The After Years: Who Saw It Coming?

As a member of a Final Fantasy forum, you might suspect that I would be on top of new releases or hear about games when they are in production.

Back in 2008, I remember feeling like The After Years was released out of nowhere. I don't remember there being any big announcement for it. I don't recall any trailers or hype leading up to it. One day, it was just out and people were talking about it. It also seemed random because nine times out of ten I hear requests for a sequel to one of the PlayStation titles, so this seemed like a game that no one asked for.

Was I just out of the loop at that time? Was it because the game started as an episodic mobile title and it was a silent port? I don't know.

Was anyone else blindsided by this release in the west?

Sequels like X-2 and XIII-2 were always front and center in gaming news for me, so this one felt like it flew under the radar for some reason.

After Years was first released outside of Japan as a WiiWare port right? I think I first started hearing about it just from reviews when it first appeared on the Wii. I could be misremembering, but I almost feel like it didn’t get a lot of fanfare before that point because I also generally kept up to date on final fantasy news.

I knew it was coming because I read about the game before hand and somehow heard about it. I remember being hyped at the time and enjoying certain aspects of it. I played most of it but didn't finish it because I had already looked stuff up about the game because when I first read about it I figured it would never come here since it was a cell phone Japanese exclusive game. So I read up on the plot and looked up screen caps.

I might get around to beating the PSP or 3D version some day. It has interesting ideas, and as a huge FFIV fan, it is generally interesting to see how that world is doing after 17 years went by. Only thing is there is too many sequences that pay homage too hard to the original. The game is worth it for the Mysterious Woman battle music. That song has a intense terror vibe to it. It's great!

I have a few news sources that helped me find out about it pretty early. I remember being annoyed it was a mobile title initially because mobile gaming still hadn't really started over here. I was pretty happy when it was finally ported to the Wii Virtual Console. I still have mixed feelings about the game, but maybe I just need to give it another shot.

Did I see a sequel to FFIV coming? Not really. I knew Square was getting into doing sequels for their newer FFs, but I didn't expect them to go full Disney......and they didn't really because they never made sequels for FFV, FFVI, etc., but nevermind that.

Oh you just mean was it on my radar before it got released in the West? Also, not really. I probably didn't know about it until years later, actually.

For anyone who has played through the After Years/Intermission - how does it hold up? I played a bit of the Wiiware version and 2 seconds of the PSP Intermission - the former was decent (except for Cecil's lame kid) but the Intermission just struck me as weirdly off at the time. Is the characterization decent? Is it just a rehash with (SPOILER)evil Cecil or is the world's lore expanded at all?

The lore definitely gets explained. Though many events are still retreads of the original story. Overall, I enjoyed the After Years, derivative though it was, while the Intermission was just plain dumb.

I didn't really care for the new lore added into the game. I'm not a huge fan of the Creator and its henchwoman villains. There were some clever shout outs to the original lore that I appreciated like the new mountain dungeon you had to climb that was created from Rydia summoning Titan on Cecil and Kain in the original.

I actually liked most of the new characters, but I felt the game did most of them a disservice by allowing the original cast to stay prominent in the plot and I ultimately found myself using more of the older cast than the new one outside of their specific story chapters.

Overall, I felt it was a decent sequel, but completely unnecessary to the narrative.