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AWR Music, the team behind Distant Worlds, have announced two new concert tours.

First up is the FINAL FANTASY 40th Anniversary concert series, entitled Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY Eternal / 悠久. The following dates have been announced, with some tickets already on sale:

• Tokyo, Japan at Tokyo International Forum Hall A on Saturday, March 20, 2027 – 6:30 PM JST and Sunday, March 21, 2027 – 12:00 PM JST
• Osaka, Japan at Grand Cube Osaka on Saturday, March 27, 2027 – 6:30 PM JST and Sunday, March 28, 2027 – 12:00 PM JST
• Los Angeles, CA, USA at Shrine Auditorium on Saturday, April 3, 2027 – 8:00 PM PT
• Minneapolis, MN, USA at The Orpheum Theatre on Saturday, April 17, 2027 – 8:00 PM CT
• Denver, CO, USA at Buell Theatre on Saturday, April 24, 2027 – 8:00 PM MT
• Atlanta, GA, USA at Atlanta Symphony Hall on Thursday, May 6, 2027 – 7:30 PM ET and Friday, May 7, 2027 – 7:30 PM ET
• Vancouver, BC, Canada at The Orpheum on Friday, June 18, 2027 – Concert Time TBD and Saturday, June 19, 2027 – Concert Time TBD
• New York, NY, USA at Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall on Friday, June 25, 2027 – 8:00 PM ET and Saturday, June 26, 2027 – 8:00 PM ET
• Pittsburgh, PA, USA at Heinz Hall on Saturday, July 31, 2027 – 7:30 PM ET
• Chicago, IL, USA at Chicago Symphony Hall on Friday, September 10, 2027 – 8:00 PM CT and Saturday, September 11, 2027 – 8:00 PM CT
• London, UK at Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, September 25, 2027 – 2:30 PM & 7:30 PM BST
• Singapore, SG at The Star Theatre on Saturday, October 23, 2027 – 7:30 PM SGT
• Seoul, SK at a venue to be determined on Saturday, October 30, 2027 – 7:00 PM KST and Sunday, October 31, 2027 – 7:00 PM KST
• Portland, OR, USA at Schnitzer Concert Hall on Thursday, November 11, 2027 – 7:30 PM PT and Friday, November 12, 2027 – 7:30 PM PT
• Washington, D.C., USA at DAR Constitution Hall on Saturday, December 11, 2027 – 8:00 PM ET
• Houston, TX, USA at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts on Saturday, January 22, 2028 – 8:00 PM CT
• Indianapolis, IN, USA at Hilbert Circle Theatre on Saturday, March 25, 2028 – 7:30 PM CT

The concert will feature the music of composers Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yoko Shimomura, and Masayoshi Soken, but no specific titles have been announced yet. Nobuo Uematsu has been announced to be attending the concerts at Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and London, UK.

Your reporter has lost count of the number of Distant Worlds she has seen, and highly recommends going if you get a chance. Arnie Roth conducts a phenomenal show, and it's well worth the ticket price. Links to ticket sales can be found on the Distant Worlds Official Website.

Adventure, tears - everything begins with this music: AWR Music has also announced a limited series Yoko Shimomura 39th Anniversary Orchestra Concert. Most Square Enix fans will know her from her work on Final Fantasy XV and the Kingdom Hearts franchise, but she also composed music from many other celebrated games. Some of the songs from the Tokyo premiere of the concert series include:

LIVE A LIVE ~ LIVE・A・LIVE - Forgotten Wings - MEGALOMANIA
Legend of Mana ~ Hometown of Domina ~
Xenoblade Chronicles ~ Main Theme ~
Super Mario RPG ~ Beware the Forest's Mushrooms ~
FINAL FANTASY XV ~ Stand Your Ground ~
KINGDOM HEARTS ~ The Other Promise ~
Ancien and the Magic Tablet ~ Kokone's Theme ~

Tickets are now on sale for all venues:

• Chicago, IL - Chicago Symphony Center - January 9, 2027, 8:00 PM
• New York, NY - Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall - January 22, 2027, 8:00 PM
• Singapore, SG - Esplanade Concert Hall - February 21, 2027, 3:00 PM
• Seattle, WA - Benaroya Hall - March 12, 7:30 PM

Yoko Shimomura will be in attendance at all four shows. More information about these shows can be found by visiting the special site.

Source: AWR Music Official Website, Distant Worlds Official Website.

With all of the live music that Square Enix, and in particular the Roth family, have produced over the years, you might wonder what additional concerts we have yet to see. It appears that the answer for now is that we'll get a concert series, called simply ""The Music of Square Enix," that collects music from just about all over the Squenix songbook.

The new website for the series explicitly references music from Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Mana, NieR, and Octopath; this alone could fill a setlist, but naturally the site also says that other series of games will be included too.

So far, fifteen shows have been announced worldwide, with on-sale dates for almost all of the shows in Europe and the United States happening this week. The concert will kick off in Tokyo in April of 2026, then head into the United States in May and June, stopping in Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. Two shows are also scheduled in Fort Worth in 2027, with a few shows in Asia and Europe in between, which seems to imply that they have quite a few other dates that they would like to fill in other locations too.

Nintendo's Direct for Switch 2 ran for about an hour, ending just a few minutes ago. This Direct was previously assumed to be mostly about first-party games, particularly those available near the launch window; under that assumption, the number of games presented by third parties was pretty significant.

For Square Enix fans, two titles in particular would be of interest, but neither are new. Bravely Default Flying Fairy was presented as a launch title for Switch 2 on the release date of June 5, 2025; this, the first game of the series, released for the 3DS in 2012. The remaster for Switch 2 will upscale the game and adjust the UI to suit, as well as add some new minigames. The online features from the original have been ported in as well.

Additionally, Squenix confirmed the long-standing rumor that Final Fantasy VII Remake would arrive on the Switch 2. This was not presented as a launch title, as far as I'm aware - the stream had some technical difficulties right before the announcement and I have not yet seen the complete video from that portion, just the audio. The version to be released will be the Intergrade version released for PlayStation 5 and PC, meaning it will include the additional Yuffie content. This of course implies that Rebirth may eventually come to Switch 2 as well, but that was not addressed in today's Direct.

Unfortunately, no announcements for anything Final Fantasy IX today, as many were hoping for - but there's still a few months before we hit that 25th anniversary.

I've been remiss for quite a while at keeping everyone up on Distant Worlds (and A New World) dates. However, for the former, the Final Fantasy 35th Anniversary Program has continued apace, and there are eleven future dates coming up across the US, Canada, and Brazil:

• Los Angeles, August 13, 2023
• Cleveland, Ohio, September 9
• São Paulo, September 28
• Rio de Janeiro, October 1


• Austin, Texas, November 10
• Montreal, December 3
• Seattle, January 20, 2024
• Charlotte, North Carolina, February 3
• Washington, DC, March 2
• Hartford, Connecticut, March 23
• San Francisco, May 31 and June 1

The smaller chamber orchestra for A New World currently has only three shows through the rest of 2023:

• Boston, September 29
• Cincinnati, October 1
• San Diego, December 8

All shows for both series are available for ticket purchase or preorder right now.

Source: Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, A New World: Intimate Music from Final Fantasy

I did a quick search of the site to see if we'd covered this yet, and I haven't seen anyone mention it. It looks like this series started in Europe and Asia and I missed hearing about it then, but now there are 22 dates for this new Piano Concert series already announced for the Western Hemisphere:

• San Francisco, March 3
• Los Angeles, March 4
• Las Vegas, March 5
• Phoenix, March 6
• Dallas, March 8
• Houston, March 9
• Miami, March 11
• Tampa, March 12
• Atlanta, March 13
• Washington, D.C., March 14
• Philadelphia, March 15
• New York, March 17
• Boston, March 18
• Montreal, March 19
• Toronto, March 20
• Detroit, March 21
• Chicago, March 22
• Cincinatti, March 24
• Kansas City, March 25
• Minneapolis, March 26
• Denver, March 27
• Sao Paulo, Brazil, March 30/31

As is my personal luck, no shows within a few hundred miles of me but I will miss one of the shows by only two days with some travel I already had planned.

Tickets for all shows are already on sale; here's a trailer for the concert series that the promoter published recently as well.

Source: Crystalline Resonance Site

First released in March for Switch, tactical JRPG and Final Fantasy Tactics spiritual successor Triangle Strategy was announced on Tuesday for a Steam release next month. It's currently 10% off for preorders on the Steam store, with three versions available for purchase - standard, digital deluxe, and digital deluxe plus a copy of Various Daylife. The digital deluxe version includes a short digital version of the official art book, the hardcopy of which I recently acquired myself but haven't had time to open and share at all yet.

Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any demo version listed on Steam just yet. I have to admit that until I was able to play the first three chapters in the Switch demo, I hadn't been fully sold on the game, so I wish that it would be available to PC players as well to try out. As it stands, though, I personally think this is the best game Square Enix have released in years, and I'm personally on my fifth playthrough of it currently. So all in all, I'm thrilled that it's likely to find a larger audience with this upcoming PC release.

Source: Triangle Strategy on Steam