A Perspective on Squaresoft

by Dan Noel, Jr.

I've been picking up a lot of thoughts and feelings in regards to the comparison between FF8, anf FF7 recently. Buzz-words like "high-fantasy", and "anti-fantasy" seem to be popping up with this recent string of "Mature" RPGs. From the rapidly growing collection of PSX games that my roommate and I have been amassing over the past two years, a large portion of those games are made by Squaresoft. Of those games, the only American released games for the PSX that we haven't picked up are Brave Fencer Musashi, Einhander, and Ehrgeiz(sp), (of which, the only one I haven't actually sat and played at all is BFM). For those of you who follow Square obsessively, you'll realize that the list of games that I've implied is fairly significant. There is one thing that I've noticed that holds true for all of them. Squaresoft seems to always be trying to do something a little different. My favorite examples of this come out clearly in Bushido Blade, Einhander, and FF7. Bushido Blade falls into the game genre of "fighting game". Yet, it is unlike most of the other games within the fighting game genre. A similar effect comes out in Einhander: side-scrolling shoot-em up game, except it's a little bit different then the seven thousand variants that are out there. And now we come to the topic of FF7. It's an RPG, there's no doubt of that. However, it's totally different then the other RPGs that were coming out before that. Another RPG example that I like is Saga Frontier. Most of the RPGs that were out previous to Saga Frontier were pretty much linear. Suddenly, you have a game that after a degree of plot, you are free to roam the entire game world to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Several of my friends, and a few other aqcaintances of mine cannot stand this game, and see it as a failure. Me, I see it as experimental, and it's uniqueness, and ingenuity should be respected, as well as it's gameplay, and story. To some extent, this could be seen as a marketing trick/gimmick - not that Square really needs any help making itself stand out from a crowd with it's games, considering it's reputation for decent quality games.

As my time dwindles here in the computer lab, I would just like to try and point out that part of why Squaresoft has become such a giant in terms of RPGs is it's tendency for being different. This trend continues with it's new games, and now that Square has it's own followers, there is always going to be a resistance to changes, and experimental works. I think that that's how Squaresoft got to where it is, and I think that they're simply continuing to follow the formula that has worked so very well, and robbed us all of so many good night's sleep.