What's Wrong with Square Enix? [Saturday 6-8pm]

[MikeTSA]

Saturday, May 26th, 2012
6pm-8pm, Panels I

First, we destroyed Zelda. Then, we conquered Resident Evil. Now we're back for our third year at Fanime to troll one of your most beloved video game developers, Square Enix. We're going to tear Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts a new one, along with a few other installments of your favorite JRPGs.

If you've been to any of our previous panels in this series, you know what to expect. However, this year, we're going to try to change things up. For starters, it's going to be more interactive, and more media will be presented rather than dull slides. We'll have videos and images to back up our arguments, but I'm going to also *try* to bring my capture equipment for my laptop so that we can actually, in real time, show off examples from the games in question. We're going focus primarily on the newer games like Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and the recent Kingdom Hearts games, but we'll reach further back for other stuff.

This is not just a one-sided panel, hence it is a debate. If you come, we'd like you to either argue our points, or defend the games in question during our presentation. For example, my friend is going to rip apart Kingdom Hearts, and I'm likely going to defend it by citing how good I thought Birth by Sleep was and steered the series back on track (until Re:coded, that is). To help out with this, here is a preview of what's gonna be said about FF XIII:

Final Fantasy XIII
- Linear design
- Visuals over substance
- Virtually no side quests
- Where are the towns?
- Poorly developed characters
- Limited control in battles

So, do some research/homework on the games we mentioned, and Square Enix/Squaresoft/Square in general. We might have some goodies to give away for those who participate.

[mganai]

Would love to be in on this, but not in town for this con.

What was the Zelda one like, out of curiosity? How were each of the games sized up?