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Square Enix Japan recently announced a new IP called Rampage Land Rankers, a dungeon crawler/RPG for smartphones coming out next month. It's an amalgamation of a variety of artistic and gameplay styles, thrown into a big blender; for instance, the character design is being done by Tetsuya Nomura in a very steampunk-y style, but the in-game models look as if they're rendered in the style of Final Fantasy III and IV 3D. The battles, meanwhile, look like a blend between turn-based JRPG fighting and card battling, and the dungeons claim to be procedurally generated for a randomized experience for each run.

It also seems as if you will use different characters in each dungeon, up to ten through the course of any particular dungeon. Other characters will be summoned via the use of items, but it's not clear as if these characters can also participate in normal play.

The game will also have a co-op multiplayer of some stripe, as well as item trading with friends on other devices. Again, the game will be out in May 2015 for Android and iOS in Japan, with no other releases announced at this time.

Source: Siliconera

Square Enix recently unveiled a teaser site as the launchpad for the newest entry in the Star Ocean series -- Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness. In the last 48 hours, we've gotten to know a fair bit about the title's development and a just a shade about its story. We have not, as of yet, learned why its subtitle sounds like a Victorian novel.

The above-linked teaser site has since been edited to include a brief trailer. Star Ocean 5, like its series predecessors, will be developed by Tri-Ace and published by Square Enix. We don't have any hint of a release window, but we do know it will be released for both PS3 and PS4.

Fans of the series (prior to the divisive SO4, that is) have much reason for excitement. Shuichi Kobayashi, the Square Enix publisher working with the new Star Ocean, told Famitsu that he wants to channel the "essence of Star Ocean 3" into this next entry in the series. Kobayashi has been campaigning for a Star Ocean 5 for several years now, pursuing series creator Yoshiharu Gotanda and series veteran Hiroshi Ogawa; he makes it clear that this is both a labor of love and intended to garner support for additional future Star Ocean titles. To this end, Gotanda also spoke with Famitsu, promising a "grand story" with plenty of material for future expansion.

SO5 will take place after Star Ocean 3 chronologically, making it the furthest advanced in time (SO4 having taken the series back to a time before the original SO). It will take place, at least to begin with, on a planet named Feycreed, some 6,000 (only!) lightyears from Earth. Famitsu has provided us with the basics of three primary characters: Fidel, a swordsman do-good, Miki, Fidel's (female) childhood friend, and Lilia, a young girl who has lost both memory and feelings. Well, that sounds nothing like a Tales Of Star Ocean game!

Star Ocean 5's combat system will be familiar to those who have had prior experience in previous titles, featuring combo attacks based assigned to button combinations that vary depending on the distance to the target. Event scenes, another series staple, will persist in Star Ocean 5. This time around, plot events and dialogue can be interrupted by enemy encounters; the results of these battles can change the path of the story and even its ending.

But alas, there is bad news as well: once again, my greatest hope for Star Ocean -- that its games will be named like SO2, i.e. Star Ocean 5: The Fifth Star Ocean -- has been dashed.

Source: Siliconera, Kotaku

Bravely Second releases in Japan in just over a week, and Square Enix are still rolling out tidbits about new content. The sequel to the well-regarded Bravely Default will contain thirty jobs, some returning from the original but a large number brand-new. We last talked about some new jobs a few months back, but in the meantime a lot has happened - you can do what we did and watch this video to catch up on all of them, old and new.

Of course, with so many jobs, it's no surprise that Squenix outran their headlights; since this video was released, two more new jobs came down the pipe: Fencer and Bishop. Fencers appear to pick up some aspects of a Tactics-style Squire, with sword skills and the ability to increase stats. The Bishop is a new healing class with additional support skills.

Still nothing about a Western release, though. I assume we all assume that it's all but a foregone conclusion, though, yes?


Source: Siliconera

In February, we covered the announcement of a new Dissidia game for arcade cabinets. In it, I mentioned that the next infodump for the new game would be on April 10; well, hey, now it's the 11th and that information is out.

The information event started with a new trailer featuring the game's first summon, namely Ifrit as summoned by Lightning; Midgar and Cocoon were also revealed as new battlegrounds. Final Fantasy Network also reports that two new gods will appear in the arcade game beyond the series regulars of Cosmos and Chaos, and that Ramza Beoulve will be one of the more than fifty characters in the game either at launch or, in Ramza's case, as a post-launch network update.



For the first time, it was additionally announced that Square Enix aren't taking on this game by themselves; Sony Computer Entertainment Japan and Team Ninja are also working on the title, which will be developed on modified Playstation 4 hardware. And, yes, it looks like after an initial rollout to Japanese arcades for a year, a PS4 version for home players is looking increasingly likely. The arcade version is targeted for the fall, but there is nothing concrete at all about release windows in the US, for PS4, or both.

Finally, if those sorts of things interest you, check out a mockup of the cabinet over at 4Gamer along with some other photos. It's not yet clear that this is the final design of the cabinet, though I assume not; it's not really like Square Enix to be so restrained, I wouldn't think.

Source: Polygon, 4Gamer, Final Fantasy Network

Did you know Final Fantasy XI was still a thing? I don't think I'd thought about it since the last time I posted news about it, back in 2012. That's unfair, though, because the game is well over a decade old but still has a core of diehard players; it's just that none of us are included in that list!

Anyway, Square Enix had a Final Fantasy XI event today, in which the very definition of what Final Fantasy XI is changed somewhat. Most importantly, the final additional scenario to the game was announced; called "Rhapsodies of Vana'diel," the scenario will come in three parts and are intended to incorporate aspects of the game's history into new battles and loot in an effort to create a feeling of closure to the adventure. These three pieces will be free to all players.

The three pieces of "Rhapsodies" will be released in May, August, and November 2015. In March 2016, the game will be shut down for Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 players, which seems like it might be well due. This will leave only the PC version as an active platform. Sometime before the March shutoff, as well, the game managers are planning a final gameplay event called "The Goddess' Gala," which promises fun content for both active and lapsed players.

While the ancient platforms are being eliminated, though, a new platform is being announced; Final Fantasy XI mobile is in the works now for smartphones and tablets worldwide. The game will carry the XI name, and has optimizations intended to make the game more playable via touch; however, it is not yet clear if it will interact with the existing platform or will exist solely on its own servers and will be multiplayer only with other mobile players.

Also announced today, for release in Japan later this year, is a mobile game set in the universe and leveraging the characters of Final Fantasy XI. The game is called Final Fantasy Grandmasters, and while it will have ad hoc multiplayer, it's not to MMO scale and the gameplay based on screenshots looks like a hybrid between MMO combat and more standard Final Fantasy line-up-and-sword-them fighting. It's aiming for beta sometime in April, but again, there's no release planned outside of Japan.

Source: Gematsu

Hope you're wearing green, because it's Type-0 day. At least in North America, Type-0 HD released for current-gen consoles today, and, along with it, Episode Duscae. For the former, the reviews are starting to come in; by and large, reviews from some of the big outlets seem to be on the positive side of mixed.

Polygon gives the game an 8/10 based on the strength and variety of combat and the darker and more militaristic storyline and the gameplay changes those things require. Given that review starts off with a few shots at how little the reviewer cared for the Final Fantasy XIII series, and a sidebar about how the port and upscaling was not done very well, that seems like a solid number.

Over at Siliconera, the review is also generally positive, though it's not "scored." The same high and low points are mostly covered, with special emphasis on the changes that Final Fantasy players will notice in terms of combat style and party management. The general theme is that the story is sub-par, but I must say that everything described in the review seems like a pretty interesting concept to me personally - it does come off a bit as though you might need to appreciate how Final Fantasy XIII told its story to really get into Type-0, though, so that won't be for everyone if true.

IGN also nails the game to an 8/10 and has the overall most positive review of any of the three, I think. Here, the darkness of the story is highlighted often, and you definitely need to know that Type-0 is the first game to carry the Final Fantasy name to receive the M rating (and international equivalents). A few sticking points still crop up, though, such as the not-fully-HD quality of some of the graphics and the poor quality of English voice acting.

A friend at work asked me earlier today, "Do you think I should pick up Type-0?" After first reminding him that I probably carry some bias, I said from everything I knew, it looked like it was worth a shot, especially if you're tired of the core Final Fantasy line. I think these reviews back me up just fine on that optimism. Has anyone out there grabbed it yet?

Of course, there's that whole thing of Episode Duscae, too. With all the push around Final Fantasy XV recently, you might have thought you knew just about everything that the demo was going to do - but until today, you didn't know about a summon showing up. And man, did a summon show up. The video contained therein shows an Eidolon well beyond the scale of anything we've seen in a Final Fantasy game, and note that it's Ramuh - typically one of the base-tier summons you get in any FF game. That actually worries me a little bit, because that is a pretty high bar to set, and to me it runs the risk of becoming something over-the-top and annoying over time. To me, this points to the idea that summoning will be a special, less-used thing in Final Fantasy XV, or the summoning itself will have some sort of shortening mechanism to keep the gameplay running.

Oh, and if that's not enough for you for this day, check this out. President Yosuke Mitsuda mentioned in an interview this week that "there is a surprise in store" this year in terms of information about a new JRPG reveal. Siliconera's reporting implies heavily that said reveal will take place at one of the big shows this year, either E3 or Tokyo Game Show. Speculation, naturally, is already underway. Final Fantasy Type-1? Final Fantasy XII HD Remaster? Final Fantasy VI HD Remaster?!?

Yeah, yeah. Don't get too carried away.