Following several attempts to get into the game when it was first launched in 2004 and later, around 2006, I finally began seriously playing Final Fantasy XI about a week ago after beating Blue Dragon.  I’m on the Alexander server and have been building my character as a Black Mage.  So far, I’ve soloed on my own in the Windurst area and I’m about to hit Level 19.  It’s time to get into some plot but I wanted my character to be strong enough to enjoy myself when playing.  Aaron’s been playing, too, and we sometimes level up together.

I realize the game is getting older, but there are still 500,000 registered players and 2,000,000+ registered characters.  It’s actually gotten me really excited about Final Fantasy XIV, which is also going to be an online, as well.  It’s going to be a nice distraction when I need to take a 30 minute break from the company in the middle of the day.

Related posts:

1. First Impressions of Final Fantasy XIII
2. 15 Hours of Final Fantasy XIII
3. Final Fantasy XIII Is Released Tomorrow

Lost Odyssey by Mistwalker Studios

For a long time, I wanted to be a video game programmer.  When I was still in elementary school, I saved up the $200 or so dollars for an entry-level version of Microsoft Visual Basic, went to trade shows to buy software on 5″+ floppy disks, and worked on creating my own version of the original Legend of Zelda in Microsoft Basic.  At some point, however, my obsession with finance overcame everything and the idea of sitting in a skyscraper, reading stock reports, and compounding money for the sheer joy of building something eclipsed the video game dream.  The reason was simple: I realized that if I achieved the empire on the financial side, I could someday just buy or establish a video game company.  If I became a low-level code monkey, on the other hand, I couldn’t have the other.  It was a case of having my cake and eating it, too.  Perhaps I should have known my idea of fun was spending hours playing Duck Tales on the original NES, shuffling Uncle Scrooge around the world to acquire treasure.

Looking back, Squaresoft, and later Square Enix after the merger, released a series of games including Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Kingdom Hearts that eclipses nearly ever other development house in terms of pure quality and fan obsession.  The only notable exception would be Nintendo, which owns the original hall-of-fame franchise covering Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Samus Aran of Metroid fame, Link and Zelda from The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong.  The problem with Square Enix is that it seems like the last unbelievable game that was released under its banner was Final Fantasy X.  That was nearly ten years ago.  I was in college.  That should put it in perspective.

Instead, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original creator of the Final Fantasy series launched a new studio called Mistwalker with the backing of Microsoft.  He got the veritable genius composer Nobuo Uematsu to write the soundtrack for the studio’s two releases, Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon.  I’ve been playing my way through both games over the past six months and there is no question that the quality of Mistwalker’s work far exceeds that of Square Enix, with the exception of the Kingdom Hearts series.  In fact, it feels like Mistwalker is more Square Enix than Square Enix is.

Blue Dragon by Mistwalker is one of the best games that has ever been made.

What scares me is that my family and I used to buy Squaresoft / Square Enix games on the power of the brand name alone.  We didn’t even need to know what the game was about or the plot, we simply knew if we bought it, we wouldn’t be disappointed.  That isn’t the case any longer.  The franchise value of the brand has gone down (I wrote about this concept in Profiting from Franchise Value at my Investing for Beginners site at About.com).  Instead of releasing one or two unbelievable games that will change the genre, it seems like they are attempting to pump out as many derivative-based titles as possible.  I can’t even count the number of releases that have been hyped under the Final Fantasy name for systems such as the DS or PSP.  Wouldn’t it be better to create a handful of classics than a long stream of mediocre non-events?

The great thing about capitalism, though, is that someone, somewhere, will create a work of pure art and the market will reward them for it.  I truly hope Square Enix doesn’t fall into mediocrity.  But if I were forced to bet on it, my money would be on Mistwalker Studios right now.  I really do wish the firm were publicly traded so I could get a look inside the operations.

Related posts:

1. First Impressions of Final Fantasy XIII
2. Started Final Fantasy XI on XBOX 360
3. Video Game Sales Fall for 5th Straight Month and Wall Street Blames … the Recession?