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It's true. See the screenshots for yourself:

Arc Rise Hearts / Kingdom Fantasia

Not that bearing a resemblance to Kingdom Hearts is a bad thing. (Or is it? I've never played the series) The main character DOES look a lot like Sora, though. Maybe it's his long lost brother. Maybe I should stop wondering before the developers take my idea and make it into a crossover game. Just like Kingdom He-OH MY GOD.

Seriously, though. Battle gameplay seems similar to The Last Remnant, at least from what I can gather in one sentence. "The characters in your party share an AP meter, allowing you to strategically queue up your attacks to suit every encounter." Graphics seem nicer in the cutscenes than in-game, but that might be due to the compression. Character artwork looks nice until one of the voice actors tries to draw their own character.

It seems like a cool game, and it's on the Wii! RPG fans and owners of Wiis rejoice! Oh, but since it's on Nintendo, large amounts of cleavage have been censored. Poor you. :(

Source: Kotaku

Among the new downloadable PlayStation Network games released recently, Natsume slipped in a couple of moderately-recent entries from the venerable Harvest Moon series. The two specific titles were originally, of course, released for Sony systems; Innocent Life was originally released for PSP in the Spring of 2007 and PlayStation 2 last year, while Boy & Girl was also released for PSP in July of 2007.

Both games are available now via PSN for $14.99 apiece, likely a reasonable cost if you are a fan of the series but missed out on these games, as many folks might have given the relatively small user base for PSP and slowly dwindling user base for the PS2.

Source: RPGamer

We're most certainly in the lull this week, as the folks who produce the news (Square Enix Japan, of course) seem to be in full swing trying to get Final Fantasy XIII out the door. So, another short update this week, with some news tidbits for Birth by Sleep and Thirteen.

I don't know about you guys, but I'd kind of forgotten about Birth by Sleep, the next Kingdom Hearts game (now that 358/2 Days is out). If you've forgotten, too, Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the original Kingdom Hearts, and is meant to be released soon after the first of the year in Japan. The tidbits for this week include a new mode within the game, called "Command Mode." This mode appears to be some sort of board-game based take on a license board system, earning buffing items by outplaying an opponent on the game board. The concept, as it's understood for now, seems unique in the Square Enix collection and probably a good fit for the Kingdom Hearts series, I suppose. Also in Birth by Sleep, it's been discovered in Famitsu that one of the characters has a master/trainer by the name of "Master Eraqsu." In English, this is an anigram for "Square," of course, and it seems to be the same in Japan. Given the look of the character, as well, it appears that this character is an homage to the original Master of Square, Mistwalker's Hironobu Sakaguchi.

The lone bit of Final Fantasy XIII news this week is the naming of another new character. Surely you've seen the trailer by now, either the Japanese, the Japanese with fansub, or the English; now you can know that the girl with the sports-bra-and-blue-dress outfit and large, skull-like tattoo is named Oerba Yun Fang, and she can summon forth Bahamut.

Finally, have I mentioned lately CoN's Facebook page? Become a fan now, if you haven't; I try to use it to talk a little more about stuff going on at the site and leave the news posting for bigger announcements about CoN these days.

Source: Kotaku, Kingdom Hearts Insider

A slightly abbreviated tidbits today, both because the good news is a bit thin this week and also because I'm not working today. Funny that I have more time to post the news when I'm at my office, right?

Let's start with the news that is my favorite for the week but has the least overall impact on the gaming world: the original Final Fantasy is now available for the Nintendo Virtual Console. For 500 points, you can play the true original version, with all of its (by today's standards, anyway) slow gameplay and clunky mechanics intact. Will users have any use for this release beyond nostalgia, with revised ports already available for no fewer than three platforms in North America? Probably not, but feel free to prove me wrong here, Wii owners. We... do have Wii owners who read the site, right?

Next up is a followup to last week's tidbits with the subbed Final Fantasy XIII trailer. This week you can get the real deal - an authentic English voice-acted trailer straight from Square Enix. Since the rest of the trailer is the same as you've no doubt seen by now, what do you think of the English dub? As usual for voice acting in Squenix games, it seems to be pretty polarizing—I personally didn't really expect too much, but it does seem like the syncing from voice to character action is a little worse in this video than I would have expected.

Finally, Square Enix released some early monster renders for Final Fantasy XIV this week. This is a nice small news item, and from what I hear several of these renders are pretty much just updates of existing designs from Final Fantasy XI, but they're pretty cool nonetheless. I am a particular fan of the crazy zebra-dragon-velociraptor hybrid and the cactuar's pimp strut. And that marlboro? That thing is legitimately terrifying.

Oh, and just to see if anyone actually reads these posts, I want to point out that you need to start taking quizzes during October if you want to be qualified to win the prize at the New Year. You have to have at least ten quizzes in your name by then to qualify, and if you miss the ones that are open right now, there's no way to catch up!


Source: Nintendo, Kotaku, GameTrailers

Not many tidbits to be had currently, now that the Tokyo Game Show has ended, so we won't strain you terribly this week. First, note that Square Enix has set a target of six million copies sold of Final Fantasy XIII in order to consider the game a success. In Japan. Apparently, Final Fantasy XII only managed to sell that many copies globally, and Dragon Quest IX has shipped only about four million in Japan—good numbers, but not quite to the scope of this new number. Note that this goal doesn't appear to include Versus, either, only the core game.

Why is this contradictory? Well, while the company aims for blockbuster numbers, they're also laying off a bunch of folks in Japanoville. The rumor is that between two and three hundred folks will be out of work soon; however, this has yet to be verified and it also could be people under the Square Enix banner who were only brought in via Squenix' recent spate of acquisitions and mergers. In any event, it's interesting that they plan to sell massive amounts of their next flagship game but yet are cutting back inside their own offices.

Finally in terms of Square, a kind soul has subbed the Tokyo Game Show trailer for Final Fantasy XIII. As you might expect, the translation isn't the best English you're ever going to see, but if you're in the strong majority here at CoN who does not have a conversational command of the Japanese language, it's probably all you're gonna get until the game's localized and out in the West next year.

I also note that the next set of quizzes are now up. If you haven't taken any quizzes yet, why not? There is still a prize to be won! And maybe a surprise after you take one, hm?

Source: Kotaku, GameTrailers

Yoshinori Yamagishi is a 20-year veteran of Enix and Square-Enix and a major collaborator with the development studio Tri-Ace - Yamagishi has been a producer on every Tri-Ace game since the first Star Ocean. It's safe to say that he is one of the major architects of the Star Ocean series, although he is not one of the three "ace" designers that inspired the company's name upon its founding. And as soon as the PS3 director's cut or "International" version of Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope is released, Mr. Yamagishi is going to distance himself from the series.

Star Ocean was originally conceived as a trilogy of games. Star Ocean: The Last Hope represented a new, different direction for the series. After the release of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time for the PS2, Tri-Ace began to branch out and create games not named Star Ocean or Valkyrie Profile, with the development of Radiata Stories and Infinite Undiscovery in 2005 and 2008, respectively. Tri-Ace is also currently working on an RPG called Resonance of Fate. According to his recent interview with a Japanese gaming site, Mr. Yamagishi wants to work on new Tri-Ace intellectual property like those three instead of more Star Ocean sequels.

Source: RPGFan