XIII-2 demo: My thoughts

 This is probably the tardiest post I've written, but it's better than a sharp stick in the eye! Welcome to the Grove, folks! I am your gardener, The Onion Knight, and today I want to give my thoughts on the XIII-2 demo that was released about two weeks ago.

 By 'tardiest post', I meant that this is something I should have documented when I first played the demo, (I just haven't had the time, I apologize!). Final Fantasy XIII-2 was released nearly two weeks ago on January 31. I haven't played it yet, but I've heard multiple good things about it. Of course, many people were upset with Final Fantasy XIII and Square, hoping to heal the fan's broken spirits, made many changes to its sequel to satisfy gamer's tastes. I'll talk more about the full game itself after I've played it, since I plan to review it eventually. For the time being though, I'll talk about the demo.

 Once you start the demo and play past the title menu, the player is treated to a cutscene with Lighting's narration thrown in. I didn't really pay much attention since I would be seeing this again anyways. Immediately, you're thrown into a boss battle. It's a pretty easy one, and during the battle you'll perform these actions called 'active cutscenes', where you have to time button commands in order to deal damage, (and get a better reward with victory). After the battle, you can walk around the Bresha Ruins, talk to some NPCs, fight monsters, collect items - typical Final Fantasy fare. For a demo, XIII-2 was fairly customization-oriented. You can change your party leader, capture monsters for your party, gain and change equipment, level up your characters freely, and change many options - which, to my knowledge, isn't seen in many video game demos. The battle system is essentially the same as its predecessor, XIII, except now you can command monsters and change your party leader during battle, which is a nice touch.

 The element of this demo I liked the most was the atmosphere of the game. Although I could only explore Bresha Ruins, it was a great setting to begin with. The rain droplets falling into your tv screen, the serene music, and the overall mood - it was like something out of a Metroid game!

 Overall, I enjoyed the demo and I know that what I'm getting will be a great title. I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition a while ago on Amazon and I also hope to pick up some DLC for the game. If you liked XIII, I'm quite certain you'll like the sequel and if you didn't enjoy it - well, why not give it a try?

This is the Onion Knight signing off. Have a good day!

Dark Clouds and Atmosphere; Ad #3

 Hey guys, how's it goin'? Onion Knight here and this is the third day in our commercial extravaganza! Yesterday, we looked at an odd (and unexciting) advertisement for Final Fantasy II. Today, we'll talk about a Japanese commercial for Final Fantasy III. This will be the last 8-bit commercial I'll be looking at, which saddens me because I love talking about the older Final Fantasy's. O, but alas, thou must move on.

 This commercial for Final Fantasy III is interesting, although I can think of one word that effectively summarizes this ad: nice. Why do I say that? That's really all it is. It's nice, but let's move on, pick this commercial into pieces, and see if we can find anything in the deep.

FFIII art cover of the box

 The advertisement starts off with a somewhat spooky, but mostly mysterious atmosphere. What the viewers, us, see are rock pillars jutting out above dark clouds, (I would say that could be a reference to the Cloud of Darkness but I'm just looking too much into it). Next, what looks like TV screens manifest onto the rock faces while bolts of lightning shower the pillars. Well, this is something! Certainly a lot better than the FFII commercial we looked at yesterday. "Okay commercial, you've got my interest!" Then, a crystal forms from the lighting storm among the clouds in the sky and another television screen begins to emerge from said crystal. The TV screen separates from the crystal and it then begins to... rotate? Yeah, the crystal TV (Crystal TV? Now I've seen everything) is actually a cube formed of multiple television screens, each showing a different gameplay element from Final Fantasy III. Well that's awesome!

 The atmosphere is really nice. As I mentioned earlier, the setting is quite mysterious and keep in mind the clouds - as clouds were a very important element in the setting of the game. Now that I think about it, the clouds probably represent the dark cloud cover that enveloped most of the world, which is discovered after the characters have left the Floating Continent.


 Once again, like previous posts, I want to comment on the music. Here, they use the Prelude theme. This theme is great, and once again it's the arranged version! It's also the only piece that plays in the commercial, unlike the first commercial we looked at where the prelude theme was cut short by the Main theme. Well done!

Artwork of FFIII; Yoshitaka Amano. Note the prominence of clouds.

 Overall, the commercial is good and caught my interest from the beginning. I really like this one, although not as much as the FF I&II ad. Speaking of which, at the end our extravaganza, I'll probably list my top 3 commercials and I'll explain why I chose them.

 I hope you liked today's commercial! Have a good day!
 Onion Knight out.

Coders are celebrities too!

New day, new commercial! Welcome back to the Grove folks. I am your exuberant host, The Onion Knight, and today we are looking at our second commercial in this advertisement fiesta. Last time, we looked at a commercial for Final Fantasy I & II, and since I couldn't find any ads for the first Final Fantasy, we'll be analyzing a somewhat different and unique commercial for the second title.

 Final Fantasy II was released in 1988 and this was probably the first TV ad for a Final Fantasy. Keep in mind that the quality of the YouTube video is very low, (perhaps suggesting just how rare and old this ad is), and that the real purpose is to analyze the commercial itself.

 Of course, it's all about Final Fantasy II. But what does the commercial tell us about this game? The first thing we see are Square employees coding the game. This is such a strange way of advertising the game, and it might not be an effective strategy marketing idea in today's world. Showing the developers themselves coding and creating the game? Weird, different, and unique is all I can really say about that. Advertising the names of the people who were behind these games was apparently a popular thing to do during this time, however, this method must have been cut short since I haven't see this kind of stuff after Final Fantasy III.

Look at the bottom of the box here. Notice that the creators' names are presented, even the programmer.

So is there anything about this commercial that speaks Final Fantasy? Well, we have the battle theme from the game playing throughout the commercial, and some of Amano's artwork is even shown throughout; the first being Leon, the next Minwu, then Maria, a boss character(whose name I'm forgetting at the moment), and finally Firion. So we've got developers, artwork, and music, but what's my opinion?

 Although the commercial is different from anything I've seen, it's anything but exciting and not much information is given in the commercial. Although the developers are shown, we don't know their names or who they are, and nothing is explained about the game at all. All I can gather is that it's for the Famicom, it has artwork, music, and people are making it. That being said, the commercial is still a rare find and something worth noting.

Tomorrow, we'll finish up the last commercial for an 8-bit Final Fantasy, (unless if I come across any more for the Famicom/NES, or any for the Game Boy FFs).

Have a good day, folks!

The most mature Final Fantasy yet

I meant to blog about this a while back, but I've been extremely busy as of late. For you FF fans out there, you may have had this game on your radar for the past while: Final Fantasy Type-0, which was previously known as Agito. It's an upcoming title for the PSP and there's one word that comes to mind- blood.

 The game is the most violent yet, (one of the bloodiest games I have ever laid my eyes on), and is sure to be one of the more mature games for the PSP. Besides the extreme violence (a chocobo dies!), Type-0 seems to be heavily laced with dark themes and a mature plot revolving around war and politics.

 I haven't followed this game very much - in fact, this trailer is the first I've seen of this game, and the sheer violence and moodiness caught me off guard. Come to think of it, even though violence is a huge part of the Final Fantasy series, blood isn't a typical visual element. VII introduced blood while VIII used blood in one cutscene, but Type-0 has brought violence for the series to a whole new scale. Type-0 is sure to be the first Final Fantasy to receive an M rating, (at least in North America). That's my prediction.

And to top off this post, here's the aforementioned trailer in Japanese. Sorry, no Ingles yet!

Type-0 article on the FF wiki

A New Final Fantasy XIV

Some of you probably remember the disappointing release of Final Fantasy XIV. After it's release, many reviews scored the game very poorly, received a bad reputation, and worst of all, angered many fans of the franchise. During the previous weekend, CEO of SquareEnix, Yoichi Wada, announced that Final Fantasy XIV will be ending it's subscription before the end of the year and heading into a strong development period that will completely change the game.

 After the failed release of Final Fantasy XIV, many members on the development team that made the game either resigned or were switched with another employee. They had been re-working the game since, but only in small pieces. Soon, the game will be entering a very strong development period, as shown in the development chart in the link at the bottom. Many aspects of the game, such as the graphics, menu systems, communications, and many more will be revamped until everything is '2.0'. By 2013, Final Fantasy XIV will be quite different (and better, I hope) and the PS3 version will be released as 2.0.

 I've never played Final Fantasy XIV, nor it's father, Final Fantasy XI. Both are MMOs, and although I'm not particularly fond of the genre, I'm more than willing to try something that has Final Fantasy in the title. So once the PS3 version is released in 2013, I'll be sure to document what the game is like. Here's to hoping it'll be good!





Press release from Yoichi Wada on the Lodestone
FFXIV development roadmap