How Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's past, present and future can be found in Fantasian

The release of Fantasian Neo Dimension was something of a full circle moment for Hironobu Sakaguchi. Final Fantasy’s creator left Square Enix back in 2003 and founded his own studio, Mistwalker, where he’s since continued making RPGs. Fantasian, in 2021, was one such release, but remained exclusive to Apple Arcade until last year’s re-release – published by none other than Square Enix.

“It certainly feels very nostalgic, almost as though you’re going to a high school reunion of sorts,” Sakaguchi tells me over video call. “Having parted ways with Square Enix all that time ago, I think there was, over the years, this distance that was built between us – with the people who I created Final Fantasy with who were still at Square Enix. But, looking at the email interactions that we had over the course of producing Fantasian together, it almost felt that this distance grew smaller, and we reconnected on a certain level.”

Sakaguchi is best known as the father of Final Fantasy, and Fantasian feels like a throwback to his earlier work. As I wrote in my Fantasian Neo Dimension review, the game is characterised by its “blend of old school genre trappings and modern sensibilities” and appears to be aimed squarely at longtime RPG players: those who have grown up with Sakaguchi’s games over the years.

Fantasian, as a result, is notoriously difficult and demands its players understand the complexities and depth of its world and systems to best its tough menagerie of bosses. The Neo Dimension re-release even added a new easier difficulty, though it remains a steep challenge.