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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

In what must seem like breakneck speed relative to the development of Final Fantasy XIII (or, of course, Versus), Final Fantasy XIII-2 is about to be released; it's almost exactly a month away in Japan, and it's due in the West in about twelve weeks. As it approaches, news of preorder bonuses collector's editions has broken, as seems to be the way with all blockbuster releases these days. In Japan, the Xbox 360 version will come bundled with a calendar showing stills and character renders from the game - just the kind of awesome bonus that is good for forever exactly a year. That's all the news from the land of the Big Red Dot, but, here in the United States the collectors editions are getting to be a bigger deal.

For an MSRP of eighty dollars, American gamers will have a crack at a pretty solid collection of goodies. The box art will have some very classy silver-on-white Amano artwork, and inside the package will rest an artbook and a four-CD soundtrack set. Beyond that, there are pre-order incentives being offered (it's not yet clear, but I assume these will be for both standard and collector's editions) at various retailers. I'll ignore for the moment that I really hate the idea of offering different bonuses for different retailers, and I'll just tell you what you can get: At Best Buy, you'll get a hardcover book that tells the story of the time between Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel; at Gamestop, you'll get a code for a DLC costume for Serah; at Amazon, you'll get a bonus boss battle against Omega - no indication if it's a similar Omega to a past Final Fantasy game, but this Omega can also become a playable character. Odds are that everything but the book will be available for free or as paid DLC eventually, though, so it would seem on the surface that Best Buy is the way to go.

Elsewhere, Final Fantasy Type-0 sold a half-million copies in its first week of Japanese release. That puts it roughly on par with some of Squenix' other big-time PSP releases, such as Crisis Core and the first Dissidia. That half-million number made Type-0 the best selling game on the market last week. And it still doesn't have a Western release date.

For those still excited about Dragon Quest X, the first MMO bearing the Dragon Quest name, we got beta details this week. If you're reading this, well, you're not in the beta. At least not yet. This initial round is only for Japanese players, and you must have a Japanese Square Enix Members account. The application process is kicking off soon and is competitive, not first-come, first-served. Also, since there's no such thing as a WiiU yet, this beta will be taking place solely on the current Wii.

Last, for the business-minded folks, Square Enix revised their projected earnings for the first half of the current fiscal year. The net sales only went up a bit, but the FY operating income and net income saw their projections double. Perhaps all is not yet lost for the company that seems to have lost its shine over the last five years or so?

Source: andriasang, Kotaku, 1up

Seriously. It's Halloween weekend, I've been working my butt off all day, and I have a pumpkin to carve. Let's just get through this as fast as we can.

At Nintendo Direct last weekend, a new video of Kingdom Hearts 3D debuted. I understand absolutely none of it, since it's in Japanese and I've never played a Kingdom Hearts game. Sora (and Neku from The World Ends With You) is there, though, and there's some gameplay and a large bouncing hamster-looking thing. And there will be 3D involved. Let your imaginations run wild!

Final Fantasy Type-0 released in Japan yesterday, too, ending months of infotrickle. andriasang gave a helpful final rollup of the most recent information, including details on the growing cast of characters, information about the Chocobo Breeding functionality, airships, and a lot more. They also detailed the odd way in which you'll have to swap UMDs. Essentially, you'll get to play the prologue and the last chapter on the first disc, and everything else on the second disc. The reason appears to be tied somehow to the multiplayer component. If you want to see a chunk of that opening sequence from the first disc, they posted that too.

Finally this week came the announcement that Squenix are teaming with Japanese mobile platform Mobage again. We've talked about their partnerships before, but this one is conceivably a bigger deal, because it involves the company's signature franchise, Final Fantasy. There's not much known about it yet, other than it will be an RPG that connects with your friends, or "where you fight for your friends," which could be construed a number of ways. Square Enix also says that it will connect to Type-0 in some way, and will be available this winter.

There, done. Candy time!

Source: andriasang