WC: Now under the all-encompassing umbrella of Square Enix, games are being released left right and centre by the Japanese giant, and they seem to have completely forgotten about gems like Parasite Eve and Bushido Blade from their past.
Yet the company, just this year, declared their intentions to return to their roots and develop the games that made them great. So here are ten that made them the market leader of the RPG genre, as well as being those they can look back on if they ever need guidance on how to make another one for the ages.
Are you excited for the forthcoming Visions of Mana? This retrospective of the Mana series will tell you all about the franchise thus far.
Trying to break into Kingdom Hearts is a nightmare.
My advice; play the games in release order. Alot of people say story chronological order but that can be really confusing. Trust me.
I think a problem that SE is going to run into (or already has run into) with this series is that a lot of the people still following it were kids / teens when they played the first one, and are now much older. I know I'm finding it increasingly hard to tolerate the childishness of some of the stuff in these games, and I'm sure there are plenty of original players who have since just stopped following the series for this reason. I can't count the number of times I was playing KH3 and just feeling like, "What the f*** am I doing?"
SE can keep the series PG-13, and try to get a new audience of kids, but how do they intend to get kids into a series with a story that has been expanding since 2002, and over the course of like a dozen games? Especially when there are already loads of newer franchises out there that have already pretty much cornered the kids / teens market.
Honestly, I think they should either end the series once and for all, or take it in a more mature direction, and ditch the Disney stuff (I know, unpopular opinion, probably). It is a series that hasn't really grown with its audience, I feel. Alternatively, they could try to steer it in a more all-ages Studio Ghibli direction, sort of like Final Fantasy.
Indeed. If you wanna give it a try, just go with 1-3. The other games are unfortunately needed to know but you can just youtube all the cutscenes by order of release of each game.
After 20 long years, can Square Enix finally give us the coveted cover-art version of the game?
I'm still waiting for a proper Final Fantasy game that looks exactly like Yoshitaka Amano's art. Dissidia proved how ridiculously amazing that would look like but it was still not close enough. They need to go for broke on Amano's art style and design.
I don't care if it's a remake of 5 or 6 or a new entry, just make it happen at some point in this life time SquareEnix...
Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy 9 are both great games that are criminally underrated.