was an easy game to recommend . Developed by , was an approachable old-school roleplaying game that had a lot of clever ideas, along with an adorable aesthetic thanks to its world made out of hand-crafted dioramas. There was just one problem: it was exclusive to Apple Arcade, so anyone who wasn’t a subscriber missed out.
Now, that has finally changed as the game launches this week on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and the Switch. The new port is called , but it’s mostly identical to the Apple Arcade version, aside from the very welcome addition of voice acting. (In a nice bit of circular storytelling, is being published by maker Square Enix.
) In many ways, is classic in all but name. It stars a hero named Leo, who — with the help of a tough princess, a mysterious magic wielder, and a grizzled ship captain — gets pulled into a quest that spans multiple realms, as they attempt to thwart a mechanical infestation led by a tall, dark, and dangerous villain. There’s plenty that fans will recognize: the amnesiac lead character, the playful love triangle, a world that blends fantasy and sci-fi, similar spells and items, and .
Hell, there’s even . The basis of is Sakaguchi and his team working with the framework they know but building on top of it in interesting ways. So you’re left with a rock-solid RPG that makes some nice tweaks to the formula.
The most obvious difference is the visual style, which is like a hand-crafted take on the old prerendered backgrounds from PlayStatio.
