Two samurai face each other in a blizzard, katanas at the ready. As the snow flurries down, neither makes an attempt to strike. One second passes, two, three, as the two warriors seemingly do nothing, except for make tiny, almost imperceptible changes in their stances. Really though, a silent war is raging—a war fought in the mind. Be clear, this is not a battle fought for an audience. Time slowly drips away as the two warriors jockey for position, advancing here, retreating there. And then, without warning, everything happens. A blade flashes in the moonlight. A claret gush of arterial blood leaps out onto the snow. One warrior stands silhouetted against the winter, holding his killing pose in true samurai style. The unfortunate other drops to his knees, and then to the ground. This was Bushido Blade.
In this "Done Right," we take a look at what made Bushido Blade one of the most unique fighters in gaming history.
For those unfamiliar with Square Enix's golden age, formerly Squaresoft, it took place between 1997 and 2002 and brought a slew of titles that were a complete hit with fans and critics and Square Enix wants that era back.
That's a bold statement, especially when the author mentions Chocobo GP and Babylon's fall after saying "here's the great titles that the company has planned", to each their own I guess
it's about personal taste. You don't need to consume what you don't like, you don't need to despise it too. We all desire the most basic thing: respect. Start there. We talk later.
First I said "to each their own" which means I am acknowledging the fact that it's not wrong to like these games!
Second I said bold statement not crappy statement, meaning it's uncommon and surprising!
You can start by reading the comment, we talk later
That's all well and good, but for Square, its more about "Makin' Ze Monezies!" which they're not. At least from the like of BF and CGP. Cause of the stank.
The big difference here is that in Square's golden age, their games demanded attention, now, not so much. This article is based almost entirely on assumptions on unreleased games, so far this year, they've released Babylon's Fall and Stranger of Paradise. The former potentially sinking Platinum Game's independence aside, releasing either so close to Elden Ring was for Q1 financials imho and certainly a really really stupid move, They are certainly finding their groove in recent years but comparing now to back when they were trend setters is a bit much.
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Deus Ex was not Commented... The Story says "Now we have to wait for these next releases and hope for that era to return". Are you sure you really read?
You're telling people to read. Bro how about *you* read the headline that *you* put on your own article. The headline that you chose says that Square Enix is currently reliving its golden age. Maybe you should have picked one that isn't the opposite of what you're trying to say.
If Babylon's Fall and Stranger of Paradise is considered the return of square enix's golden era, then we are in trouble cause those 2 games alone are getting shitted on like a pubic toilet.... Let's just hope forspoken changes that.
Forwoken because it has a Black lead? I’m sorry Black people exist you racist dipsh@t
The golden age for SquareEnix was when they were called Squaresoft the moment Enix got added to the name the golden age died out. Squaresoft was producing great games and memorable JRPG's left right and center NES, SNES, PS1, and parts of the PS2 libraries show the golden age of Squaresoft.
That’s the point of the article, but with new projects coming, including the new Final Fantasies, I believe that Square Enix has the power to change it. If it’s gonna happen, it belongs to the future to answer.
They won't change and go back to the golden age most of that talent has left, working on other projects, or simply want to go down a different path. I want Bioware to change but that will never happen most of their talent left, EA interferes, the founding members just up and walked out, I wouldn't be surprised if Bioware is dangling by a thread before EA shuts them down. All you can do is cherish those memories of Square's golden age by remembering or playing the games that gave you those memories.
That's the problem with the article, it focuses on games nobody has even played. I'd love nothing more than a return to form from them but this article is stretching at best.
Id like to see them return tonthe golden age as well. My playstation needs some suped up graphical turn based jrpgs. Enough of action rpg action rpg being shoved down are throats. I know you dont like it dont buy it. Ive honored that for the most part. Ff13 eh ff15 eh. I did dip into ff7 remake but i had to.
I dont know if im alone or not but id like to think most of us that played the original wanted something more like the original gameplay wise in ff7 remake then the action rpg we got. I will add im on chapter 17 at the end of that chapter i believe but i cant help but think what couldve been
I'll take some more turn-based tactical, too. What I wouldn't do for a legit new entry in the Front Mission franchise (and an official FM 5 port).
The title is wrong. People want that golden age to come back. Today's Square is in low budget spitting age living off of ff14 whales.
Kazuko Shibuya held a panel and a live drawing at Japan Expo 2019, revealing neat details on Square's early days and Final Fantasy's history.
There's been some debate as to whether or not Square-Enix is as good as either of the parent companies were. Find out why!
I think we've already established that as soon as these two companies got together they basically ruined everything they ever created.
Except Dragon Quest which came from Enix. I think they was running scared that everyone in the west would just want 1st person shooters and Bill Gates even talked about the Japanese players wanting cerebral games and West players wanting Twitch games. Square-Enix went on a convert everything to twich while keeing the cerebral players. This formula NEVER worked. The other thing is it takes at least twice as long to make a turn based rpg with almost twice the staff, as it takes to make a action game.
You have to give the player what they WANT.
Except Tomb Raider and Nier are actually a relevant franchises now and FFXV was great if you weren't clouded by nostalgia.
i think quality went down because the competition between Squaresoft and Enix made both their games great!
@Spartan - Tomb Raider was always a relevant franchise...
And Square isn't to be thanked for Nier's semi-burst of popularity, that goes to Platinum and the Dev/creator - SquareEnix is just a publisher, 'Cavia' was the studio behind Nier, and since it didn't really sell at all (Meaning Square failed to publish and advertise/market the game) - it became a Cult hit and not a commercial one, Platinum Games being given it was what established Nier's series so that it can finally breathe and be alive and succeed...
No you'd be ignorant to actually believe that to be true.
We've had plenty of great awesome Square Enix games in its 14 years of existence
Exactly. Dragon Quest 9 is responsible for me getting into the Dragon Quest series and into console/handheld rpgs in general.
FFTA2 is one of my favorite games of all time and got me really into tactics games.
Yeah, all 2 of them. Dissedia is ok, The world end with you is really good. Basically everything else is just a re-release, wasn't actually made by them, or is garbage.
Like, you can't count Valkyrei profile because it's actually a 1995 PS game.
@ Princess
So you're really just going to ignore all the quality games Square Enix released just to fit a flimsy agenda huh?
There is no agenda other than "Have SE developed games stop sucking and end crappy publishing practices."
Almost everything SE develops is garbage, and a lot of what's not can be direclty attributed to the other development studio that worked on it.
You must have an agenda if you're really willing to overlook all the quality titles Square Enix released.
In a year where Nier: Automata & Dragon Quest XI released in the last few months, I can't take anyone like the author or people who share his/her minds set seriously
I don't like Dragon quest, and, a very important distinciton, Nier isn't developed by SE. Nier is developed by Platinum, so it's quality is 100% irrelivant to wether or not SE sucks.
You not liking Dragon Quest is besides the point and it doesn't change the fact it's a great game. This article is about generalizing Square Enix and saying it hasn't released a good game in its entire existence. A good game by them can't then be discarded because it's not like by you. Its mere existence is proof that your claims are BS.
Platinum also worked with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto on Star Fox Zero and that game sucked. Square Enix's Yoko Taro worked with Platinum to make Nier: Automata a quality game. You can't really say S-E had no involvement or input in the quality of that title.
There are many other S-E games that I can list that easily prove you wrong
Platinum also working on bad games is irrelivant. SE had nothing do to with Nier being good. They didn't make it.
Uh, yeah, actually. My not liking it means, as far as I'm concerned, it's not a great game. That's kinda the point. They even do things like joint development on Bravely Second... and the result is less good than Bravely Defualt (which was only published by them.)
You say, you have all these examples, but you don't list them. Even if Dragon Quest 9 was the best thing ever, it's 8 years old so that being your example is a pretty bad sign and it rases the total of not shit SE developed games to 3. Wo freaking who.
When Platinum bad games it was usually under bad direction, which they didn't have when developing Nier: Automata.
As far as I'm concerned it seems like you'd just discern any quality game Square Enix to stick to a flawed agenda. If an objectively well received gets released by them, it's really irrelevant if you like it or not. You could also say you don't like Nintendo games, that doesn't mean they don't release quality games.
Recent titles such as DQH2, WoFF, FFXV, JC3, ROTR, Life is Strange, Sleeping Dogs, FFXIV: ARR, Tomb Raider '13, KH2, KH:BBS, DQVIII are just a few examples of your viewpoint being wrong.
I can't take this author seriously when he/she can't even recall the quality games that Square Enix have released in their 14 years of existence.
"The next two FFs were FFXI and FFX-2, which, yes, we still can’t believe got released."
What dafuq are you even saying? FFXI released in 2002, before the merger. Plus the idea of an MMORPG game set in the Final Fantasy series was conceived by Hironobu Sakaguchi(the franchise's creator) himself. And FFXI was a quality game, so it's even more absurd to try to unnecessarily criticize it to fit an agenda.
FFX-2 was also developed and released in Japan before the merger, so idk why you're calling that out. Do you even research?
FFXII is the first mainline title that was in development after the merger, and it's in fact as the author says "pretty good." That alone further invalidates this entire articles' point. Not to mention that DQVIII was released after the merger and it's one of the best in the franchise.
And it's pretty convenient how Square Enix's purchase of Eidos never gets brought up. They've handled the Tomb Raider franchise better than Eidos did.
"And it's pretty convenient how Square Enix's purchase of Eidos never gets brought up. They've handled the Tomb Raider franchise better than Eidos did."
They also setup TR to fail via ad costs that made 4 million games sold a "disappointment" and then there's what they did to Hitman.
Agreed.
Fallen, you need to write this article! I can't stand when in comments, MANY know more then the author. SOOOO many mess ups in this article its not even funny. DQ has moved MILLIONS of units since that merger.
FFXV was great if you weren't attached to those old games. I actually like where they are taking it.
I disagree. I have no nostalgic attachment to classic FF games because I barely played the games. Most of my exposure is to the remasters and spin offs like crisis core. In total, I have played maybe less than 7 FF games and 2 of them actually are the first 2 anniversary psp releases, but I never beat them because I was a kid and got lost and had no patience to figure out what to do or where to go.
With that out of the way, I thought FF15 was a mediocre game. It had an awful story that was not only poorly written and shoddily paced, but also incomplete with several cutscenes being added after launch which is ridiculous.
Aside from the garbage story, the game's combat was mindnumbingly dull. All you have to do is hold a single button for auto combos and occasionally press a direction of you felt like mixing it up. Dodging was holding a button for auto dodging. Partying didn't even require timing. Just hold the square button and bam, you'll parry when the attack hits. No timing required.
Add to that, the completely formulaic open world structure with copy/paste "take this photo here" and "catch these frogs for me here" in a world where The Witcher 3 exists where even the most full of quests legitimized itself with good writing and context within the game world. The most lived in and concrete open world in a video game with the most tightly knit design of any open world game to date.
I did not think FF15 was good at all. Has nothing to do with nostalgia because I have next to no attachment to the franchise, but I love rpg's, both action and turn based, and FF15 to an rpg fan felt like an insult to my experience with the genre. It felt more like "baby's first action rpg".
Had nothing to do with the old games, combat, story, "missions" = go there, get that, bring here, everything was dull, and playing the sidequests did nothing for the main story. Completing them was more of a chore.
Calling a monotonous game great is overdoing it, glad you enjoyed it there's plenty of simple rpgs with no depth for you to play. :)
Okay let's see: Counting New games only:
Bravely Default
Bravely Second
The World End With You
Dragon Quest VIII
Dragon Quest IX
Dragon Quest XI
Nier: Automata
basically. 3DS - PS4 - Switch if you want your JRPG from Square Enix.
My issue with them is not releasing some games on disc in other markets, I am setsuna. Also the remake/remaster of secret of mana will probably also not receive a disc version outside of japan.
? "My issue with them is not releasing some games on disc in other markets, I am setsuna. Also the remake/remaster of secret of mana will probably also not receive a disc"
Different markets, different games.
Secret Of Mana isn't some small project, its a full remake.
I never said secret of mana was, I was saying id like it on a physical disc to which they probably wont do.
FFIII on psp isnt small project in the end of the day its main FF. Still, they released it on disc in japan and only digital in the rest of world. Moreover, Limited, Collector editions were mostly not available in US only in EU. All FF in psp, 3rd birthday, KH BBS, and the first two XIII trilogy all of them were just available only as standard edition in US, but in EU there was some quite different editions. After Lightning Return SE has became better as whole company.
To put a game on physical media and/or make it available as a digital download is a decision a gaming company has to make.
It can be considerably cheaper to just go with digital downloading especially if the game size is relatively small and your target audience has access to the Internet. Like it or not the digital downloads are the way many games will be delivered to the average gamer in the future.
You said it future. We aint there yet. It like saying back to 1985 throw all your VHS because in 2013 Blu-ray is the future.
Where have you been, all these small publishers popping up offering physical releases. Truth is there are more games coming out physically then what did on ps3. Some people may have realized that digital isnt the future just yet.
It's definitely not been the same company ever since they merged but they also lost of a bunch of key developers and people on staff. Also they have this crazy notion that classic game design is utter trash so instead of giving fans what they want they keep experimenting with the format and screwing it up.
I think they lost some of the talent that really made Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy (e.g. Hironobu Sakaguchi, Koji Ishitani, Isamu Kamikokuryo, Nobuo Uematsu, ect...). I'm sure there are others, but that's all I could readily remember or find. Also I'm sure Wada or who ever's idea it was, really tried hard to westernize the series along with many JRPG game producers during the last gen, and we all know how badly that went for everyone involved. I'm just glad most of them are starting to throw that mentality away and produce good JRPGs again (in SE's case, I mean WoFF, not FFXV). On top of that, the company seems to lack direction or just has poor leadership.
This game was amazing. I want another one using euphoria physics.
What sad is that a PS1 game did in terms of overall game elements many modern titles can't even touch.