“The Kez Analysis” is a small opinion article for an aspiring Game Designer, giving is take on the state of the industry through the reading of current popular (and up and coming) IP and major game companies.

The target of my first article is Square-Enix:

This popped up into my mind while checking out the details of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, X360). But I’ll get into that a little later. Now let’s start with the analysis itself.

Past: Origins and the Rise of Squaresoft

Square was formed in 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto, and their first great hit was Final Fantasy, which later would become one of the greatest RPG IP’s (even though their first two projects were The Death Trap and Will: The Death Trap II).

Curious Fact 1: Square released 18 games between 1984 and 1987 before the release of the original Final Fantasy.

“Final Fantasy I” was designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi and was supposed to be his last project for Squaresoft, and the series name came from just that, it was the his last title design to save the company from financial ruin. As fate would have it, the game was so successful that Sakaguchi kept designing Final Fantasy games until the “V”. After that designing passed on to Yoshinori Kitase, while Sakaguchi served only as director until he left in 2001.

A screenshot from the game that shot Square into greatness

With the Final Fantasy games, Square pretty much revolutionized the CRPG-genre, bringing innovation, and above all great storytelling. Of the First five games, my personal favorite in Final Fantasy II. The leveling up system pleased me quite a bit and the story wasn’t all bad in itself, but the following four installments would show what Square could do.

Final Fantasy VI, my favorite Final Fantasy game ever came out in 1994 on the SNES was the warm-up to the one that most consider a milestone in videogaming history: Final Fantasy VII. VII was the first numbered Final Fantasy game to come on a non-Nintendo platform and the first one in 3D. The tale of Cloud and friends sold to this date almost 10 million copies.

Good ol’ SNES days

How the hell do you fly with only one wing?

Following that came Final Fantasy VIII and IX, all under Sony jurisdiction and for a while it seemed everything would be well as gamers would have a company that they could count on to deliever complex and engaging storylines and compelling gameplay.

Honorable Mentions from the Past: It would be a crime to end the past section without mentioning a few titles like Chrono Trigger (1994) and Chrono Cross (2000) or the ‘Mana’ Saga that are considered by a few to be superior to Final Fantasy games and also brought a lot to the CRPG genre.[b]

Curious Fact 2: My favorite Square game (Chrono Cross) feature over 50 playable characters and 27 different endings. How’s that for replayability?

Curious Fact 3: Many of the Final Fantasy (series) fans argue over which is the best game of the series and usually the two candidates are VI and VII.

The Enix Merger and the growth to Industry Giant

Over the years, Square and its Final Fantasy IP had a huge rivalry with Enix and its Dragon Quest IP, but in April 2003, that would come to an end thanks to the Square and Enix merger that would form the industry giant: Square-Enix.

To be quite honest Square had started to dissapoint with its IP’s, mainly with Final Fantasy X and the extremely girly (also considered pure fan-service) Final Fantasy X-2.

Fanservice!

Many thought that the merger with Enix would turn the tide around, but unfortunately, that would not be so. Square Enix (which from now on I will refer to as SE) started milking it’s Final Fantasy IP for all it’s worth while the Enix part of the company started re-making its Dragon Quest IP’s – quite successfully to.

In my point of view, Final Fantasy XII was a huge disappointment in both terms of story and originality. Sure it was astounding graphically, but the rest didn’t impress. It did nothing to separate itself from the rest of the CRPGs.

More recently SE tried to explore new IPs in the form of: “Infinite Undiscovery” and “The Last Remnant” but again failed to impress.

Honorable Mention in this Section: I mentioned the famed Dragon Quest IP from Enix, but could not end without mentioning the Star Ocean IP which has delievered very solid games over the years.

The future…

Now SE has acquired the dying Eidos Int. and gained a few new IP’s in the process, if they will correctly cash in on them or not remains to be seen.

As for what’s to come, no one can really tell… Final Fantasy XIII, although graphically astounding, seems to follow in the blandness of Final Fantasy XII and that can never be good. The MIA Final Fantasy Versus XIII keeps me more hoping than XIII for the series. But then again, I can always be wrong. Still, as long as Dragon Quest remakes continue to sell like hotcakes, I don’t think SE will be in any trouble soon.

The Future?

The rest is up to them, and we will watch it unfold as gamers we are.

This article is just the opinion of one man and an opinion is worth just that. All feedback is welcome, any suggestions or correction can be stated in the comments