See Kairi, you can say all that, but you are still so hot for Director's Cut that you might very well put out in order to get it. I mean, there's all kinds of failures of logic or reason in your post, but you'd have the essential point there if it wasn't for the fact that you are so into it when it's a series you like.

I mean, even Goldfish did your point better than you, which is basically "I do not like these things because they do not appeal to me". Okay, that's cool, you're not alone. But it's not a moral or ethical issue, and for some reason Kairi, you keep making it sound like one. Stop anthromorphizing companies.

The thing is, if a game like Dirge was a more solid game I probably wouldn't be complaining about it so much, I felt the reason DoC was created was like a forced piece of work just for the sake of expanding FF7 to get more money, and not cause they wanted to make great shooter game to challenge themselves in a different genre or something like that. I was fine with the AC movie, then they start announcing the other FF7 titles, one which we can't play on our cell phones, among others that seem to have potential.

Then DoC came out and I just felt like its milking for the sake of it, and they didnt put much good work into it, they improved it for the NA release, showing that they at least admit the gameplay was kinda broken, but it only succeed in making it playable.

International version are for profit, but at least the games that get special editions tend to be solid titles. A game like DoC was like churning out a cheap toy for a quick buck. I like KH, the first FM eas enoyable with new enemies and most of all, a really tough proud mode that got me hooked and developed my skills. The new scenes and secret ending are major bonuses to tie me over till KH2 came out. Its still a solid game that I felt was my money's worth, DoC however was not.

Now we have more FF7 titles coming up and I dunno if it will fall into the DoC catergory in terms of gameplay. If they actually work hard to make a solid games out of these, I can forgive the overboard milking, but untill then, I still stand by my point the lack of actual decent game development to make unoriginal cheap toys.

Bottom line, if you're gonna milk it, might as well make a great game while you're at it.

If you think Kingdom Hearts was solid enough for a director's cut, why are you complaining about Square milking the series when they announced it?

The one thing I find slightly frustrating these days is the amount of systems that SE is porting to... It feels like there is no kind of unity and that you basically have to buy one of every system if you were a pretty heavy fan of some of their recent games.

Are they milking it? Maybe just a bit, but I've seen much worse. Companies do these kinds of things when they become popular. Sometimes it works, they grow, and they make better quality milkage worth buying - and yes, there can be those kinds of things. There are people out there who want to know what happens in side-stories and spin-offs and who would pay anything to have it even if it were short and cheesy.

The worst fairly recent case of milking in the industry lately in my opinion comes from Koei. Koei was never really huge in North America but they had a loyal fanbase for their style of games. They were innovative at one time but now look at them.

www.koeigames.com ... Dynasty Warriors 5, Dynasty Warriors 5 Extreme Legends, Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires all released in a period of what? Less than 12 months? A new 3 Kingdoms game every year with only fairly minor adjustments and changes? Why?? And you know what happens? The loyal fans give up, move on, and stop buying the games. The company either figures it out and adjusts or goes bankrupt and/or gets bought out by someone else.

SE hasn't stooped that low yet. Heck, look at X-2. It was fanservice, yes, but still the combat and level scheme was fun and they tried to do something different with it.

Question, did the Final Mix for the original Kingdom Hearts ever make it over here? If not then why do you even care? You won't be able to play it unless you import and understand Japanese.

Final Mix was a Japan only release, none of the international versions of the SE games ever make it beyond Japan.

And I have the first final mix, I got it when it first came out, I have beaten it and will be getting the second one.

I have been importing games all my life cause I lived in Hong Kong till recently, I'm now in LA for college. In Hong Kong, most of the games are imported from Japan, and we play them even though we can only read the kanji, but that's the best we can do. You guys may get games alot later, but at least you can understand it. Luckily now that I'm in the USA, I can play English games now.

I have to say I never care much about the DW games, the gameplay was a bit repetitive for me, but since fans like it and its still a solid game, I don't see that much of a problem, and most action games remain bascially the same most of the time.

And I said it before, if you're gonna milk it, at least make it a solid game that lives up to the previous games, not Dirge of Cerberus.

Ah you see, that is part of the problem. Koei for years was known for making strategy games, not action games and strategy is where it built its original fanbase. Games like Nobunaga's Ambition, Uncharted Waters, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are what made that company originally grow. Then they found a product that was hot on the market - the Dynasty Warriors series. Now the company focuses mostly on milking out that series while leaving most of its other products in obscurity. Uncharted Waters Online? Hardly even heard of in the US... What you get left with is a company that pissed off its original fans (strategy gamers) while milking a product to a different audience who's getting tired of your work (DW gamers).

This can happen to SE too, but it hasn't yet - though it's arguable. I hear there are some significant combat changes in FFXII that majorly vary from how the FF series was originally developed and changes like that can lead SE down a road where they really might not want to go. What's also good to see is that SE isn't making a new flagship game every year and are putting a bit of work into their main products. FFX was a three year project, and the time between FFX and FFXII has been quite some time.

It doesn't sound like you know Koei all that well.

But this conversation is a little ridiculous to begin with. I seriously doubt the thread creator wanted to turn this into a fucking circus.

Treasure... they even try to not make sequels of his games, with some little exceptions... what the heck, they even releases his best games on the most "not mainstream" console of their times (gunstar heroes = Genesis, Radiant Silvergun = Saturn, Sin & Punishment = Nintendo 64 in 2000, Ikaruga = originally on Dreamcast... in 2002) and they are still making awesome games, like Astro Boy.

Goddammit, way to ruin my last point.

And all you did was show me a creative company; not one that values creativity over money. It's impossible to show me one because it doesn't exist-- companies are a product of capitalism.

It's also worth noting that creativity in and of itself isn't shit. Your game won't sell if it's creative but bad. And it has always needed a decent amount of polish, whether in graphics or gameplay. Just having a keen idea doesn't make the grade, and if it does for you, you're hella shallow or exceptionally easy to please.

I think the only group of people that might value creativity over money, could be the make of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, because i think they focus more of the "beauty" (i'm not just talking about graphic here) ans feeling of the game then to just make a game to make profit...now will have to see what they'll do next...

No doubt something that will ROCK you.

WOW! Heroes of Mana looks pretty awesome! It's been a while
since i've slashed a Rabite (like, 8 or 9 years lol). Looking forward to
that and i hope they bring Wonderful Life to the US ^_^

Square-Enix pretty much went sequel happy after it became Square-Enix. Maybe it's just disgusting nostalgia clouding my judgement but there were more original games coming out of Squaresoft back in the 1990s, it pretty much went downhill after the merge. You can only beat one story to death once. It's an entirely other thing to milk the Final Fantasy name since there is essentially a new game every iteration but did anyone really care what Vincent was up to after the fact?

I'm not complaining because you cannot deny the quality of their product but KH2 sucked compared to KH1, all the FF7 spinoffs are laughable and the only games I'm buying from them in the near future are the games that appeal to my graphic whore side and remastered ports I can carry in my pocket.

I actually liked KH2 a lot more then 1, but that's just my opinion hehe.

Fucking S-E. RELEASE SOME FUCKING WORTHY GAMES TO PLAY. Not these special edition spin-off pieces of shit.

I don't mind getting them since I'll get the pirated copies anyway, but at least release something you can REALLY play.

Damn right, woman!

http://www.solarnavigator.net/films_...vie_poster.jpg You are aware Square's been "milking" Final Fantasy since like 1989 right? They release three SaGa titles here and renamed them "Final Fantasy Legend" simply for marketing reasons. And Final Fantasy Adventure? That was a Seiken Densetsu game, disguised as Final Fantasy. I wish people would quit acting like this is a new development; it's really not. :)

Eh, I don't even like Star Wars. Nor bad acting. And I'll one up you and name the Matrix as well.

And your logic fails since you quoted me as saying that SE likes to milk the FF name. But essentially they're different games from one another, FF10 does not have the same story as FF1, 2, 3, etc. It's a totally different from say, Kingdom Hearts, where every new version of the game is true sequel to the former, in which I really couldn't give a damn about. Personally I consider it more credible to create a totally new graphics engine, totally new cast of characters, story, scenario, etc from scratch and tack on the tried and true FF name on it rather than take the same old gang, same graphics engine, same story evolved when to a point where it didn't need to go and tack THISGAMESOLDREALLYWELLLASTYEAR PART 2.

Case in point, there had never been a true sequel to any FF story until FFX-2. And wasn't that one of the first games out on the SE name? Even Chrono Cross under Squaresoft wasn't a convential sequal to Chrono Trigger.

People have been bitching about the FF thing since it became popular to so the dialogue really is worn out. But in hindsight, Squaresoft was nothing compared to Square-Enix.

I didn't say you liked it, just listed it to counteract that part I quoted. and you're right, the Matrix sequels blew also.

Are you trying to say Square wouldn't have done this without Enix joining the fun? That sounds like what you're trying to say. I sure hope that's not what you're trying to say, because that's surely wrong. I agree they're more sequel happy now than ever, but I'm just clarifying here.

Seems to me like it just took them a while to get really good at business like they have.

Bit of an update on one of the actual games in the original post:

(From The Magic Box)

"- Square Enix revealed new info on its NDS RPG Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the story does not tie with or take place before the stories of Final Fantasy XII, the game simply shows Vaan (18) and Penelos (17) living in Luftpiraten . All the airships from FFXII will be in this game, as well as new ones; and the relationship between the two characters will be presented in a way that was not possible in FFXII. The battle system will involve the use of stylus and touch screen."

So basically, it's a gaiden story to FFXII. Uses the two characters and the world in a scenario that could have taken place under different circumstances.

I'm saying their business model has changed since the merge. I don't know who's responsible since I'm not really privy to the inner workings of SE but there was a very very obvious shift in their mission statement from pre-merge and post-merge. Who knows if the Square side is responsible or the Enix side is because neither company adopted this sort of sentiment before. Now both companies are really capitalizing on their known franchises, which is well and good although I honestly wish we can see more original series come out of both camps.

And personally, while business is going excellent now, I expect people to be burnt out on what they're doing soon. Last I heard, Dirge did really bad and no one is really looking forward to the upcoming FF7 games (save the remake of FF7). SE is mostly riding on the prestige they both collected during the 80s and 90s so when that starts wearing thin, things can change really fast for them and they need to rethink their "3 Pillar" whatever focus they got going on. True KH2 sold a gazillion number of copies but somehow I get a feeling they're alienating the older more traditional fanbase with these sort of games. There's a fine line between genius and accessible to old and tired.

Just thought I'd mention that Final Fantasy X-2 was released in Japan under "Square Co., Ltd." and before the merger. If you were to ask me, I would say Squaresoft's paradigm shifted much before the merger. Any attempt to pin that on Enix is unjustified.

Here's some new Heroes of Mana screens (with some from SD3 mixed in there)
http://www.jeux-france.com/news17556...re-sur-ds.html

It's a Wonderful World screens
http://www.jeux-france.com/news17555...e-devoile.html

the It's a Wonderful World site
http://www.square-enix.co.jp/subarashiki/teaser.html

Final Fantasy 12 Revenant Wing site
http://www.square-enix.co.jp/ff12rw/

some FF12:RW cgi art scans
http://www.jeux-france.com/news17554...-illustre.html

FF12:RW cgi trailer
http://www.square-enix.com/jp/member...pv01/movie.flv

youtube version
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fc2E6sWnYI0

Wow, thanks for the find MTFR.
I notice they reused the tracks for the FFXII:RW trailer, I guess they haven't advent much into those two newly proposed games... dunno when they will be scheduled for release >_<