s going to be another great RPG, filled with callbacks for long-time Final Fantasy fans, with a fun battle system and stunning backdrop. It will more than appease RPG purists, and for the most devoted Final Fantasy fans, it will do plenty to tide them over until Revelation’s big release next year.