News

First off, news that's actually been around since earlier int he month. A twitter message from the official account for the game Bravely Default: Flying Fairy has renewed fans' hopes that the title will be brought west. The 3DS RPG, which received both critical praise and respectable sales in Japan, has been out since last October but with no announcement of plans to release outside the island. While the English text of the twitter message is about as perplexing as its title, the Japanese text amounts to "The voices from those folks aboard are definitely getting through!" Fingers crossed.

In somewhat more official news, it's been made known that Wii U beta testing for Dragon Question X is now underway, with the game set to go on sale for that console at the end of the month. The Wii U version features of graphics upgrade, but is still compatible with its original Wii incarnation.

Saving the coolest for last, it looks A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy XIV will be getting a new mount some time in the future, and one which should be well familiar to any regulars of CoN: Magitek Armor! Check out the first source link; it's from the official FFXIV developer blog. The design is still a ways from play-worthy, but I think you'll all agree that it's pretty slick.

Source: FFXIV Blog, Siliconera, Kotaku

With the beta kicking off, Square Enix released new content yesterday with regards to A Realm Reborn in the form of two new in-game videos and the application benchmark tool.

The videos are both in-game (for the beta, of course). One details a "tour" of several of the game's areas on both Windows and PlayStation 3, in which the environments all look lovely and the battles and events dynamic. Not sure if it's the video or the engine, but the PS3 scenes look to be a bit less fluid and more jittery. I'd assume that the PS3 version hasn't been quite as optimized as Windows as yet.

The second video is a developer's commentary (in Japanese, with some subtitles) in which the use of a gamepad to play is described. Since PS3 and PC users will all coexist in-game, it's important that the use of a gamepad to play the game is as functional and easy as with keyboard and mouse. To that end, it appears that the PS3 (and who knows, maybe 4?) gamepad will have at least three full sets of functionality available to the d-pad and face buttons, toggled on and off by tapping the left and right triggers. The default sets will also be customizable.

In case you've never done a benchmark before, Final Fantasy XIV's is specifically meant to see how your PC would do trying to run the game. Essentially, it tests your system to see its performance and to suggest to you if you need an upgrade of any kind before trying and/or buying the game. It's a 470MB file, so it's not necessarily something you do on a whim.

Of course, I did it on a whim. What they show in the benchmark looks absolutely fantastic. The second scene, which starts with a group of chocobo riders running through windmills, was particularly good looking. And my new PC scored "fairly high" at 1920x1200 with maximum settings and even higher when I dropped one level to high settings , so I would think that a gaming PC build in the last couple years with a less-than-HD video output would do just fine. Heck, it even kind of makes me wish I had the time to try to get into the beta.

Source: IGN

Yep, Sony had another worst kept secret. In New York tonight, the company put on a show to announce the advent of the PlayStation 4. The company spent a lot of time early on talking through the specs of the new system, which, while they did a good job of presenting, seemed like they weren't nearly as unique as they wanted the crowd to believe.

There were plenty of developers there showing off some new games, though the tropes all felt familiar. There was a driving game that looked lovely. There was a FPS - being Sony, it was a Killzone game. There's an Infamous game.

There was some interesting stuff. Johnathan Blow was there, he of Braid fame, talking about his next game appearing on the PS4. Blizzard showed up to announce Diablo III for the new console (as well as for PS3). Bungie showed up to tell everyone that Destiny will be on PS4 too, which is a nice slap to Microsoft.

Yeah, though, I intentionally buried the lede. What did Square Enix do, right? Well, not that much. They showed the Agni's Philosophy demo, looked the same as before. However, this time they said it was running on PS4 hardware. Was it always? We don't know. Also, Final Fantasy brand director Shinji Hashimoto appeared to say: "yes, there's a Final Fantasy game coming for PS4" and that it will show at E3. Zero other details. Sorry!

The PlayStation 4 will arrive for Holiday 2013.

Starting today, the North American PSN store has a series of Final Fantasy games half off. Which games, you might ask? Well, a bucket of them. You can get a version of every numbered Final Fantasy game up through IX (not including III, which never has had a Sony release). Most of the games are the PS One versions, including Origins, Anthology, and the three released originally for the first PlayStation. Final Fantasy IV's PSP version is included, as is Tactics: War of the Lions. Rounding out the set are three games from the Dissidia series.

This sale is 50% off the top and will be running for two weeks. The game selection is a little different than the European-region sale that we, uh, forgot to post about until right now. That sale's over, though. Sorry about that.

Source: US PlayStation Blog

To start things off, an incredible boxed set of Amano art, "The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy," has been made available once more for the price of $89.99, printed by publisher Dark Horse. The set consists of three volumes of art encompassing the Final Fantasies I through X, and they're pretty darn slick.

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy is now available for iOS devices, but it's got a couple new features up its sleeve. The first is Edit Mode, where players around the world can create their own tunes and access those created by others. The second is Quest Medley, which enables players to select and play through a playlist of songs at a time. The iOS version also has a few additional songs available from series spin-offs Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. When asked about these inclusions, the mobile development team responded that, should such a move had sufficient popular backing, they hope to add songs from other Square Enix series, potentially from the Chrono or Mana games.

Final Fantasy Type-O has been in a purgatory of sorts. Released in Japan back in late 2011 for the PSP, it sorta fell off the radar as far as us in the West are concerned. In November of last year, a company official said that, while they had no current plans regarding release, they felt the game would be well received in North American and European markets, and that they hoped . Thanks to a bit of looking, some fellow over at operation-suzaku.com got in touch with one of the voice actors hired for the English localization. The source revealed that, while he knew no more of the game's future than anyone else on this continent, most if not all of the English localization had already been finished. So... still shelved for now, but at least we know a bit more about its fate.

A lot of the information hitting the web this past week from Square Enix surrounds Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. Perhaps the biggest Lightning Returns news has been the introduction of a major character, Lumina. Lumina looks like she could be Lightning's second sister: pink hair, etc. Her role in the game looks like it'll be a bit complex, however, as Lumina will support Lightning at some times but deter her at others.

Citizens too seem to be divided on how to treat Lightning and her role as Liberator. As previously reported, NPC interaction is intended to be a large part of the game. In a recent Famitsu interview, developers explained that, just as many characters are willing to wait calmly for the promised end of the world, many others seek to prevent it - in part by interfering with Lightning's mission.

On the topic of annoying friends/helpful enemies, Lightning is shown actually duking it out with FFXIII-2 protagonist Noel in a trailer released yesterday. Not sure what that means, but perhaps any of you who have played FFXIII-2 to its conclusion could have a guess?

Seems like everyone's changing these days, so why shouldn't Lightning? Change clothes, that is. It has been announced that players will be able to select from one of a few different outfits for Lightning. It is unclear yet whether clothing options will be provided in the original release or whether they'll be available for additional cost afterwards, but the way the company seems to be doing things these days, I can venture a guess.

There's quite a lot of buzz surrounding the decision to make Lightning Returns a pseudo-Action RPG. It has been confirmed for some time now that players will only be able to control one character during the game, Lightning, and that, while still an ATB battle system, things will be more fast-paced. Amongst its more action-oriented elements, it appears that there will be a system for evading and blocking in combat. Regarding how the single-character party will impact the player's investment in the game's cast as compared to most previous FF titles, which featured many characters, Toriyama responded that they wanted to create a game focusing directly on Lightning. He added, however, that characters from both previous FFXIII titles will fill major NPC roles throughout the story.

It also appears that Lightning Returns will feature some variety of quest/hunt/mark board, as did the original FFXIII. I wasn't sure what topic to put that in, so I just saved it for the end. Enjoy!

Source: Siliconera, Operation-Suzaku, Siliconera

Contrary to what we (and many others) proposed yesterday, the new iOS release isn't Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, or a bundle release of both; it is, as laszlow mentioned after the original post, "All the Bravest."

What does that mean, "All the Bravest?" Well, it pretty much does what it says on the tin. This game is all-combat, all-the-time, with you controlling ten or more characters - I think I count twenty in one of the screenshots - at once by tapping them when their ATB gauge is full. The combat will progress through "stages" in which you battle various monsters followed by a boss. It looks to be pretty low-strategy, as well. There's no indication that you pick attacks per character (which, admittedly, would get pretty frustrating, pretty fast with that many folks in the battle party), merely that you tap them when they're ready and tap multiple characters in succession to create attack chains. The base set of characters appear to be generics, with jobs culled from the history of the Final Fantasy series. There are twenty of these, some of which are unlockable through play.

I think this game has a few things against it, personally. First, with most of the sprites being recycled from other games, odds are there's going to be no coherent art direction in the battles, and it's going to look like a third-grader's collage project - I mean, just look at the title screen. Second, and this won't surprise anyone, but much of the content, including 35 premium characters, are available via in-app purchase, and not for the initial buy, which is expected to be about three US dollars. Finally, if there's really not much more to it than "tap things when you're prompted," it seems like this is a mashup of Theatrhythm and Airborne Brigade, two other recent iOS offerings from Squenix, which doesn't seem terribly innovative when you think about it.

The game's out in New Zealand now, given the magic of world time. Since New Zealand has about nine people, none of whom I know to be CoN members, we might have to wait a little bit to see if my first impressions are indeed accurate.

Sources: Kotaku, Official All the Bravest Site