Final Fantasy Follow-Up

 OR:

When It Was Hip To Be With Square

I wrote my last entry about Square Enix’s legendary franchise before learning of the company’s most recent plan to sell FFVII-based NFT’s, a move that is quickly earning them a tumbling snowball's worth of backlash and criticism. It got me thinking about the history of the company, especially when the Playstation came on the market. This is by no means an exhaustive nor comprehensive history, merely a general impression from an outsider's perspective. During the 16-bit era, hey were known for publishing titles to the Super Nintendo, Final Fantasy III (technically VI, but that's another matter) being one of their most acclaimed releases. Squaresoft, as they were known back then, was leery of Nintendo’s insistence on cartridges over the CD-ROM format. On the other side of the great dividing wall between Nintendo and Sega, the Sega CD, despite not being financially successful, demonstrated how RPG’s and strategy games could benefit from the extra storage space, if only in the presentation department. Thus, their decision to abandon Camp Mario for the greener pastures of Sony’s gray underdog was made. 

Squaresoft went all in on Playstation’s promises of a bigger and better medium for their games, and I was there for it. I didn’t necessarily buy every single release, but I followed every announcement diligently. New games seemed to come out weekly. Not all printed money like Final Fantasy VII, but what hits they had were obviously more than enough to buoy their b-list brethren. It felt like the company was willing to take risks on more niche and obscure titles others would pass on, maintaining a faith the financials would work themselves out somehow. 

About halfway through the PS2’s life cycle, Square seemed to begin losing their way. The bubble birthed on the back of the PS1 hadn’t burst, but the surface tension was beginning to show signs of weakness. Focus was shifted to their major franchises like Final Fantasy while other established titles were allowed to languish by the wayside. The excitement of the new frontier was long gone, and they fell off my radar. I’d still keep an eye out for what was next for the Final Fantasy franchise albeit I’d stopped playing the games around the release of IX, last part of the great Playstation One Trilogy. Overall, though, I’d lost interest in RPG’s and started looking to other, more action-oriented genres. I often joked I had an abusive relationship with role-playing games, that I loved them dearly but had no time for them. Kingdom Hearts was probably my point of saturation. It was a good note to end the relationship on, an overall well-made game whose only real fault was an off-the-rails story that, as I've heard from even its most devoted fans, didn't get much more coherent in the sequels. 

I do genuinely love this image, albeit
I can't help but think they're up there looking for the lost plot. 

When it came to the PS3, I found myself practically ignoring Square Enix (as they came to be known then) beyond a passing fascination with Final Fantasy XIII and one of its spin-off games. After that, it was off the radar again. The next major piece of news that caught my attention was their acquisition of the Tomb Raider franchise, giving it a fresh, gritty reboot I met with almost complete indifference. Nier: Automata held my interest for a bit, but had much the same problem as Kingdom Hearts, with a gonzo story nobody seems to have a full and proper handle on. This was the time of the PS4. From what I can tell, the PS5 isn't going to see much from its old friend. Tomb Raider, along with a number of other IP's, has been completely sold off to a holding company in favor of some Crypto currency venture I don't pretend to be knowledgeable about. 

This is no longer a label that piques my curiosity nor captures my imagination. I don't recognize it from its heyday.

And this one just makes me sad. 

Calling them sell-outs is admittedly unfair. They're not so risk averse as to only bank on Final Fantasy and their merchandise which they're just as quick to advertise as any of their games. They have a wide range of titles currently on offer, and when I look upon Power Washer Simulator, part of me is assured they haven't changed as much as it may seem. Square-Enix has changed to be sure, but so have I, and maybe that's what I'm really sad about. 

What I really want to know at this point is, given the sale of their former Eidos properties, who owns the rights to Gex?

First World Regrets: Videogame Hoarding

Final Fantasy VII changed my life in the most first world of ways. I had been impressed by the Sega Saturn and even though it was proving to be one of the less successful consoles on the market, I was initially undeterred, setting a plan in motion. I made a list of games whose contents are sadly lost to time beyond maybe the first two or three titles. The mindset was that if the Saturn market collapsed shortly the moment I walked out of the game store with it, I would have been set for life, or at least one or two subsequent console generations. Instead of shelling out for the latest and greatest of games, I could stick to the tried and true. You can keep your Crash Bandicoot and Mario Kart; I'll still be living it up with Panzer Dragoon Saga and Enemy Zero. 

How viable this plan would have actually been in practice is debatable at best. Sticking exclusively to a given piece of hardware is a pretty good way to give yourself buyer's remorse. I think of the PS2/XBOX/GCN generation, how each of these very powerful consoles ended up sculpting unique markets unto themselves. If you loved Role-Playing or Strategy Games, PS2 was the way to go given Square Enix's success with the Final Fantasy series. If you loved First Person Shooters, then you went with XBox and got chummy with all the other Halo fans. If you were a lifelong Nintendo fan, you obviously went with Gamecube and its first party IP's including Mario and Pokemon. When I think back to the Saturn and the games I was going to tough out the next few years with, I think my gaming tastes and habits would have changed drastically. I certainly would have favored quality over quantity, instead of the serious problem I came to have when I got my PS2. 

The PS2 had a massive library of games, a catalog befitting its position as the biggest seller of its generation. Ironically, the majority of PS2's I remember selling people on while I worked at Target had more to do with the console's capabilities as a DVD player than a gaming console. Obviously, it was cheaper to buy a standalone player, but offering the PS2 as a complete package seemed like a no-brainer for gamers and families alike. The XBox could play DVD's as well, but it required the purchase of a separate remote control to the tune of about 30USD. Adding to the irony, that's only a little more expensive than a PS2 memory card, while the XBox had a built-in hard drive for game saves. By comparison, the Gamecube basically sold itself since fans of Nintendo properties such as Metroid and Legend of Zelda didn't care about DVD's or any other multimedia capabilities. 

I went with the PS2 because I had the PS1. I went with the PS1 over the Saturn because I saw a commercial for Final Fantasy VII. I became obsessed with all things Playstation (apart from the occasional outings with the N64). I didn't simply love the Playstation. I loved Sony itself. I researched the company for an economics class and that leaned heavily on the potential of the PS2 becoming not only a games console and home media player, but also a small desktop PC thanks to its promised add-on of a hard drive. That would never technically come to pass; the Linux Kit was never meant to offer up a desktop experience on the level of a PC or Mac, and the hard drive would find more use with online games like Final Fantasy XI anyway. Nonetheless, and just like with the Saturn, I was undeterred. I held on to my PS2 for years, and  there was no favoring quality over quantity. At my worst, I owned something like 200 games. My justification was that I had relatively obscure taste and it wasn't always possible to rent certain titles. Moreover, a lot of the games I wanted had been on the market for some time, their prices typically dropping by half before I became aware of them. I very rarely paid full price for games, but also rarely bought used. In fact, the only used PS2 game I remember buying was Gran Turismo 3, purely because it was literally cheaper than renting it. 

Youtuber Caddicarus made a video detailing his unpopular gaming opinions, including such notable takes as, "ET for the 2600 is not the worst game ever made," and "mobile gaming is pretty cool actually." The one that struck a chord with me was his unexpected admission that the Gamecube was better than the PS2. Seemed like blasphemy given he's known on the internet as a Playstation fanboy to the Nth degree. I've only played the Gamecube within the last few years thanks to my roommate having one, checking out games that I missed because I was in camp Playstation. While the Gamecube had a smaller library than the PS2, it seemed like I had to go further and further out of my way to find something especially bad. That's true of any console, but with the PS2, it attracted shovelware in a way that would only be surpassed by the Nintendo Wii. Actually, the reason I was so hesitant to get a Gamecube back in the day was precisely because of its emphasis on quality over quantity. That is, I knew the Gamecube had really good games on it, but it was the fact that everyone was playing them all at once that kept me away. Everyone was playing Mario Kart. Everyone was playing Metroid Prime. Meanwhile, I don't know many people who were playing Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior or Stretch Panic or Kagero II: Dark Illusion on PS2. I generally stayed away from mainstream titles except maybe for some RPG's. Square Enix had left PS2 owners spoiled for choice, to say nothing of other publishers who recognized the console as the place to be for fans of the genre. 

Much like my Saturn plan, I banked on a number of RPG's for PS2 because I had it in my head that someday I'd have nothing but time on my hands and would need something that could fill that void. RPG's generally take a lot of time, what with being more story-driven and all, so it was the perfect solution to this problem I was convinced was coming sooner rather than later. Had the pandemic happened about 15-20 years earlier and I had a non-essential job to leave me waiting at home, I would have been fully prepared, if only in staving off boredom. 

I've now sold off the majority of my PS2 games (hence the eBay photos I dug up, which aren't all of them). There's maybe a few stragglers I didn't get around to, but they're not taking up an entire foot locker and then some like they once had. The same goes for my Sega Dreamcast, which also had a substantial library at the time. The only games whose prices dropped lower and faster than PS2's were the Dreamcast's, and I was all in. In a way, I did with the Dreamcast what I'd wanted to do with the Saturn. The console wasn't performing well, so it was best to get it while the getting was good. 

My PS3/PS4 collection is substantial, though that's thanks mostly to Sony's Jelly of the Month Club, Playstation Plus. For the price of about a game per year, I can download a game or two a month. They're typically smaller, independent games or older titles past their prime. I allowed my membership to lapse back in January, which left over half the collection inaccessible. It didn't bother me as I was getting more out of my PS4 as a streaming device than a games console. I turned the service back on this month to start playing through some games I meant to finish.  

11 years, 12 months per year, 2-3 games per month...

I guess I never learn. It only makes me sad that you can't really sell digital versions of games. With my old games I can trust that they've all gone to good homes, to gamers like myself who can appreciate and enjoy them as much as I should have. Nowadays, my rule is that I don't buy a new game unless I've beaten one. That's the compromise I made with myself a few years into owning my PS3, and I've mostly stuck to it ever since.

Concept of Deceit

The trouble with games getting retitled upon release in various regions is that it you may completely miss a release because you literally don't know what to look for in searches or what to ask for in stores. For weeks, I'd been seeing trailers on Classic Game Room's trailer channel for a game called Conception, specifically, Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars. I had no real interest in it, so when I saw something else called Deception IV: Blood Ties, with somewhat similar-looking video thumbnails and artwork, I skipped over it. In fact, it wasn't until today that I decided to check on its official page in the PSN store. 

I suddenly felt very, very dumb. 

In my defense, the Deception series has gotten the Final Fantasy treatment when it comes to installment names, and I don't merely mean "IV being II" or "VI being III." I mean, Final Fantasy Legend and Mystic Quest-levels of "where did this come from and where does it belong?" 

Backing up, the first game in this apparently very long series that I played was Kagero II: The Dark Illusion. When I first heard of it, it was called Code Kagero. That article mentioned it being a sequel to a game called Tecmo's Deception, an early Playstation release from 1996. The games are a kind of action/strategy/puzzle synergy, feeling like an odd mix of Resident Evil and the skate park editor from the Tony Hawk games, if you can picture that. I always liked describing Kagero II (which was released as Trapt in 2005, but I refuse to call it by that name) thusly: 

"You play a beautiful princess in a gorgeous mansion... who makes a deal with a demonic spirit to give her the power to fight off bounty hunters after she's framed for her father's murder."

The setup is that you're being pursued by bounty hunters (and anyone else allured by the price on your head) who generally move fairly slowly, yet hit very hard. Your only real defense is running. Apart from that, and thanks to your demonic contract, you have the ability to pull booby traps out of thin air. When you enter a menu, the game freezes and the room gets broken up into a grid. You can set three different types of traps: ones that come out of the ground such as bear traps, ones that fall from the sky like boulders, and ones that come out of the wall like arrows. Each trap is assigned to a controller button. You decide where they're placed in the room, triggering them with the assigned button. The trade-off is that you have to lure the baddies close enough to you to get ensnared without getting hurt yourself. The other issue is that some traps take longer to set up than others. So, if a trap doesn't work, and you decide to assign another trap to pick up the slack, you'll have to stall. The traps can often work in conjunction with the mansion's architecture and decor, including torches, stained-glass windows, electric chairs, spike pits, and mechanical alligators, to name a very small sample. 

I frigging love this game. 

I freely admit it appeals to the sadist in me. As much as I'm not big on fantasy settings, there's something perpetually intriguing about castles, dungeons, secret rooms, and hidden passages. I also love the moral ambiguity, the way you question your actions (and delight in them) as your victims mutter pensive final statements as they meet sticky ends, to say nothing of the greater plot behind the scenes involving your father's murder. It definitely has its problems. It gets very repetitive and falls victim to the dominant strategy conundrum. Points earned help you purchase different traps, but you'll often find yourself sticking to a pattern of the same handful of devices, leaving you very little incentive to experiment. Still, the pros outweigh the cons and I consider the game a masterpiece. It was a fairly late release on the Playstation 2, and I was convinced I wouldn't see another entry in the series for some time, if at all. 

Now, nearly ten years later, not only does it get a sequel, and not only does it get to come stateside, but it completely flies under my radar with a name I don't recognize, and barely makes sense as a title. 

In fact, Blood Ties isn't even the proper name of the game. It's Dark Side Princess (which sounds way more badass). Even the IV isn't accurate as the game is labeled as a direct sequel to Kagero II. Remember how the Rambo series' first film is simply called First Blood, with Rambo being the "over title" of First Blood, Part 2, with Rambo III dropping the "First Blood" part altogether? Kagero II is technically Deception IV, but it's called Kagero II because it follows Kagero: Deception III. Is it any wonder this series is so obscure not only in America, but in Japan as well? 

So, given all I've gone on about the series, how I felt dumb, then excited, then confused, then back to excited, the question remains: will I be picking up the game? Not right away. There's a few dealbreakers that sour the package despite all the praise I foisted upon it. 

Firstly, the game is produced by Tecmo, who recently merged with Koei. I wasn't happy about this merger, as Tecmo saw fit to insert characters from its Ninja Gaiden franchise into Koei's Warriors Orochi games. That should make me happy, as the Samurai Warriors series is another staple of my PS2 top 5. However, it simply makes me sad. 

That's a minor gripe, though. The biggest problem is a matter of time and money. Deception IV has been released on PSN for Playstation 3 and Vita, but is not cross-buy. As much as I get why not every game gives you both the console and portable version for a single asking price, I feel like this is a huge misstep for a series that didn't really catch on outside of a very niche market in the states. A game like this really deserves to be played on the PS3, but I've been favoring my Vita of late. Whichever version I got, I wouldn't be completely happy with it, but their combined price isn't exactly worth it to me. The other issue is simply that I've reached a point where there's too many games out there and too many games in my library for me to spring for another. Child of Light is on its way, along with Hyper Light Drifter, and Wayforward will soon be delivering on the new Shantae game I preordered during the Kickstarter campaign. As far as current playing habits go, I've been really invested in Pinball Arcade, specifically the Gorgar and Black Knight tables. Speaking of pinball, Zen Studios recently announced a new 4-table pack for the Star Wars line, including a Han Solo-themed table and even one focusing on the Droids. So much to do, so little time. Wait for me, dear Deception IV... or come to Playstation Plus, whichever comes first. 

Here's a recent trailer for Deception IV: 

Card XIV: (Nothing To Do With) A Realm Reborn

Signed up for a chance to be in a beta for the PS3 version of FFXIV. As much as I can't stand MMOs, I've got a kind of morbid fascination with the downfall and much-discussed reboot of XIV. I probably won't get the full game, even if I do get to be part of the beta. In general, I have this kind of abusive relationship with RPGs: I love them, but I don't have time for them. At least with something like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I can play a mission or two back-to-back, unwind during the debriefing and upkeep phases, then save and quit for the day. If I am going to get involved in RPGs again (apart from the tactical strategy subgenre like XCOM or Valkyria), it'll be in the realm of pen-and-paper, which I've actually been ruminating on for a possible video project in the coming weeks. Nothing's solid yet, mostly on account of my car troubles (which I'm getting fixed this week), but hopefully things will mellow out and I can stay motivated to go back to producing full-on video works, if only occasionally. 

TRON LEGACY (culled from DevART Journal)

As long as it's on my DevART journal, I might as well post this portion of that entry here:



TRON LEGACY... Awesome. Simply Awesome. Whatever definition you attach to the word "awesome," throw it out and build up a new one, remembering that "awe" is the first syllable and you'll have an inkling of an idea of what seeing this movie was like for me. Sure, I have a few nitpicks and complaints, but it's kind of like when I saw the H2G2 movie; given everything that stood in that movie's way, that it exists at all is about as fulfilling a feeling of vindication as any success it endured thereafter.
If I do have one regret, it's honestly that I saw it in 3D.
The 3D is fine... for 3D scenes. Everywhere else (namely the real world), the glasses just put a yellow-green haze over everything. The worst part is the movie seems to be aware of this, but won't quite own up to it; at the beginning, we're treated to a rather odd title card (this isn't a direct quote, it's just the best I can recall):

The following 3D presentation has scenes that were shot in 2D. This is intentional and how the film was produced.

Please do not remove your 3D glasses for these segments.

In other words, unlike Avatar, which was fully shot in 3D or How to Train Your Dragon, which was fully CG and could therefore be easily switched between 2D and 3D, Tron was only partially shot in 3D, the remainder being 2D and only partly converted later. At one point, I ignored the title card's demand to leave the glasses on and slipped them off for one of the early scenes to find not even so much as a ghosting effect around anything or anyone, a tell-tale sign of the conversion process in any 3D film. I shouldn't be mad, as I guess the alternative would be an immersion-breaking interjection cuing the audience to put on or take off the glasses. Still, I wouldn't have been disappointed if I never saw it in 3D. When it hits the second-run theaters, and if it does so in a 2D format, it's definitely getting at least one more re-visit from me. Hell, I'm wrestling with seeing it again now. The last film to have that kind of effect on me was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which I did see twice in theaters*.

Yes, I'm generally that hard to impress and my taste in films is that hard to place and predict.

*(How to Train Your Dragon was close, but not quite there).