D’ya know that Australian sounding chick in the last epic to the eye balls trailer of Final Fantasy XIII? Well, she goes by the name of Oerba Yun Fang. And as you can see, Oerba is a bit of a looker. Sexy in a mysteriously exotic kinda way. But the name is a weird one. It sounds like a Korean delicacy! I honestly would’ve preferred her name to have been Oerba Kimchee (seeing as I touched on the subject of Korean delicacies and all). Her name certainly gives licence for Final Fantasy XIII’s black dude Sazh to drop a corny line like “So, your name’s Oerba Yun Fang? Woooo, you a young thang!” and then give a reassuring look to himself like he just dropped the funniest and slickest line ever. I actually wouldn’t mind that…

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Square Enix released their latest trailer for Final Fantasy XIII at this year’s Tokyo game show. And it’s bloody epic. We’ve got love, heart attack, conflict, pain, talks of death, mecha’s, magic and a warblicious Japanese ballad plying all the while. If you didn’t want this game up until this point, you will after having watched this.

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Final Fantasy X-2’s soundtrack got slated by pretty much everybody, their Grandma and their unborn child. And let’s not get started on the game itself. Despite having a love / hate relationship with Final Fantasy ever since VIII and really loathing X something chronic – I rather enjoyed X-2 for what it was. Soundtrack and all. Sure, the compositions were not anywhere near as memorable of some of Uematsu’s works on a bad day. But the soundtrack served its purpose and matched the new tone and direction of the game perfectly. But whilst most of the soundtrack was being tossed in the crapper by the masses, the game’s main instrumental theme “Eternity” got shown a lot of love. Probably because it was the only composition in X-2 that sounded like it was actually from a Final Fantasy game.

Listen: Eternity ~Memory of the light and waves

Composed by Noriko Matsueda & Takahito Eguchi
Final Fantasy X-2
© 2003 Square Enix

For the mp3 players: Eternity ~Memory of the light & waves

An alternate version of “Eternity” which has more instrumentations and an R&B vibe going on for it also featured in the game and on its soundtrack. If you aim for the 100% completion and get ‘the band’ back together, they treat you to a performance of this song in Guadaosalam, and you can hear it every time you go back there.

For the mp3 players: Eternity ~Memory of the light & waves (Band member musical performance)

Another month, another Final Fantasy game on the cards. Square Enix’s latest chronic milking of the series is tentatively titled Four warriors of light: Final Fantasy Gaiden. Not a great deal is known about this game. But it’s Final Fantasy. So there’s not a great deal to know really. It’ll probably play like all the rest, with a couple of changes.

The characters are designed by Akihiko Yoshida, who is also responsible for the games’ official artwork. And the setting will be an old school setting. Dragons, witches, castles, kingdoms and all that good fairy tale shit. We can also expect Final Fantasy Gaiden to be a new off-shoot of the franchise, as with Crystal chronicles and Tactics.

If Square didn’t roll out so many FF games that looked the same, I’d care more. I’m sure at least one of these non-main-entries-into-the-series Final Fantasy games are really good and worth the time. But when you click on gaming websites and see a Famitsu scan of a new game every other month, you feel like losing the will to even bother with half of ‘em.

It took 2 years, a batch of trailers, finally getting an Xbox 360 and finding out more about the story to finally get excited about Final Fantasy XIII. So it’s gonna take more than just a magazine scan to peak my interest in an FF game. A lot more.

It’s cool that the DS is still getting major third party support though, especially in the way of RPG’s. Of all the systems and consoles out right now, the DS probably has the best library of RPG’s to choose from.

You can check out the official website for the game here: complete with a cool piece of artwork, and a hot piece of retro, 8-bit, muffled and compressed to hell music.

Square Enix have gone on the record to say that Final Fantasy XIII will not be a typical J-RPG and that it will straddle genre’s. Game producer Yoshinori Kitase said…

“There’s a trend these days to strictly categorize games as western RPGs or Japanese RPGs, but Final Fantasy is something that we don’t try to categorize as either, or. For us, the game straddles genre’s”.

If Final Fantasy XIII isn’t a J-RPG, then Princess Peach is black and from Kijuju. We all know full well Final Fantasy XIII will feature a theme song sung by a female J-Pop artist, complete with warbilicious vocals. That there will be magic. There will be a love interest that will never fully come to fruition. There will be a kakkoii boy or two. There’ll be a girl with big eyes, pig tails, mini skirts and boots. Some Mecha’s. A couple dozen beasts. Bahamut. And shit loads of FMV. Shoot, with seen 90% of this stuff in trailers! Of course it’s a J-RPG!! Final Fantasy had continued to pretty much define a J-RPG all by itself.

I know games developers in Japan are currently feeling the crunch to lob loads of western appeal into their games. But there’s nothing wrong with a full on, unashamed Japanesey title. I just hope Square don’t bastardize Final Fantasy further than they have up until now. Although given the hash job they’ve made of the series so far, there’s not much more Square can do to make things any worse. (Although I wouldn’t put it past them!) And no matter what they do, whether the end results are good or bad – Square Enix will rack a shit loads of sales, a broken record or two and commercial success. With XIII releasing on 2 successful platforms this is already guaranteed. Square’s so called straddling genre’s and injection of western influences is probably making the lead main character a white female and chucking in a black guy with a gun and an afro. I hope it ends there. The last thing I want is for Square to try and deviate too much and ruin the game as a result.

The problem with Final Fantasy has never been it’s never been western enough. It’s been that Square seem to have lost sight of what made the games so good originally. I just hope that Final Fantasy fans do not end up greatly disappointed. This could easily go the Resident evil 5 route: a game which sells loads, gets decent reviews across the board, but ultimately ends up a game that falls really short. Although XIII has something in its favour and one less burden that Capcom had: the game that came before it wasn’t all that brilliant, and can easily be bettered.

[CVG]

Square Enix updated their official Final Fantasy XIII website with a brand spankin’ new trailer! Definitely worth checking out.

NOTE: In a bid for YouTube to keep up with the Jones’, embeddable videos now feature an option to be viewed in high quality instead of the usual compressed-to-shit quality we’ve been forced to put up with until now. Just click the icon in the bottom right corner once the video begins playing and select ‘HQ’ to view the trailer in all it’s high quality glory.

This is easily the first trailer in the series which has left me with a feeling of anticipation for the game’s release. The preceding trailers were just a little too dull and void of anything really interesting. They lacked a hook. In this trailer  we finally get to see more of the battle system and actually hear the character’s voice over dialogue. Square Enix is still keeping rather tight lipped on the battle system, but it looks like XIII will share more in common with X-2’s than XII’s: with all the chain attacks being able to interrupt enemy attacks and visa versa.

I always liked leading lady Lightning’s design, but this trailer has me loving her even more. She looks like even more of a bad arse! I just hope Square Enix give her some depth. No characters in a Final Fantasy game have been given a great deal of development and depth since the cast of Final Fantasy VII.

The game is looking real sharp from a graphical standpoint. I just hope the story and gameplay are up to scratch. Because XII damn near bored me to death with how boring it was, despite it being one of the PS2’s best looking games.

Square Enix seem to be getting the XIII wagon rolling now, which is a good sign. I think fans were beginning to get bored with there not being anything on the game and Square Enix rehashing the same images and trailers. Still no confirmed release date, but it is certain that Japan will definitely be getting this game at the end of the year. With the America’s and Europe seeing a 2010 release.

The official websites for Square Enix’s forthcoming Final Fantasy epic’s (I shall use the term ‘epic’ lightly until I see and know more about the game) have gone live! There’s not much to look at, but there are a few high resolution screenshots of the game and main character art to check out.

Most interesting is that the Final Fantasy XIII site features a previously un-heard piece of music! The name of the song and its composer is not disclosed anywhere on the site. And whether the piece is the theme of XIII, simply a piece that’ll play on the title screen or if it’ll appear in the game at all is unknown. But what is certain is that it’s a stunning piece and a sole reason to check out the site – seeing as there’s sod all else to get caught up in.

Final Fantasy Versus XIII also has itself a website, but there is nothing on it as I write this.

Square finally seem to be taking baby steps in getting the Final Fantasy promo train running. Although it could be a good few months until we get anything new on the game. I cannot wait for the system comparisons to make their way onto the Internets. I’m already scared at the potential can of worms that could open – especially if the 360 version ends up on only 2 discs and looks better…

Official Japanese ‘Fabula’ websites: XIII | Versus XIII

Another day another Final Fantasy game announced. The Crystal chronicles series has spawned another game in the form of Echoes of time. I’m usually skeptical about Final Fantasy announcements as Square rarely bring anything new to the table. But this game actually seems quite cool. You’ll see and know why after the vid.

The Square Enix developed Pollux engine will allow players to play the game together whether they’re playing on a Wii or DS. It’s great to see developers pushing DS and Wii connectivity – even if it did take 2 years. And as the trailer showed, the game is also playable online. DS players can play online with Wii players and visa-versa. Awesome news and one thing that was oddly missing from Ring of fates. Although now we know why.

Square Enix have not disclosed the control schemes and general specifications of the 2 versions of the game, although there will obviously be differences. It’ll probably boil down to preference in terms of which version you pick up. The DS will have dual screens which will allow speedy access to in-game menu’s and nifty stylus controls, but the Wii will have the benefit of being able to be played on the big screen.

I’m unsure of how this game will retail though: whether the Wii and DS versions will retail separately or come in a pack together for those who want to be able to play the game both at home on the big screen and on the go.

Final Fantasy Crystal chronicles: Echoes of time is slated for a January 2009 release in Japan. There’s no confirmed European, North American or Australian release date – but I’m sure Western gamers and those down under will see this by August 2009 the latest.

The connectivity between systems and the online play between systems is a good look indeed. I’m glad a third party is exploring new avenues where Wii and DS games are concerned. Hopefully if this game manages to pull it off well it’ll open doors for other developers to push the connectivity between the systems even further. The forthcoming DSi definitely lends itself better to future DS to Wii connectivity with its new dashboard and SD card support.

As stoked as I am for Echoes of time, I have to ask the question: What the hell is going on with The Crystal bearers!?

New screenshots of Final Fantasy XIII have surfaced!! It was previously revealed yonks ago that our agile new heroine would become part of your typical FF style party, and that it was highly likely that the red haired girl and the Seifer look-a-like in the hat would be part of it. And whilst these screenshots don’t really confirm that, they actually kinda do. The shots above show our little party spending quality time together in much more rural settings as opposed to the high tech cities we’ve seen up until now. The shot on the top right is especially striking; showing a colossal figure amidst tidal waves which appear to have frozen.

Square Enix are still keeping tight lipped about anything concerning this games’ plot and its characters, which is just how I like it! There’s nothing worse than knowing everything about a game way before it’s even released.

As we speak, there’s a bunch of Square Enix employees working their fingers to the bone to get this game completed, along with a bunch of other Final Fantasy related games on the side. Oh yeah, and the forthcoming Xbox 360 port of this game as well.

A playable demo of Final Fantasy XIII will be made available with Final Fantasy VII: Advent children complete when it releases in Japan in March 2009. There’s no word on if this demo will be made available for download on the PSN marketplace.

Watch it: Final Fantasy XIII E3 2008 trailer
Read about it: Fabula nova crystallis: Final Fantasy

[Famitsu]

This trailer was first shown at Square-Enix’s secretive DKΣ3713 event. Lots of things surprised me about the gameplay footage here. First, it’s a fully 3D fighting game (no sidestepping like Soul Calibur or Tekken), and second, it features impressive aerial pyrotechnics, looking like a fantasy-themed Vitrual-On.

The two characters shown are Onion Knight and Cloud of Darkness, who are able to cast many spells and even undergo some transformations. Cute old-school menus and lots of tiny numbers liven up the RPG-flavored display. If this game actually plays anything remotely like Virtual-On, I might just have to give in and buy a PSP.

[Siliconera] [Gamekyo]