Who do you think you are?
I don't know what planet it is that Square Enix currently lives on, but I don't want to go anywhere near there. If anyone were to look at the company known as Square Enix with an unlearned and amateur eye, they might come to the decently sensible conclusion that the company is spiralling off into insane fancy with each new dalliance. Selling off their foreign contingents, sinking their resources and reputation inside obviously doomed ventures and slowly pushing their prices up in a global market that is becoming increasingly strapped for cash. Do- do Square Enix think they sell perishable essentials? I'm sorry, Square; I don't think you can faithfully argue that the soaring world wide oil prices are forcing you to sell Final Fantasy 7 Remake at beyond the market cap; unless Tetsuya Nomura really wants to sell the environmentalism message even stronger this time around!
Because I don't care who you are, there has to be a point at which you make a right decision as a company. Even EA was still funding their Originals program even at the height of their infamy, Ubisoft put out the Mario and Rabbids: Kingdom Battle games even whilst all their franchises fell off a cliff into mediocrity; and Satan managed to get dressed up as a really slick looking snake before he doomed all of humanity by tricking Eve. But Square are desperate to prove that they are the Meta of the gaming world, only without the billions to spend on doing literally nothing. If you were to swap the CEO's of Facebook and Square Enix for an entire month, I'd bet both companies would still be on the spiral trajectory they're currently on; that's about as damning of an insult as I can muster. And why do I care? Why do you think- because their franchises are damn good! (Why do all the crazy companies have to hoard all the coolest toys?)
But I think that even for the most delusionally addled Square Enix executive out there today, it had to take an additional several week bender on every hallucinogen on and off the market to reach the bizarre parallel universe where their current plans for 'Celebrating' Final Fantasy's birthday made any sort of sense. Oh that's right; Square's most important franchise is due for another anniversary in the very near future and it's going to be one that gets the treatment of a dedicated game release in order to remind fans of the games that they love. Similar to what Sega did with Sonic Origins. Only, Sonic Origins was slightly tainted by Sega's impulsively self-defeating desire to eradicate all non-origins versions of their Sonic games in order to force people into buying remasters they might not have even wanted. What if you like the original Sonic 3 soundtrack? Too bad, loser; buy the remaster! What could Square possibly do to top that?
Hmm, how about offer a collection of every Final Fantasy game up to the sixth instalment? Yes, that's right; Final Fantasy I-VI, remastered and remade with a 'modernised UI' and sharper colours and probably something eye-wateringly bad on the design front because we know how Square Enix are with FF remasters. It's either them screwing with the pixel art philosophy of backgrounds in service to some nebulous ideal of 'more defined colours equals better', new text that doesn't fit inside of the boxes they're meant for or a totally butchered soundscape that murders the iconic Final Fantasy OST. Whatever the problems, it is nice to have these games brought back into a playable state even if only a few of them are actually 'full games' by today's standards. Heck, Final Fantasy 1 is only a tad less rudimentary than the original Dragon Quest. So what's the problem with this 35th anniversary collection anyway? Hmm? It's how much?
Just let me fondle about with my brain for a second as I try to wrap my head around this. Because try as I might, I'm really not stumbling into the valid justification for a Final Fantasy collection costing £245. I'm really drawing blanks here! In my head the only sensible case would be if this collection is treating each and every game like it's a £50 brand new title, but that can't be right as buying each of them on Steam only comes up to about £55. (And, you know; the fact that such a consideration would be absolutely ridiculous. That too.) No, we've got to look at some of the extra goodies to confer our value here. Somehow there's £190 worth of non digital stuff here and we're going to find it if it kills us dead! Which looking as these price tags might just alone.
Okay, so first of all each game comes in a physical case, which is highly unnecessary but appreciated. That's worth about 5 bucks if we're being polite. There's an artbook showcasing character pixel art, which is probably worth about £20-30 depending on what you value in life. Pixel 'figurines' which look a bit like badges from the preview image but they do use the word 'figurine' for some reason... £3 at most. Oh and then there's the... vinyl record set of the soundtrack? But why... screw it- your average LP goes for £40, given this is a licenced OST we could probably knock another £10 ontop of that. So what does that leave us with? Less than £80 worth of value. I suppose the extra £110 is racked up under service costs? Or maybe those figures are really cool. I mean, cooler than anything ever constructed by man!
Square, in their infinite insanity, have lauded this collection as their way of celebrating the launch of these games to a whole new generation. A generation who are willing to spend the price of a brand new game on a collection where only about three of the entries meet the basic standard of content most expect out of their fully launched games. Now, to be fair; Final Fantasy is one of the biggest and most influential JRPGs of all time and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least interested in playing through the franchise origins. I already tried to endure the origins of Dragon Quest before discovering that series was literally never interesting to my sensibilities; maybe FF would stand up firmer for me. But I'm also not enough of a fanatic not to spot it clear as day when my love and fandom is being exploited by opportunists, like it very much readily is.
I love the games that Square Enix's many teams make, but for the life of me I cannot comprehend what is going on in those upper offices. It's like someone introduced the upper management to meth and they've spent the majority of the past two years destroying all semblance of competency in their slow spiral into becoming extras from a scene of Better Call Saul. I don't want to live in a future where Square slowly raises the base prices of all it's products and attempts to gaslight the world into believing this is what they're worth. I don't want to live in a world where Square subsidies it's already profitable videogame ventures with pathetic WEB3 grifts and schemes. And I want to live in a world where I can look at a Square Enix pricetag without having to immediately gauge whether I'd make more money from selling my kidney off to the NHS or on the black market.
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