News

Squenix, partnered with a French game company called Ankama, is coming out with a new Tactical Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game called "Wakfu". It's free to play, and appears to be a sequel to Ankama's previous MMO, called Dofus. Wakfu takes place one thousand years after Dofus, and there will no doubt be all sorts of throwbacks to Dofus in-game in Wakfu, but as it's an MMO it's doubtful one will need to have played Dofus to enjoy Wakfu. An overview of the Dofus story can also be found at its wiki below, if anyone wants to read up on the history before they delve into Wakfu. Also, anyone who's interested can register for the beta at their website.

Squenix will be at the New York Comic Con on October 8-10 to announce their game, along with demos and giveaways like t-shirts, posters, and the like. The game itself has interesting characters like "warrior gamblers", "plant summoners", and "protectors" (of animals), as well as time-tested characters like archers, beserkers, regular warriors, and the like.

Finally, anyone who wants to take a look at the game but won't be at the Con can go to Wakfu's site, as they have screencaps, videos, and, if you're really excited about it, wallpapers. The release date is still TBA, though it's likely sometime in 2011.

Source: Wakfu Site, Wakfu Facebook, Dofus Wiki

That's right, the team behind FFXIII is interested in making a sequel (for better or for worse, as we learned with FFX)!

In an interview with Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama, two of the important folks behind FFXIII, Kitase said that he would like to work on a game that could be referred to as FFXIII-2. The goal of such a game, according to Kitase, would be to explain "additional areas of the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythology" as well as help "players to better understand the FFXIII story."

Equally interesting is that the team behind FFXIII has already been grinding away at a new game. Toriyama hinted that this project would be another entry in the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, which would confirm speculations that Square Enix intends to introduce a new title in the series at their press conference this coming January.

The duo also said that the FFXIII team had intended to produce a large amount of downloadable additional material for the game (you may remember having heard this earlier). This ended up not panning out, but Kitase did say that his future titles would work to develop additional content from the beginning. They also mentioned that some of the added content originally intended for FFXIII could wind up in this mystery title currently in the works.

While it's beginning to look like Square Enix is building up for their Fabula Nova Crystallis press conference as much as Lebron James did for his signing announcement, I have to admit they've certainly hooked my interest.

Source: IGN

With all the news about the 3DS, it's clear that the Square Enix news of the week is going to be handheld-centric. Final Fantasy XIV has been out for Collector's Edition players for over a week now, so it's old news already. What's new is all the gaming on the go - hope you're prepared to take some road trips in the near future to accommodate it all.

Staying first with the week's general trend of the 3DS, it's worth noting that of all the franchises promised for the new Nintendo portable, Squenix isn't giving any release dates at all, yet. The only games officially presented at Nintendo's conference this week were Chocobo Racing and Puzzle Bobble, and there was no dates attached to either.

With regards to games that are being released for systems that actually exist as yet, check out yet another Squenix remake in SaGa 3, coming back to Japan for Nintendo DS in January 2011. This game is a remake of what we in the West know as Final Fantasy Legend III, one of those Game Boy games that was rebranded for North America because Squaresoft didn't think they could sell games that didn't have the Final Fantasy name. No word yet on whether it will make it back across the sea twenty years after its original Japanese release. Also still coming soon, but this time for PSP, is the Tactics Ogre remake. The Squenix store in Japan started preorders for a collector's pack, at the hefty price of about $120. It's got a soundtrack, a signed illustration, a deck of tarot cards and... wait for it... the actual game. Odds of it making it outside of Japan? Not much, I'd wager. There's a "new" trailer for The 3rd Birthday, which is really just the public release of a behind-closed-doors trailer shown at the Tokyo Game Show. As one should expect, it's got more information about the cast of characters and plot, and more gameplay than we've seen as yet. There's a link to an HD version in the comments at andriasang, and while it takes about ten years to load, it's is amazingly pretty for a PSP game and the music and gargantuan monsters really evoke the feel of the original Parasite Eve.

Back to the 3DS to wrap up, it seems that Hajime Tabata, director of Agito and The 3rd Birthday, thinks that the new Nintendo unit would be a good home for Before Crisis. Since this game has never been available to anyone outside of Japan, perhaps this is one overblown, self-aggrandizing rumor that we could all get behind? The real question is, will anyone look to buy this on a new handheld when the game itself will be almost seven years old by the time the 3DS even launches, let alone when a port could be complete?

Wrapping up with CoN news, I finally got around to automating the process to give people their five-year member awards. That only took like nine months.

Source: andriasang, SiliconEra

In addition to the pre-TGS news we shared the other day, Square Enix has been releasing more info over the course of the week in preparation for the weekend's open-to-the-public exhibits. The bottom line for all of this is that Square Enix is showing some major love to PSP at this Tokyo Game Show, and that smugglers inside the show are bringing out some video that people have been waiting a very long time to see.

On Wednesday, some early screenshots from the Tactics Ogre remake for PSP showed up on andriasang. They're nothing really unexpected, but they do look great, pretty much exactly as fans should expect them to look. However, yesterday out of TGS came a blowout of screens and information for upcoming PSP releases, including the announcement of the Japan-only Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix, and a few more screens from The 3rd Birthday. Additionally, more info was released for [duodecim], the new Dissidia game. First, there will be small product-code tie-ins between [duodecim] and the two aforementioned games, which will allow Lightning to dress up as Aya Brea, and Cloud to change from his Final Fantasy VII look to his Kingdom Hearts costume. It's doubtful that these codes will make the leap to the West, though, as the Final Mix game won't even be released here. [duodecim] also showed a control chart at TGS, for players wanting to try the beta in the booth. andriasang reports that the controls are pretty similar to that of the original. Something new, though, is that Lightning will be bringing her Paradigm Shifts to the Dissidia series - no word yet as to whether other characters might get a similar additional battle system.

Moving away from the PSP somewhat, there's good news for people who still want to see Final Fantasy Versus and Agito XIII. A YouTube user at the show was able to record video from the Squenix booth for both games, and while Square Enix successfully got them yanked from YouTube already, the cat is in fact out of the bag and Kotaku has the videos hosted currently. They may not last up there, either, though, so check them out quick, unless you just want to wait for the non-shakycam official releases that are sure to be forthcoming. Versus shows off some running and jumping, and a battle against a pretty awesome looking Behemoth; Agito shows the more standard cutscenes and battle system that one would expect from the JRPG line. Both are quite short. If you do want to wait for the official discussion of these games straight from Squenix, though, you won't be waiting all that long - it appears that the company will have a conference to display the entire Fabula Nova Crystallis series on 11 January, 2011.

With the press days of TGS now over, I suspect that the news from TGS is all but over as well. However, if you hear anything over the weekend, let us know!

Source: andriasang, Kotaku

With Final Fantasy XIV in open beta for quite a while now, there's a lot of information on the game out there. Since it's set to release for PC on September 30, I figure a bit of a review of what we know so far is in order.

Final Fantasy XIV looks like it has a several interesting tweaks within the game that set it apart from the standard MMO. First, there's the flexibility of the class system. A player can apparently switch their class by simply switching their equipment: thus, a player can switch at will between a spellcaster, a physical attacker and something boring, like a botanist. It also appears that, once you've reached a certain level of mastery, your character will be able to use one class' abilities while being actually equipped as a different class. (I.e. a physical attacker who is capable of casting a spell or two. Or whatever it is that botanists do.) Regardless, this seems to at least answer R51's confusion with that whole tailor-class business.

Quests are built towards specific classes, so that a player can select quests based on what pertains to their character. It also looks like the difficulty of enemies can vary quite a bit depending on location.

Aside from what we already know about weekly leveling limits, Square Enix has put in additional checks to prevent players from going level-crazy. According to this fellow over at IGN, there are several aspects of the game (such as a relatively limited number of solo quests) that encourage/force the player to enter into multiplayer pursuits or explore additional areas of the game.

The game also appears to be shooting towards a high level of realism, especially in the less battle-oriented classes. There is an economy of sorts within the game, and players can not only harvest natural resources of a wide variety but fashion them into, uh, stuff as well.

The reviewer at IGN speaks highly of the combat system in FFXIV. Powerful moves require TP (tech points?) while magic requires MP (duh). There is also a stamina bar, which gradually drains when executing standard attacks. Upon leveling up, the player is able to assign points to all the standard categories (attack power, magic power, defense, magic defense, etc.).

The game isn't without its flaws, of course. Apparently, there is a bit of redundancy involved in the non-combat classes (which is probably to be expected). This reviewer also is a bit frustrated with the teleporting system (teleporting requires a large number of Anima points, which also regenerate slowly), as well as having to manually reassign the character's abilities after switching classes.

The biggest problem that I saw, however, was the issue of hardware. Like R51 mentioned earlier, you're going to want to have a pretty decent machine if you want to be running FFXIV at the ideal level. It isn't exactly clear how much the game is compromised by a less-than-perfect PC (even when run at lower graphics settings), but it sounds like there'll be a fair bit of lagging involved.

That said, Square Enix still has a bit of time to try to clear up some of this stuff before the game is released at the end of the month. Personally, I think that most of these smaller issues can be forgiven so long as they try to do something with the game's playability on less-than-jacked PCs.

All the information in this news post is based off of the below-linked IGN article (I haven't been in Beta, and nor have the staff to the best of my knowledge). If you're someone who has played the Beta firsthand, though, why not chirp in with anything interesting you've found and/or your opinions?

Source: IGN

The Tokyo Game Show snuck up on me - for some reason I remembered it being later in the year than this last year. Wiki tells me that this is indeed a week earlier than last year, but still, surprise surprise when I woke up this morning!

The actual show doesn't technically open until 16 September (and not to the public until the weekend, sorry to our zero readers comfortably close to Tokyo), but as is always the case, relevant news has started to come in already. andriasang brings us, first, the map of the Square Enix booth for this year's TGS. It's a good way to work out what the big games are going to be, according to the folks at Squenix; note that on the map, virtually all of the booths are the same size, with the biggest single block being dedicated to Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded, The 3rd Birthday, and the new Dissidia Duodenum [duodecim]. Also notable is that Versus XIII and Agito XIII won't be on their own in the booth at all, that Final Fantasy XIV has very small real estate, that Squenix is pushing Fallout: New Vegas (their first game in Japan labeled with the Japanese equivalent of Adults Only) as they publish for Bethesda in Japan, and the curious "Square Enix Online Manga" niche next to FFXIV. I don't remember hearing much about the last one, there, but apparently Squenix rolled out plans for e-distribution of manga in several locales this summer.

If you're one of the folks aching for the new Dissidia, the first screenshots are out featuring Kain and Lightning. Looks like Kain will be fighting on the side of Chaos and Lightning for Cosmos, assuming the factions remain the same in the sequel; the screenshots show Kain spearing Cecil and Lightning fighting against Garland - or, that's what Siliconera say, and it looks more or less like that is what is happening amid all the screen-filling nuttiness going on. [duodecim] isn't expected until 2011, but TGS will have a playable build.

The last news on right now for TGS is some more discussion of what is undoubtably the most important feature of The 3rd Birthday: you can turn the fanservice up to eleven by destroying Aya's clothes. Apparently Aya's so tough now that she doesn't even seem to mind fighting in her underwear - however, game director Hajime Tabata says that it isn't the point of the game, despite the fact that they've shown a lot of interest in the clothes coming off but pretty much zero interest in explaining how they might get rebuilt. Additionally, Tabata has asked players not to play the TGS demo specifically to see the clothes get ripped off, but then also gives hints on how they can most easily be torn off in the demo build. Way to stay classy, chief, and - by the way - also make the game look like it's going to completely suck if you're not buying it specifically to see skin on your PSP screen.

More as the week goes on, no doubt, from the Tokyo Game Show.

Source: Siliconera, andriasang, Square Enix North America