Like in awesome sauce? Yes....I mean Asylum was a great Batman game and the team or whoever was responsible for the scripting and all that jazz clearly understands the material.
I want that same tender loving focus on this project, it doesn't have to be a FF-insert iteration here with Western sauce- Just a good Western flavor of a FF. I'm curious to the results.
@Rachel Fogg: Given how well they took care of the sourcematerial in AA, I do not doubt they'd do the same with FF.
In fact, more so than many japanese studios who I feel would just pick their favorite FF (and it's gonna be either FFVII or FFX) and copy it shallowly.
ROFL! That's true, you can't really blame FFVII for being so popular...SE certainly loves bringing the world up every year or so to give them oodles of money. I dunno about X though.
My best bet is that they won't link it to any existing FF, the risk is too great and SE is quite fine screwing up their own franchise from time to time. They wouldn't let a Euro/Western developer take their crown ;).
But a non numerical FF western style game would be grand and a safer bet for them then for them to risk placing their beloved VII cash cow on the table. That's what I would hope/pray/think anyway.
@Rachel Fogg: Oh yes, I don't think a western developer would be allowed to even touch the main-series, neither do I think a serious western would want to either.
A good studio would try to make their own western thing instead of basic jrpg #15634
Unless it's the developers of Lord of the Rings: The Third Age which would effectively remake FFX.
What I meant was that had it gone to a japanese developer, the chance was bigger of that happening, and we'd be following the adventures of the sword-wielding Klowd, his buxom companion Tiff, the mysterious girl Eris etc.
OH! My bad!! I'm feeding a baby so I can only look away for like split seconds. Gawd babies are messy, at least he likes peas....
Oh most definitely it would turn into that, agreed completely. And thus the need for me to firebomb SE HQ grows with each 'spinoff' they do to my precious VII timeline/canon or it's bastard offspring (CC was good though.)
Yes, unfortunately it might not even be the other developers fault, hell they might have the game 70% done before Wada walks in there and says 'Cloud cameo in there get now.' Or something along those lines.
@Rachel Fogg: You're the second person I learned to have a baby today.
What is the world coming to!?
Yeah, despite Sakaguchi wasting everything on that movie, he was at least a better man than "Imperial Hot"-"Why hello thar Microsoft, is that some money for me?"-"Milk it!" Wada
@Rachel Fogg: Curse you Rachel Fogg and your dubious statements.
One day, I'll get you and your family, just like how I tricked your ancestor Phileas into traveling around the world in 80 days!
Exactly, I don't know why he failed with about every FF-part (even Cid is called Sid), but I suspect he was replaced by a doppelganger at the time.
Sakaguchi is still a man who cares about games, after all. Even if he takes Microsoft-money just like Wada, he has still performed better this gen on the consoles themselves.
I want to learn wrestling-moves just so that I can use them on Imperial Hot ^^
(DEAD) Goldwings - Remembered for his bravery and heroism... xD was starred
(DEAD) Goldwings - Remembered for his bravery and heroism... xD was unstarred
@NaryaMithrandir: Aren't they as useful at game development as Grin right now?
@bkchurch: Fortress is supposed to be SE's experiment as Western FF.
If you've been listening to the rambles of Square (and their acquisitions) they got a hue fascination with the West right now. It's like a love story.
@bkchurch: Defeats the purpose of western FF game.
It'd be nice...but it's like trying to connect to your manly roots by going hunting in the woods...then ordering from McD's cos the forests are closed for season.
@Rachel Fogg: When I dress up in a sailor moon outfit and stand in the middle of a foodcourt I don't earn any womens hearts. Only beatings from security.
@D-K, Oh sheeple..: Rogue Galaxy is one of the most boring JRPGs I have ever played.
Sure, combat is fun, but not when you have to fight for hours upon hours while walking through oversized (yet pretty linear) dungeons with the most uninspiring cast of characters ever.
@ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness: It was a complete game. It had a sense of scale and adventure much like Zelda: A link to the past.
Weapon fusion, Skill sets, Item fabrication, customizable party, primairy and secundairy weapons in real-time, Bug training/battling thing, great graphics and the best fighting system to ever grace an RPG. Though i felt the giant cathedral/tower thing to be a bit grindy the rest of the worlds felt balanced and proportioned.
Dark Cloud maybe more up your alley, though i'm sure you've heard of it.
@D-K, Oh sheeple..: Yeah it was complete, but it doesn't change the fact that the complete world was rather dull.
They got a lot of technical aspects down which you really can get lost in hours, and most of these things have been refined since the days of Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicles.
And much in the same way, they have an abundance of things you can do.
The problem for me is that they are just so uninspiring to do. I don't like the main cast, and the bi-characters are all anime-stereotypes (the most notable unplayable characters are a fat captain that sleeps for days, yet manages to be a successful captain, and his talking cat, which is just a cat, that talks).
The playable human characters are all stereotypes that more or less appear in every jrpg, and the non-humans are just bland (with the peak being a lizard who looks just like the NPCs of his own race and lacking in redeeming factors).
While fighting is fun, the abundance I had to do in that game turned me off. You didn't have to take many steps for an encounter, and yet you have to spend hours traveling through the dungeons that look just the same with little variations.
A problem it shares with Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicles where you had to fight through enormous levels consisting of the same area (though randomly generated) over and over again.
Both games have wondrous graphic, but what good are they when I have to look at the same corridors for hours upon end?
@ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness: You have a point with the somewhat monotonous and linear design, i just feel like the battlesystem is so angaging I tend to just look past it's flaws. Up until this point they've alway lived up to my expectations.
We'll see how WKC turns out, even though it's Level-5 I am feeling a bit iffy about it.
Wonder who they'd shuffle the dev duties over to. Eidos? The Ivalice team? All I know is that castle-sized Malboros are fucking awesome and I want to see more.
@Nightshift Nurse: Yeah, a PS3/360 FF spinoff should be interesting to see, especially since Square's classifying Versus as a main-line title as opposed to a spinoff.
Hopefully the studio they outsource it to has multiplatform experience.
Speaking of which, does Eidos own Rocksteady? If so...hmmm...
@Komrade Kayce: Generally, full-budget console releases are the "mainline" titles. You could argue that X-2 is more of a spinoff than a main game, but Versus is definitely a full mainline entry. The budget for that game is pretty damn big.
@Komrade Kayce: No matter what, X-2, Dirge of Cerberus etc were ages ago.
I too would like to see Squeenix on my big console. Mainly the PS3. I'd really like something by them on the PS3. A SquareEnix title on my PS3 would be really appreciated.
Yeah, I think FFVIII is probably a good comparison. Maybe grade it a bit higher, like X, but not as high as IX.
However, its a 'spinoff', so if we start using the grading scale of Crisis Core to Dirge of Cerberus, we might have a quality control issue here with no possible 'winning' outcome. :S
@Komrade Kayce: I thought the gameplay in Tactics A2 was simplified to the point of being broken.
Chocobo Tales may have been "kiddy" in feel but was extremely well done. Furthermore, it's the first Squeenix game I've played in a while that I felt really dripped with the same vibe they had in their PS1-era heyday.
And finally, I liked Dirge for what it is: an action-heavy RPG blend. It was gorgeous, it played well for what it was (i.e.: not Devil May Cry), it had what I found to be an enjoyable level of fanservice, and it set the stage for a potential Final Fantasy 7-2 (which is something I'd very much like to see).
@Komrade Kayce: Exactly, man. It's a good thing GRIN went down when it did because if they make this game it'd be crap like everything else they've made.
These dudes went out of business for a REASON and they tried using this Final Fantasy as something to shove in people's faces like they were saying "Haha! You didn't buy our crappy games so now you don't get this game!"
@RSQViper: I can't speak for Grin's other projects since I never played them, But Bionic Commando Rearmed was fantastic. And even the full-fledged next-gen Bionic Commando was a good, reasonably polished game.
It just wasn't a $60 game.
Last gen, it would've been one of those titles that debuted at $39.99. Unfortunately there's no range of prices this time around - games are $60 no matter what (with rare exception).
People would spew less venom towards the current-gen offerings that would have been yesterday's $29.99 - $39.99 releases if such games were priced accordingly.
@Nightshift Nurse: I got the new Bionic Commando for €40 on release day, so I don't know where the $60 comes from because the Euro and US Dollar were around the same level at the time.
Oddly enough I got Street Fighter 4 for the same price the day it came out as well and I'd have classed it as a €60 title. Capcom must have been just looking for extra sales at the time I suppose and dropped their price points out of holiday season.
@jayc4life: You guys were lucky to receive some more realistic pricing then. In the United States it debuted at a $60 price point as so many other games do that really should be no more than $39.99.
Hell, if it means establishing new pricing standards then by all means I wish developers would agree on a $44.99 price point for games that "cost a lot to develop but aren't quite up to the standards that premium pricing dictates".
Right now that seems to be $49.99 for games like Cross Edge and Katamari Forever and that's still too much for either of them (different reasons though).
What I don't understand is how can the guys who brought back to life one of my favorite games (Bionic Commando Rearmed) Makes so many duds along with that. I mean was it managements decisions to pick up crappy projects like wanted and terminator salvation? Or was it just overall poor management period? I wish I could find out the true reason behind it.
@Befitzero: I always figured it was trying to take on too much at once. If they hadn't been saddled with two tie in games as well as two remakes/sequals, they might have been okay.
@lightweaponx: Not necessarily, 1 good/great/superb game is always enough to warrant existence, I [ironically] hate all things Hudson, except for bomberman.
There are several other examples of devs with a high crap-to-hit ratio, yet you'd miss them if they were gone.
@lightweaponx: 1 in 10 Movies also become blockbsuters.... so we can get rid of the other film companies then?
they also did the GRAW 1 & 2 for PC and there were my favs as well.
They only seemed to flop when making movie franchised games and to be fair a good movie game is unheard of, maybe they needed the money to continue working on thre own individual projects to have to work on those titles, kinda sad really.
@Hasseo: Ugh, I'm tired of seeing stupid generalizations like this. -__- Every studio has their hits and misses, and GRIN just seemed to have hit a fatal strike of bad hits. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth having. One great game is enough to justify having an existence for all the other bad ones.
@Archaotic: The art is nothing more or less than what it is; art.
One can imagine all sorts of things within the universe depicted, as it is a simple 2D image made to evoke emotion. Good art doesn't make a good game, you're just sad you were denied a FF.
As a reviewer you should be well aware of how brands/series, and the love for them, blurr our notions of objectivity.
Besides, all they've shown is art, realisticly, a FF of regular proportion takes a long time, especially as novices...
[though i don't know whether Grin was able to make use of the FF engine]
Still.. shame on you for getting suckered in like that..
...
can someone get me a ladder, i'm having some trouble getting off my hgh horse =)
@D-K, it's not butter? no way!: dude what? he was saying he liked the art. thats it. so far..he likes what he has seen, i feel the same way, i would've liked to see where the game was going too.
I was quite sad to seen GRIN go. I actually enjoyed Bionic Commando, it was really fun except for the broken Matchmaking system.
That said, I'd probably be one of the first people to scream 'BLASPHEMY!' whilst frothing at the mouth at a Final Fantasy game not made by Square. I concede though that these looks at what might have been have been intriguing.
Did they forget what game they were making? This is Final Fantasy! It looks like the artists inspiration was Lord of the Rings. To be fair they did half assedly throw in a Chocobo and some floating crystals so I guess all is well...wait no.
@n1ner6er: Yeah and Square has been Messing it up since FF7. At least this looks like a "Fantasy Game". Honestly, I would have loved to see a new developer run with the franchise.
Call it Classical Fantasy, not Fantasy. Every Final Fantasy game has been incredibly Fantasy, just because it wasn't set in medieval times doesn't mean it's not Fantasy.
Star Wars is Fantasy (Star Trek being Sci-Fi)
Final Fantasy has always had a Steam-Punk vibe to it, even pre-VII. They just moved on from Steam-Punk to more futuristic forms of the same version.
I, for one, loved it, always have, and always will.
I've enjoyed most Final Fantasy games, but I would like to see another with some hint of steam-punk.
And yes, I'm well aware Star Wars is fantasy. Only the setting is sci-fi.
And I did say fantasy setting. I never said the others were not fantasy, just they lacked the setting of such. FFVII and VIII were definitely not really fantasy in terms of setting.
As for the comment of being tired of using swords and shields. Well, shields may not be in all FF games, usually there is a sword. I wouldn't mind a real Sci-fi Final Fantasy game... though that would kind of go against the Fantasy part of it.
But don't start going at me because I apparently didn't word my original comment in a way you didn't like. I'm still correct in my reasoning. I never said FF lacked the Fantasy element, it just lacked the setting.
I would have loved to see the FF games done visually like this. It actually looks like a FANTASY story and not a sci-fi/boyband mix. It's a lot more reminiscent of the old NES and SNES games. You don't have to use the company Square, but please use the concepts.
09/21/09
09/21/09
Fortress Team 2?
Eh? Eh?
09/21/09
09/21/09
Which is good, it would be foolish for SE to let something like this die. Since they own Eidos why don't they shove it on the team that did Batman?
I mean, there's potential here...lots of good potential.
09/21/09
09/21/09
Like in awesome sauce? Yes....I mean Asylum was a great Batman game and the team or whoever was responsible for the scripting and all that jazz clearly understands the material.
I want that same tender loving focus on this project, it doesn't have to be a FF-insert iteration here with Western sauce- Just a good Western flavor of a FF. I'm curious to the results.
09/21/09
In fact, more so than many japanese studios who I feel would just pick their favorite FF (and it's gonna be either FFVII or FFX) and copy it shallowly.
09/21/09
ROFL! That's true, you can't really blame FFVII for being so popular...SE certainly loves bringing the world up every year or so to give them oodles of money. I dunno about X though.
My best bet is that they won't link it to any existing FF, the risk is too great and SE is quite fine screwing up their own franchise from time to time. They wouldn't let a Euro/Western developer take their crown ;).
But a non numerical FF western style game would be grand and a safer bet for them then for them to risk placing their beloved VII cash cow on the table. That's what I would hope/pray/think anyway.
09/21/09
A good studio would try to make their own western thing instead of basic jrpg #15634
Unless it's the developers of Lord of the Rings: The Third Age which would effectively remake FFX.
What I meant was that had it gone to a japanese developer, the chance was bigger of that happening, and we'd be following the adventures of the sword-wielding Klowd, his buxom companion Tiff, the mysterious girl Eris etc.
09/21/09
OH! My bad!! I'm feeding a baby so I can only look away for like split seconds. Gawd babies are messy, at least he likes peas....
Oh most definitely it would turn into that, agreed completely. And thus the need for me to firebomb SE HQ grows with each 'spinoff' they do to my precious VII timeline/canon or it's bastard offspring (CC was good though.)
Yes, unfortunately it might not even be the other developers fault, hell they might have the game 70% done before Wada walks in there and says 'Cloud cameo in there get now.' Or something along those lines.
09/21/09
What is the world coming to!?
Yeah, despite Sakaguchi wasting everything on that movie, he was at least a better man than "Imperial Hot"-"Why hello thar Microsoft, is that some money for me?"-"Milk it!" Wada
09/21/09
OH me? Baby? Nah, just watching over my little nephew/cousin thing. He's made out of chub, right now he's asleep for about 4 hours.
I don't hate Sakaguchi, he just made a movie that wasn't a FF movie...but it's decent movie without the FF attached so...
As for Wada, I want to grow a fist on my chin so I can punch him in the face.
Gah! Imperial Hot...one day that will happen.
09/22/09
One day, I'll get you and your family, just like how I tricked your ancestor Phileas into traveling around the world in 80 days!
Exactly, I don't know why he failed with about every FF-part (even Cid is called Sid), but I suspect he was replaced by a doppelganger at the time.
Sakaguchi is still a man who cares about games, after all. Even if he takes Microsoft-money just like Wada, he has still performed better this gen on the consoles themselves.
I want to learn wrestling-moves just so that I can use them on Imperial Hot ^^
09/21/09
Dude I just hope your "boss" doesn't find that statement you made earlier.
09/21/09
*strikes pose*
09/21/09
09/21/09
09/21/09
@bkchurch: Fortress is supposed to be SE's experiment as Western FF.
If you've been listening to the rambles of Square (and their acquisitions) they got a hue fascination with the West right now. It's like a love story.
09/21/09
@D-K, Oh sheeple..: This is the only thing I could think of as I read your post.
09/21/09
Well that's what it was originally. Now that Grin's gone under it's not unfeasible to imagine a company like Level 5 picking up the pieces.
09/21/09
It'd be nice...but it's like trying to connect to your manly roots by going hunting in the woods...then ordering from McD's cos the forests are closed for season.
09/21/09
And for posting Sailor Moon you earn my heart.
09/21/09
I HATE THESE DOUBLE STANDARDS! gaaaghhahahh
09/21/09
I might be biased as i prefer real-time battle over turn-based, but i'd really like to see level-5 take a stab at this.
Look at their track record, also they're making a game with Studio freakin Ghibli!
Rogue Galaxy!!!
09/21/09
Sure, combat is fun, but not when you have to fight for hours upon hours while walking through oversized (yet pretty linear) dungeons with the most uninspiring cast of characters ever.
09/21/09
Weapon fusion, Skill sets, Item fabrication, customizable party, primairy and secundairy weapons in real-time, Bug training/battling thing, great graphics and the best fighting system to ever grace an RPG. Though i felt the giant cathedral/tower thing to be a bit grindy the rest of the worlds felt balanced and proportioned.
Dark Cloud maybe more up your alley, though i'm sure you've heard of it.
09/21/09
They got a lot of technical aspects down which you really can get lost in hours, and most of these things have been refined since the days of Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicles.
And much in the same way, they have an abundance of things you can do.
The problem for me is that they are just so uninspiring to do. I don't like the main cast, and the bi-characters are all anime-stereotypes (the most notable unplayable characters are a fat captain that sleeps for days, yet manages to be a successful captain, and his talking cat, which is just a cat, that talks).
The playable human characters are all stereotypes that more or less appear in every jrpg, and the non-humans are just bland (with the peak being a lizard who looks just like the NPCs of his own race and lacking in redeeming factors).
While fighting is fun, the abundance I had to do in that game turned me off. You didn't have to take many steps for an encounter, and yet you have to spend hours traveling through the dungeons that look just the same with little variations.
A problem it shares with Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicles where you had to fight through enormous levels consisting of the same area (though randomly generated) over and over again.
Both games have wondrous graphic, but what good are they when I have to look at the same corridors for hours upon end?
09/21/09
We'll see how WKC turns out, even though it's Level-5 I am feeling a bit iffy about it.
09/21/09
09/21/09
09/21/09
Not that I mind the boatloads of attention the PSP and DS have been getting, but a bit of proper next-gen polish is always welcome.
09/21/09
Hopefully the studio they outsource it to has multiplatform experience.
Speaking of which, does Eidos own Rocksteady? If so...hmmm...
09/21/09
Haven't there been a pile of WiiWare releases Final Fantasy related?
And that Vinnie Valentino one on the PS2?
What about FF XIII 'Versus', does that not count as a spinoff? Its likely to appear before this one does, now that Square has control of both.
Or X-2... its about as close to a spinoff as you can get. I'm confused about your lack of console non main numbered final fantasy 'spinoffs'.
09/21/09
Dirge of Cerberus fits the bill, though.
09/21/09
Whats classified as a spinoff, then, if X-2 isn't? I thought follow ups to mainline games or set in the same universe games were the spinoffs.
I SO CONFUSE
09/21/09
09/21/09
I too would like to see Squeenix on my big console. Mainly the PS3. I'd really like something by them on the PS3. A SquareEnix title on my PS3 would be really appreciated.
09/21/09
EDIT: And by good, I mean, not great or amazing, but square enix level 'good'. So lets not go crazy with expectations here.
09/21/09
Maybe we should create a FF sliding scale to rate things with?
09/21/09
Yeah, I think FFVIII is probably a good comparison. Maybe grade it a bit higher, like X, but not as high as IX.
However, its a 'spinoff', so if we start using the grading scale of Crisis Core to Dirge of Cerberus, we might have a quality control issue here with no possible 'winning' outcome. :S
09/21/09
The Crystal Chronicles series and Final Fantasy Tactics A2? Eh...not so much.
09/21/09
You can't possibly mean what you say. The third person action snooze shooter on the ps2 better than tactics a2 on the ds? Really?
One, while having a pokey feel good time story, had a lot more gameplay and depth than the other.
And Chocobo Tales? If we're going to start including childrens games, might as well throw Chocobo Team Racing into the mix.
09/21/09
Chocobo Tales may have been "kiddy" in feel but was extremely well done. Furthermore, it's the first Squeenix game I've played in a while that I felt really dripped with the same vibe they had in their PS1-era heyday.
And finally, I liked Dirge for what it is: an action-heavy RPG blend. It was gorgeous, it played well for what it was (i.e.: not Devil May Cry), it had what I found to be an enjoyable level of fanservice, and it set the stage for a potential Final Fantasy 7-2 (which is something I'd very much like to see).
09/21/09
These dudes went out of business for a REASON and they tried using this Final Fantasy as something to shove in people's faces like they were saying "Haha! You didn't buy our crappy games so now you don't get this game!"
09/21/09
It just wasn't a $60 game.
Last gen, it would've been one of those titles that debuted at $39.99. Unfortunately there's no range of prices this time around - games are $60 no matter what (with rare exception).
People would spew less venom towards the current-gen offerings that would have been yesterday's $29.99 - $39.99 releases if such games were priced accordingly.
09/22/09
Oddly enough I got Street Fighter 4 for the same price the day it came out as well and I'd have classed it as a €60 title. Capcom must have been just looking for extra sales at the time I suppose and dropped their price points out of holiday season.
09/22/09
Hell, if it means establishing new pricing standards then by all means I wish developers would agree on a $44.99 price point for games that "cost a lot to develop but aren't quite up to the standards that premium pricing dictates".
Right now that seems to be $49.99 for games like Cross Edge and Katamari Forever and that's still too much for either of them (different reasons though).
09/13/09
09/14/09
09/13/09
09/13/09
09/13/09
09/13/09
There are several other examples of devs with a high crap-to-hit ratio, yet you'd miss them if they were gone.
09/13/09
they also did the GRAW 1 & 2 for PC and there were my favs as well.
They only seemed to flop when making movie franchised games and to be fair a good movie game is unheard of, maybe they needed the money to continue working on thre own individual projects to have to work on those titles, kinda sad really.
09/13/09
09/13/09
09/13/09
One can imagine all sorts of things within the universe depicted, as it is a simple 2D image made to evoke emotion. Good art doesn't make a good game, you're just sad you were denied a FF.
As a reviewer you should be well aware of how brands/series, and the love for them, blurr our notions of objectivity.
Besides, all they've shown is art, realisticly, a FF of regular proportion takes a long time, especially as novices...
[though i don't know whether Grin was able to make use of the FF engine]
Still.. shame on you for getting suckered in like that..
...
can someone get me a ladder, i'm having some trouble getting off my hgh horse =)
09/13/09
your High Horse may be a bit too high.
09/13/09
09/13/09
That said, I'd probably be one of the first people to scream 'BLASPHEMY!' whilst frothing at the mouth at a Final Fantasy game not made by Square. I concede though that these looks at what might have been have been intriguing.
09/09/09
09/09/09
09/09/09
A new developer bringing some new life to the series would be great as well.
09/09/09
Call it Classical Fantasy, not Fantasy. Every Final Fantasy game has been incredibly Fantasy, just because it wasn't set in medieval times doesn't mean it's not Fantasy.
Star Wars is Fantasy (Star Trek being Sci-Fi)
Final Fantasy has always had a Steam-Punk vibe to it, even pre-VII. They just moved on from Steam-Punk to more futuristic forms of the same version.
I, for one, loved it, always have, and always will.
09/17/09
I've enjoyed most Final Fantasy games, but I would like to see another with some hint of steam-punk.
And yes, I'm well aware Star Wars is fantasy. Only the setting is sci-fi.
And I did say fantasy setting. I never said the others were not fantasy, just they lacked the setting of such. FFVII and VIII were definitely not really fantasy in terms of setting.
As for the comment of being tired of using swords and shields. Well, shields may not be in all FF games, usually there is a sword. I wouldn't mind a real Sci-fi Final Fantasy game... though that would kind of go against the Fantasy part of it.
But don't start going at me because I apparently didn't word my original comment in a way you didn't like. I'm still correct in my reasoning. I never said FF lacked the Fantasy element, it just lacked the setting.
09/09/09
09/09/09
Artists are in the link:
Martin Bergquist and Tony Holmsten
09/09/09