Final Fantasy XIV Massive Fail, FF13 Double Fail

It's been nice being a fan for all these years, Square-kun, but enough is enough. Ever since the Final Fantasy XIV open beta began with an epic cluster-fudge earlier this month - or even years before that, some would say - it's becoming harder and harder to remain a fan of the once-glorious Final Fantasy franchise. And that's putting it mildly.



As far as I'm concerned, the thing that finally tipped the balance, all the way down to raging bitterness, was the massively failed interface of FF14. It may sound frivolous, but when you couple it with the terrible interface-lag (hello hardware mouse!?), plus the performance-lag (even on the lowest settings), and naturally the server-lag, the game quickly becomes unplayable for more than five minutes at a time - unless you're willing to risk your mental health. And I somehow doubt that all these problems will be fixed in time for the public launch at the end of this month.

And don't even get me started with the combat and chat systems! From an MMO standpoint, those are quite simply beyond repair... But eh, I guess that's what you're bound to get, when you have a bunch of devs who automatically assume that everyone has a gamepad plugged into their PC. Will this be a good MMO when it's released on the PS3 next year? Absolutely. Does it look great? Sure, if you don't mind all the slack copy-pasta. Are the miqo'te the hawtest race ever? Pretty much, yes, right there with the mithra from Final Fantaxy XI.

Basically, if all you want to do is sit back and relax in a nice-looking online game, go for it. But if you have even the slightest intention to pewpew (for more than 8 hours a week, at that), don't. Just... don't.

Now, about Final Fantasy XIII, there's some good news and some bad news. Although the so-called "good news" seems to be having quite the opposite effect in Japan. First, the decidedly-bad news is that there will be no DLC for FF13, contrary to earlier promises made by Square Enix. The story was reportedly leaked from the next issue of Famitsu, with the following comment allegedly made by developer Toriyama.

"We were planning to make DLC for it, but those plans disappeared... Sorry!"

What little sincerity may have transpired from this statement is immediately blown away by the second news related to FF13, which was also confirmed today. Likewise breaking its earlier promise that the game would be a PS3 exclusive in Japan, Square Enix has now officially announced an Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII in Japan, set for a December 16, 2010 release there. To make matters even worse, this Xbox 360 version will cost only half of the PS3 version's initial price, and it will include a previously-unavailable "Easy Mode".

A fair assumption one could make, given this double failure, is that Square Enix never really intended to keep the game exclusive to the PlayStation 3 in Japan, nor did it ever plan to release any additional DLC for it. Regardless of this being true or not, feelings of betrayal are washing down over fans like a bloody tsunami. Especially over Japanese fans, some of who were mislead into buying a PS3 for this game in particular, and to refrain from reselling it at second-hand, in the hopes of some future downloadable content.

Death threats aimed at Yoichi Wada (Square Enix president and CEO) have already ensued. So they're gonna have to pull some really big stunt at next week's Tokyo Game Show, to turn things back in their favor. Among their plans for the show, by the way, is to have a playable version of Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360 (teh lulz), but more importantly they will reveal Tetsuya Nomura's new - and so far unannounced - game. Oh, and a sequel to Dissidia Final Fantasy is also beeing revealed today by the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. It's said to be titled Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy, with a 2011 release for the PSP attached.