Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 and Harvestella lead an onslaught of fall games from Square Enix

Reeling from pandemic production issues — and, perhaps, a gradual shift toward more sustainable working practices — the video game industry is well into a product drought. We are now facing a lackluster release schedule for fall and the final months of 2018, with very few major titles and exclusives from platforms that typically grace the seasons. Late 2022 seems to be a very quiet period for video games.

Square Enix was not told.

A revered Japanese publisher, the venerable Japanese publisher, has You can stack Schedule of releases. Between mid-September and mid-December it is releasing no less than nine games — and as many as 12, if you count the PC version of Triangle StrategyThe It’s Strange What Life Has to Offer Arcadia Bay Collection on Switch, and the strange mobile compendium-remake-thing Final Fantasy 7 Ever CrisisBeta testing of the product is planned for next year.

This lineup does not include any major releases, although there are a lot of remakes and reissues as well as some smaller spinoffs or genre experiments. But you couldn’t call it modest, either; there’s ambition and breadth here, as well as daunting, exhaustive length — most of these games offer some kind of variation on a JRPG template, and are not shy of slow buildups or sprawling run times.

The games together paint an image of a publisher that has let go of trying to be a global monolith after selling its Western studios, properties like Deus Ex, Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider, and instead embraces its Japanese identity while it enjoys a surge in anime popularity and increased JRPG content via Steam and Switch. Many of these titles would not have been released in the West even if they were available for download.

Square Enix provided this line-up at their London event, complete with counters that dispense Japanese snacks and fake cherry trees. Romancing SaGa Minstrel SongA more anticipated and highly-anticipated remake of the classic tactical RPG. Reborn: Tactics Ogre. JRPGs were not designed to be sampled in demos of half an hour on the show floor. However, I was able to try out all of them. These are the results.

The DioField Chronicle

Image: Lancarse/Square Enix

Square Enix’s most original genre experiment was perhaps the best, The DioField ChronicleThe traditional tactical RPG-format is exemplified here Tactics OgreIt removes both the turn-based and movement grid actions, making the game more single-player. League of Legends Or a more hero-focused, real-time strategy video game. It’s busy in a good way, but the storytelling is staid and the mission hub appears to have been made on a shoestring budget. The demo gave me a better view of it.

The DioField ChronicleIt is available now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as well as Windows PCs, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One.

Valkyrie Elysium

Image: Soleil/Square Enix

The most enjoyable demo game. Valkyrie Elysium is a loose successor to the Valkyrie Profile series — loose because it turns the Norse mythology-inspired yarn from a hybrid platformer-RPG into an action-RPG with the emphasis firmly on fluid, Bayonetta-style action. The name of the game is keeping your valkyrie’s combo strings going while summoning einherjar — spirits of dead warriors waiting for Ragnarok — to assist you and exploit enemies’ elemental weaknesses. It’s a sparse production full of empty landscapes, but it plays well where it counts.

Valkyrie Elysium It will be made available for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 users on Sept. 29, with an additional Windows PC version expected to follow on Nov. 11.

Nier: Automata – The End of YoRHa Edition

Image by PlatinumGames/Square Enix

Undoubtedly the best game in this glut of releases, but also the best-known quantity, is this Switch release of Yoko Taro and Platinum’s 2017 cult hit. Just having the game in portable form is a joy, and this edition leans hard into the game’s fan following with exclusive costumes and a completist approach to content.

Nier: Automata – The End of YoRHa EditionNintendo Switch will release it on October 6, 2018.

Star Ocean – The Divine Force

Image by tri-Ace/Square Enix

Reboots are less frequent than Valkyrie Elysium, the sixth Star Ocean game exists on a continuum with all its predecessors — and shares the same developer, tri-Ace. It continues the sci-fi RPG series’ steady drift into action territory, with large, open environments to explore and a lot of elevation to boot. There’s a gimmick, and a pretty good one: DUMA, a hovering droid that assists all four party members by bringing an aerial dimension to both exploration and combat. “Blindside” surprise attacks and DUMA-powered Vanguard Assaults bring an intriguing emphasis on positioning to the combat. The game is also handsome enough, but don’t look too hard at the characters’ immobile PS3-era faces, or listen too hard to the nonsense dialogue (“That’s just semiomancy!”)

Star Ocean – The Divine ForceOn October 27, the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox One will release their new games.

Harvestella

Square Enix

This is not the same as the delicate blend of styles found in something like The DioField Chronicle, Harvestella takes the no-brainer, Frankenstein’s monster approach to genre mashup: What if we just bolted these two things together? Harvestella This is both a farm life simulation at home and an adventure-RPG outside. Both are interconnected in a satisfying way. Head out to dangerous fields and harvest material to build equipment for your farm. Visually, it’s surprisingly lush, and narratively, it’s surprisingly dense. It is also available in Harvestella’s world, the natural cycle of the four seasons is interrupted by a time of death known as Quietus, caused by dust from the Seaslight, a huge, fronded crystal that dominates the landscape. Omen, artificial beings that are known to be humanoid creatures, also play a role in the story. A protagonist who is amnesiac finds himself in the middle of all this chaos is called Omen.

Harvestella doesn’t seem to be a very sophisticated example of either genre, but it just works — the two flavors go together like salt and caramel. The sim is a strong contender to make it stand out in the current crop of farming simulations.

Harvestella Nintendo Switch, Windows PC and Windows PC versions will be available Nov. 4.

Dragon Quest Treasures

Image by Tose/Square Enix

I’m a little reluctant to pass judgment on a shortish demo of a lite JRPG that is obviously taking pains to introduce itself slowly to young players — but Dragon Quest TreasuresIt does not appear to meet the standards of Dragon Quest 11The very charming (to which it seems to be a prequel about Erik and Mia’s childhoods) Dragon Quest BuildersThe sequel. Tose is an outsourcing company that developed it. It comes across as a dull and uninspired attempt to create a treasure-hunting, colorful adventure for all ages from the margins. This game has the most severe symptoms, which have affected every other one: it suffers from a lot of text and awkward transitions between storyline and gameplay. It also lacks momentum. Perhaps it will get better in the future.

Dragon Quest TreasuresNintendo Switch, Dec. 9, will have it available.

Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core

Image by Tose/Square Enix

With its Final Fantasy branding and, judging by its slick presentation, relatively lavish budget, this is probably Square Enix’s biggest bet of the season. But it’s also one of the oddest. As a remake of a 2007 PlayStation Portable game — a prequel to Final Fantasy 7 from the perspective of a SOLDIER operative — it varnishes its humble origins with slick graphics, handsome character models and full voice acting. But structurally, it can’t disguise those origins at all. It’s still a narrow, scripted action-RPG set in tightly constrained environments; there’s a fadeout and a jump to a battle arena every time you enter combat, and the pre-rendered video sequences are noticeably lo-fi. In those senses, it’s very dated. But in the context of 2007, the combat itself was ahead of its time — at least within the Final Fantasy series, in the way it puts the player in immediate command of so many iconic spells and abilities in a free-flowing and well-sorted action game. It’s the past and future of Final Fantasy in one contradictory package.

Final Fantasy 7: Crisis CoreOn December 13, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 will launch, as well as PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.

It could be an unfortunate scheduling error to have such a large number of publications from one publisher. The publisher might just be trying to assert and redefine itself after the Western business was sold. It could also be an indication that Square Enix is padding its global calendar with products it no longer offers, such as niche-only Japanese products.

It is not as important for Square Enix’s future as major 2023 releases such as The Forspoken And Final Fantasy 16Will be. This is a great example of a publisher doing something others, especially Western, don’t do. Rereleasing and remastering past hits to keep brands alive is not unusual, but making so many small bets — as opposed to one or two giant ones — certainly is. Square Enix offers modest budgets both to internal and external developers for many different purposes. This includes experimentation, creation of unique new properties, and other creative endeavors.Harvestella And DioField), brand extension (Dragon Quest Treasures), maintenance of long-running mid-tier series (Star Ocean) or reinvigoration of dormant ones (Valkyrie Elysium).

It’s no surprise that the original experiments here are the most engaging games off the bat, but the bigger picture is one of a publisher that’s willing to keep small but ardent fan bases happy. The lesson from the slow-burn success of Capcom’s Monster Hunter and Sega’s Like a Dragon (aka Yakuza) is that this can pay off handsomely in the long term. What about the immediate term? At least, thanks to Square Enix, we’ve got something to play this winter.