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Data from Famitsu and other sources show that Square Enix has now sold 3.2 million copies of Dragon Quest IX in the 10 or so days since it came out in Japan.  This marks the second DS blockbuster in a row for Square Enix, who had Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days in the top 10 sales bracket as Dragon Quest IX first hit the shelves.  So what’s next for Square Enix?

A few things…

The continuation of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years for the American WiiWare market - with 3 additional episodes released on July 6th 2009 and 3 more due in August before the September conclusion.

Square Enix will continue it’s summer assault of the handheld gaming market in Japan with the release of two more titles in August:  Blood of Bahamut, an RPG from the folks who brought us Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings; and The Game With No Name: The Eye, a “first person survival horror” uhhh… whatever that is.  Apparently this is a sequel to the first Game with No Name.

And most important, the American release of Dissidia: Final Fantasy for the PSP on August 25th, 2009.  Day one.  I guess I’ll have to clean my PSP screen and charge it up for this.

As for site downtime, my apologies.  Hope everyone is still around, feel free to reply to this post with a “hi!” if you are.

So I picked up the prologue chapter for the game, which is actually turning out to be fairly lengthy.

I’ve logged about four hours, and it’s pretty darn good so far. Much of the gameplay is, as expected, ripped almost entirely from the original FFIV (read: turn-based, ATB driven combat). However, there are a couple of new wrinkles that have an impact. The first are “Bands”; co-op attacks by two or more party members. You acquire some bands automatically as the story progresses, but the vast majority are there for you to discover on your own by combining different actions from each member of the desired band. For example, combining “Attack” with Cecil and “White Magic” with Rosa will activate the “Holy Blade” attack. Most offensive bands do more damage to a particular enemy type, so it maintains an element of strategy. Another addition is the effect of moon phases, which shift after a period of time or whenever your party sleeps. Each of the four phases significantly powers up one of the four primary attributes (physical attack, white/black magic, and techs) and weakens another.

As story goes, the plot is pretty intriguing so far, if a little nonsensical occasionally. While you do control the old guard characters like Cecil and Rosa on occasion, the majority of the game is played as Ceodore, Cecil’s son. He’s a pretty solid character all around, though he tends toward the melodramtic.

One other thing worth noting is that this game gets hard in a hurry. At my point, I’m already having to level grind to keep standard mobs from slicing off nearly half of my HP every time they attack.

But anyway, I’m interested to keep exploring the story to see what surprises Square has in store. Definitely worth the download so far.

Did you know that the sequel to fan-favorite Final Fantasy IV was released today to the WiiWare download service?  Here are five things about the game that might interest you.

The Title: The game is titled Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.

The Developer: Matrix Softeware developed The After Years for Square Enix after being involved with the remakes of Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV for the Nintendo DS.  Yeah, you know those snazzy 3D remakes?  Matrix Software made them.

The Setting: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years takes place 17 years after the original title, featuring the son of two primary FFIV characters as the lead protagonist.  There’s more, but it would be spoiling it for you.

The Cost: This is where it gets tricky.  This is an episodic game, meaning it is broken into 9 chapters that will be released between now and September.  I’ve seen a couple of variations, but for the most part it is 2 chapters in June, 3 in July, 3 in August, with a finale in September.  The initial chapter and “main game” itself is 800 points, you must get this to purchase subsequent chapters.  So that’s 8 bucks USD, following chapters are priced at 300 points (3USD), the first of which, Rydia’s Tale, already available for purchase.  The finale may cost 800 points, meaning the total price of this game will come out to 40 USD, about the price of a Square Enix DS title if this were released for the handheld.

The Music: Mostly Nobuo Uematsu stuff from the original game, from what I can tell so far.