It’s exactly because the arcade version was amazing that I can’t, lol.

Sometimes I’m ok with visual updates (and I don’t even mind the look of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends much), but something’s just off here. Bub’s just too upright/tall? for one thing.

Roguelite gameplay is a natural fit here but I just can’t with this art style. 😔

I don’t think he’s particularly strident here or anything in Japanese, but the headline here would have been better off sticking with the machine translated “nothing has changed” in the article.

There isn’t any optimism in Matsuno’s words here. I would have added “as always” to “economic disparity remains the same” and “again” to his comments about armed conflicts. He sounds tired of the cycle.

Tactics Ogre was also partly inspired by the genocidal conflict in the Balkans. I wish Matsuno was getting new projects like this.

New engine, new gameplay style, new [licensed] IP. Lots of variables. Owlcat’s exploded in size recently but I can’t quite tell yet if this is their big swing like BG3 was for Larian.

I’m also confident the writing will be competent, and Ty and Daniel have have a good track record of being available to assist on adaptations. I just hope I like the player characters more this time around. I didn’t quite click with anyone in the Pathfinder games (haven’t tried Rogue Trader yet).

Once bitten, twice shy. They’ve had really mixed results doing this with the brand in the past, and their current corporate strategy suggests it’s not happening again anytime soon.

I think the Bravely series is the closest to that we’ll be in these times, although it’s not even clear at this point if that series is continuing or not.

Final Fantasy X was also the first pure turn-based game in the mainline series since 1990.

I keep hearing people cite Final Fantasy nostalgia with Expedition 33, but pure turn-based combat with realistic graphics happened exactly once in all of Final Fantasy. I don’t get it. Pure turn-based is much more of a thing in the rest of the genre, including SQEX’s other properties.

The writing was already on the wall following the massive successes of Persona 5 and Honkai Star Rail. Expedition 33 had its moment in the zeitgeist, but at this time it’s not clear it will be the massive revenue generator those games are. And that’s the goal for mainline FF.

That said, SQEX has been very internally-driven for a while now, and their major teams get more excited about developing games with action elements. I’d be very surprised if FF17 returned to turn-based for that reason alone.

I think it has some good qualities, especially the soundtrack and shifting boss sprites.

conventional wisdom does not apply

All the more reason why it’s far too early to draw any conclusions.

It’s too early to draw any conclusions. Take it from Mat Piscatella, who’s forgotten more about video game market research than I ever learned myself.

Hardware launches are not like game releases, anyway. It’s the establishment of a new product market, and early game releases on consoles have an ebb and flow to them that later blockbusters do not. It’s about building growth, not first-week sales.

I’d be annoyed if this got delayed only because of the Switch 2 port, but Falcom really does need this to be on as many platforms as it can get.

Besides, I’m sure NISA’s happy with the extra time considering the rate they’ve been churning these out.

For story, nothing is lost here (and it arguably flows a bit better without the new stuff).

For gameplay, this kinda sucks. Luso and Onion Knight weren’t anything special, but Balthier’s job class was interesting and Dark Knight was a fun goal to grind towards with a big payoff at the end. Agrias’ birthday event had an item that was great for Geomancers, too, and that’s one of my pet jobs. Since they aren’t adding new battles, this also means the game is shipping with nine fewer battles, not even including the cut multiplayer content. My biggest complaint with FFT was always that the side content was thin, and this is really not helping.

That said, what this article doesn’t mention is that they are still including the animated scenes from WotL, though it sounds like they won’t be in the main story, just additional content in menus. Plus, a lot of the WotL improvements over the base game (bug fixes and upgrading the script, some nice job tweaks) are already in the scope of this project anyway, and it appears it won’t have the negatives, like the slowdown bug, the bad sound, or the weirdly stretched aspect ratio.

You’re not going to find more text/explicit plot than you have already. That said, there is good environmental storytelling in the last zone of the game. The next zone for you (Wrecked Ship) might have a little more for you to chew on. I’d say get through that zone and then see how you feel about it. If you like it, the ending will probably feel rewarding.