News

Final Fantasy VII turned 26 years old (timed from the original release in Japan) earlier this week, and the official Twitter account had a couple things to say about it. As a bit of trivia, Square Enix announced that January 31 would henceforth be registered as Final Fantasy VII Day in Japan; it's official but not (yet) a national holiday.

What I liked more, though, was the announcement of a special project using LEGO bricks. It's not clear yet if this is an official partnership with LEGO or what it might mean in the future, but on FF7 Day the official Twitter account announced a survey to allow people to vote on what iconic scene from Final Fantasy VII Remake would make the best brick diorama. The four options in the poll are the starry-night Nibelheim flashback, Aerith's House, the Sector 5 Church, and - almost predictably - the Honeybee Inn. The plan is for someone, I assume some sort of LEGO Master Builder, to build the winning scene; after it's complete and promoted worldwide, there will be a raffle to win the apparently-one-of-a-kind design.

That's the only part that makes me sad; at the moment, the company has said nothing about officially running the winning design through LEGO Ideas to put a fancy, expensive set on sale to the general public. The right set would mint money for both companies, so fingers crossed they announce something along those lines later.

Source: Final Fantasy VII Official Twitter

The Game Awards were last Thursday, and Final Fantasy fans were treated to a nice surprise: Naoki Yoshida, producer of Final Fantasy XVI made an appearance to announce the newest trailer and the game's release date.

The game is being released on June 22nd, 2023, and pre-orders are now open! You can pre-order here: Official Site Pre-order. There's a drop-down on that page that lets you select your region.

The Standard Edition costs $69.99 in the United States, while the collector's edition is $349.99. The latter comes with various goodies, including a Premium Statue - Phoenix vs Ifrit, Metal Eikon Pin Collection, Special Clive Rosfield SteelBook® Case, Cloth World Map of Valisthea, and digital items as well.

Finally, a new trailer, titled "Revenge", was also released! You can watch it on YouTube or at the Official Final Fantasy XVI website.

Source: Game Pressure, Final Fantasy XVI Official Site

Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, a mobile game that reimagines the timeline of Final Fantasy VII and its Compilation, has been pushed back to 2023 with a closed beta test period happening next summer.

The game was originally planned to have a beta this year; as December approached, fans were getting worried that the game might have been dropped due to the lack of news. It's good to see the game is still in production.

An updated trailer came along with news of the delay. Here it is:
Source: Square Enix Games, Final Fantasy YouTube

My Twitter feed exploded with this news on Monday: The ESRB ratings for the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters were updated to list both the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, leading to speculation that the titles would soon be released on those platforms.

We've had no official word from Square Enix that I can find, and today the ESRB ratings have been reverted to their original status of PC only.

Given the level of excitement over this leak, let's hope the news turns out to be true.

Source: GameRant

The newest trailer for next summer's flagship Final Fantasy release, titled "Ambition," released just a bit ago from Square Enix. This newest trailer focuses more on the nations of Final Fantasy XVI's world, as well as the characters who are bonded to - and by implication, cursed by - the game's Eikons. The trailer's voiceover goes so far as to describe the events of the game as the "War of the Eikons ," and this seems apt given that most of the combat shown in the four-and-a-half-minute runtime shows battles against and between Eikons themselves. This is the first Final Fantasy trailer I've ever seen to be age-restricted on YouTube, so the embed here will be of the Japanese version as for some reason that isn't locked down the same way.Gematsu's coverage of the trailer includes some additional context from Naoki Yoshida and Hiroshi Takai, as well as the promise from Yoshida that there will be further interviews with the team published in the very near future. Yoshida describes development as being in the "home stretch" in advance of the Summer 2023 release date.

Bright and early this morning in the West, Konami dropped an announcement trailer for a remaster of the first two games in the Suikoden series. Originally released in the mid and late 1990s for the first PlayStation, the new remastered versions were announced with a vague "2023" release date. The two games will drop as a single bundle for PlayStation 4, XBox One, Switch, and Steam, but pricing information has yet to be released. At the very least, it should be considerably less than it would cost you to get an original copy of Suikoden II in this day and age! Check out the lovely visuals below.