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 Square-Enix, one of the most beloved RPG companies ever created, is now in the middle of their golden age. And as it's known, golden ages are the ones with greatest works, but this time it's different. Square-Enix is now one of the richest ever companies in the world (gaming specialized or not). And recently they've reached the point where they can release any average quality product with their logo on it to get an over million copy sold in the first week.
Square's real golden age was between 1994 and 1997 where most of their master pieces where released at that time, mainly "Final Fantasy VI", "Chrono Trigger" and "Final Fantasy VII". After that Square got attached to reusing again again their products and creating stopped at some limits although their were some good tries. For example a game like "Parasite Eve 2" was a very wonderfull survival horror game with RPG elements, but sadly the idea of contiuation the series was canned for Square not wanting to make a not very planned adventure. So what should Square do till they get a good plan? Ofcourse making more and more of two things :
1) Final Fantasy games and sub games : The Final Fantasy series may be the most famous RPG series ever. Fans of the series can be like 10% of world population (No kidding). Sure FF is great and all but not all games were good.
The problem with FF games is that although most of them are very good they are still overrated. And Square takes adavantage very well of that, by making more and more FF games even if they weren't super quality, plus making some moderate games of same or different genre and adding FF characters and elements to it. Of course they get alot of money from that.
A good example for that is "Chocobo racing" which is a kiddish racing game ala "Mario Kart" but with FF elements and characters. That game made me really sick with ZERO intersting to continue it. I tried my best to adapt with it but it got me mad really, and I think the best thing in it was that one of the characters was cute enough to not force me to close the game immediatly.
2) Remakes : They can remake the same game for what seems like forever. For example Final Fantasy 1 was remade 4 times and was released 7 times - on NES (The original game), MSX (A port of the original game at it's time, and I'm ok with that), a PSX remake, another PSX remake but this time bundled with FF2 (Which was a remake too), a Wonderswan remake (haaoom), I-mode mobiles remake, and a GBA remake (But this time they added an additional side quest and called it FF1 Dawn of souls, as if that makes it another game).
Notice that all the remakes were the same everything but with resized sprites to match every system resolution.
Anyway since 3 years and Square's main task was a secret project which was revealed after a year. A collection of "Final Fantasy VII" sequels, prequels and sub games, simply because FF7 was their most loved (err.. overrated) game. Then they gave it another fancy name "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII".
Last year it started with the first prequel game called "Before crisis" which was for Japanese I-mode mobiles only so I never had the opportunity to play (But I'm sure they'll release it someday outside JP and make extra cash from it. Then last summer the sequel movie was released called "Advent children".
To the matter of fact, that movie was one of the best I've seen really but the problem isn't about how good it is as much as how much they've lowered their level with it. Long ago FFVII was a game that touched millions of people hearts and it's ending although not telling every thing made ppl satisfied. Although Sqaure said they made the sequels because of fans, it's very obvious they wanted to gain more cash off their masterpiece.
On 1998 a small team from Square started making a sequel for a non-FF called game. That team was responsible before for making two legendary games (They made other outstanding games after too). The game was "Chrono Cross" an unbelivingly good game which was released on 1999, as a sequel for one of the top 5 RPGs ever "Chrono Trigger". Although CC wasn't as good as CT, but it showed some wonderfull features even FF games of that time didn't had. And the surprise is that the small team didn't have much of cash as much as a team like FF8 team had. But the differences were outstanding, still both are 2 good games but CC exceeded what FF8 tried to do by miles.
After CC success (mainly in US though) Square should know interest in making sequels of their projects again. I'm afraid it can't be explained but only as it's not FF = a sure success. So after a while another japanese company "Namco" bought the rights to develop games for the "Xenogears" series made by that small team, and ofcourse Square accepted since it had no plans to make any use of the name in the near future.
"Xenosaga" I and II were a success, should I say more. The games which were not going to be included in Square's plans because they aren't FF made a good success and right now theya re being remade and "Xenosaga II" is in work iirc aswell.
So Square, keep milking your series more and more till no body gets interested anymore.
Side note : Although I wrote that article, my favourite games ever were made by Square. Such irony, isn't it?
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