They came for our Chocobos!
Over the past month we've had no less than two full Final Fantasy spin-off games pop out of the Square Enix factory from seemingly nowhere, and increadibly, despite the beloved and storied mainline franchise they both spawn from; they are both bad. Okay, that's not being entirely fair; Stranger of Paradise is more heavily flawed, especially when compared against previous games made by these very same developers hardly a few years earlier. It's more of a resounding disappointment of a game rather than an objectively bad one; and yet that still reflected poorly on early sales. Chocobo GP, on the otherhand, is a title that came out of nowhere with the express goal in life to be a mistake upon man. And so we readily welcome the new material to poke at with the same exuberance it would demand being a travesty forged of a game that I, and presumably everyone else on the planet, had no idea even existed. A Chocobo racing game? 'Mkay, Square, you know best...
Of course the concept of Chocobo racing goes back far in the the Final Fantasy lore, with the earliest example I can think of being the racing minigame stuck onto the frame of the original Final Fantasy 7 (Although I'm sure it goes back further) to be just one of the many side activities for you to get lost in when you should be focused on saving the world from irreparable ecological devastation. The only caveat being that it's less of actual racing that you do in that minigame, and more of betting on who you believe will win whilst spamming buttons that might be helping things but it's hard to say. There were actually some pretty cool rewards that were on offer from that minigame but I just couldn't bring myself to wait around for 3-5 minutes at a time for every race to wrap itself up. (I know I'm someday going to learn about a 'skip-race' button that I missed.)
This Grand Prix, however, is more exactly what you think of you hear 'cutesy novelty racing game'. "Hey, is that a child of the Mario Kart genre?" It certainly is! It features several characters from the Final Fantasy and Chocobo series' (Wait? Chocobo is a series of it's own? That... makes no sense whatsoever) and has they go around Kart tracks and casting magical spells at one another and just that good old fashioned friendship destroying fun that multiplayer Nintendo games are known for. In fact, this game is a long awaited (is 'awaited' the right word?) sequel to Chocobo racing from all the back in 1999. And amazingly it didn't just launch as a really bad mobile HD port with predatory mobile monetisation antics imprinted over the once buy-to-play game. You know, like Mario Kart GP is. It's a model that has seeped into other titles and ruined them, such as that Crash Team racing remake. Oh wait, I spoke too soon... it's here as well.
Yes, even the sweet and adorable hybrid abominations known as Chocobo's are not exempt from greedily goring for your wallet. Square Enix couldn't go one week without incurring significant outrage regarding the in-the-box pricing strategies of this full price Switch racing game. How significant were these complaints? I heard about them and I didn't know about this game's existence beforehand; talk about a bad first impression. Mark this in just another long line of surprising gaffes from Square Enix, which is turning their company into something of the clowns of the 2020's so far. Marvel's Avengers, Stranger of Paradise, Babylon's Fall, the horrible $70 pricing on the PC version of FF7R; thank god for outliers like Guardian's of the Galaxy and long-term troopers like Final Fantasy XIV otherwise it would really feel like this massive entity is verging on dropping off entirely.
Right away we're seeing our usual tactics. Special unique characters are on offer to be purchased using the ingame premium currency Mythril which is offered to players once they first play the game in a small 800 bundle and then never again unless they shell out their real-world credit cards. We're looking at Cloud and Squall as characters for season 1. (which makes you wonder where exactly the team can go from there. I mean they're the two most popular FF protagonists; so who else can you offer? Maybe Leon from Kingdom Hearts? Change things up a little...) That Mythril can't be used on the character though, of course not. You have to use that to buy the season pass (which is exactly 800 Mythril, funny that) and then play for an inordinate amount of time to max out that season pass and unlock him. Or, alternatively, you can decide you don't like the offering in this pass and wait for the next season, only to discover that in 5 months all your Mythril becomes invalid, because Square is learning from Nintendo with their currency management policies apparently.
Seriously; there is no justifiable reason why ingame premium currency should expire. It is absolutely grotesque that these childish kids games fully and openly encourage a system where they hope you'll forget about excess credits on your account so that you can buy them again at a later date. Offer big bundle deals with awkward Mythril thresholds fully in the knowledge that the excess is due to disappear into the ether before the next big season of the game. It's policies like these that should get a management board fired, I have trouble enduring a firm which operates with grifts like that in order to bleed money out of a children's game. I mean come on! Why don't you just mug kids coming out of the corner store after school, seems like a lot less set-up for the same overall goal. (Yeah, I think the decision makers here are actual scum.)
These mobile levels of monetisation haven't come and gone without incident and unlucky early adopters are warding off any curious purchasers like brave mine canaries, sacrificing themselves so that others may live rip-off free. Naturally this has made Square go into full-on defence mode, and concessions have been dripping out of their studio ever since to try and trick the buying public back to their side. Maybe a little bit more Mythril will get thrown in over here, maybe they'll throw some in the season pass to keep you grinding. Pretty much everything they're offering are empty platitudes that don't so much as tickle the heart of the problems, demonstrating a distinct lack to make any meaningful changes. Sure you get more Mythril, but less than the price it takes to buy another Season pass, and it will still evaporate half-way through that second season. You'll earn some premium currency during the season, but who wants to bet it'll be just enough to be able to afford next season's pass? It's as if they already knew the sort of backlash this was going to cause and had backup schemes ready to go in order to make it look like they're listening and responding to their fans. But that's crazy talk, right...
What you'll often hear from studios like this, who make these blatantly anti-consumer decisions, is that they had no idea that the public wouldn't lap it all up and thus have made a huge totally unintentional and unforseeable, mistake; but not to worry- because now they're listening to the players and will be better next time around. All of which I typically find to be a load of hogwash. Do you know how you can easily tell if your monetisation sucks? Put yourself in the shoes of the player and ask if you'd rather scoop out your eyes with a tablespoon than endure this egregiously drawn out season pass grind. It's not rocket science! The only way these mistakes could be genuine and good faith, would be if the development team, or at least the one's making decisions for them, have grown totally out of touch with the public they provide for. Which sounds pretty likely the more I think about it, doesn't it? That's another sore mark against Square, and let's hope it's the last flub for a good long while, eh; else that Forspoken is going to more than just boring.
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