I miss when square-enix was just squaresoft, it's like everything sucks since they joined with Enix

I whole-heartedly agree.

Enix was the worst thing to happen to Squaresoft. A close second being The Spirits Within.

Squaresoft made some of the most revolutionary games since like 1995 (dont quote me on the exact date) I miss them, the products they came out with were good and never had problems.

To be fair, Enix used to be a pretty good company, too.

However, they were also each others' largest competitors. Combining made them the de facto monopoly of console RPGs, and their recent games reflect this (See: Final Fantasy 13, Final Fantasy 14).

Square Enix pissed me off with one thing - they hyped up The World Ends With You crowd, hinting there might be a second game...


...second game turned out to be an iOS port of the first game with 20% of the DS game features cut out.

What the fuck?

Ugh...that was awful. I was getting pretty excited for a sequel and then all they give us is a sub-par port? Why even hype that waste of time up at all....

Wow. :|

You know, I wouldn't have believed this a few years ago, but that was before they released Final Fantasy 14.

Take a screen shot of the pm. Great evidence for.. well any number of gaming news sites and.. i dunno, the better business bureau?

but yeah, Square has been floundering for years since they've been putting out lemon after lemon with a lot of the franchises and trying to milk everything they can out of spin offs.

Dragon Quest seems to be the only thing they can do decently anymore and even then they're fucking it up trying to put out a lame Wii MMO.

Eh, i don't think the gaming media gives a shit about HoR, they were interested, then it turned out to be a really halfassed game. On top of that, they didn't specifically say that i can't talk about that bug, all they did was link me to threads where i discussed it and say i violated the "No Slam Posting" TOS rule. Their examples of a slam post were comments like "THis game sucks" or "This is the worst game/studio ever." That's hardly the same as "Hey square, your game is broken for months now, are you doing anything about it? Why aren't you acknowledging it?"

I'm pretty sure the game was rightly a miserable flop, that's punishment enough.

Sad part is, Dragon Quest was originally an Enix property, and one of its only good ones. Even the DQ series was crap between 5 until 8, and it never kept up with better RPGs. >_>

Was it? I loved 5 and 6, they're some of the better SNES RPGs out there. 7 is the only one I haven't managed to play

I took a few nudges at 5 and 6. They were okay. I loved 3 and 4, regardless of graphical simplicity. :)

7.. was crap. I don't usually quit an RPG, especially right near the end, but I just gave up on DQ7. The class system was poor for an RPG made after so many better ideas had come along, and the world was full of bathroom humor, in every damn town. >_< Wasn't too keen on DQ8's "hidden agenda leveling", where I put points into things and had no idea what I would get. I wrote the series off since then..

Which is possibly regretable, expect I haven't had time for the games I DO have. =P

I'd try out 9. It doesn't have any indepth over arching story but it's a lot of fun and I really liked the class system in it. It felt like a good throwback to the old DQ games without feeling old and stale.

Square Enix has been dead to me for years now. Listening to this I'm so glad I got off the boat when I did.
Also,
> implying anything SE releases can be fun anymore

I dunno, i don't like rpgs so hardly anything they release is ever on my radar.

The one thing from them i've always loved is the final fantasy crystal chronicles games and i was hoping this would tide me over till they release another one on a nintendo handheld. Well it didn't lol.

It's weird, they released FFcc echoes of time, a 4 player online co op dungeon crawler hack and slash on ds a couple years ago and it was absolutely incredible. Then they release this turd and literally everything about it is so wack. The loot aspect is even useless becuase the game is so fucking easy you could probably just walk through it blindfolded mashing the attack button and beat any part of it other than the last boss.

The online setup which was frankly amazing seemed to be the one thing they got right and it turns out if you use it it BREAKS THE GAME lol.

Eh. I love RPGs and still most things they publish are on my radar, dude ;)

I know! I had a blast with EOT (though I never finished it) even with it being so different from the original Gamecube release. Pisses me off that they'd just abandon that IP, when it genuinely has so much potential. Just the lore of the FFCC universe was fascinating to me.

Like I said below, SE is a publisher, and can't really be blamed for bad development decisions. But the scenario you're describing is definitely a classic example of awful publishers doing awful things - and getting away with it. I kind of want to suggest you demand a refund, really, but I would try my hardest to get the word out further about how awful they're being.

Shushhh, we're bashing SE here.

Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the modern Kingdom Hearts titles (like 358/2 and Dream Drop Distance)...

I dunno; most of those titles sound pretty fun and were pretty well received.

I'm being facetious. I severely like Square Enix for many of their company policies, especially many of their poor decisions in their own development studios. Actions like what Arjuna described above leave a terrible taste in my mouth, and Square But any publisher typically publishes decent games - even EA owns Mass Effect -they find what they think will sell, fund and distribute. I recognize bad development decisions can't really be blamed on a publisher most of the time, so a bad game should hardly count against them. Up above we see a clear problem in the support and marketing area, which is definitely SE's sector, and again why I will not tolerate their games anymore.

Kingdom Hearts... aw, man. I'm not going to put this up and clog Arjuna's journal, dude. I'll send you a note.

Square-enix is a garbage company now. Absolute trash. Blizzard, Bioware, Square-enix.... all the big names that used to make superb games have simply decided not to give a fuck anymore. Sad thing is, many gamers are still gobbling down the putrid excrement they call games nowadays based on the reputations of old. With luck, those no longer deserved reputations will be tarnished beyond repair and these uncreative, uninspired dinosaurs of gaming's past will all go bankrupt.

I think that's a little ridiculous. Bioware has been great this gen. As for blizzard and square, i never play their games, only game from square i like is the final fantasy crystal chronicles series and most of the people i know that have it are loving diablo 3.

Sorry, but I disagree. Mass effect, Dragon age and SWtOR were all absolutely dreadful wastes of programming talent and space. (IMHO) Whilst blizzard bastardised the diablo franchise with 3. T-T

That's fine lol. At least with ME, you're in the vast vast vast vast minority. Just don't play them.

Yeah. That's for sure. xD

Diablo 3 sucked. Biggest disappointment in gaming i have ever experienced.

was it? I know the people that i know that played it complained about it but they also dumped like 200 hours into it in a month or two lol.

I didn't even like diablo 2 so i probably wouldn't like 3.

I think you're exaggerating; the issues with Blizzard's and Bioware's newer games aren't anywhere near this level of callous, uncaring douchebaggery and crap.

Squeenix are the worst of the three games wise, even though I dislike Dragon Age /Mass effect and the like, they do at least have some redeeming qualities, as does Blizzard's WoW and D3. All these companies, however, have a very similar, no fucks given attitude when it comes to their fanbase.


The big problem is money grubbing from all three. Whilst I don't begrudge a company making a profit, when it comes at the expense of their fanbase, I have a problem with it.


Online only...

DRM...

On-disk dlc...

Unfinished, untested betas released as full games.... and the list goes on. It's not simply these three companies, but the AAA gaming scene as a whole that needs a shakeup.

Well i support drm and i think the arguments against on disc dlc is pretty ridiculous, who cares where it comes from, it's dlc from the start, it's just easier to put it on a disc than a remote server.

As for not caring about their fan base, the fact that Bioware is releasing a whole new end section to ME3 simply because their fans hated the ending is a testament to how much they care about their fans. I can't speak of blizzard/squeenix since i don't really play their games. IF what i experienced with HoR is how squeenix treats all their consumers, then yeah, fuck them.

Also, i like AAA games, this is the best generation ever imo. I simply just don't buy the ones that suck and i've never been short of a huge list of titles i still want to play.

To be quite honest, to me, on disk DLC is a scam. I buy a game under faith that i'm getting everything on that disk. I've bought the disk and it's contents.. Or, if you want to get fancy, bought the license to use it. Then a game company turns around and says it used all this disk space for all this extra content but you still have to pay extra for it. If they have the time and inclination to put this content on the disk, that tells me that said content should have been included in the original price and available on purchase. In other words ,I've just been sold an incomplete game and they want to extort more money from me to complete it. This is exactly what on disk DLC feels like to me.


As to Bioware, their Mass effect ending was the biggest F.U. to their fans that I've ever seen. It made a mockery of everything that game series was supposed to represent. They were NOT going to change it, despite the screaming of the rightfully pissed off masses. Then , SWtOR basically nosedived , their fans began to desert them in droves and a number of them were even tossing around words like 'class action lawsuit' and suddenly Bioware (and the real culprit behind all this crap, EA) realize their bank accounts are in danger of hemorrhaging. BAM , reworked ending.


Also, let me clarify, it's not the AAA games themselves that are all bad, a number of them were very good, it's the main AAA distributors ( EA/Activision) that are choking the industry.

The internet has had a hand in the "Unfinished, untested betas released as full games...." portion of things.... They just drop something the very second its half passable, because "we'll just patch it later" comes into play. They want the cash to start flowing in as quickly as possible. So at the first second they have anything they can pass off as almost finish, its on a disk, or hosted up on a server, and shoved out the door. There are games released, with at least one, or more game breaking bugs, which are KNOWN to the designers. They intend to fix these issues with the first patch, but the patch wont be ready for another month... So you buy a game, and might as well not play it for a full month while it is being properly finished.

Exactly. It's just.. ridiculous.

Yeah, it kinda sounds like you're overdoing it there just a TAD.

Square lost me some time ago, but the other companies aren't doing SO bad. What annoys me is the companies aside from the one you've mentioned here aren't doing so GOOD in comparison. Until someone else steps up and challenges their work with something on a scale large enough to make people take some real notice...

It's down to the fact that pretty much all the once independent (and good) game companies were bought out by either EA or Activision and subsequently either run into the ground or forced to tow the new company line to the detriment of their old standards.

Of course they gobble it all up, the majority of gamers is still composed of the dregs of the proletariat and wouldn't recognize taste if it bit their dicks off.

xD Oh wow... I need to remember that.

and now you know to never touch another squarenix game.

If they release another FFcc online game on 3ds, i will have to buy it unfortunately. Short of that, yeah, fuck them.

to be fair n-Space is the people you should be complaining at; they're the developers.
Square Enix is simply a PUBLISHER.

Actually SE london developed it. I think both of them did but SE london sure got the majority of the credits.

also as far as online play goes I sorta put the blame on Nintendo.

I mean...Nintendo's "online" is really REALLY backwards compared to online gaming on the other platforms (XBL, PSN, Steam) ; lack of voice communication, the whole "Friend Code" system...

Nintendo's online mainframe feels really backwards compared to the other platforms and feels like the online platforms from a generation or two ago (PS2, Dreamcast)

Actually theres been plenty of games on ds and 3ds with all of those features. Devs can put in anything they want, theres voice chat in HoR. The fact few devs do put those features in is on them, not nintendo. This can't be blamed on nintendo, theres been plenty of online games on nintendo's handhelds that don't get broken if you play them online. This is just a game that was released in a broken state.

In all fairness, I think some of the "no voice chat" was done in order to keep things kid-friendly. I'm not particularly fond of hearing people fire off swear words faster than their gatling gun shoots, but at least in an M-rated shooter there shouldn't be any children in the room listening to it. However, that would be vastly inappropriate in a game like Mario Kart Wii, which carries and E-rating and could potentially have 10 year olds in the room.

That's not to say that there can't be voice chat associated with E-rated games, but Nintendo seems to be reluctant to add it to any game with a potential competitive online scene, like with Mario Kart games.

Wow damn that sucks.

Square Enix is a really schizophrenic company these days, I've noticed ... it's almost like anything that has to do with Square is awful while the Enix side still remains good, or something, though admittedly I haven't played any Dragon Quest games after VIII. But, I mean, their PSP port of Final Fantasy Tactics had that stupid slowdown thing that made it completely unplayable, yet their PSP port of Tactics Ogre is amazingly good and I seriously recommend it to everyone. That sort of thing.

I just hope they give us Kingdom Heart 3 before they go under.

The ONLY games by Square-Enix I like are Bushido Blade I and II.

Square-Enix has been a massive disappointment since the get go. They've only produced three games that I truly like. Kingdom Hearts 1&2 and Star Ocean: The Last Hope. And Kingdom Hearts has been milked to DEATH!!!

When playing Final Fantasy 10, I reached a point about halfway through the game (I think) where for no obvious reason, the monsters became twice as hard to kill and did twice as much damage as before... while being the same monsters I had just been fighting a few minutes ago. I had already been stressing a little over the whole Blitzball thing, and how I couldn't practice for it or play so well, and feeling vaguely unhappy with te characters and graphics.

At that point, without saving, I turned the game off and just... never felt any drive to play it again. I never finished it.

Before that game, I would play a Final Fantasy game to excess, clocking hundreds of hours killing monsters and finding all the secrets and side missions. I would feel some level of connection with the characters, and enjoy picking my exact favorite team while leveling each character to max level. I think it was right there that Square was no longer the company for me, and their games lost me. And now when people talk about an issue with their games, they're quietly silencing them? ...Seems I made the right choice.

THANK you for this.. I write for a gaming website and I am going to do a story on this if I could? Note me when you can! :)

Long as everything stays anonymous, i'm preparing for some interviews for work in that industry. I gotta crash now though, i'll give you links and info tomorrow.

Believe me I won't say a word as who told me what. ;)

Hey, fyi, it looks like i gotta nuke my computer. No clue how but i got some nasty shit and it's most likely compromised so this is going to have to wait a few days while i get everything to back the way it was.

This displeases me. I was thinking about getting Heroes of Ruin and have been for some time. I suppose that I have my answer now. :C

Don't, i was excited for it, it's a pretty halfassed game even without the bug.

Theres SO much to it though, on paper and it could have been really good but all of it is completely pointless since they didn't balance the difficulty at all. Even the toughest boss battles in it take just 5 seconds of mindless hammering if you have 4 people to win. Loot is completely useless since enemies do like 1/20th of your health bar which not only almost instantly auto regens but you seirously find health potions every 5 feet. It's just absurd how many they give you. The game is devoid of even the tiniest modicum of challenge which makes the combat not even remotely entertaining.

It's like they give you tons of loot you don't need cuz enemies do no damage and they give you 3 skill trees with abilities you don't need because 3 whacks with a sword will kill just about any enemy in the game.

Probably a case of upper management noticing people getting interested and saying 'get it out there, NOW.' :/

The correct response:

DDoS their ass. If you don't take the cost of the game out of their ass somehow, they'll never learn that this kind of behavior is unacceptable.

S-E has their priorities completely mixed up. I'm still waiting for Final Fantasy Versus XIII (which has been in development for practically 6-7 years now) while they release countless ports of older games, new sequels to the original FFXIII, and just generally don't seem to listen to their fans until the shit hits the fan (FFXIV, anyone?).

Versus 13 was cancelled. Just thought I'd let you know

No, there was a rumor over a weekend a month or so back where the source thought it was cancelled. That following Monday an executive said he had just come from a meeting showing off a tech demo for the game. Here's the article: http://kotaku.com/5928488/square-en.....sy-versus-xiii

I'm still somethin' of a Square-Enix fan. Not out of mindless hope or optimism or anything, it's just that I refuse to blame and hate an entire company and its history on the failures of a few games. I really appreciate their 'love-letter' games as of late; Dissidia 'n Theatrhythm, mostly. The only really unacceptable thing is probably the way they've handled FFXI lately; the security is so tight that you can't even casually log in or find your username (no joke. I couldn't even find a help call line for this sort of thing). I'd mention FFXIV, but given the game's upcoming overhaul, I'm not gonna judge that too harshly.

I agree with this rather more than most other posts on here so far.

<3

Welp, i was waffling on wether to get this game or not (as it looked like it'd be freaking awesome) but game-breaking bugs and shoddy customer support can kill my interest in a title.

at least there's still RE:Revelations (say what you want, i think it's a decent game... not perfect but certainly decent.)

These guys have been such garbage for a while now! :(

Remember when they had lots of quality games? And friendly and helpful service??

I do.

I don't think they've been good for almost a decade, honestly!

all mega corporations are ruining games indifferent ways..

EA is ruining Bioware for example..

Activision is ruining Blizzard

Enix ruined Square.

and Ubisoft is pretty much ruining it for EVERYONE.

Sounds like the same people who run Sony On-line Entertainment... who are also going down the hole.

=^.,.^=

Did you see how badly they fucked up the FF7 PC re-release? Not surprising to hear they fucked this up too :/

Should just remake FF6

I love RPGs and entered the gaming world with the first Kingdom Hearts, so KH and Final Fantasy hold very special places in my heart, and they always will. That said, I remain (and probably will for a while) stuck in the PS2 era; I don't own a PS3 or any portable devices (except an old GBA, with which I played KH Chain of Memories), so things like FFXIII and KH Dream Drop Distance are wholly beyond my gaming horizon. This doesn't bother me in the least. It will bother when (if) a proper Kingdom Hearts III comes out.

It does seem as though the whole global gaming industry is in something of a rut, but remember, this has happened before; the gaming industry nearly kicked the bucket in '82, and were close to it again before the PS1 and Dreamcast came out. A few years later, we got things like FFIX, which remains my very favorite game ever. Have faith.

This is the London branch of Square-Enix, remember that. I got hit by that bug after already beating the game, so it didn't really cost me a thing. I started a new game and recreated my original character. Had much more online time and haven't suffered from it again. I play casually everyday just for the Weekly/Daily Challenges and occasionally to help others get through a game or challenge along with gaining Ranks for those that are my friends.

I can definitely agree that this game could have been much better if they wouldn't have rushed it and reused the same areas with slightly altered stages.

I am curious though, have you beridden yourself of the game or do you still have it?

I feel the same way, about S-E being totally gone to shit since the merger. I miss the old Squaresoft. And Secret of Mana and other IPs they used to focus on.
And where the hell is my Chrono Trigger sequel? And I'm not talking about Chrono Cross either. The game was all right, could have done without 40+ rather shallow characters but I digress.

After XIII I really, really lost my taste for them. XIII was utter shit. I turned it off and walked away after a boss turned on some hidden doom-counter-timer thing. Want to play defensively and drag a battle on? NOT ON MY WATCH apparently.

They're really going down the shitter.