FF XII Re-make, New RPG Announced By Square/Enix

Yesterday was Square/Enix's annual media party, and there were a couple of interesting announcements. Game|Life's Chris Kohler was there, and reports on the most interesting announcement: a Final Fantasy XII re-envisioning entitled International: Zodiac Job System. The title will feature the same story, a further-refined combat system, and a series of 12 separate license boards. Each board corresponds to a traditional FF 'job', like Monk or Red Mage; at the moment there is no plan to release it in the states. Other announcements include word that Star Ocean will get the remake treatment, with the first two games coming to the PSP sometime in the future. They are also working on a next-gen Star Ocean 4; no details about that. Crystal Chronicles for the DS drops in August in Japan, no US release date was given. Finally, screenshots and videos of The Last Remnant capped off the event; we talked about the game earlier this week when it was announced.

FFXII "remake"

[hansamurai]

I don't think remake is the right word for the new FFXII release. Many Square games have been re-released with changes in the Japanese and European markets (but generally for the European release it's the first release).

For example, FFX was re-released in Japan as "Final Fantasy X International". For the re-release they added some extra bosses, a secret ending, and the coolest thing was the new sphere grid. This is basically what they're doing with the new license boards in FFXII, so I'm honestly not surprised that they're doing this. This FFX International was the only game that PAL territories got.

They also did a FF7 International because for the American release of the game, they added some more bosses (I think Ruby Weapon and another super boss). So then they re-released the game in Japan again with these new enemies and maybe some other changes.

Anyways, I don't think we'll see this game in the U.S., or in Europe as they've already gotten the original game. With the Western releases they added 16x9 widescreen which is something TFA is touting as new. The only real new thing is the new license boards, which are basically used for leveling up your characters and giving them abilities and magic.

Re:Star Ocean remake?

[rpguy]

Square-Enix doesn't like the idea of the Virtual Console [1up.com], apparently. They'd rather port or remake older titles to card or disc and collect $40-$50, instead of settling for a "mere" $5.00 to $8.00 for digitally distributed product. It's hard to blame the execs, since Square-Enix can easily crap in a box and sell a million copies of anything with "Final Fantasy," "Dragon Quest," or "Kingdom Hearts" in the title. They've simply trained their fandrones too well.