Square Enix have officially announced the release date for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, it’s being globally unleashed on August 27th. They’ve also revealed how much the subscription fee will siphon from your wallets: £7.69 and $10.99 respectively. Other confirmed details include an early access for pre-orders, as well as collectors edition.
Square Enix announced yesterday that they’re working on an HD release of Final Fantasy 8 for the PC. While a release date and the addition of any fancy extras have yet to be announced, the HD spruce up is itself enough of a tempter to have me picking up a copy.
Square Enix have sent along a new batch of screenshots of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn in preparation for the next round of closed beta testing next month. The images show off some of the sights of Eorzea.
Particular highlights are the large floating crystals which act as teleportation hubs between locations in the game and what looks like large statues of pointing children. Don't be deceived, those children are actually Lalafells, the dwarven race that populates Final Fantasy XIV.
Reborn is the right word. Final Fantasy XIV has always been a difficult game; an MMO built for Final Fantasy fans and players, it was roundly kicked in the face by both critics and its community before being taken offline late last year. Square Enix promised to have a second try.
That second try is currently in development, but available to play via a heavily NDA’d beta. I’ve been playing the game during the beta, and at various events, and am happy to say there are good things coming. Final Fantasy XIV is getting better: much better. Here are some highlights from last weekend’s phase two beta.
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Each weekend of April will see groups of excited Final Fantasy fans will be lead through a closed beta of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. On show during the event are the forests around the city of Gridania and the addition of personal Chocobo mounts. I’m not au fair with the Final Fantasy games and so am going to go ahead and assume they’re a sort of chocolate rococo rocking horse.
I’m close, right? I can feel it.
Squeenix’s second ever stab at an in-house MMO stumbled embarrassingly out of their front door two years ago wearing its pants on its head, looking and smelling like an unmitigated disaster. But given everything we know about Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, there’s plenty to be optimistic about - between a new client, graphics engine, server and data structures, newly redesigned maps and a reassembled interface, this is an entirely new game, built by an almost entirely new team who know the genre, warts and all.To say that FFXIV had a troublesome launch is an understatement. Upon release in 2010, every single aspect of Squeenix’s MMO was broken. It was a disaster. Since then, the original development team has been rehauled and now, after 3 years of rebuilding this sinking ship, FFXIV has emerged as A Realm Reborn. But how far do the improvements go?
I recently attended a hands-on session and returned to Eorzea to see for myself. I also interrogated new producer/director Naoki Yoshida as to just what the hell happened. Here’s what I found out.
It’s official: Skyrim’s mighty soundtrack is now the 238th most popular classical work ever, or that’s at least according to a Classic FM listeners’ poll. It’s an impressive achievement for a video game soundtrack, but it almost pales in comparison to the success achieved by Aerith's Theme, from Final Fantasy 7, which climbed all the way into the top 20 and settled into 16th place.
The British radio station asked its listeners to submit their three favourite pieces of classical music, new or old, and a campaign by games industry PR Mark Robins (who runs this Facebook page) helped put video game music in the Hall of Fame alongside the likes of Mozart and Mealor.
Final Fantasy 7's PC release has hit Square Enix's virtual storefront and it comes bearing sparkly things, like achievements and cloud saves. Though there's another feature which may cause diehard fans to grumble and new players to rejoice.
This weekend the PC re-release of console darling Final Fantasy VII went on sale. Hooray? No. In the first known instance of the polar opposite of hooray, Final Fantasy VII was released accidentally, and early purchasers were met with faulty serial numbers which left them unable to play the game. Square Enix has promised refunds and a free copy of the game to all those affected.
That Final Fantasy VII re-release we mentioned has just been officially announced by Square Enix, which means we can finally make that 'Cloud Saves' pun we shamefully overlooked the first time around.
You might not remember, but Square's ancient RPG Final Fantasy VII was actually released on the PC in 1998: Square Enix are banking on you not having a copy, as they've been caught sneakily preparing for a re-release.
