Samantha Lienhard's Blog, page 69

Konami and Bloober Team Have Announced a Partnership

Today I woke up to the news that Konami had formed a “strategic partnership” with Bloober Games.

According to the official announcement, this partnership will involve “jointly developing selected contents and exchanging know-how.”

No specific details were given, but this is significant for two big reasons.

First, Bloober Team has developed several psychological horror games. I reviewed Layers of Fear 2, Blair Witch and The Medium for MonsterVine, and I previously played the first Layers of Fear. While I have mixed feelings on some of their games, I feel they’ve been getting better and better, with The Medium being my favorite Bloober Team game so far.

I also felt while playing Blair Witch that they really wanted to make a Silent Hill game, and The Medium made that even more apparent.

The second reason this news is significant is that there have been persistent rumors that multiple Silent Hill games are in development, with one of them being developed by Bloober Team. I was pretty skeptical of all Silent Hill rumors by that point, but this lends credibility to them.

Bloober Team and Konami are working together on something. Maybe it really is Silent Hill.

People’s reactions to the news today taught me that a lot of Silent Hill fans hate Bloober Team’s games and do not share my feelings that The Medium was a good game. So maybe I don’t have a lot of company in being intrigued by this news. We’ll see…

What are your thoughts on the partnership between Bloober Team and Konami, and the potential for a Bloober-developed Silent Hill game?

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The World Ends With You Anime Thoughts, Final Remix Review, & NEO Demo Impressions

Over the past few days, I played the demo for NEO: The World Ends With You, watched the final episode of the TWEWY anime, and finished The World Ends With You: Final Remix.

After debating about how to cover all of these things, I decided to just have one big TWEWY extravaganza blog post!

Let’s start with the anime.

The World Ends With You Anime Adaptation

When I started watching the anime adaptation of The World Ends With You, I had concerns. The beginning feels very rushed as a result of cramming the entire game’s story into 12 episodes, although it was still incredible just to see a game I love so much in anime form.

However, the pacing improved dramatically after the first few episodes, and I ended up enjoying it overall.

The anime has its flaws. Some parts don’t come across quite right, and there are a few changes I wasn’t crazy about. Most of these changes are probably also the result of the fast pacing, although there was one near the end that I don’t know why they changed.

Click for major TWEWY spoilersIn the anime, Kitaniji is completely defeated before the encounter with Joshua. They still showed the flashback of him and Joshua agreeing to the Game, but I feel like it lost something by not having that final conversation between them.

Yet the anime also pulls off some scenes incredibly well. There are even a few parts that I’d say the anime did better.

I expected the anime to cover A New Day, the new epilogue added for the Final Remix version of the game, but it didn’t. Instead, it ended on the game’s original secret ending, expanded to include some more details in a way that I thought worked very well.

Meanwhile, I used the anime as a guide to keep my Final Remix playthrough in check, as I’d follow up each episode by playing up to the same point in the game.

The World Ends With You: Final Remix

My playthrough of the original The World Ends With You was absurdly long, since I wanted to complete everything. For the Final Remix, I was much more restrained and stuck mostly to the main story (and of course, A New Day).

I was a little worried about revisiting a favorite game, afraid that it might not resonate with me as much over a decade later.

My concerns were unfounded. The Switch controls are cumbersome, and I quickly decided to stick with the touchscreen controls since the Joy-Con controls are somehow even more awkward, and I forgot how some parts of the game require you to grind a bit for specific pin/material drops, but I was immediately sucked into the game just like I was when I played the original.

I love The World Ends With You. The story, the characters, the foreshadowing, the humor… and all sorts of little fun details I forgot about that all come together to make it a unique experience.

Comparing it to the anime after each episode provided extra entertainment as well, and I’m really happy that I decided to play through The World Ends With You: Final Remix after all.

And then I played A New Day.

You unlock the three “days” of A New Day by completing certain challenges in the main game. A New Day itself doesn’t seem to distinguish between days, however. I only knew I was on a different day by seeing that the menu screen said so.

Anyway, Neku and Beat find themselves back in the UG for a new Reaper’s Game, and they’re joined by a Reaper girl named Coco who is one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen. Neku is also having visions of destruction and a mysterious girl wearing headphones. Shibuya’s layout has been shuffled around so that the streets don’t go where they’re supposed to, and most paths are gated. Remember how I mentioned grinding for drops in the main game? That’s a core focus of A New Day, and it’s so tedious… I felt like it went out of its way to be as tedious as possible.

Meanwhile, the story is… strange. I dislike several aspects of A New Day’s ending, as well as their puzzling presentation.

Click for major A New Day spoilersWas it really necessary to have Neku get shot at the exact same place again? I’m sure they intentionally mirrored the main game’s scene to have his visions of Joshua shooting make both him and the player question whether he was seeing the past or the present, but then to have Joshua hit Coco’s shoulder and have her run away in basically the exact same pose Minamimoto had in the original scene? Really?

And then she revives Minamimoto with a Taboo Noise sigil, basically mirroring his revival in the main game? Really?

And she needs Neku for some purpose, so is the implication that she shot him to use him as a pawn, mirroring his original death even more than it did already? Really?

In short, not only do I dislike Neku being killed again, I also dislike how it felt like a weird remix of ideas from the main game.

I’m glad I played the NEO: The World Ends With You demo before A New Day, because if A New Day was my only brush with new TWEWY content, I’d be very nervous.

NEO: The World Ends With You Demo

Fortunately, the same can’t be said for my time with the demo! The demo covers the first two days of NEO: The World Ends With You, and it’s fantastic.

Rindo and his friend Fret are going through what seems to be a normal day until they find themselves in the Reaper’s Game without much knowledge of what’s going on except that teams are competing for points and they need to fight Noise.

The characters introduced in the demo are likeable so far, but what really impressed me was how much NEO feels like The World Ends With You.

Scanning is back, although now you can move at the same time. You still use scanning to read people’s thoughts and start battles with Noise, and chaining encounters is back as well. I came across a Pig Noise, too!

Combat is pretty different now, since the game is 3D and uses ordinary controls, but – and this is kind of amazing to me – it still captures the feel of the original. Every character can equip one pin, and you use that pin’s button commands to switch to control that character in battle. This adapts the sense of controlling multiple characters at the same time to a 3D single-screen system, and you alternate back and forth to build your gauge for a powerful attack similar to how the light puck functioned in the original and the cross-combos work in Final Remix.

I am seriously impressed by how much the combat feels like TWEWY combat despite having such significant changes.

I almost regret playing it, because partway through, I had to remind myself that this was only a demo and I would have to stop. I’ll need to wait another month to play more NEO: The World Ends With You, and the demo was so good that I want to play more now.

Conclusion

That was a lot of TWEWY content to talk about, but what are you thoughts? How do you feel about The World Ends With You, its anime adaptation, Final Remix and A New Day, and the demo for NEO: The World Ends With You? Personally, I’m even more excited for NEO than I was before!

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Crossbell, Hajimari, and Nayuta Localizations All Confirmed!

The Falcom 40th Anniversary live stream news turned out to be huge… although it was leaked ahead of time when the Epic Games Store decided to put all of the games’ store pages live in the morning.

Anyway, I decided to check it out after all.

The live stream was primarily a concert, and I avoided actually watching the concert parts after seeing warnings that spoilers were being shown on the screen behind the band. The music was great, though, with some excellent songs from both Trails and Ys.

But let’s get straight to the announcements.

Yes, the Crossbell games are being localized! Yes, Hajimari is being localized, too! And yes, even Nayuta is being localized!

(It would have been even more exciting if it wasn’t leaked ahead of time, since they casually followed up their performance of a Trails from Zero song with the English logo appearing on the screen before leading into the announcements.)

NIS America revealed the following release schedule: Trails from Zero will be released in Fall 2022, Trails to Azure will follow in 2023, The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails will also be released in 2023, and Trails into Reverie (the localized name for Hajimari) is coming out in 2023 as well.

That’s right, we got four localization announcements, and 2023 is going to be packed with three of them coming in the same year.

All four games will be available for PC (Steam/Epic/GOG all confirmed; they’re not EGS exclusive), PS4, and Nintendo Switch.

What makes this news even more incredible is that NIS America officially partnered with Geofront, the team behind the Crossbell fan translations, to make this possible.

For someone getting into the Trails series like me, this is fantastic news. If you’re a bit confused by all the games, Zero and Azure are the Crossbell arc and come in between the Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel arcs. Trails into Reverie is the most recent game, set after the Cold Steel arc.

So what about The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails? You’ll notice that the title is structured differently and I didn’t list it above. Well, Nayuta is an action RPG spin-off that is not canon to the Trails series.

…Probably. Apparently it’s officially non-canon, but some fans feel there might be connections that could lead to it being retconned into the Trails series. We’ll see.

I’m thrilled by the recent Trails news (and looking forward to catching up ahead of Zero’s release), although a lot of fans are upset that Reverie won’t be out until 2023. Personally, I think it’s worth it to have official releases of the Crossbell games – and how can you argue when you get four localization announcements all at once?

(And since three of them only got a year, I’d say it’s not certain that Reverie will be late in the year and/or after Nayuta like most people assume.)

In news completely unrelated to Falcom, Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse localization was announced last night, too. All of my video game hopes seem to be coming true! What’s next, Yakuza Ishin?

Are you excited for the Trails announcements?

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Kuro no Kiseki Has an Alignment System

Previous details about Kuro no Kiseki hinted at it, and now it’s been confirmed: the upcoming new game in the Trails series will feature an alignment system.

The latest Famitsu feature on Kuro no Kiseki, with scans of the pages shared here, introduced two new characters and also revealed the LGC Alignment System.

LGC stands for Law, Gray, Chaos. According to translations, your choices and actions will influence your alignment, which in turn will influence various things, including your allies.

There are a lot of mixed feelings about this so far. Some people think it’s a great addition, while others worry it might result in the main story being weaker or shorter if it has branching paths.

There also are questions of how this will work in a series that features generally linear stories, and how sequels will acknowledge it.

My feeling right now is that the main story will probably be the same, with your alignment affecting minor things and side content. I doubt they’ll have multiple endings, at least not in any significant way. But we’ll see! No one knows for sure yet how they plan to implement this system, so what do you think is the best way for a Trails game to include alignment?

Meanwhile, don’t forget that tomorrow night/Friday morning is the 40th Anniversary live stream, where we might get some Trails news for the west!

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I’ve Become Much More Interested in Elden Ring

Ahead of the Summer Games Fest, I had only a passing interest in Elden Ring due to all of the excitement about it and my own growing interest in FromSoftware’s games.

Because of course, one of the big selling points is that it’s open world, and I’m not the biggest fan of open world games.

The trailer revealed during the Summer Game Fest was pretty cool, but it’s the details revealed about the game since then that have really made me more interested in following it.

In IGN’s interview with Miyazaki, he explains a little more about the world structure, saying that the world is split into six main areas.

You have a hub, which leads to the six areas, each of which has its own major dungeon as well as optional areas.

A large Famitsu interview with Miyazaki, translated here, also goes into more detail. In the discussion about exploration (found in Part 3 of the translation), Miyazaki mentions that in addition to the “large open field,” there are areas structured more like areas in Dark Souls. These “legacy” areas appear to be the six major dungeons.

When discussing the field (in Part 4 of the translation), Miyazaki reveals that the open field areas have a world map where you can set waypoints, but the dungeon areas do not have a map. There are also barriers blocking your progress to some areas that you’ll need to overcome.

So overall, it sounds like there is a big open area that connects to the world’s major areas, and the main dungeons are structured more like Dark Souls.

I’m cautiously optimistic about that. While it’s still open world, it sounds like it might be the sort of structure that I’ll find enjoyable. A big hub leading to more traditional areas sounds good to me. So for now, I’m much more interested than I was before… and keeping my eye on Elden Ring news despite not being completely sold yet.

What are your thoughts on Elden Ring’s open world structure?

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Falcom 40th Anniversary Live Stream Will Feature New Announcements

On June 24, there will be a special live stream to celebrate Falcom’s 40th anniversary.

I know what you’re thinking: didn’t we already do this? Wasn’t it the 40th anniversary live stream where they finally showed Kuro no Kiseki’s combat system?

Well, this is another 40th anniversary celebration being held in connection with New Game+ Expo, which revealed that it will include “performances by Falcom jdk BAND, a message from president Toshihiro Kondo, and special announcements.”

It seems geared more toward the west, NIS America is involved and promised surprises, and so everyone is hoping for Hajimari localization news.

…Or Crossbell. There’s still a chance!

It’s less likely that Falcom will announce a brand new game due to the event’s focus, but who knows?

Anyway, the live stream will be on June 24 at 10 PM PT / June 25 at 1 AM ET. I’ll probably catch the news after the fact both because of the time and because I’m still too early in the Trails series to risk seeing spoilers! Here’s hoping we get some exciting news.

What do you think will be announced at the New Game+ Expo Falcom 40th Anniversary live stream?

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E3 2021 Part 10: An Exciting Nintendo Direct!

Table of Contents

Summer Game Fest 2021
Koch Primetime
IGN Expo Livestream
Guerrilla Collective Day 2
Wholesome Direct 2021
Ubisoft Forward
Devolver Forwarder
Gearbox Entertainment
Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase
Square Enix Presents
PC Gaming Show
Future Games Show
Limited Run Games
Capcom
Nintendo Direct

Nintendo Direct

Today was the Nintendo Direct, the final show of E3 2021, and I was hopeful that it would rise above the recent lackluster shows.

They started with the latest character being added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Kazuya from the Tekken series. Then they announced that Life is Strange Remastered Collection and True Colors are both coming to the Switch (with an animated trailer that had me curious at first, but that’s just the trailer).

After seeing Guardians of the Galaxy again and then Worms Rumble, we got to see Astria Ascending. I’ve been intrigued by Astria Ascending since it was first announced. It’s a console remake of a mobile JRPG, and I think it looks pretty interesting. It’ll be out on September 30, right after all the other games I’m looking forward to this year.

Two Point Campus was shown again, followed by the announcement of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, which leaked earlier this week. It’s a remastered collection of the first three Super Monkey Ball games.

Then they announced a new Mario Party game! Mario Party Superstars brings together 5 boards and 100 minigames from the series, with both local and online play, and I’m kinda interested even though I’m not much of a multiplayer person. I’ve had fun with Mario Party.

They followed that by saying they don’t have anything to show about Metroid Prime 4 just yet… but instead they announced Metroid Dread, a new 2D Metroid game and the next mainline game. It looks so good, and I want it. It comes out on October 8, which at least gives me a little breathing room after the rush of games.

(So far, I’ve only played Metroid Fusion, but I want to play more Metroid games.)

Just Dance 2022 and Cruis’n Blast were shown next, followed by the much-rumored announcement that Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is coming to the Switch along with its A New Power Awakens DLC. The rumors of this port kept being denied, but now it’s official! I was actually tempted to buy Kakarot a few times, but kept holding off because of the Switch rumors. It’ll be out on September 24, of course, on top of everything else I’m looking forward to.

Mario Golf: Super Rush got a new trailer, and so did Monster Hunter Stories 2. The world in Monster Hunter Stories 2 looks beautiful, and I’m excited for it.

There’s also going to be a new WarioWare game called WarioWare: Get It Together!

Then they showed the new trailer for Shin Megami Tensei V, including its leaked release date of November 12 (11 in Japan). I’ve never played a mainline SMT game, but it looks pretty cool. I’m tempted to try the series sometime.

Danganronpa is also coming to the Switch in a special collection called Danganronpa Decadence, which includes all three games and the new expanded spin-off Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp.

Now, one of my specific hopes for this E3 was that we’d get some Fatal Frame news. I was hoping for a new entry, a collection of the older games, or at least for Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water to escape dying on the Wii U. And I got my wish, because Maiden of Black Water is actually coming to all major platforms later this year!

They showed some stuff for Doom Eternal, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2, and Strange Brigade, then showed Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope again.

Next… Advance Wars is back? Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is a remake of the first two games, and it’ll be out on December 3. I tried the first Advance Wars and couldn’t really get into it, but I’m happy for all the fans who were hoping this series would be revived.

They ended with Legend of Zelda news: a look at the Age of Calamity DLC, a new trailer for Skyward Sword HD, the announcement of a special Legend of Zelda Game & Watch system, and then the moment most people were waiting for, a new trailer for the sequel to Breath of the Wild.

Personally, I couldn’t stick with Breath of the Wild and the new trailer does nothing to convince people, but I know people are really excited for it.

Phew, what a Nintendo Direct! No sign of Bayonetta 3 or a new game from Monolith Soft, which were my top hopes, but we’ve got a Fatal Frame port, a new Metroid game, and lots of other exciting announcements! As far as I’m concerned, this Nintendo Direct was a success and the best show of E3 2021.

Bandai Namco’s show is apparently just going to be House of Ashes, so that’s it for our E3 2021 coverage! I’ll be watching the Nintendo Treehouse gameplay segments, so I’ll write a new post if they reveal anything that I should have included here.

What did you think of E3 2021 and the Nintendo Direct?

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E3 2021 Part 9: Limited Run Games and Capcom

Table of Contents

Summer Game Fest 2021
Koch Primetime
IGN Expo Livestream
Guerrilla Collective Day 2
Wholesome Direct 2021
Ubisoft Forward
Devolver Forwarder
Gearbox Entertainment
Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase
Square Enix Presents
PC Gaming Show
Future Games Show
Limited Run Games
Capcom
Nintendo Direct
Bandai Namco

Limited Run Games

Today was the day Limited Run Games had its E3 presentation, so they announced physical print editions of a wide variety of games, starting with Zombies Ate My Neighbors & Ghoul Patrol, Superhot, and Double Dragon & Kunio-kun: Retro Brawler Bundle.

After that, they not only announced a physical run of River City Girls, but also River City Girls Zero and River City Girls 2. I believe Zero is a new localization, while 2 is a completely new game.

The next game shown for a physical run was Strife: Veteran Edition, and then they got my attention by going through a series of trailers for all the Shantae games. I thought this was going to be the announcement of a Shantae collection, but it was actually for PS5 releases. The first Shantae is also coming to the PS4. As far as I can tell, they’re going to be separate releases, not a collection.

BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites was next, and I didn’t even know BloodRayne was still around.

Then came Haven, Skatebird, Huntdown, Axiom Verge 2, The Takeover, Dusk, and one game near and dear to my heart – Republique: Anniversary Edition. Why am I so fond of Republique when I haven’t actually played it? Because the Republique Kickstarter is one of the first things I ever blogged about. Hey, maybe I’ll get the Limited Run release!

Going Under, One Step From Eden, RWBY: Grimm Eclipse Definitive Edition, and RetroMania Wrestling came next, followed by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood for the PS4 and an unexpected announcement of the original Rondo of Blood for the TurboDuo, being localized for the first time.

They followed that with the Contra Anniversary Collection and ended with Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties.

Capcom

Capcom had an E3 show this year, and they’d announced ahead of time that it would include Resident Evil Village, Monster Hunter Stories 2, Monster Hunter Rise, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. Since two of those games are actually out, I figured they’d announce some new content.

Well… they confirmed Village is getting DLC. They didn’t show anything, just said they’ve started working on it. The multiplayer game Re:Verse is also launching next month.

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin got a nice new trailer and confirmation that a demo is coming on June 25. It’ll also get an update adding Palamute on July 15.

The Monster Hunter Rise section featured information about its next update, due out on June 24.

Finally, it was time for The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, and while they didn’t announce anything new, they provided a new trailer as well as a lengthy look at the gameplay. In fact, that was the most positive thing about this show for me – they spent such a long time on Ace Attorney that maybe they really do consider it one of their big series now.

I’m honestly pretty surprised that they spent that much time on Ace Attorney.

Anyway, then they talked about eSports for a while before ending. So… that was a pretty lackluster show, even with the expectations I went in with.

But hey, we still have Nintendo’s E3 show tomorrow, along with Bandai Namco’s! Maybe they’ll bring some surprises. Stay tuned!

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E3 2021 Part 8: PC Gaming and Future Games Show Highlights

Table of Contents

Summer Game Fest 2021
Koch Primetime
IGN Expo Livestream
Guerrilla Collective Day 2
Wholesome Direct 2021
Ubisoft Forward
Devolver Forwarder
Gearbox Entertainment
Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase
Square Enix Presents
PC Gaming Show
Future Games Show
Limited Run Games
Capcom
Nintendo Direct
Bandai Namco

PC Gaming Show

The PC Gaming Show began with no audio. Off to a good start.

Fortunately, we finally got sound. The jokes about the show going off without a hitch and a bot scanning to confirm there were no hitches made me wonder if perhaps the lack of audio was intentional, as a joke.

Anyway, they showed a lot of games… mostly games that didn’t particularly interest me, so let’s take a look at some highlights instead of going through them one by one!

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong sounds like it could be interesting, although the trailer told me pretty much nothing about the game itself.

Soulstice, however, looks pretty cool! I’ll be keeping my eye on that one.

The next one that caught my attention was SacriFire, an RPG currently on Kickstarter. I don’t know if I’ll back it, but I’ll certainly keep it in mind. Songs of Conquest also looks interesting, although I’m not sure it’s my sort of game.

Future Games Show

As soon as the PC Gaming Show ended, the Future Games Show began. I was mainly interested in checking it out to see what Xseed’s announcements would be. Once again, it was filled with a lot of games, so I’ll go through the highlights.

Grow: Song of the Evertree looks pretty, although I might not like it, since it’s a sandbox. A Tale of Paper is a platformer that also looks pretty interesting, and Beacon Pines looks really cute.

We got to see a new trailer for Eldest Souls, which I remember being announced, and I liked it… although I’m not crazy about it being a boss rush game.

A game called Harold Halibut looks neat, especially because they made all of the models physically and scanned them for the game. The next game shown after that was Happy Game, which was absolutely horrifying.

Tails of Iron, which is described as an “RPG-lite,” had a pretty interesting trailer.

Lust From Beyond is also getting an M-rated edition, which is coming to consoles as well. I reviewed the definitely-not-safe-for-work edition for MonsterVine, and I’d say it’s worth checking out.

Xseed was featured with Akiba’s Trip, Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, Rune Factory 4 Special, and Rune Factory 5. So… their new announcements turned out to just be ports of Story of Seasons and Rune Factory 4, which disappointed me a bit.

Detective thriller Conway: Disappearance at Dahlia View looks intriguing, and so does Immortality, the game they ended on.

And that was the end of the Future Games Show, as well as the end of today’s E3 events! We’ve still got a couple of smaller events tomorrow, followed by the final two on Tuesday to finish things off. What are your thoughts on E3 so far?

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E3 2021 Part 7: Square Enix Presents

Table of Contents

Summer Game Fest 2021
Koch Primetime
IGN Expo Livestream
Guerrilla Collective Day 2
Wholesome Direct 2021
Ubisoft Forward
Devolver Forwarder
Gearbox Entertainment
Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase
Square Enix Presents
PC Gaming Show
Future Games Show
Limited Run Games
Capcom
Nintendo Direct
Bandai Namco

Square Enix Presents

I was looking forward to Square Enix’s presentation quite a bit, especially since it was confirmed that we’d be seeing Babylon’s Fall and there were all those intriguing Final Fantasy rumors floating around.

Well, they started with Guardians of the Galaxy. And… it went on for a long time. A very long time. So much time was devoted to Guardians of the Galaxy that I started to wonder if it was ever going to end.

But it finally did, with the announcement of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series, the rumored re-release of the first 6 Final Fantasy games… for PC and mobile devices only. That decision confuses me. I would have expected Switch or PS4 at the very least to be an obvious choice for them, but apparently not.

It also got only a tiny slice of time in the presentation, followed by another tiny slice of time devoted to the upcoming Legend of Mana remaster.

Then they talked about updates to their Avengers game, and then went through a quick series of trailers for mobile games: the upcoming Hitman mobile game, Nier Reincarnation, Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, and the latest content coming to Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius.

After that came the moment I was waiting for – Babylon’s Fall! And… my feelings are mixed. On one hand, it looks pretty interesting and the combat seems like it has potential. On the other hand, while you can play solo, it seems to have co-op as a focus. Worse, it’s a live service game. That’s not exactly what I was hoping for.

Life is Strange was the next focus, with them first talking about the upcoming Remastered Collection and then focusing more on the new game, True Colors.

I thought that might be where they would end things, but that other report was fulfilled – Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin was officially announced! This is an action RPG spin-off being developed by Team Ninja, and I’m pretty intrigued. A demo is available now, but only for the PS5 despite the game itself being multiplatform.

And that was it for Square Enix’s show!

It wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped, but Final Fantasy Origin is intriguing enough to balance my mixed feelings on Babylon’s Fall. Anyway, today’s E3 festivities are far from over, as we still have two showcases left today! Stay tuned!

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