Highlights
- Apple Arcade exclusive Fantasian, a highly acclaimed JRPG, may be making its way to Steam, according to evidence found on SteamDB.
- Fantasian received praise for its intuitive combat mechanics, challenging enemy encounters, and memorable locations.
- The game's potential PC port is exciting news for JRPG fans who don't own iOS devices, and it would be Mistwalker's first PC game in its 19-year history.
Apple Arcade exclusive Fantasian might be on its way to Steam, according to some newly emerged evidence. The first part of Fantasian launched on Apple Arcade in April 2021, some four months ahead of its full-fledged release.
The latest game from the JRPG veterans at Mistwalker debuted to fan adoration and critical acclaim, with many reviewers praising Fantasian for its intuitive combat mechanics and an enormous variety of boss fights. The second part of the game, in particular, received widespread praise for its memorable locations and challenging enemy encounters which required players to fully master the game's combat.
And though Mistwalker never gave any indication that its unique JRPG will ever be available on non-Apple devices, the company might already be working on a PC port of Fantasian. Namely, SteamDB recently scraped an apparent Steam listing of the game that still isn't live as of August 2, but already includes some Fantasian promo materials, including its logo and a handful of gameplay screenshots. The data also indicates that Mistwalker will soon start testing the PC port of its latest JRPG, as the name of the newly scraped Steam listing mentions a "playtest."
Seeing how Fantasian is still touted as one of the best Apple Arcade games ever made, this turn of events is likely to excite many JRPG fans who don't own an iOS device. The game itself embraces many storytelling tropes associated with its genre, but also puts some notable twists on a variety of JRPG gameplay conventions. One of its most notable contributions to the genre is the Dimengeon system which allows players to collect random enemy encounters before clearing them out all at once. This particular mechanic allows for largely uninterrupted exploration segments while making random encounters more rewarding, thus preventing minor battles from getting in the way of other gameplay elements.
Fantasian also boasts an original soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu, best known as the long-time composer of the Final Fantasy series. And though the game was developed specifically for iOS devices, it shipped with support for physical gamepads and also offered intuitive one-touch controls that could translate well to a keyboard-and-mouse control scheme. A PC port of Fantasian would mark a notable first for Mistwalker, seeing how the Japanese studio has never released a PC game in its 19-year history.
Should Fantasian truly leave mobile devices, it won't be the first game to do so in recent times. Namely, PS5 and Xbox gamers just received their own Zelda-like title in the form of Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm, a former Apple Arcade exclusive that hit PC and current-generation consoles on August 2.
Fantasian is available on iOS devices via Apple Arcade.