This Week in Games

Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold's New Stuff Is Pretty Cool

Welcome back, folks! Like many people, I've been keeping my ears open regarding the new Project R.E.D. series, Kakusei Hunter Omegahorn. It's very unique as a tokusatsu series; our protagonist summons giant kaiju to fight each other, while summoning other kaiju (and his spaceship) to serve as extra weapons. It's extremely unlike what you'd expect from Super Sentai or even Kamen Rider, more like a very sci-fi take on Monster Hunter. The Egogears even have faux-Monster Hunter-esque artwork depicting the kaiju on them. Folks were pretty down on Gavan Infinity for a variety of reasons. It's way too soon to say if Omegahorn will also leave folks feeling cold, but kudos to Toei: they're swinging for the fences. Now if only they'd actually stream it in America like with Ultraman! Come on, even Kamen Rider streams on YouTube via Tokushoutsu!

Nintendo Reveals Incoming Updates for Xenoblade Chronicles 2's Switch 2 Edition

By the time this column goes live, Monolith Soft's update patch for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will go live. This'll update the game to run at a clean 60 frames per second and render at 4K resolution in handheld mode. Yes, Virginia, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will be a real video game now! (I snark, but as much as I love Xenoblade 2, even I have to admit that it is rough going on the Switch—these updates are sorely needed.) There's a lot more going on than just the textures and rendering, though, so let's talk about it.

To get folks who've never played it up to speed, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the story of a young relic hunter named Rex who finds himself bound to a legendary living weapon (a Blade) named Pyra, who asks for his help in scaling the legendary World Tree in pursuit of the Architect, the deity who created their world of Alrest. Also, there's a catgirl with a Welsh accent tagging along. It's a great RPG, and if any other game featured a character with Pyra's (and her sister Mythra's) writing, people would still be raving about her character—which is why people really love Pyra and Mythra.

The updates add several features to expand on the base game, on top of all of the other DLC that has been added. First, a new mode called Merc Assault. Xenoblade 2 already had a mercenary mode where you could deploy your spare Blades on missions. Unfortunately, you never really controlled your Blades. While every rare Blade was effectively a character unto themselves, drawn by a known anime artist (featuring renowned names like the late Takahiro Kimura to recent favorites like Shunya Yamashita), they were basically support characters, literally standing on the sidelines offering magical moral support while your actual party members did the fighting. Merc Assault allows you to actually control your Blades while fighting monsters, with their skills and elements combining in unique ways. Chances are, you'll have a great variety of the rare Blades in your party, so you'll have plenty of opportunities to mix and match 'em. And you'll probably even get a lot of mileage out of the Blades you don't normally get to use (alas, poor Gorg). There's also a nifty feature for accessing your Blades' various on-field abilities without equipping them. This is very technical, but trust me: it's a tremendous quality-of-life decision. Gathering items is so much faster now.

Xenoblade 2's Blades were the main highlight of the game; Monolith Soft designed them to be acquired through an in-game gacha system where you'd spawn them from Core Crystals. No real money was needed, just time and effort in locating the Crystals. There was an in-game reason for all of this, and it even tied into a major twist in the game—but the Doylist reasoning behind it all was that the Switch 2 had media-sharing capabilities that allowed you to share screenshots to Twitter, and Monolith wanted to capitalize upon people's excitement at landing rare acquisitions. Besides the headache of rolling for random Blades, the biggest issue with Blades is that they're all so inconsistently designed. As I understand, there was little direction towards the guest artists regarding how Blades should look. While on the one hand, it helps sell the idea of Blades as bizarre synthetic lifeforms (which, again, ties into plot), it also means that some Blades don't even look like they belong in the same universe as the rest. Still, there's merit to a cast full of freaks—you're bound to find one weirdo you love, and their story is bound to tug at your heartstrings.

Speaking of Blades, protagonists Pyra and Mythra (long story) get new duds as rewards for the new Merc Assault mode... or for scanning their respective Amiibo. The outfits still evoke the normal bits of Pyra's and Mythra's regular outfits, like Pyra's crop top and shorts or Mythra's apron-dress. But I like that the outfits are more consistent between the two of them, reflecting the girls as being two parts of the same whole. The "starry" texture on their clothing also helps give them a more "otherworldly" look, as befitting other rare Blades. And the outfits make the two look a bit more in line with Pneuma. If anything, I miss Pyra's and Mythra's hair looking more saturated—Mythra's faded blond looks more like Pneuma's green, but Pyra looks like she needs to touch up her dye. It's a shame these outfits came out as late as they did; they'd be absolutely sick in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I have to wonder if artist Masatsugu Saitō was a little inspired by his work on the upcoming Expelled from Paradise sequel...

Finally, a new Blade was added to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and she's a doozy. A lot of people held out hope that Malos, the villain of Xenoblade 2, would become playable. No such luck. People also hoped that Mythra's descendant would be introduced, since we've met Pyra's and Nia's kids in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Also not the case! The new Blade is instead Multiple Observative Mimetic Organicus—or M.O.M.O. for short. M.O.M.O. is from the Xenosaga games, like KOS-MOS: a Realian (synthetic lifeform) designed for communicating with the alien Gnosis. M.O.M.O. has a unique gimmick, where she can swap between two forms: her Real Mode (pictured above) and her "Imaginary Mode," which gives some parts of her skin a transparent crystalline look that reveals her robotic skeleton. While I've lost the tweet that explains this, there's lore behind this: her Imaginary form has an Omega symbol on her forehead that evokes KOS-MOS' design in Xenosaga 2, and is also meant to interact with Imaginary Space. I'd explain what that means with a smile on my face—but I never got a chance to play Xenosaga (even though I had all three games for my PS2 at one point!). Best I can gather is, there's a lot of technobabble that prevents ordinary humans from engaging with the dangerous Gnosis, and M.O.M.O. is a living robot/computer that facilitates that for them.

Now, I've already mentioned Xenosaga's beloved gynoid weapons platform Kosmos Obey Strategical Multiple Operation System (KOS-MOS for short). Famously, she was also a rare Blade in Xenoblade 2—the rarest one, in fact. Her evil duplicate T-ELOS is also around. And as it would happen, events in Xenoblade 3 imply that KOS-MOS and the rest of Xenosaga are, to some extent, canon to Xenoblade. Yes, that would include Mary Magdalene. Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Soga are like that. But let's not pay attention to the wrong part of the story. M.O.M.O.'s presence brought a detail that has Xenoblade and Xenosaga fans abuzz. When KOS-MOS was included in Xenoblade 2, the game's copyright information included Bandai Namco, who famously owned the rights to Xenosaga. This, like many other things from Bandai Namco, was a bugbear for a lot of fans, because fans have wanted ports or re-releases of the Xenosaga trilogy for a long time, especially now that Xenoblade has made the overall Perfect Works games much more popular. As you can surmise from my tone, Bandai Namco hasn't really done much about that. But! M.O.M.O.'s presence in Xenoblade 2 doesn't include Bandai Namco's copyright info! A lot of people take this to mean that Nintendo, who currently owns Monolith Soft, has bought out the rights to Xenosaga, and the possibility of a remake is all but inevitable. I'm... not so convinced. Sure, Xenosaga no longer appears on Bandai Namco's list of IPs, but according to sleuths on Reddit, Bandai Namco's trademark on Xenosaga is still valid through 2030. Moreover, G-MODE's Xenosaga: Pied Piper release still lists Bandai Namco in its copyright information. This isn't nothing, but I'm not quite going to start jumping for joy just yet. As usual, my stance on rumors is that a rumor and US$3 is good for buying you one cup of coffee. If and when there's actual confirmation from Nintendo one way or another, then we can talk about Xenosaga being back. A company taking out a trademark or a trademark lapsing is sometimes just paperwork and not a sign that a new Chrono Trigger is being worked on. So let's not count turkeys before they hatch. Of course: I'd be down for Xenosaga to come back. It'll be interesting to see how much of it aligns with Xenoblade after all these years. Also, do our friends in Brazil a solid and translate the Xenoblade games into Portuguese, please?

New Updates for Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold Expansion

Final Fantasy XIV EU Fanfest was this past weekend in Belgium, and we've got a real doozy of news that came in regarding the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which has an expanded free trial where you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Shadowbringers expansion up to level 80 for free with no restrictions on playtime. No updates yet regarding the aforementioned free trial, so no need to update the copypasta just yet, but there's plenty of other stuff.

Let's get ahead of the 8-ball with this: there's some concern over the expansion because this one is going to have two raids that are effectively crossover media: the first being the Ghosts of Desire alliance raids, which are a crossover with Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the Beyond the Lifestream raid series, which are for the Final Fantasy VII remakes. And yes, the latter means actual battles with named Final Fantasy VII villain, Sephiroth. Licensed content in Final Fantasy VII isn't new, strictly speaking; there have been in-game events featuring outside media like Dragon Quest and Yōkai Watch (heck, the Yōkai Watch event is currently being re-run as we speak!). And there is also a series of in-game raids in the Shadowbringers expansion that are not only NieR: Automata-themed, but even canon to NieR:Automata. But there being two sets of licensed raids in Evercold has folks worried that the story in Evercold is going to suffer, given that Raids tend to be opportunities to expand on stories or in-game lore.

I'm not as worried about the Evangelion crossover raids. The Final Fantasy XIV fanbase skews far older than, say, Goddess of Victory: NIKKE, which also had a pair of Evangelion collaborations that did very badly. But also, your average teenybopper playing NIKKE is too young to really care much about Eva. Jokes abound about FF14 being a fandom retirement home of sorts, but there's a not-insignificant chunk of that game's fandom that is in their 30s, pushing 40. We'll all be going ga-ga dragging our WoLs through fields of abject misery for a single crumpled Orchestrion scroll with a single scribble of Misato on it. (Also, consider: unisex plugsuit outfits.) It's the Final Fantasy VII collab that also has me a bit worried. Now, I know what you're thinking: Final Fantasy XIV is chock-a-block with references to other Final Fantasy games. One of the first mounts you can actually get is a Magitech walker, and it even plays an arrangement of Terra's theme from Final Fantasy VI. Endwalker partially took place on the Moon (as in, the Moon in the sky), and as such took the opportunity to make some choice references to Final Fantasy IV, which also included some lunar adventures. This included an honest-to-God Lunar Whale mount (an older buddy of mine was very taken with that). Long-running Final Fantasy boss Gilgamesh has made numerous appearances in FF14. So has the Cloud of Darkness, a variety of weapons, Final Fantasy XV's Noctis, and many others. Heck, the current expansion for Dawntrail features Kefka from Final Fantasy VI. So why is Sephiroth any different?

I think part of it is because the iconography of Final Fantasy 7 is so iconic that Final Fantasy VII is practically a different series unto itself even within the umbrella that is Final Fantasy—heck, FF7 has enough spin-offs for it! (Let's see, Before Crisis, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, Ever Crisis—the spin-offs have a convenient naming scheme...) The Cloud of Darkness or the Ultima Weapon can be handwaved away as just a creative reinterpretation of a known Final Fantasy boss. Sephiroth is Sephiroth. And with Final Fantasy VII being as complicated as it is (especially with the remakes fully embracing extended lore from the rest of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII), there's likely some anxiety over things getting even more convoluted for the game. I don't have a solution to this! My only condolence is that people will be able to get Tifa's outfit (and Barret's outfit). Tifa's crop top will hit the glamor plates as hard as 2B's stockings did.

Speaking of narrative, we also got confirmation that Evercold will handle things a little differently regarding the story. Basically: in a decision that reminds me of Pokémon Scarlet/Violet's narrative structure, players will be able to pursue various facets of Evercold's story as they choose, be it the field system or the main scenario. As players will have the chance to pursue dungeons in whichever order they choose, Evercold will feature an automatic content-balancing system that scales enemy levels to match players. I'm pursing my lips at this some, since I don't know how this'll work in situations where a party's level is massively disparate. The best anyone can gather is that the games might average the levels of player parties first, but we'll keep our ears open in the meantime.

We also have confirmation on the new player class: the Bastion, a ranged tank class. Game producer Yoshi-P even showed up cosplaying as the class—given the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday film, I have to wonder if the decision of a silver suit of armor with emerald green robes was intentional... Anyway, the main feature for the Bastion is the massive shields on each arm, with pikes on one end (for the punching) and thrusters on the other for rocket punches—or, as shown by Yoshi-P, for flipping the shield around and making some ranged artillery attacks. But this is also a ranged melee class, so there will be plenty of options for attacking from a distance. Further hints abounded regarding the new DPS class, with many theorizing it could be some sort of Falconer class... Speaking of characters, look forward to extra customization options for your characters. In addition to traditional stuff like new lip or eye options or improved color pickers, players can also look forward to customized animations for their actions—say when you're casting abilities or Warping. How will these new animations be made available? Cash shop is likely. FF14 knows how to nickel-and-dime folks...

Speaking of money, Final Fantasy XIV's upcoming Switch 2 version is up for preorder. As many people have been pointing out: buyer beware regarding the version you get! If you buy and install a paid version of the game, like the Standard or Collector's edition, you're automatically forgoing the option of even trying Final Fantasy XIV's aforementioned and memetic free trial. The Free Trial is, as you saw, particularly extensive for the game, and only cuts out the option to join free companies (read: guilds). It's safe to say that if you play the free trial and really want to join a guild of some sort, you'll probably be set for FF14—but anyone else who still hasn't taken the plunge on FF14  is encouraged to try the free trial first. FF14 is infamously slow to start, and many pains have been taken over the years to make A Realm Reborn and its post-game less of a headache to play through so that folks can get to the real meat of the story in Heavensward and Stormblood—and the beloved Shadowbringers. Final Fantasy XIV on Switch 2 releases this August 4 and will include up to the Dawntrail expansion—meanwhile, the Evercold expansion is slated for January 2027. Plenty of time to catch up...

Cyber Connect 2 Wants You To Play Fuga: Melodies of Steel One Way or Another

We don't hear about major console releases getting mobile ports that much anymore. The mobile market used to be a big deal for the console industry, a burgeoning market poised as a genuine threat to the likes of Nintendo and its long-established dominance in the handheld market. Then gacha games became the standard template for mobile games, and the rest is history. But a few actual video games were on mobile, like Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions or a bunch of Dragon Quest ports. That was, however, quite a while ago. All this to say, I get why Cyber Connect 2 would want to port Fuga: Melodies of Steel to mobile. But the decision to do so sure stands out.

Famously, Cyber Connect 2 pays its dues by making a ton of anime-licensed titles (and .hack games) in order to support the studio's true passion project: the Little Tail Bronx games, a series taking place in a cute world of floating islands and sky-ships, populated by the animal-like Caninu and Felineko. Also, everyone speaks French. The series started on PlayStation 1 with Tail Concerto, a cute (but short) game about a literal police dog named Waffle chasing after mischievous Felineko kids in a robotic walker. Its sequel wouldn't come out until the tail-end (hehe) of the 3DS: the ambitious SoLaToRoBo, where you played as the adventurer Red Savarin and his mech, the Dahak, in an attempt at stopping a large world-ending plot. Both games have some dark moments, but are bright, characterful, and richly lived-in. They're also very rare and very expensive to track down.

And then Cyber Connect 2 made Fuga: Melodies of Steel. Originally releasing in 2021, the story still takes place in the same world as the other Little Tail Bronx games but is much darker—effectively, the entire world going under the equivalent of World War 2. And the comparison is rather blunt, with certain enemy units in the game being named Zyklons, after the toxic gas used by the Nazis. The story is also much darker, dealing with a gaggle of kids taking refuge in a giant tank after their village is destroyed. The good news is that the tank is formidable- not invincible, mind, but resilient enough to help transport the kids to safety, maybe even end the conflict. And it even has a cannon that can absolutely obliterate the enemy. The problem is, the tank is literally fueled by the souls of one of the children; while the cannon is absolutely a get-out-of-trouble-free card, someone has to die for it to work. It's like Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume crossed with Bokurano. The number of children sacrificed to fire the cannon also affects the ending, as you can imagine.

Fuga has by and large been the most successful of the Little Tail Bronx games, such that it quickly earned itself two sequels. (Releasing on more than one single platform likely helped.) In that light, I can understand Cyber Connect 2's decision to port it to mobile. The mobile release includes several DLC (mostly costume packs), along with one (1)  Dummy Soul, which lets you fire the Soul Cannon a single time without needing a sacrifice. And it's only US$19. You do have to play it on a mobile device, so it evens out, but Fuga is definitely worth double-dipping for on other platforms. It's a pity the other Little Tail Bronx games are still in limbo, but hopefully we can see them ported someday. I still have a ton of affection for SoLaToRoBo. I sure hope other folks get to check it out.

First look at Chronoscript: The Endless End

I was quite taken with Deskworks' RPG Time: The Legend of Wright back in 2022. It's a charming game: an RPG where the entire experience is framed as a tangible RPG made by your extremely imaginative middle school friend, with every event and encounter represented as some kind of set-piece built by his nimble fingers out of household supplies and a lot of tape. We even got to interview one of its lead designers, Tom Fuji. Deskworks is back with another charming game that blends its gameplay experience with its framing: Chronoscript: The Endless End, an upcoming 2D Metroid-vania with some Souls-like elements. We got a chance to play the demo and get an early look at the game.

The jist of the game is that you're the editor Frederick G. Muller, who's been transported into the ink-based world within the pages of a tremendous manuscript written by an ageless vampiress, Viola S. Chambers. Viola needs a bit of help wrapping up her manuscript, which comes in the form of you fighting through her pages and battling all kinds of weird creatures. The twist is that the stages are literal pages: obstacles manifest as curled pages you can't cross, and your "map" screen is in fact the mess of opened books sprawled all over the writer's library. According to Fuji, this decision was inspired by the desire to make map screens "more meaningful" and to give them a bigger role. Circumstances can also cause pages to get tossed around; during our demo, a battle against a literal bookworm caused a page to fly out of its binding and onto the floor, where it landed upside-down. Our battle then continued on the ceiling.

Much like RPG Time, your character is a cute little scribble of an actual person (the little squiggles that make up their form are very nostalgic). But the game itself is far more ambitious, with the events in the 2D world occurring on 3D pages. Ink blots can impede or encourage your progress; the vampire's pen can guide you to new areas (or just pick up the whole page so she can appreciate you better); some obstacles might even be fully represented in the 3D world instead of on the page. Also worth pointing out: the character designs are from Mari Shimazaki, whose work you might recognize from Bayonetta. You can also look forward to gothic music courtesy of Yasunori Mitsuda, whose music you might remember from Chrono Trigger and Xenogears. Masami Yamamoto, best known for producing Bloodborne, is also working on this title. 

As per the demo we played, combat is so far rather simple: you have a basic sword swing, and can attack enemies around you. You have a few charges you can accumulate that allow you to restore health. Progress is saved at couches, which restore your healing charges but also revive all of the enemies you've defeated. You can also upgrade your abilities at couches through collecting ink acquired from defeated enemies. You also lose all the ink you've accumulated upon defeat, and have to return to where you died in order to recover it. Upgrades include stuff like increasing your attack, but during the demo there's also an upgrade specifically for looking at the pages immediately neighboring the one you're currently on. And I'm not sure how I feel about that being an upgrade hidden behind in-game currency. I'll chalk it up to the demo being a work-in-progress.

Chronoscript doesn't have a concrete release date yet, but is aiming for release later this Autumn. Best to keep an eye out for it: even if you didn't like RPG Time, this one's shaping up to be a great game for Halloween.

Let's wrap up with some quick tidbits:

That'll do it for this week. I, too, have heard of the Kumamoto earthquake, and I'm hoping that folks in Japan are safe. In the meantime, continue to take precautions regarding heat and air quality in the US; smog is no joke. A pity, because I'd normally encourage folks to touch grass and maybe try out a local burger place—nobody should have to endure triple-digit weather. Not even I can handle that, and I'm from the tropics! Keep safe as best as you all can, and keep an eye out for your loved ones. Be good to each other. I'll see you in seven.

This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing Japanese RPGs, eating popcorn, watching VTuber content, and watching tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.