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Tag Archives: SquareEnix

Final Fantasy XIV a PS3 exclusive… MMO

I was as shocked and surprised as anyone when Sony’s Jack Tretton took the stage at E3 and announced to the world that SquareEnix’s Final Fantasy XIV was not only in the works, not only arriving in 2010, but would be a PlayStation 3 exclusive title (as long as you don’t count the PC format).

Then details began leaking out and it became a lot less impressive. Here’s why: Final Fantasy XIV will be the next “MMO” from SquareEnix. Yup, the company is ready to move on from Final Fantasy XI, which wasn’t nearly as successful as SquareEnix had hoped.

By launching a new MMO in the Final Fantasy series, SquareEnix hopes to take advantage of several new market realities. First, Sony has a much stronger online community built up than in the PS2 generation. Every PS3 has a hard drive. And the next-gen firepower fill allow SquareEnix to make FFXIV that much more impressive.

On the downside, its unlikely that FFXIV will stay a PS3 exclusive for longer than maybe the first year, and the monthly fees are likely to limit the appeal of the title, just as they did for FFXI. As nice as this announcement may be, it still lacks the punch that would have been delivered if FFXIV had been announced as a single-player, offline RPG that was a PS3 exclusive. Color me, and the acne pills-needing crowd for that matter, disappointed.

Review: Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP)

Star Ocean is one of the slower-moving RPG series around; the first installment appeared on the SNES system, and never made it to US shores. Star Ocean: Second Story made it to the US, but by the time it appeared, the platform of choice was the original PlayStation. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the third chapter in the series, didn’t make its debut until the PlayStation 2 era, and sometime later this winter, we are expecting the Xbox 360 debut of the series, in the form of Star Ocean: The Last Hope, the fourth installment in the epic series; at this point, no PlayStation 3 version of Star Ocean: The Last Hope is planned, though it has not been completely ruled out.

In the run-up to the first new Star Ocean since 2005, SquareEnix is releasing the first two Star Oceans on PlayStation Portable Slim (PSP Slim), and Star Ocean: First Departure is the first of these two PSP remakes. It marks the first time the first Star Ocean has ever appeared on North American shores, outside of import shops.

While the game definitely possesses a retro feel, the story is engaging and the various systems from battle to skills to item creation possess enough depth to keep most gamers happy and playing through the entire length of the journey. Although mildly updated, the game’s graphics do not stray too much from their SNES roots. The characters are sprite-based, though more detailed than in the original; and the battles are real-time affairs that will keep action RPG fans mildly satisfied, despite the overall retro feel even of the battle system.

The story centers on Roddick Farrence, a boy determined to save his village from a petrification problem when, in a very Star Trek-style moment, he meets visitors from another planet who tell him the only hope for his world won’t be found on his own. In the update, SquareEnix’s team used Star Ocean: Second Story’s game engine to bring the game’s systems up-to-speed with the rest of the series. That includes an item creation system that allows you to manufacture just about anything with the right ingredients and a recipe, even tire chains. Also, the game was given a fresh, American voice cast and offers up hours and hours of voice acting that were never present – for technological reasons – when it was first released on the SNES.

In the end, Star Ocean: First Departure is not ground-breaking or innovative, but it is an essential key to the origins of the series, and the first appearance of the title on US shores makes it noteworthy in and of itself. Fans of the series will see it as a must-have; it also provides a fine jumping-on point for those who played Star Ocean: Till the End of Time on PS2, or are looking forward to Star Ocean: The Last Hope on Xbox 360, and are wondering about the origins of the series.

Before you begin Crisis Core

Before you begin Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, be sure to look into some term life insurance quotes. The PSP game is far more of an action RPG than the traditional turn-based affair that made the Final Fantasy VII universe so universally appealing, to be prepared for the change.

That said, the game is everything one could hope for on a gameplay standpoint, except that it’s a bit short on the main quest. A lot of hours can be added via optional missions, but the main quest is complete in only a handful of hours of gameplay, rather than the 50-plus hours the original Final Fantasy VII game delivered on.

I’ll be doing a full-on review soon, but I’m enjoying what I’ve played thus far.

Review: Final Fantasy XII – Revenant Wings (DS)

SquareEnix may be more open to making sequels to their hit Final Fantasy titles in the post-Sakaguchi era, but most of these sequels make most folks wonder if it’s worth the bother. That’s largely because whenever a sequel is made, SquareEnix seems determined to change the genre of the game.

Final Fantasy X-2 featured a very different battle system, and of all the sequels made so far from Final Fantasy VII have strayed into areas like action games, shooters and just about anything but what made the original Final Fantasy title from which they sprang so successful. In other words, not one of the sequels has been a true RPG.

Final Fantasy XII – Revenant Wings for Nintendo DS is no exception. Rather than a traditional RPG, the game, which revisits the corner of Ivalice that is home to Vaan, Panelo, Balthier and Fran, is a real-time strategy title. While the storyline is worthy of the Final Fantasy moniker, the Command-and-Conquer game play feels out of place in a world full of chocobos and red mages.

The game is divided into 10 chapters, each consisting of about five battle maps, so the Ivalice of this sequel has plenty of open, residential and commercial real estate to take place on. The maps sport a good deal of variety and graphic detail.

The real problems begin with the game camera; it’s hard to manipulate and rarely at the best angle to see everything you need to see from a strategic standpoint. Also, the game ramps up the difficulty level extremely early on, tossing a level of challenge at gamers who may not be RTS veterans into a very deep, frustrating level of challenge.

The game has some aggressive AI as well, so Final Fantasy XII veterans who grew accustomed to only being challenged during boss battles may not be completely at ease with how smartly opponents challenge him or her. Although released on a very mainstream platform, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings is a hardcore gamer’s delight, something that may scare off many mainstream gamers.

Of course, the graphics are as good as one would expect from SquareEnix and make just about all other DS titles seem weak efforts by comparison; that said, the game looks only like an average PSP title.

In the final analysis, some RTS fans may dig the hardcore RTS aspects of Final Fantasy XII – Revenant Wings, but that is a small portion of the audience who fell in love with the series’ PS2 swan song title. While not a failure on the level of Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, one can say with relative confidence that Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for Nintendo DS is not the kind of thing most fans of the original PS2 title were expecting, nor is it a game most of them will want.