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Some of you out there may not have seen much from Square Enix' toy division, or even known that Squenix has a toy division. Most accurately, it's called Square Enix Products, and they produce figures and toys for a wide array of game franchises, not just for Squenix properties.

With the New York Toy Fair last week, the company took the time to set up some displays of their new action figures for 2012, and Square Enix events manager Wilbur Lin and a cameraman walked through the big ones to share with the fans. All eight videos are now available on the Squenix Members Blog, and if you're a gaming, toy-collecting nerd like I am (or would be if I had more money), I would bet that there's at least one franchise shown there that you play. Square Enix is producing figures this year from the universes of Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter, God of War, Halo, Mass Effect, and Arkham Asylum.

For those who just care about the Final Fantasy toys, the final video shows large, articulating figures of Lightning and Serah in their Final Fantasy XIII-2 costumes, and some smaller chibi figures of Cloud, Squall, and Yuna. The chibis come in packs of two of the same character, with different costumes and/or props, and have changeable expression faces (three pre-made, and one blank that you can draw yourself). I know what you're thinking - why would you ever need a face for Squall other than the totally blank one, right? Ha! Anyway, the two packs of the chibi characters appear to be set to retail at $19.99, and Lightning and Serah will be set for $54.99 apiece - a bit staggering, since I paid $14 for Final Fantasy XIII new, but the figures really do look pretty neat if you're a big fan.

Source: Square Enix Members, Square Enix Shop

After a painfully long process, CoN is giving to you today, only five years after its release, our coverage for Final Fantasy V Advance (to accompany, of course, improved coverage of the PlayStation release). While it is one of the less-popular games that CoN covers, it remains a quality release even as it approaches its twentieth anniversary, and long ago we realized that our coverage of the game was the weakest of any game covered on the site.

While it did take us far too long to get this content out to you all, we're very proud of the work that we've done, particularly in the massive, Djibriel-penned walkthrough. The walkthrough was fantastic to begin with, with an immense depth, and having it CoN-nified will make it all the better for you too. We've added to that some more of our great CoN features, with all the equipment and monster data you've come to expect, along with our quality miniguides that make the trickiest parts of the game easy to access and easy to understand.

Final Fantasy V is the only game we cover that I have not personally played from start to finish in any of its incarnations. This section is good enough that I now want to. (I probably still won't, but at least I want to!) While I played my usual role of slavedriver, though, this section really came to be based mostly on the hard work of others. They're all listed on the new Final Fantasy V landing page, and will all get their site awards quite soon, but I wanted to take the time to mention a few specifically: Djibriel, for offering us his fine work and being willing to work with us as we adjusted the tone a bit to best represent CoN; Death Penalty, who continued to push me and put way too much work into the section for someone who doesn't even particularly like the game; and EvilEye, who isn't even on the bloody site staff and never has been, but poured dozens of hours into testing simply because he loves CoN.

I hope that you all take a look at this section today and in the days going forward, and that it helps push you toward wanting to play this game, on PSX or GBA (or even SNES), for the first time or for another time. Thanks to you all for visiting CoN and keeping work like this going through your very presence.

Oh, and if the title of this news article confuses you, you need only look several years in the past.

After somewhat of a let-down in Japanese sales as compared to its predecessor (selling in its first two weeks about half of what FFXIII sold in its first), despite perfect reviews from both Famitsu and Dengeki, FFXIII-2 has finally made its appearance stateside and, er, Europe-side.

IGN gave the game an 8 out of 10, praising it for stepping away from the linearity of its predecessor, its leveling up system, additional content, appearance and battle engine. They criticize the game, however, for what seems to be overshadowing flaws: battles that are less than challenging and a story that leaves the player asking "what story?"

Other sites provided more generous scores while echoing the same complaints, saying that the issues of the FFXIII had been corrected successfully at the cost of storytelling.

Does anyone here have the game? Anyone intending to purchase it? Somebody just say something before Del does :P

Source: IGN

I have felt for a while that not enough people go to the fanart galleries here on CoN to show their appreciation for the artists who have contributed here, some of them for going on a decade. I understand that a lot of folks don't feel comfortable leaving comments on art, especially if the folks in question are not artists themselves - as someone who once was in that position of discomfort, I know that it can be a tough barrier to hurdle.

I want all of us to feel like we have some interaction with the artists here, though, because we want to keep our fanart section going and bringing in as many new artists as we can to supplement those who have submitted dozens of pieces. Even if you can't speak to the composition or lighting or media of fanart, the artists still love it when you're willing to at least subjectively decide how you feel about art, both as a whole and on their individual works.

So, starting today, you can now show a little bit how much you care about CoN's artists by voting on fanart and being rewarded with site awards for doing so! We'll keep track of how many ratings you make, and your account will soon be able to show off just how much time you spend looking through our galleries.

A few things you will want to know: one, we've reset the tracking of ratings on all fanart, so yes, you can re-rate fanarts you've rated once before. Also, we don't track the number that you rated, only that you rated. If you really feel that something deserves a low grade, give it - nobody will ever be able to call you out for it. We want honesty in our comments and ratings, because that's what makes them valuable. Finally, you can only receive credit towards site awards by being logged in when you make your votes (by checking the "remember me" box when you log in). If the site doesn't thank you by name after you rate a fanart, you probably didn't get credit. Edit: If your name doesn't show up but you're definitely logged in, though, you did get credit, don't worry.

So, please, use some of your time over the holidays of the next couple weeks to show your appreciation for our artists. You can bling out your own profile a bit while doing so, and then everything's a bit shinier sitewide.

Well, it's not the PlayStation Network. It's definitely not Steam. However, the Square Enix Members site does share one thing in common with those two: it's an online gaming portal and community site that has had personal data compromised by external intrusion so far this year.

Note: You can ignore the more sensational headline in the link above if you're worried about financial information being compromised, if, say, you play Final Fantasy XI - no credit card information was stored on the hacked server, according to Squenix.

At this time, it's unknown how deep the intrusion went, and how many members might have been impacted, or how much data was accessed from those members. Squenix as yet aren't even confirming that data was definitely taken, but, come on, we kind of know how this goes by now. If there's evidence of an intrusion, it's safest to just assume that everything they had got boosted right out the back door.

Is anyone out there even a member of this site? I have been for a few years, but have found it of precious little use for me personally as yet.

Source: Kotaku

With only a couple days between now and the Japanese release of the sequel to FFXIII, I figured I should probably curb the studying and start doing some work around here.

Forgot what was happening? Feel free to check out this recap from IGN. After four hours of playing, the reviewer expressed satisfaction at the amount of exploration available, among other things, and concluded by saying basically the same thing people have been predicting for a while: "Final Fantasy XIII-2 has serious potential. It seems that the developers at Square Enix took consumer feedback seriously when designing this sequel." Of course, potential doesn't translate to anything concrete.

Until only a few days ago, that is, when Famitsu posted its review for FFXIII-2: a perfect 40. The reviewers echoed the praise expressed above (that the developers had taken feedback into account), approving of the time-traveling system, greater freedom, more sidequests and strategic gameplay. They did predict that players may be frustrated by being limited to only Noel and Serah.

What does a Famitsu score really mean anymore? There have been three perfect scores recently: Skyward Sword, Skyrim and now FFXIII-2. This makes FFXIII-2 only the 18th game to receive a perfect score (and it is certainly in good company), but it does seem that Famitsu is become slightly more lenient. For instance, the scores of previous FF titles:
FF1 35; FF2 35; FF3 36
FF4 36; FF5 34; FF6 37
FF7 38; FF8 37; FF9 38
FF10 39; FF10-2 34; FF11 38
FF12 40; FF13 39; FF13-2 40

The record certainly hints at a trend, but who knows if that means FFXIII-2 is unworthy of the score? The reviewers certainly had plenty of good things to say about it.

I predict the fanbase will be divided, as per always, but us stateside folk will have to wait until January 31st to see for ourselves.

Source: IGN, 1UP