News

Jump Festa (and more important, Square Enix's Japanese youtube channel) gave us our first trailer for the upcoming mobile game Final Fantasy Legends: the Space-Time Crystal, which we announced last month under the different translation "Crystal of Time." There are a few glimpses of combat which, as we already knew, will take its inspiration from the company's classic SNES RPGs - hey, that's our department! Actual footage of the game - which as its title suggests will focus on time travel - is very sparse, but includes a Behemoth and Atomos.

Additionally, we finally have the full track list for the "Second Performance" expansion for Final Fantasy Theatrhythm. These are:
"He of the Name" (Bravely Default)
"Evil Wings" (Bravely Default)
"The Serpent That Devours the Horizon" (Bravely Default)
"Horizon of Light and Shadow" (Bravely Default)
"Chrono Trigger" (Chrono Trigger)
"Ultima" (Final Fantasy 15)
"Hard to Miss" (Final Fantasy 15)
"Zero" (Final Fantasy Type-0)
"Ardent Rhythm" (Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song)
"Title Screen" (Romancing Saga 2)
"Battle #4" (Saga Frontier)
"Meridian Dance" (Secret of Mana)
This comes just after the announcement of a March 2015 Japanese release date for Theatrythm Dragon Quest. Perhaps the sad lack of Chrono tunes might be ameliorated in a similar matter sometime down the line?

Finally, there's another new job for Bravely Second, and it's a Cat Master. Yes, it involves cats. No, I don't know why.

Source: Square Enix Youtube, Polygon, Siliconera

Final Fantasy XV got a lot of big updates out of Jump Fiesta this weekend. A new trailer was aired at the event, featuring a new female character, a new town, a new summon, and assorted other new things: you can see the trailer in English (French subs) here. What’s even more exciting, however, is the series of comments on the trailer provided by its (still fairly new) director, Hajime Tabata.

The trailer features a new character, Cindy, who had been revealed in some screenshots earlier this week. Don't get too excited though, as she (sadly) won't have much of a role in the game's story.

The massive, uh, thing towards the end of the trailer is Titan - taking up his accustomed role as summoned monster in a truly titanic proportions. Tabata clarified that this is indeed the same size Titan will take when you summon him. Apparently, Titan will also play a big part in the story.

There is a new town featured in the trailer, a semi-tropical locale called Lestarg. This video shows a bit exploring around the new town, which is evidently quite big - but not the biggest that will be accessible within the game. There's also a "Dog Cam." I'm not really sure what's going on there, but it's cute so I'll approve for now.

Speaking to technical matters, Tabata pointed out that the clips in the trailer are seamless. Tabata said that the aim is to make the entire game transition seamlessly, but that loading time will likely be required in some places, particularly leading up to big plot cinematics.

Tabata also shared some interesting details on the game's use of time. One day is equal to an hour of gameplay, with daytime lasting some 40-45 minutes. Tabata pointed out that this means some battles will last multiple days. Eating and sleeping will be important in the game, providing stat bonuses and maintaining those bonuses, respectively. If you neglect sleep for three days, you'll start to see negative effects, and you won't be able to level up unless you take time to rest. The team appears quite excited about these elements of the game: Tabata said they hope it'll not only make the world more realistic but make the characters feel more human.

If you were unimpressed with the range of battle moves, the FFXV agrees with you: they're working to add more variety to physical battle, and look to make some big improvements to what they consider a currently-lackluster magic system (for this reason it was not shown in the trailer). Tabata stressed that while the trailer is indeed meant for advertisement (and not merely 'this is where we're at'), the team is hoping to continue improving just about everything featured in it.

Source: Square Enix Youtube, Youtube, Siliconera

We last had a big update of Square Enix mobile games last month, and true to form, there's more information coming out now - in one case a new game and in the other a new release.

First with the new game, there's new info in Famitsu this week detailing the new mobile title "Mevius Final Fantasy." It's billed as being related to Final Fantasy games, but not a remake. This game has a bit more firepower behind it than many mobile games, though, with Yoshinori Kitase at the helm and several staff members who have worked on older games in the series. It'll be out in Spring for iOS and Android, at least in Japan.

Already out as of last week is a remake, but it's not from the Final Fantasy series. It's a release of Dragon Quest III, with a polished-up graphics and interface similar to that of the first two Dragon Quest mobile remakes. This leaves only Dragon Quest IV of the Famicom originals not to show up on iOS and Android, so one might think we'll see that crop up in the next year.


Source: Siliconera, Official Dragon Quest III

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. And the very next day, you listened to a Christmas CoNcast in which Tiddles and I talked about holiday memories and played mairocrat wii.

With our podcast pace remaining slow, and the holiday season already in full swing (and with Tiddles now in possession of a streaming device hooked up to his Wii U), we decided to give it another try this year, this time running mairocrat 8 and streaming it to Twitch. (What, you didn't know CoN had a sometimes-used Twitch channel?)

Anyway, see below for this cast. It's full of us yelling at our Wiis and sharing the best parts of gaming at the holidays, like unwrapping games on Christmas morning or buying games we'll never play on Steamsale. It's also a nice, compact, exactly-forty-minutes that you can devour on the train or plane as you travel for the holidays. Share your holiday gaming memories with us, too!

Source: This Episode, The CoNcast Subscription Feed, The CoNcast on iTunes

Square Enix has just provided the first taste of what Final Fantasy XV's voice acting will sound like in English. You can view the clip here, at Square Enix's official UK YouTube channel.

The trailer, originally shown in Japanese at Tokyo Game Show 2014, occasions dialogue from several protagonists ranging from trivial to epic to a hearty helping of battle-grunting.

Two new SaGa games were announced at Square Enix's SaGa 25th Anniversary show earlier today, both slated for 2015 release. The first, for browsers, will be titled Imperial SaGa; the second, exclusively for the PSP, has only been given the working title SaGa 2015. A few screenshots of the former and a few sketches relating to the later are just about all we have to go by so far. Series composer Kenji Ito has been confirmed as returning for the PSP title, if not for Imperial SaGa.

Series creator Akitoshi Kawazu had said earlier this year that a new title was in development, but the announcement had been delayed more than once. With none of the preceding SaGa titles available in digital formats in western markets, fans of the series are sure to be excited. Right? If any of you are still around, out of the woodworks with ye!

Source: Siliconera, Gematsu