Welcome to the Caves of Narshe

The Game Awards 2024 have been up and running for under an hour as this is written, but a Square Enix announcement happened early on. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, always expected for a Windows release, got a date that is coming very soon: January 23, 2025.

The game will be released on both Steam and in the Epic Games Store on that day, and preorders are meant to start in the next few hours. Squenix are advertising on socials that preorders will have a discount of "up to 30%" so if you have a pretty strong gaming rig and no Playstation 5, it's your time.

If you like your Final Fantasy smol and adorbs, Square Enix announced last week a new line of merchandise, coming next March, that will start to scratch that itch. The key item in the small collection, to me, is a new music album with twenty songs including one from every mainline game; this list contains a few tracks that seem like they would be pretty confusing to get the "cute" treatment, which really makes me all the more interested in hearing it. The album will be in CD format and will be the Japanese release even if bought worldwide, and is listed at $30.

The album art contains a new illustration with a ton of cute illustrations of Final Fantasy heroines and creatures, to the extent that I can't pick a favorite. The same art is reflected on some other merch, as well, but pretty standard fare including t-shirts and a tote. In my opinion, the keychain is probably the best option both based on price and how well the album cover design translates to the products.

Preorders for all of the merchandise are open now and preorders of the album also include a sticker of the new SQKawaii branding on the album cover.

Source: Square Enix Store

Many Warriors of Light were abuzz at the news that dropped earlier this week: a mobile version of Final Fantasy XIV is currently in production. Built by Lightspeed Studios, this is an officially licensed game from Square Enix.

What we know thus far:

• It's a sister game to the PC & console version, and will feature the story of A Realm Reborn.
• It includes multiplayer battles that have been optimized for mobile controls.
• It is not a gacha game.

This former player of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (may the global version rest in peace) is not surprised by that last item; I longed for Final Fantasy XIV units in that game but the rumor was that Naoki Yoshida, XIV's producer, did not like gacha games and would not approve much use of his game's materials in the mobile gacha games.

What remains to be seen is just how Final Fantasy XIV Mobile will monetize. The game will be free to play, so many fans are speculating that there will be a glamour cash shop much like its big sister has. According to FandomWire, Yoshida's goal is to create a sustainable, long-running game rather than a quick cash grab.

Fans can sign up for an email list to obtain the latest news about the new game at the official Final Fantasy XIV Mobile website.

Here's the official teaser trailer for your enjoyment:



Source: FandomWire, Official Final Fantasy XIV Mobile Site

Hi, friends - this is just a quick note to say that the heavy lifting on the server maintenance that has been going on since the summer is now largely complete. There are certainly a few things that have broken along the way that are on my list to clean up, but if you're reading this message it means we've fully transitioned to our new hardware and the site is not likely to fall over dead for at least another couple years. Probably.

If you see anything that looks bad, runs slow, doesn't work, et cetera, please let me know as soon as you can. If it's something potentially time-sensitive, like site slowness or rampant spambots, your best bet is to find me in Discord. Thanks as always.

Yesterday, Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy XVI is just about ready to go for Windows PCs, with the release of a demo and announcement of the full release date: September 17 of this year.

It's a pretty good set of news for people who don't have a Playstation 5; the demo is the same as what was released for PS5, including the entire prologue chapter with the ability to transfer the game data into the full game. The base game is priced at a reasonable-for-Squenix $49.99, but for $69.99 you'll get the game plus both released DLCs, which is still minimum $5 less than PS5 players paid to get them at release. Preorders also get a few DLC items; two of them are similar to the bonuses for the PS5 preorder, and the third is an Orchestrion Roll that I genuinely can't remember now how one gets for PS5.

I haven't been much of a PC gamer for quite a while now, at least not for new games; the specs look pretty significant to me, though, and the requirement of having 170GB free on an SSD is definitely looking pretty intense. If you're curious, though - and you should be, because FF16 is a genuinely excellent game - now is a good time to grab the demo from either Steam or the Epic Store and see if your rig can manage it between now and mid-September.

Source: Square Enix

When the Pixel Remaster games were released in physical editions for consoles a couple years ago, they sold out virtually overnight, leaving only digital downloads available for players. With a couple years' water under the bridge now, though, and the continued popularity of the remasters, Square Enix have announced that a wider release of the physical games will be available starting October 8.

Like the original limited edition release, this new one will be for Playstation and Switch only. Unlike the original, though, the pack-in bonuses are limited to just a sticker sheet. The release is priced at $75, which seems like a lot - but, thinking back on it, that's still less than I spent for Final Fantasy III (US) on SNES 30 years ago even accounting for inflation.

Source: Gematsu

At yesterday's Nintendo Direct, Nintendo were very careful to warn users that there would be no discussion of the upcoming Switch successor. However, there were a lot of pretty great games announced and/or shown, and among them were a set of four games coming from Square Enix that will appeal to CoN readers today.

The first announcement came not just from Square Enix, but from Mistwalker, the current home of Final Fantasy progenitor Hironobu Sakaguchi. Squenix will publish a console release of Mistwalker's Apple Arcade game, Fantasian, sometime this coming winter. The original release of the game was three years ago; the new release will be for all current consoles and also PCs on Steam.

For Squenix themselves, the company showed a new trailer for the HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest III, as well as announcing a release date of November 14. It will also be released for all current consoles and PC. It looks and sounds as good as you'd expect from seeing previous HD-2D games from Square Enix and Artdink.

Dragon Quest III is the earliest game in terms of narrative in the original three games, though, so you might be wondering, what of the earlier-released games of the series? Turns out that Squenix sneaked another announcement into the new trailer; HD-2D releases of Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II are also in production, and will be released sometime in 2025.

The final game from yesterday’s Direct was the announcement of another remake, this time Romancing SaGa 2. It's a fully-3D remake of the original 1993 Super Famicom game, complete with voice acting, and will be released October 24 of this year. This one won't come to Microsoft consoles but will still be released on other consoles and Steam.

Longtime friends of CoN, TheSpeedGamers, have announced a charity marathon stream of Final Fantasy games for next month, starting July 9 at 7pm ET and running through July 14. For this marathon, donations will be in support of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, one of my personal favorite charities. As of this post, the schedule is still to be determined, but expect a large slate, as previous Final Fantasy marathons from TSG have covered virtually every mainline single-player game and then some.

CoN is supporting TSG this summer as well! We will rebroadcast the stream live on our homepage throughout the marathon, and I'm certain it will be a topic of discussion on our Discord too. We've also just packaged up some donations to be given away for raffles and donation goals during the stream in partnership with ThePhoenixCave, with more to come! If you'd like to be a part of CoN's contributions, start by grabbing some of our holographic stickers before they're gone, or come talk to me in Discord.

Keep an eye out here for more information, and don't forget to tune in on July 9.

Source: TheSpeedGamers (TSG.tv), ThePhoenixCave

Square Enix announced last night that the Kingdom Hearts 1-3 series would be released on Steam in just a few weeks, on June 13. I'd missed that this collection had previously been available on the Epic Games store - because, you know, who regularly opens their Epic Games store software - so it appears that the biggest news here is that the Steam release will be the first time that the games will be available to purchase as a single bundle.

It doesn't look like the store page on Steam has been switched on yet, so the bundle price has not been released as far as I can see at the time I write this, nor is it clear if the Steam release will be playable anywhere other than Windows machines. On the Epic storefront, the individual games are at the $50-60 price point currently.

The games themselves contain all of the content available, including the remasters and/or cinematics included from the sideline and handheld games. I won't list them all here because you probably already know them if you've gotten this far into the post, but the list is everything you would expect to see.

Additionally, for purchasers of the bundle, subtitled "Integrum Masterpiece," there will be a new keyblade called "Dead of Night." There's no further information pertaining to whether that bonus weapon will be equippable across all games or what other special features it might include.



Source: Square Enix

Naturally, I had important family engagements last night just in time for the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth State of Play showcase from Sony, so after catching only the trailer last night I had to get up a little early to catch up. So, here's a quick recap for all of you as well, if you missed it or only saw the "short" trailer so far. Spoilers abound if you're looking to go into the game completely tabula rasa, so this post will simply end with the State of Play video and the rest will follow in thread.