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Checking out the new trailers for Square-Enix’s PS3 epics Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII initiates a trademark Final Fantasy impeccable - enlightening, revealing, enticing and confounding any red-blooded gamer in one fell swoop. Bear in mind that these titles are still a ways off; FF XIII has only shown smidgeons of gameplay footage and is scheduled for release in late 2008. FF Versus XIII only has CG-animated cut-scenes to its credit and understandably hasn’t been given an official date. However, the fate of the franchise and the two pillars supporting the massive Fabula Nova Crystallis project are, make no mistake about it, drop-fucking-dead gorgeous in an age where looking gorgeous is about as passé as making an FPS.
Breaking through an enemy by punching them so hard they traverse the entire globe before crashing back into place, teaming up with upto four party members to unleash a massive beating on an unluckily cornered foe, having a bipolar frog, semi-suicidal underage shinobi and a gun-wielding princess with a monster sealed inside her join your party as you pummel through level 100 minions and bribe powerful Dark Council members with either treasure or a closed fist; heaving exploding penguins at unsuspecting foes to send ‘em sky-high, and blocking an earth-shattering attack from a towering, Satan-like monster with your bare hands…If the above sentences couldn’t describe the sheer madness transpiring in Nippon Ichi’s Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories(sequel to Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, the immensely popular Turn Based Strategy RPG free-for-all), then the upcoming paragraphs may not get the job done either. However, if you had to bet you’re hard-earned EXP points on one thing, it’d be this—Disgaea 2 is the be-all, end-all of such games on the PS2, a frighteningly hilarious and laid-back dippy head-trip into the domain of character skills, classes, stats, levels, weapons and pizza-delivering cell phones.
The dream team behind Chrono Trigger reunite for a role-playing tour de force on the X360.
It’s a sad fact that Microsoft had to face–that their newest console was going the way of the dinosaur in Japan. This changed recently with the release of Blue Dragon, a game developed by renowned Final Fantasy (FF) and Squaresoft alumnus Hironobu Sakaguchi. Thanks to his track-record, Blue Dragon went on to become the highest selling XBOX 360 title in the territory thus far (Microsoft has already sold more than the 200,000 copies that were readied on day one of the Japanese launch). After leaving his original home in the RPG giant, Sakaguchi founded Mistwalker Studios (which by the way, is also developing Lost Odyssey, that gorgeous gem also coming to the 360) who, in conjunction with Artoon Studios (Blinx the Time Sweeper) has developed this new 3D, turn-based RPG. Of course, renowned character artiste, Akira Toriyama (Dragonball), and legendary game music composer Nobuo Uematsu are also onboard and this is the first time the trio have worked together since developing Chrono Trigger more than a decade ago.
Of course we’re all still gushing over the newly released E3 trailers for Killzone 2, MGS4, Heavenly Sword and what not (even though only one of us here actually has a PS3 to play them on *cough*). But here’s something else to drain your fluids! Being developed by Yoshiki Okamoto (he was the executive producer for Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, and Onimusha) and his company Game Republic, Folklore (originally known as FolksSoul: Ushinawareta Denshou in Japan) is a PS3-exclusive and will be released this year in October round-about.
In the title, players venture into the netherworld as Ellen, a 17-year-old on a quest to find out about her dead mother, and a Keats, a reporter for an occult magazine.
As your journey into Ireland and the supernatural begins, you’ll be faced with a number of monsters called folks. These little tool bags will pack machine guns, cannons or other assorted weapons and basically try to crush you at every turn. How do you attack and defend yourself? You harvest the spirits — called ids — of these folks and use them in battle.
Let’s say you run into a Barrager, a little bugger with his machine gun drawn. You press whatever face button you’ve assigned the spirit of the shell-shooting Brummbear to, and the ghostly image of the hulking jerk appears and blasts the gunner. The gunner gets weak, his spirit appears above his body, you latch onto the spirit with a snake-like purple beam and yank the Sixaxis controller up to rip the id from the body.
And now check out this sexy Sailor Moon-ish magical transformation sequence, followed by some gameplay montage. Also, expect some user-created maps via the game’s Dungeon Trial mode. I don’t know why, but my first impression of the game was something closer to Lost Kindgom, a really obscure Gamecube RPG that involved using monster cards. It’s like Yu-Gi-Oh, but hawter and more importantly doesn’t have a sucky anime series for people to mock on Youtube.
Thanks to Joel Johnson for mentioning this interesting looking title. You can read his mushy love-letter at over at Kotaku.
Without any further ado, here are some hot screens straight from E3 2007. Now when will I get to see this demo, considering Blue Dragon’s is just out? Hit the jump to check out the images.