Final Fantasy Resonance Is The First New Turn-Based Final Fantasy Console Game In Almost A Decade

On October 22, 2026, Square Enix will release a brand-new Final Fantasy game built around turn-based combat, something it hasn't done in almost ten years.

Final Fantasy Resonance, the first HD-2D entry in the series, is the first new turn-based Final Fantasy console game since World of Final Fantasy in October 2016. The gap closes three days short of a full decade. That is not a technicality dredged up to make a headline. It is the clearest possible measure of how thoroughly the biggest RPG franchise in the world walked away from the battle system that made it.

How Long Has It Actually Been

The numbered series is the starker number. Final Fantasy X, released in 2001, was the last mainline entry built on a genuinely turn-based system, its Conditional Turn-Based Battle. Everything since has been something else. Final Fantasy XII moved to real-time with a programmable gambit system. XIII ran on an accelerated ATB that plays in real time. XV went into action. XVI went full character action, with producer Naoki Yoshida stripping out the last remnants of the command menu. The Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy splits the difference with an action-ATB hybrid, but nobody is mistaking it for turn-based.

That is twenty-five years without a turn-based numbered Final Fantasy.

And for the sticklers out there, yes, there have been a couple of turn-based games since 2016, but they do not fall under this classification:

• The Pixel Remasters (2021) are turn-based, but they are re-releases of games from 1987 to 1994.
• Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles (2025) is turn-based, and it is a remaster of a 1997 game.
• We're not counting Mobile entries like War of the Visions and Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis even though they kept command-based combat alive, since they were released not on consoles but on phones, in gacha economies.

Strip those out, and you are left with new, turn-based, console Final Fantasy games. There is exactly one in the last ten years, and it came out in 2016.

Why Square Enix Left Behind Turn-Based Systems

Square Enix has never been coy about the reasoning behind the departure from turn-based gameplay. Ahead of Final Fantasy XVI, Yoshida explained the shift away from command menus in terms of audience: he believed the share of players who no longer prefer turn-based combat had grown over the previous decade, and that a modern blockbuster needed to meet them where they were. He also left the door open, saying it was "definitely possible" that a future Final Fantasy could return to a command system.

Read that alongside Resonance, and something interesting emerges. Square Enix is not returning turn-based combat to the numbered series. It is routing it through a side project, on a smaller budget, with a different team, at $49.99 instead of full price. The company appears willing to test the waters without betting the flagship on it.

This experiment is perfectly timed, too. With the recent revival of turn-based JRPGs thanks to indie darlings like Sea of Stars and award-winning colossal projects such as Claire Obscura: Expedition 33, fans have disproven Yoshida's claim that the audience has shifted away from turn-based games. Now, it's time to see if Final Fantasy can be part of this revival once again, too.

Octopath Turn-Based Combat Pedigree

That team handling this project is the tell. Resonance is being developed by Team Asano, the Square Enix group responsible for Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, and the recent HD-2D Dragon Quest remakes. Tomoya Asano, who produced Octopath and effectively established HD-2D as a house style, is the executive producer.

Team Asano has spent the better part of a decade running a quiet, profitable argument that turn-based RPGs never actually died; they were just abandoned by the companies that used to make them. The Octopath series alone has shipped and sold more than 7 million copies, and demand for the games is recognized by Square Enix itself, which announced a Switch 2 version release for both games.

When Square Enix finally decided to put turn-based combat back into a Final Fantasy, it did not hand the job to its main studios making Final Fantasy. It handed the job to the people who never stopped - the people who disagreed with Yoshida's proclamations, and Square Enix is giving them the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.

What is Final Fantasy Resonance

Final Fantasy Resonance is a ground-up rebuild of the first story arc of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, the 2016 mobile gacha RPG, reworked into a full console release. You follow Rain, an airship commander, and his childhood friend Lasswell out of the Kingdom of Grandshelt after the Earth Crystal is shattered by a man in black armor.

Combat runs on stagger and break, exploiting enemy weaknesses to seize extra turns and open up Resonance attacks. The party is bolstered by Visions, summonable echoes of legacy Final Fantasy heroes, with 26 in total, including Cloud, Terra, Tidus, Squall, Zidane, Y'shtola, and the Warrior of Light. Espers, chocobos, airships, and moogles are all present. Producer Keisuke Nakashima has pegged the main story at 30 to 40 hours, with completionists looking at up to 80.

While Final Fantasy Brave Exvius was a full-fledged gacha game, that DNA isn't lost in Resonance - in fact, the Visions themselves are manifestations of the Gacha mechanic, but are provided to players not as chaseable loot box prizes, but as actual unlockable summons in the game that will not require microtransactions.

It launches on October 22, 2026, on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, at $49.99.

The Timing Is Not An Accident

Turn-based combat stopped being a liability somewhere in the last two years. Atlus put Metaphor: ReFantazio out in 2024 to acclaim and strong sales. The aforementioned Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 arrived in 2025 and became one of the year's genuine breakout successes, on a battle system that would have been called a commercial death sentence in 2016. The audience Yoshida believed had moved on turned out to be sitting right there, waiting.

Resonance is Square Enix's answer to that, but it's clear that it's not ready to take the full plunge just yet. Resonance is not a numbered entry. Not on a flagship budget. It is a glorified side project, made by the team that was adamantly keeping turn-based alive within Square Enix all along, arriving three days shy of ten years since the last time the company tried this on a console.

If it works, the interesting question is not whether Square Enix makes another one. It is whether the next numbered Final Fantasy finally comes home to its roots.

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This story was originally published July 13, 2026 at 5:02 PM.