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Square Enix's E3 presentation was this afternoon! Clocking in at forty-five minutes, most of the news featured other franchises, but there were some tidbits for Final Fantasy fans.

First up is Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster. Covering the first six main games, these titles (released individually) will be coming soon to Steam, Android and iOS, though a release date wasn't mentioned. No other information was released other than these promise to be "pixel perfect" remasters.

The other major announcement for Final Fantasy fans is Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, an upcoming action game in collaboration with Team NINJA from KOEI TECMO GAMES, creators of the NINJA GAIDEN and Nioh series. Coming in 2022 for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One as well as PC, this spinoff appears to be heavily influenced by the original Final Fantasy game, although with new characters. Jack and his allies Ash and Jed throw open the gates to the Chaos Shrine, resolved to defeat Chaos. Take a look at the video here: YouTube

A free trial of this game is now available to download and play through June 24th.

The presentation also featured glimpses from Square Enix's mobile games, both current and upcoming. Seen were:

• the repeat collaboration between Final Fantasy I and War of the Visions:FFBE
• the upcoming fifth anniversary of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius
• footage of Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier
• a sample of NieR Reincarnation

There was also a short reminder about Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, showing footage of Yuffie, but no new information on future titles in that franchise.

Finally, they showed (old) teaser footage of their other upcoming games, including Forspoken, Final Fantasy XVI, and Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, but those of us wishing for further glimpses at these titles were left disappointed.

Source: The Verge, Square Enix

Dragon Quest as a franchise turned 35 years old this week, and Square Enix went to town on bringing around new games. Gematsu has them all covered, so here is a quick list for Dragon Quest fans out there:

• A twelfth entry in the mainline series, subtitled "The Flames of Fate," was announced with no release date but plans for a simultaneous worldwide release. A trailer lives behind the click.
• Another new game, Dragon Quest Treasures, is a spinoff featuring characters from Dragon Quest XI as children, and is centered around treasure hunting. It, too, has a trailer past the link but not much other information to speak of.
• For the MMO Dragon Quest, DQX, there were two new updates this week. First, the next expansion for version 6 will arrive in Japan this fall; additionally, an "offline" version was also announced for 2022.
• Finally, an "HD-2D" remake of the third Dragon Quest game will be coming soon as well. Dragon Quest III was the final game for the NES, and the remake will combine pixel art and engine effects to re-render the game in a 3D environment. There’s no release date available for this game either, but there is (obviously?) a trailer too.

Seems like there will be plenty of content for Dragon Quest fans over the next couple years, to say the least.

Source: Gematsu

Today’s Nintendo Direct described a number of games coming in the next year or two to their platforms, and while there were no new Square Enix characters coming to Smash, the company did appear with a few announcements. First, a remastered version of Legend of Mana will be coming in June to Switch, as well as Playstation 4 and Steam. The illustrated backdrops look pretty, and the sprites look nice and sharp.Also announced for Switch, Playstation 4 and Steam, plus iOS and Android, is a remaster of SaGa Frontier. Also originally for Playstation, this remaster re-adds some content that was previously cut from the original game. It will be out earlier, in April.

The third game announced in the Nintendo Direct is a brand-new title that should excite both fans of Final Fantasy Tactics and Octopath Traveler. Currently called by a working title of “Project Triangle Strategy,” the new game is an isometric tactical RPG set in the Octopath universe. Based on the announcement trailer, the game expands on the combat formula developed in FFT by adding in chained attacks among units, and multistage attacks shown in the trailer by creating watery tiles that can then enhance lightning damage. It also appears that the battle environments can be more destructively changed in battle, as a farm building on a battle map is shown being set ablaze more than once in the trailer video. On top of that, it appears that the game will offer meaningful choices that will change the course of the plot, which should create significant replay opportunity. This game is scheduled for release in 2022.

Source: Gematsu, Gematsu, Kotaku

And strangely enough, not on Steam! Square Enix announced yesterday that the Kingdom Hearts series would make its debut on Windows PCs via the Epic Games store. The games will be released on March 30 of this year, with eleven games to be released across four packages.

The four packages mirror the most recent versions released of each; HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX contains the first game, Re:Chain of Memories, the cinematics from 358/2 Days, Kingdom Hearts II, Birth By Sleep, and the cinematics from Re:Coded. HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue includes Dream Drop Distance, 0.2 Birth By Sleep ~a fragmentary passage~, and the cinematics for Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover. The Kingdom Hearts III release contains the Re Mind DLC, and then the final release is of the rhythm game Melody of Memory.

First, I hope you enjoy this news because it was a lot of effort to type out those wild game subtitles. Second, I hope that if you're interested you have deep enough pockets, because the preorder price is $50 for the first game compilations and $60 for each of the remaining three releases. Preorders are open now.

Source: Square Enix

The newest mobile, turn-based strategy game from Square Enix is releasing in under two weeks now, and as of yesterday pre-downloads were made available on both Apple and Google app stores. Released last year in Japan, Dragon Quest Tact is a monster-collecting, monster-training, grid-based strategy game developed by Aiming. It looks to be pretty standard mobile tactical RPG fare, but the Dragon Quest IP is really cute in context and the design and animation look pretty impressive too.

Anyone who pre-downloads the app before the release on January 27 will get a free King Slime monster for their party, too. Who could say no to that?

Source: Dragon Quest Tact

Just before Christmas, Square Enix applied for three new trademarks in Japan, all related to Final Fantasy VII; the filings were made public on Monday of this week.

Two were for text use: "Ever Crisis" and "The First Soldier." It seems reasonable to believe that these two are both related to the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, given the use of the terms "Crisis" and "Soldier" in other ways related to FF7. The third is more explicit - it's a trademark application for the logo used by Shinra Electric Power Company. The two text trademarks were filed on December 17, and the visual on December 22.

There's no other information about how these marks might be used, as only the Shinra logo has been used in the past in its current form. The other marks could refer to remakes, remasters, or new games in the FF7 universe for any platform. They could even refer to upcoming books based in the same. They could even be for projects that never actually happen. We will just have to see what happens with them in the future.

Source: Gematsu