I was fortunate enough to attend E3 again this year and of course, unlike most others who attended E3, I spent 90% of the time stading around the Square-Enix area absorbing everything they had to offer me. Since I was there for hours and saw and did everything they had available I figured I would write this up to give an overview of it all.
The games they actually had available to be played in kiosks included: Radiata Stories, Kingdom Hearts 2, Romancing SaGa, Fullmetal Alchemist 2, and Dragon Quest VIII. Their new line of Mobile entertainment games were also available to be seen and played I believe including Hexcite, Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding, and Musashi: Mobile Samurai.
Unfortunately, since I try to play the demos in their entirety, I was only able to fully check out and report on Kingdom Hearts 2 and Romancing SaGa.
Kingdom Hearts fans will be happy to know the game is in feel very similar to the original except expanded, the combos you unleash by mashing the attack button on the ground or in the air feel impressive and long compared to the original and they have added a nice feature where you can press triangle to perform attacks that randomly pop up as sort of "opportunity attacks" to take advantage of where enemies are standing or doing at any given time. It adds a whole new level to the combat system and was very enjoyable to do.
On the demo there were four options:
- Mulan level boss battle
- Mulan level mission battle
- Olympia colluseam boss battle
- Olympia colluseam mission battle
In the Mulan levels you obviously had Mulan as your guest party member and in Olympia you had Auron! Auron's special allows Sora to perform his Auron's Limit Breaks from Final Fantasy X together with him in rapid succession by pressing the triangle button at the correct times, similar to the way moves like Ragnarok worked in the original. The olympia level was not just a duplicate from the original, but instead the underground passages of the colluseam which was all new and fresh. The bosses under Olympia were Hades and Cerberus who you both got to fight with Auron on your team which was both nostalgic and exciting.
Romancing Saga seemed incredibly slow paced for my liking, but being a fan of the SaGa series I played through a good deal of what the demo had to offer. The menus were still in Japanese so I couldn't delve too deeply into anything really except the gameplay which I spent most time just walking around my superdeformed character looking for a battle. I actually couldn't find one.... Fortunately I got kind of bored but noticed that on another kiosk the characters were in a different scene where they were in a battle. The battles were very reminicient of the first SaGa game on PS1 which was very enjoyable for me and brought back nice memories of what is probably my favorite game in the series. The graphics are very original in style but actually ended up looking rather bland, don't get me wrong, it doesn't look awful, but I preferred the way Sketch Motion was implemented in Unlimited SaGa. Fans of the series might find this game enjoyable and I'll probably pick it up myself when it comes out but I don't think Romancing SaGa is going to gain the series too many new fans.
On the west and east sides of the kiosks were the Final Fantasy XI section and the Mobile Gaming section, most importantly the Final Fantasy XI side-
They had brought back Eric from last year (and probably the year before) to kind of host one of the main courses of the Square-Enix area which was located in the middle of surrounding Final Fantasy XI sit-down kiosks. Throughout the day Eric was announcing and giving away prizes for correct answers to Final Fantasy XI trivia and also the Boss Battle Bash which took the place of the Ballista tournament of last year. The boss battle bash basically consisted of Final Fantasy XI players forming parties of generated characters to face off against bosses from Final Fantasy XI and the expansions for prizes ranging from the Final Fantasy XI Atlas to the incredible top-of-the-line Intel motherboard+processor combo prize for each other members of the party. A battle took place every hour on the hour and was enjoyable to sit around and watch like a sports fan at a bar watching the superbowl, except way geekier.
The prizes given away from Trivia, all of which I won at least 1 of included: Final Fantasy XI mousepads, Final Fantasy XI shirts (Tarutaru /laugh design, san d'orian pride, galkan smash, etc.), Dear Friends concert programs, Final Fantasy XI atlases, copies of Final Fantasy XI for PC and Playstation 2, copies of Final Fantasy XI: Chains of Promathia for PC and Playstation 2, Tickets to the instantly out-of-stock main theatre show, and Square-Enix PS2 games (Star Ocean, Musashi Samurai Legend, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Front Mission 4, Fullmetal Alchemist, etc.)
Also on this side of the showfloor were 6 beautiful booth girls dressed in full mithra attire from Final Fantasy XI available to take pictures with. At one point in the day they even had a member of the staff line up people to take pictures with the girls and print them on the spot with a cardboard Final Fantasy XI frame for absolutely free. (I will post my picture as soon as I get to a scanner)
Finally, the main event of the Square-Enix floor was located right in the middle, a large horizontally long theatre playing the latest and longest exclusive trailers from their upcoming titles. Only a half hour after the floor opened the tickets were already gone for the entire day but I was lucky enough to win a 2:00 PM ticket from answering some Final Fantasy XI trivia. Inside the theatre they showed the trailers for most of the games on the showfloor and even Final Fantasy XII which didn't make the floor this year (I suspect they're changing the battle system because too many people complained -_-; I surely hope not.) The feature of the theatre seemed to be the 'Compiliation of Final Fantasy VII' which was trailer after trailer of the accompanying titles of Final Fantasy VII including Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, Before Crisis, and even Crisis Core! Speaking of which, the Crisis Core trailer was very ambiguous as to what the game even is since the entire trailer was an anime sequence. What the trailer DID show was that the game (or whatever it is) seems to focus on the Cloud/Zack/Sephiroth story that occured around the time of the Nibelheim reactor sequence. As non-conclusive as the trailer was, it looked beautiful and amazing. It's sure to be another great title.
Well that's pretty much all I can think of for now, if anyone has any questions or anything to add about the Square-Enix showfloor of E3 2005 please feel free to post/ask. Sorry if this seemed garbled or incomprehensible as there was just so much to talk about and the fact that I'm exploding with excitement for all of the upcoming titles even sitting here typing about them. Hope this has been mildly informative.
