News

It's been a while since the last Squenix tidbits, largely due to the number of hours put into the Final Fantasy V section revamp. Because of that, I'm going to assume that a lot of the news that came out in the meantime we all already know from sources that are less generally interesting than CoN, and I'll try to just get us caught up from the last couple weeks.

Just yesterday, the closed beta for Dragon Quest X began, for instance. Odds are you're not part of it, right? You can still see the beta testers' site for some minor details, though. Interestingly, it seems like you need to have a 16GB or larger flash drive to install the beta; having no Wii, I can't say if that's truly odd or not, but it seems that way to me. andriasang has a number of beta screenshots, so check them out; I'm sure video and more screenshots from testers will be emerging soon enough.

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy also released in Japan a little over a week ago. Famitsu rated it pretty well, though people do seem to think that a good score from Famitsu isn't what it used to be. If you don't trust Famitsu, though, perhaps you might trust, say, Nobuo Uematsu? The composer of so many of the songs included in Theatrhythm posted to Twitter that the game made him so nostalgic that he wept. That seems like a pretty good endorsement if you've been playing Final Fantasy games since the eighties, like this author. At launch, the songs available for DLC were discounted from 150 yen (currently $1.86) to 100 yen ($1.24). Originally, that discount was meant to run for just about three weeks, but it's recently been extended for an extra month, into mid-April. The initial batch of DLC has songs from Final Fantasy II, IV, V. VII, VIII, IX, X, and XIII. There's also a promotional game where you can pseudo-play a bit of the game via Flash with some of your social media friends. Yeah, that's kind of hokey, since you don't get to actually play. However, I'm totally stumbling through the Japanese-only site right this second to try to figure it out - so far, I've discovered that it has the Final Fantasy VI ending theme in it somewhere!

You may have forgotten that Kingdom Hearts 3D is still a thing. It is, though, and it's coming out in Japan on 29 March, under five weeks from now. Even sooner, though, is 3 March, the day when Square Enix is planning a pre-launch event somewhere in Tokyo for the game. No other details as yet, but I would be surprised if they didn't show the 10th Anniversary Special Edition package for the game, which contains the new game, copies of both Nintendo DS Kingdom Hearts games, a 3DS shell cover, a dozen artwork postcards, and a truly cool looking box to hold it all. I can't believe it's been ten years since the original Kingdom Hearts already - the new one will release exactly ten years and one day from the original. That was on the PlayStation 2, kids.

To wrap it up for this week, on 30 March there will be another batch of cards for the Final Fantasy CCG in Japan. I don't really remember looking at too many of these in the past, but this batch has a focus on Final Fantasy VI, and has some really cute artwork. andriasang has a selection from the 320-card set; check page two for a hilarious Ultros (which is how he looks in Theatrhythm!).

Source: andriasang, Siliconera, Kotaku

Some of you out there may not have seen much from Square Enix' toy division, or even known that Squenix has a toy division. Most accurately, it's called Square Enix Products, and they produce figures and toys for a wide array of game franchises, not just for Squenix properties.

With the New York Toy Fair last week, the company took the time to set up some displays of their new action figures for 2012, and Square Enix events manager Wilbur Lin and a cameraman walked through the big ones to share with the fans. All eight videos are now available on the Squenix Members Blog, and if you're a gaming, toy-collecting nerd like I am (or would be if I had more money), I would bet that there's at least one franchise shown there that you play. Square Enix is producing figures this year from the universes of Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter, God of War, Halo, Mass Effect, and Arkham Asylum.

For those who just care about the Final Fantasy toys, the final video shows large, articulating figures of Lightning and Serah in their Final Fantasy XIII-2 costumes, and some smaller chibi figures of Cloud, Squall, and Yuna. The chibis come in packs of two of the same character, with different costumes and/or props, and have changeable expression faces (three pre-made, and one blank that you can draw yourself). I know what you're thinking - why would you ever need a face for Squall other than the totally blank one, right? Ha! Anyway, the two packs of the chibi characters appear to be set to retail at $19.99, and Lightning and Serah will be set for $54.99 apiece - a bit staggering, since I paid $14 for Final Fantasy XIII new, but the figures really do look pretty neat if you're a big fan.

Source: Square Enix Members, Square Enix Shop

After somewhat of a let-down in Japanese sales as compared to its predecessor (selling in its first two weeks about half of what FFXIII sold in its first), despite perfect reviews from both Famitsu and Dengeki, FFXIII-2 has finally made its appearance stateside and, er, Europe-side.

IGN gave the game an 8 out of 10, praising it for stepping away from the linearity of its predecessor, its leveling up system, additional content, appearance and battle engine. They criticize the game, however, for what seems to be overshadowing flaws: battles that are less than challenging and a story that leaves the player asking "what story?"

Other sites provided more generous scores while echoing the same complaints, saying that the issues of the FFXIII had been corrected successfully at the cost of storytelling.

Does anyone here have the game? Anyone intending to purchase it? Somebody just say something before Del does :P

Source: IGN

Well, it's not the PlayStation Network. It's definitely not Steam. However, the Square Enix Members site does share one thing in common with those two: it's an online gaming portal and community site that has had personal data compromised by external intrusion so far this year.

Note: You can ignore the more sensational headline in the link above if you're worried about financial information being compromised, if, say, you play Final Fantasy XI - no credit card information was stored on the hacked server, according to Squenix.

At this time, it's unknown how deep the intrusion went, and how many members might have been impacted, or how much data was accessed from those members. Squenix as yet aren't even confirming that data was definitely taken, but, come on, we kind of know how this goes by now. If there's evidence of an intrusion, it's safest to just assume that everything they had got boosted right out the back door.

Is anyone out there even a member of this site? I have been for a few years, but have found it of precious little use for me personally as yet.

Source: Kotaku

With only a couple days between now and the Japanese release of the sequel to FFXIII, I figured I should probably curb the studying and start doing some work around here.

Forgot what was happening? Feel free to check out this recap from IGN. After four hours of playing, the reviewer expressed satisfaction at the amount of exploration available, among other things, and concluded by saying basically the same thing people have been predicting for a while: "Final Fantasy XIII-2 has serious potential. It seems that the developers at Square Enix took consumer feedback seriously when designing this sequel." Of course, potential doesn't translate to anything concrete.

Until only a few days ago, that is, when Famitsu posted its review for FFXIII-2: a perfect 40. The reviewers echoed the praise expressed above (that the developers had taken feedback into account), approving of the time-traveling system, greater freedom, more sidequests and strategic gameplay. They did predict that players may be frustrated by being limited to only Noel and Serah.

What does a Famitsu score really mean anymore? There have been three perfect scores recently: Skyward Sword, Skyrim and now FFXIII-2. This makes FFXIII-2 only the 18th game to receive a perfect score (and it is certainly in good company), but it does seem that Famitsu is become slightly more lenient. For instance, the scores of previous FF titles:
FF1 35; FF2 35; FF3 36
FF4 36; FF5 34; FF6 37
FF7 38; FF8 37; FF9 38
FF10 39; FF10-2 34; FF11 38
FF12 40; FF13 39; FF13-2 40

The record certainly hints at a trend, but who knows if that means FFXIII-2 is unworthy of the score? The reviewers certainly had plenty of good things to say about it.

I predict the fanbase will be divided, as per always, but us stateside folk will have to wait until January 31st to see for ourselves.

Source: IGN, 1UP

Final Fantasy XIII-2 inches ever closer, so it's no surprise that the week's news is primarily related to the sequel inbound. Kotaku posted not one, but two articles this week with nothing but new screenshots, and it seems that the hottest thing revealed within (no pun intended) is the new merchant, Chocolina, who dresses up like a chocobo on fire - if the chocobo wanted to show some skin. I'm hoping that getup is all faux chocobo, or else PETA will be on Squenix' case now that they're done with Mario.

The sequel also changes up the battle system a bit, as well as the excellent battle music, from its predecessor. It looks like the changes are subtle - to me, the battles in the video seemed a little faster-paced from what I've seen so far in Final Fantasy XIII, and the addition of quick-time events with chained combos from different party members looks good. It appears that you might be able to change the party leader during combat as well, which perhaps will also mean a change in the "hey, your leader's dead, no reason to keep fighting now game over hahahaha" aspect of the first game.

Also, for some reason, there will be DLC to allow Noel to dress up as Assassin's Creed's Ezio. This paragraph is short because, really, what else are you going to say about that?

An interview by Destructoid with Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama has been making the rounds since being published last week, and it seems to have caught a lot of people's attention for the fact that it seems to indicate the possibility of a Final Fantasy that is a first-person shooter. Naturally, this has a lot of people up in arms (again, no pun intended), but if the quote is correctly written, the interview really says nothing more than "anything could happen at any time." There could just as easily be a FPS Final Fantasy as there could be a cart racer set with Final Fantasy charact... okay, well, that's a bad example.

Last news of the week, breaking just today, is that there actually will be a new action-RPG IP coming from Square Enix in the near future, once they can finish all the hires they want to build the game out. The first image representing this game was released today, and it means very little. If you presented the image without content, I would have guessed Devil May Cry at first. Not sure what that means, to be honest, but, hey, there's a big white owl.

Source: Kotaku, Destructoid