Final Fantasy Creator’s new JRPG lets you procrastinate with its random encounters

Fantasian, the next game from Mistwalker, the studio founded by Final Fantasy its creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, is coming to Apple Aracde later this year. Now we have a new trailer that finally shows the gameplay of the diorama-based JRPG, including its unique take on random encounters, the “Dimengeon System”.

In classic JRPGs, like the one Sakaguchi made on Square Enix for years, you leave a town, go to a dungeon, and swing through a series of random encounters until you get to a boss fight that further the story. In Fantasian the sequel to Mistwalker’s previous mobile game Terra Battle, players have the option to send enemies they encounter on their journey to another dimension to be fought later. “Players can then jump into a Dimengeon whenever they want and enjoy the satisfaction of wiping them all out at once,” Polygon reports in a new interview with Sakaguchi

Here it is in action:

In fact, you are going to discover Fantasian‘s great looking settings without annoying interruptions, then go back later to burn through the battles and level up if necessary. I’m not sure what it says about JRPGs that some of the biggest innovations in them in recent years revolve around pushing aside one of their core mechanics, but this seems like a smart way to cope with playing on smartphones.

Here’s some more information about the game:

• The story centers around Leo, an amnesiac who loses his memory after being involved in a “massive explosion at a hybrid magic-tech factory.”
• Leo teams up with Kina, a young woman from a dusty border town, to try to discover their destinies together, including trotting the world, skipping between dimensions and navigating the ‘balance of chaos and order’. Naturally.

• The story is told in part through ‘bite-sized novels’ that players can explore as part of the game’s ‘memory system’.
• Each environment is based on a real, handmade diorama that has been photographed and scanned in 3D.
• It has an airship.
• Final Fantasy composter Nobuo Uematsu will do the music.

Mistwalker has made quite a few really good JRPGs in the past, including Lost Odyssey for Xbox 360 and The last story for Wii. I’m much less impressed with the studio’s more recent mobile games. But perhaps Fantasian can change that.