I want to start off by saying that I adore Square Enix. Squaresoft, one of the predecessors to Square Enix, created my favourite game of all time in the form of Final Fantasy IX. Beyond that, they’ve contributed greatly to my passion for gaming with series such as Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean and many others. However, as the years have passed, my enthusiasm for Square Enix has waned to the point now where I now view their products with scepticism. This is due to the many stupid strategies that Square Enix continue to follow, to the point now where they often surprise me. Taking all this into account, I thought I should write my current thoughts on Square Enix and why my passion for them has faded.
Probably the first time that I seriously began questioning Square Enix’s strategies was when Life is Strange 2 was announced. I had really enjoyed the first game, even though I had a few problems with its concept of choice, and was really looking forward to seeing how they could build upon the franchise. However, I was immediately taken aback by the pricing. The first game had been perfectly priced at €19.99 and I truly believe that this price tag contributed greatly to the incredible sales that it managed to reach. However, Life is Strange 2 was priced at €39.99, double the price of the original game! I couldn’t believe it and, while I don’t know how well it ultimately sold since Square Enix have never announced the sales figures, it felt like Life is Strange 2 didn’t come anyway near the cultural impact that the original managed to achieve. I was hoping that Square Enix might have learned their lesson but then they announce Life is Strange: True Colors, the third main game in the series, at a price tag of €59.99. I was stunned, I couldn’t believe that they had decided to raise the price tag even further and it felt to me that Square Enix were simply trying to milk the series for all it’s worth.
I have also spoken before about the inconsistent quality of Square Enix’s remasters and PC ports and, while I could talk about the disaster that was the initial PC release of Chrono Trigger or the iffy reception of some of their other games, I’d like to address a particularly important remaster that Square Enix have been releasing recently, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters. As you might imagine, I was quite excited to hear that a release of the first six Final Fantasy games was coming to PC, particularly since Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II were amongst the Square Enix games I most wanted to see released on PC. Of course, I was cautious due to prior experience but when the remasters came out they were nearly perfect save for one major flaw, the font. As soon as we saw some footage and screenshots of the remasters, people immediately began to point out how unbelievably ugly the font was. What’s even more strange is that it was discovered that, even without the help of mods, it was surprisingly easy to go into the game’s files and change the font to something more appealing. Despite how easy it is to correct and how vocal people have been, it seems Square Enix have no intention to change the font themselves as their recent promotional material still uses the ugly original font. While PC gamers can change the font themselves, those on mobile are stuck with that hideous font and that will also apply to any potential console release of the pixel remasters.
The decision for Square Enix to establish a studio to develop titles similar to the JRPG classics that they used to make, titled Tokyo RPG Factory, seemed like an ingenious move that older fans of theirs would adore. However, once I began playing “I Am Setsuna”, I could tell that they had missed the mark, likely misunderstanding what drew people to their older titles. Despite the graphics being better from a technical perspective, I Am Setsuna still exuded a cheap feel compared to many older JRPGs. The world was lacking the wonder of the classics, the characters felt bland and the story felt painfully written at times (I remember one scene that was meant to be funny making me cringe in particular). Ironically, I Am Setsuna has been their most successful product with Lost Sphear and Oninaki receiving weaker reviews and lower sales. To me, the big problem with the games from Tokyo RPG Factory is that they don’t feel genuine, they feel like imitators and this makes their games unappealing to both the general populace and the older fans that they are attempting to target.
Another weird decision that ended in disaster was Balan Wonderworld. I wrote a whole article about this before but, in an article called “The Stupid Strategies of Square Enix Continue To Surprise Me”, I feel it’s important to bring this up again. I was initially excited about Balan Wonderworld when I learned that it was being created by Yuji Naka, the man most credited with the success of Sonic the Hedgehog. However, the €60 price tag set off alarms as most 3D platformers released these days are priced at €40 or less. Still I was excited to play the demo when it was released last January. The movement of the character felt sluggish, the decision to have the same action mapped to six different buttons was weird and the game felt aimless. I merely played a single level and uninstalled the demo. Once the game finally released, I began hearing about how much of a disaster it truly was. Costumes that made you incapable of jumping, a barebones story and uninspired world design were just a few of problems that plagued the game. Beyond poor oversight, Square Enix is also to blame for forcing Yuji Naka to focus more on story than he cared for. Hilariously, Square Enix released a Balan Wonderworld novel that explains the background of all the characters, the story, the villain etc. The fact that none of this is explained in the game, amusingly the villains name is unknown unless you read the book, is an unbelievable decision that contributed to how bad the game ultimately ended up.
Finally, I’d like to bring up their release of Marvel’s Avengers. As someone who got into the Marvel Cinematic Universe two years ago, you can imagine that I was quite curious about Marvel’s Avengers and how it would be received. The news that it would be a live-service game was confusing but it didn’t necessarily damn the game. When the game came out, I heard surprisingly positive things about the single-player campaign but that the multiplayer part of the game was underdeveloped and repetitive. Since then, the focus has been completely on the multiplayer component of it, how dull it is, how crazy the prices are for skins and the like, technical problems with events etc. Marvel’s Avengers even faced controversy recently when they began selling paid consumables with many declaring it “pay-to-win”. The paid consumables have been removed now but the game remains plagued with problems and is an example of how a live-service model can be poorly executed. Even Square Enix themselves have stated that the game has not been successful although their decision to blame Crystal Dynamics, the developers of the game, and not the live-service model was upsetting to some people.
There are numerous other decisions that Square Enix makes that I could discuss such as their decision to predominantly release Dragon Quest spin-offs on PC rather than the main games or why it took so long to release Kingdom Hearts on PC but I would like to end on the fact that I once loved Square Enix and their products and it saddens me that I look at them these days and see so little of what I used to adore. Let me know your thoughts on the stupid strategies of Square Enix that continue to surprise me, what you think of the decisions of modern Square Enix, whether you disagree with any of the points I made, if you can think of any other strategies of theirs that you’d consider stupid and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.