News

For CoNniversary last year, we not only released a new Final Fantasy VI walkthrough section, we also recorded a CoNcast about how awesome Final Fantasy VI is. Because it is easy to say how awesome the games we cover are (it's circular reasoning - they're awesome because we cover them and we cover them because they're awesome), we decided to pick up that mantle for this episode and start to turn it into a miniseries. At least for the time being, we're following the order in which the games were added to CoN, and that means that today's episode is all about Final Fantasy IV.

Lasz and Stiltz joined me to record some words describing this phenomenon. We talk about the ATB system, the deliciously melodramatic plot, the fantastic soundtrack, and the fact that it's been released for approximately seven thousand gaming platforms. Hopefully, spending some time listening to us will remind you that FF4 is fantastic and you'll seek out a new playthrough (and/or buy a new copy through AmaCoN!).

Source: The CoNcast Subscription Feed, The CoNcast on iTunes

The sequel to 2012's Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, subtitled "Curtain Call," is set for release this year for the Nintendo 3DS (April 24 in Japan, in fact). The information about the game is flowing freely now, though, as one would expect from an iteration on a music game. Most of the new content for the game comes in the form of the tracks available, and earlier this week Square Enix announced a big chunk of the tracklist from the first seven games of the series. There are some big names in there, from "Matoya's Cave" to "Golbez, Clad in Darkness" to "Clash on the Big Bridge" to "Dancing Mad" to "J-E-N-O-V-A" (and that's not even ten percent of the track list already announced).

The new version of the game also contains a new mode, "Versus," which takes the core gameplay and applies it to a head-to-head competition in which players compete for best score and also build up debuffs to throw at the other side as handicaps. The other gametype added to Theatrhythm for iOS, "Quest Medley," mode returns as well with some enhancements; on top of that, new characters will be present (some from Type-0), and better sorting and favoriting mechanisms will apply to the growing tracklist. The game's even getting a Crystarium!

The 2.2 patch for Final Fantasy XIV is planned for release on March 27, and as befitting a patch, it will be adding a fair amount of new content. New battles will be added in the patch with Leviathan and Gilgamesh, as well as adding new Beast Tribes and towns. This patch should come in advance of the PlayStation 4 release of the game, which, if bought in the Collector's Edition, will include a Fat Chocobo mount. Look at that goofy thing!

To wrap up with Squenix merch news, check out these goodies. The Play Arts division, responsible for all of the action figures and similar toys produced by the company, is rolling out a lot of new figures at various price points. At the high end, in the plus-$100 range, you can find massive Bahamut, Hero of Light, and Dragoon figures. The Hero of Light and Dragoon figures look a lot like the original Amano arts that were used in the logos for Final Fantasy I and IV respectively, so it's possible that this line could grow to include other similar figures in the theme. Perhaps we could have a Magitek Knight? Please?

The Static Arts line is known for less expensive figures; coming soon to that line are a series of figures modeled after the Monster Octopus design language. The first three of these figures, Cloud, Sephiroth and Tifa, are available now for pre-order. They're pretty reasonably priced, at $30 for five-inch-tall figures - okay, that doesn't seem reasonable, but compared to other collectible figures of similar size, they're not bad.

In the long tradition of Piano Collections albums, which have been released for lots of games in the series, there will also soon be a Piano Opera collection for Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX. Piano Operas are single-disc, multi-game albums with a selection of piano arrangements for each game; while the first six games (divided by platform) got albums back in 2012, 2014 will be the release date for the new compilation.

Not really that much to report on this, I suppose. Final Fantasy XIV, released to Windows last year, is now available for beta on PlayStation 4. Unlike the betas for Windows, this beta is immediately open to everyone, and the client is on the PlayStation Store for immediate download.

The game is planned to exit beta and enter wide commercial release for PlayStation 4 on April 14 of this year.

Source: Final Fantasy XIV Official Marketing

While we might have bombed out of covering it on CoN news, you may have heard from some other, obviously mediocre site that there was a bit of controversy around the recent Western release of Bravely Default. In short, a few characters received slightly older canonical ages, and a couple female characters found their character models with more clothing for the US and Europe than they had in Japan. Naturally, the response to this news ran the gamut from those who found it pointless to those who seemed to have a much creepier viewpoint on the whole thing.

Naturally, this got us thinking, so I woke up the day after spending some time with an IV in my arm and grabbed Tiddles, Stiltzkin and Death Penalty to spend some time talking about this newest (minor) controversy and some of the history of censorship in Final Fantasy games, whether forced by Nintendo or willfully taken on by Squenix localization teams. Not only were some of the choices interesting, I'd wager there are some you hadn't even heard of, so it's worth a download right now!

Source: The CoNcast Subscription Feed, The CoNcast on iTunes

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, series producer Yoshinori Kitase has expressed interest in returning the core Final Fantasy series to the Windows platform. Beyond the MMOs, XI and XIV, a new game in the series has not been published to the Windows desktop OS since Final Fantasy VIII. It's clear, though, that the company maintains some interest in the platform with releases from other series like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider, not to mention the recent re-releases of Final Fantasy VII and VIII to Windows last year.

While no games from the Final Fantasy XIII series were released for the platform, Kitase reminds Eurogamer that the original XIII development took place in a Windows environment, so the notion of a release was not restricted by the development itself but instead Squenix' own market analysis and concerns about DRM. Kitase stops well short of promising a release of Final Fantasy XV via Steam, but it's clear from his words that the interest is there and that a release could easily be in the cards if the numbers look to work in the company's favor.

Source: Eurogamer

Square Enix has registered "Shinra Company" as a trademark specifically for use with video games. After all this time, and with no remake on the horizon, could we be looking at another spin off here? Could the trademark be used somehow for the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3? Today's news correspondent, fatman, puts his weight (ha!) behind the former, as Square has seen some success with releasing Final Fantasy VII on Steam and PlayStation Network, and no doubt all the recent sales have been lucrative. The time might be right for another continuation of the universe to reach the new and revived players recently brought into the fold.

Source: CVG, siliconera