E3 09: Hands-On With Square-Enix

While touring the Square-Enix booth at E3, I had the opportunity to get my hands on some of the new Final Fantasy titles coming out. The first one I tried was Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Playing as Roxas, you team up with Axel to complete a mission. The gameplay is exactly like the console games in the series, but naturally this one has DS-level graphics. It still looks nice, although sometimes particularly frenetic combat could be a little overwhelming on the tiny screen. Controls use the buttons — the touch screen is only used to adjust the camera from side to side with a quick sweep of your thumb. Although I didn't play it, I did watch a couple other people try out a 2-player mission in wireless co-op at the other table.

Dissidia Final Fantasy is the PSP fighting game featuring FF characters. I selected the Onion Knight and battled my way through a few opponents on different levels. Instead of fighting the same guy in a best of three kind of thing, you battle a different person in a new arena each time. The graphics are extremely pretty, as you would expect, although to be honest, I found the controls a little complicated and unintuitive. It gets a little chaotic with all the running and jumping and fast traveling around the multi-tiered levels. Of course, it was my first go at it, so it would probably make more sense if I'd read the instructions!

Then I worked my way down to the other end of the booth past the giant screen showing the Final Fantasy XIII trailer on a constant loop to try my hand at Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers on the Wii. The girl at the booth made a point of reinforcing to me that this game is more of an action/adventure game with some light RPG elements as opposed to a straight RPG. The character design and environments look really nice, although the graphics are a bit jaggy. The areas I explored had you moving with the Nunchuck and using the Wiimote to point at the screen and use your crystal bearer powers to move objects around the screen and activate items. The controls are slightly awkward, but an adventure game is much more preferable to me than the strategy-RPG style of the original Crystal Chronicles. I also witnessed other people playing some mini-game type scenes that use the Wiimote in the typical waggle fashion to shake off monsters and such. The girl also indicated that you'll be able to interact with all the NPCs wandering around the town, but that hadn't been implimented in the demo. They did appear to react to you with little Sim-ish icons over their heads. Sometimes ladies would get hearts over their heads when they looked at you, and if you bumped into any of them, they'd reel back and an exclamation point would appear.

So it looks like regardless of what console you own, you'll be able to get a taste of Final Fantasy in one way, shape or form!