Once Upon a Time...
...there were two companies.
One was called "Squaresoft", and many wonderful games appeared under their banner. One of the distant cousins of the juggernaut Final Fantasy series was created by the old Tactics Ogre team, and christened Final Fantasy Tactics. Cute noseless character sprites and endless political machinations combined to take many hundreds of hours of my life.
Another company was called "Enix", and many wonderful games appeared under their banner. One of their original titles, created by the team called tri-Ace, was called Valkyrie Profile. Beautiful character art and moving music combined to form an instant favorite of mine.
Now these two companies merged just over six years ago, but the Square teams did their own thing with SaGa and Final Fantasy, while the Enix teams did their own thing with Star Ocean and Dragon Quest.
Only recently has there finally been a true merged production: Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume was released in Japan last November, and for the North American DS market last month. And of course the reason I bring it up now is that I got it over the weekend. It perfectly combines the cute sprites of Tactics and the beautiful character art of Valk, adds the haunting music of Sakuraba Motoi, and (after only a few hours of play) already shows hints of the complex Machiavellian politics that was the hallmark of FFT.
This is the kind of thing I always hoped for out of the Square-Enix merger (and been disappointed for the past six years). It's a wonderful fusion of two of my favorite sources, and I look forward to finishing the game (in due time).
One was called "Squaresoft", and many wonderful games appeared under their banner. One of the distant cousins of the juggernaut Final Fantasy series was created by the old Tactics Ogre team, and christened Final Fantasy Tactics. Cute noseless character sprites and endless political machinations combined to take many hundreds of hours of my life.
Another company was called "Enix", and many wonderful games appeared under their banner. One of their original titles, created by the team called tri-Ace, was called Valkyrie Profile. Beautiful character art and moving music combined to form an instant favorite of mine.
Now these two companies merged just over six years ago, but the Square teams did their own thing with SaGa and Final Fantasy, while the Enix teams did their own thing with Star Ocean and Dragon Quest.
Only recently has there finally been a true merged production: Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume was released in Japan last November, and for the North American DS market last month. And of course the reason I bring it up now is that I got it over the weekend. It perfectly combines the cute sprites of Tactics and the beautiful character art of Valk, adds the haunting music of Sakuraba Motoi, and (after only a few hours of play) already shows hints of the complex Machiavellian politics that was the hallmark of FFT.
This is the kind of thing I always hoped for out of the Square-Enix merger (and been disappointed for the past six years). It's a wonderful fusion of two of my favorite sources, and I look forward to finishing the game (in due time).