Mist Walk with Me

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For the last couple weeks I’ve been hooked on Fantasian: Neo Dimension - Mistwalker’s latest release. I had known about Hironobu Sakaguchi leaving Square after the commercial failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and went on to make some well regarded Xbox/Wii games. I never owned those systems, so it wasn’t until a recent insert credit episode that I decided to go back and learn about what the whole deal was with Mistwalker.

Mistwalker itself is a loosely defined supergroup of art directors, scenario writers, and musicians co-producing projects. Some of the notable Mistwalker team members are Kimihiko Fujisaka (Drakengard), Naoto Ohshima (Sonic & NiGHTS), Yukio Futatsugi & Manabu Kusunoki (Panzer Dragoon), Akira Toriyama (Tobal), and Nobuo Uematsu (Rad Racer). It’s a lot of old men making the kind of legacy projects they feel like, and I think that’s pretty neat.

I thought I would make this thread to talk about everything from ASH: Archiac Sealed Heat to A Thousand Years of Dreams to Terra Battle… and anything in between. My hope is that after I beat Fantasian, sometime in 2025 I’ll pick up another one of their games (maybe Lost Odyssey or The Last Story).

Neo Dimension is Sakaguchi’s triumphant return to Square Enix, he and Naoki Yoshida (head of Creative Business Unit 3) are teasing something Sakaguchi spent 2024 writing and beginning production on…

Could this mean they’re co-producing Final Fantasy XVII? Or doing something totally fresh and outside the box? We will see… but honestly it might take a while to come out since Sakaguchi seems to be addicted to FFXIV.

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I put around 5 hours into The Last Story for the first time in years earlier today and it’s still a very comfy bedtime story of a game.

Also, more games should give me the opportunity to make NPCs slip on banana peels!

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I am not convinced the sales are triumphant, based on early sales reports in Japan and online store charts, but it is certainly heartwarming that former SQEX veterans have always been respected by the current producers. Same goes for Tanaka Hiromichi despite the FF14 debacle.

The Last Story and Lost Odyssey are mostly the work of AQ interactive (and its subsidiaries Feelplus and Cavia), with many of their former staff composing the team now known as Marvelous First Studio within Marvelous.

I have such a fond memory of The Last Story that I am actually a bit scared to revisit the game. I loved that the setting was condensed in such a small environment. The obvious comparison back then was the still fresh concept of Assassin’s Creed, but it also gave the game a proper tabletop RPG campaign feel, akin to something like Darkmere on the Amiga.

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