2. Final Fantasy XV
I realize that by including a new Final Fantasy game in this list, that I may very well be risking some credibility as a writer, but at this moment, I don't care. For the first time in a VERY long time, I'm excited about Final Fantasy, and it feels fantastic. Final Fantasy may very well be the video game series that means the most to me personally as a gamer. Ever since Final Fantasy IV blew my 14 year old mind way back in the 16 bit era, and showed me how a video game could be much, much more than just a game, it's been a love affair full of peaks and valleys. I once cut a whole week of class in college to stay in my apartment to play the most mind-blowing game I'd ever seen at the time, Final Fantasy VII. When my mother passed away after a long battle with cancer, playing Final Fantasy X was a crucial part of my healing process, as it was the one oasis I could find in a desert full of grief. And I'll never forget sitting in the empty basement of my new home during my first night as a homeowner, with nothing but a tube TV, a camping chair, and my PS2, playing the opening hours of Final Fantasy XII. This is a series that means a lot to me, and one that probably always will. It is due to this that I have joined legions of Final Fantasy fans around the world who have become very bitter over the last few years with what has happened to the series. Final Fantasy XIII was a shimmery, beautiful-looking game that lacked the heart and soul that the series has always been known for. It's easily to place all the blame on Final Fantasy XIII for this, but in truth, the franchise has been struggling a bit to find it's footing since the end of the Golden Age of SquareSoft at the turn of the millennium. This arguably began when two key brilliant minds behind the franchise, creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and composer Nobou Uematsu, stopped working on the series full time in order to establish Sakaguchi's new development studio, Mistwalker. But regardless of any of this, it's difficult to argue against the fact that the series hasn't been especially great over the last decade, and is in need of something special to bring it back. Will Final Fantasy XV be that special spark that ignites the series back to life? It's still way too early to tell, but it is hard to deny that the gameplay footage Square Enix released at E3 (see above) looks incredibly promising. Known as Final Fantasy Versus XIII for several years, the game is being directed by Tetsuya Nomura, a tried and true talent of Japanese game development who is best known for directing the beloved Kingdom Hearts games for the Playstation 2. Final Fantasy XV's combat looks to resemble the nice fusion of real time and turn-based systems that Kingdom Hearts is well known for. But perhaps what is most fascinating about Final Fantasy XV is the imaginative way it seems to fuse the fantastical creatures, magic and and lore of the series with a setting that very closely resembles the real world. Being able to conjure spells and wield those insane weapons while fighting through a modern city utilizing a Kingdom Hearts-esque battle system - it sounds
fresh. And fresh is exactly what Final Fantasy needs moving into a new hardware generation. Will Final Fantasy XV propel the series back into that elite space that is now dominated by Western developers? It could go either way. But one thing is certain: it sure is fun to be excited about Final Fantasy again.