News

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

So, yes, we buried the lede by posting the mobile games first. This is a free service, suck it up. Today's biggest Final Fantasy VII news is big but probably pretty predictable in some ways: Final Fantasy VII Remake is itself being remade. Okay, not really, but that line was too good to pass up. What we’re actually getting is a new release on Playstation 5 called "Intergrade," which will allow users to either bump their graphics up to 4K with HDR or to lock the frame rate at a constant 60fps. It will also add in a dedicated photo mode, which my daughter will eventually love since she seems to spend most of her FF7 time trying to get good screenshots of Wedge’s cats and Aerith on the way to Corneo’s mansion. Check out this introductory trailer to see the upgrades and the other big surprise.Intergrade will be available as a standalone game for PS5, but PS4 users who bought the PS4 version will get a free upgrade (with some minor stipulations). The other big news about the PS5 release will also come free for new purchasers, and will be available as purchased DLC for PS4 upgraders - an entirely new scenario with Yuffie. It’s entirely new because it will cover her time before Cloud meets her as she mounts a raid on Midgar with thievery on her mind. The timeline of the DLC will overlap with the events of FF7R, so it should be nicely spoiler-free. IGN’s post of the trailer video says that the DLC will be available also for PS4, though the video itself does not mention this. Gematsu is instead reporting that Squenix have explicitly said that the Yuffie DLC won't be released for PS4, so that is unfortunately likely the case.

Also in news today for Final Fantasy VII Remake, Famitsu reports this week that Tetsuya Nomura will not serve as co-director for part two, handing the reigns fully over to Naoki Hamaguchi. Nomura will stay on board as the creative director for the title for all upcoming Final Fantasy VII titles, with the handoff being possible due to the robust framework laid down for the main game via part one.

Source: Gematsu, IGN

Maybe not the news you expected to see tonight (that's still coming momentarily to your trusty CoN), but Square Enix also announced two Final Fantasy VII mobile titles today, "The First Soldier" and "Ever Crisis." We mentioned the trademarks for these games last month; now we know that the former is, surprisingly, a battle royale-style game set at the dawn of the SOLDIER era 30 years before Final Fantasy VII. It looks to be exactly as described, a third-person battle royale shooter with all the trappings of FF7 including firearms, swords, magic, summons, and big mechs. It will be out this year.Ever Crisis is a bit of a stranger thing to describe. It looks a little bit like Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition, though not as overtly chibi; the overworld art style looks like a high-res version of the original PSX game but combat looks like a scaled-down version of Remake. It will be an episodically-released game that will cover the entirety of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, even including Advent Children. It will start releasing in 2022.

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