Square-Enix Has Me Hyped

It's been a week y'all. Sorry I didn't get reviews up this weekend, but I have family in town and there weren't any comics I particularly wanted to write about. Young Justice is still pretty, but the first arc ends mildly anticlimacticly. Black Cat was bad all around. But that’s not what we’re here for. I watched one E3 press conference this weekend because it was the only I had any interest in: Square-Enix. It was a fantastic conference with several exciting announcements.

First up was Final Fantasy VII Remake. This game looks amazing. The graphics are stunning. I can’t believe it. It might be the best looking video game I’ve ever seen. But graphics aren’t everything FFVIIR appears to have the gameplay goods. The original FFVII had one of my least favorite combat systems ever. ATB (Active Time Battle) was boring in every iteration it ever had. Even Final Fantasy XIII's weakest aspect of it’s gameplay is waiting for the bar to fill up. FFVIIR appears to be taking all the good things from Kingdom Hearts (Tetsuya Nomura is at the head of both games btw) and merging it with Final Fantasy VII. Allowing me to play the game while the ATB bar charges is a very good idea. Once it’s full, you can enter a borderline turn-based mode before going back to the normal gameplay. It just seems so smart.

My only concern is that this is the first game in a series that will remake FFVII. That means this installment will be the opening Midgard section of the original game. And it is apparently going to be a multidisc game. In 2019. For PS4. That’s a very big game to be based on the first section of another game. So, we’ll see what comes of that. But I’m excited. I don’t even like FFVII, but this game looks good and I’ll follow Nomura wherever he takes me. Can’t wait for March.

Next up is Kingdom Hearts 3: ReMIND. I’m so excited for this DLC that I’m not sure what to do with myself. First of all, it looks like you can play as Riku and Aqua in more instances and Roxas for the first time in KH3. Hype. Beyond that, there’s the real meat of Kingdom Hearts: The story. Looks like this will delve into Master Xehanort's backstory which is something it felt like they wanted to do in the base game, but ran out of time. It also shows that Xehanort’s got the black cloaks from either Luxu (my bet) or the Master of Masters (the other option). And one of my favorite things about this series is when they explain stuff that didn’t need to be said outright. Also some more stuff Luxord, who I like quite a bit and we don’t seem to be done with quite yet. This trailer isn’t exactly clear on what will be in the DLC, but I’m still hyped.

And finally, we reach Marvel’s Avengers. I’ll just be straight with you: This game looks bad. The graphics look subpar, the characters look like people wearing Halloween costumes of the Avengers, and what little gameplay we saw looks pretty generic. They also chose the most boring and vanilla cast possible. Who cares about Black Widow? Has she ever been an interesting character in any medium? Where are Spider-Woman and Black Knight? Hell, where’s Hawkeye? I do have some hope for this game because Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal are good at their jobs. And the fact that it’s a live service game means that as long as the basics are solid, the game can be improved whether or not it is good at launch. I’ll be watching this game closely, but it definitely won’t be a day one purchase for me.