News

Nearly a year ago, we covered Square's plan to release new mobile titles in 2015. Between then and now, I missed that Portal, what I previously described as the "helper app," was released. The main app is a news and information aggregator, but apparently within its framework is the capacity to serve games. A new version of Triple Triad is the first of those games.

This version has both single- and two-player modes, so one can play against the CPU or other folks online. The cards are similar to the Final Fantasy XIV version, pulling characters and such from the entire canon of Final Fantasy games. It's free-to-play, with microtransactions and time gates dictating how often you can play. The player starts with five "stamina crystals," and each game uses one of the five. Restoring a crystal requires either a microtransaction of a thirty-minute cooldown.

If you're a Final Fantasy XIV player, you will soon be able to link your Portal Triple Triad games to your XIV account, likely for in-game rewards or achievements in the latter. That functionality is not yet up and running.

Both Portal and Triple Triad are free to download and available for both iOS and Android.

Source: Siliconera

If Square Enix were Apple, they would have had the HD Remake done when they announced it, and it would have just shown up in the PlayStation Network store during the presentation. What's really happened, though, is that an unannounced port of the newest PC version of Final Fantasy VII has appeared for iOS devices, at least in New Zealand; regular readers of CoN news will recall that iOS releases tend to start there and appear in other locales going westward over the next day or two.

The release trailer doesn't seem to make anything clear regarding how the game works. There are no visible touch controls shown in any of the clips, which are mostly clips of FMV cutscenes. However, Engadget reports that instead of reconfiguring the game to be more touch-friendly, the game will have a virtual joypad on screen. I personally suspect that the game will remain in the standard 4:3 ratio, leaving room on the sides of the screen for controls, at least for phones. If you've already gotten the game on your iOS device, perhaps you can fill us in - the New Zealand price has come in at $19.99, so I can't say that I'm up for it just yet.

This version of the game will include a few cheats by default, such as the ability to max our all character stats with the push of a button, and the ability to turn off random encounters. This will essentially allow the player to treat the game as a Final Fantasy VII slideshow if desired, with most of the gaming elements replaced with short bursts between cutscenes.

The game is supported only by iOS 8, and the hardware required appears to be of the iPhone 5s generation, meaning phones and tablets roughly two years old and newer. There's no indication of an Android version at this time.

Source: Engadget

News really dries up when Death Penalty and I go a-travelin', does it not? Fear not, as I'm back now and he will be soon as well; however, don't forget that all of you out there are free to write news that we're missing!

The annual Gamescom conference was in Cologne, Germany last week, and as loyal readers will know, Hajime Tabata explained back in June that there would be no new Final Fantasy XV news until then. Storing things up for a couple months led to a news blowout on this hotly-anticipated game, as follows.

The biggest thing, of course, is the new trailer. Square Enix love their trailers, and with trailers like this who can blame them?



This trailer is a flashback to fifteen years before the intended timeline of the game, with emotional scenes between young Noctis and his father, King Regis.

Gamescom was also the location and time of the most recent Active Time Report, and it and the discussions around it formed the core of new Final Fantasy XV information for the summer. Among the sights, sounds, and tidbits released:

• Ambushing monsters, in this case a marlboro
• Pending polish to game visuals and battle system
• Pending launch of English/Japanese Final Fantasy XV forums
• Next Active Time Reports at PAX Prime and Tokyo Game Show
• Flight coming to the game, and likely not passive airship flight
• New screenshots of dungeons, towns, and other scenery

A girl who had previously briefly appeared in media released by the Nova Crystallis team, Lunafreya, was also confirmed at Gamescom to be Noctis' betrothed, an arranged royal marriage to ensure peace with Tenebrae. At the start of Final Fantasy XV, she and the king are presumed dead, but come on - we all know that's not gonna happen.

And, to bury the lede as I so love to do, not only did the team confirm the game will not slip to 2017, they also confirmed simultaneous worldwide release. How about that?

Source: Siliconera

Yeah, of course you heard, duh. And you probably heard also that there will be changes coming to the new version, and we're not yet sure what most of them are. So, the CoNcast Team jumped at the chance to do some supposition while we wait for something more visual or playable, and we recorded an episode with our thoughts. Listen now, to be sure you can point out all the ways in which we were wrong later.

Also listen to more talk about Four Job Fiesta, as I played my FJF run and streamed it to Twitch as we recorded. It was a trainwreck.

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