News and Announcements for April 2024

Final Fantasy XVI may be done with DLC following the release of The Rising Tide but there’s no rest for the weary. The development team just announced the existence of a bug impacting New Game+ players that’s capable of preventing main scenario quest progress. The team has prioritized finding the cause of the bug and repairing it and is expected to release a patch once they do. While the bug is game-breaking in that it manages to prevent story progress, encountering it isn’t a sure thing. According to the announcement made on social media, there is a “small chance” of the bug occurring when a player selects New Game+ and opts to skip the prologue. Doing this could result in party members not...
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The team behind Final Fantasy VII Rebirth just announced a special event going down at this year’s Tribeca Festival in New York City. Called “From Fire to Firaga: Remaking Final Fantasy VII,” the director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Naoki Hamaguchi, and the producer and director of the original Final Fantasy VII, Yoshinori Kitase, will be getting together at the SVA Theater on 23rd to discuss the ins and outs of remaking this iconic game. The event is set for Friday, June 14, with tickets going on sale next week on Monday, April 29, on the Tribeca website. Here’s a description of the event from the Tribeca event page. “Naoki Hamaguchi, the director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Yoshino...
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It’s the spirit-catching season in Final Fantasy XIV with the "Yo-kai Watch: Gather One, Gather All!" collaboration event returning on April 24. Running until the launch of Dawntrail, players can participate in FATEs in select regions to earn Yo-kai Watch minions, weapons, and mounts Yo-kai Watch is a popular Japanese game originally developed by Level-5 for the Nintendo 3DS back in 2013. The premise centers around a hero who uses a special device called a Yo-kai Watch to meet and befriend unique “Yo-kai” or spirits that have been haunting a whimsical city. But don’t worry, the Yo-kai aren’t modeled after the ghosts and ghouls you see in horror films. Yo-kai are cute and colorful like supern...
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In a letter posted to the Final Fantasy XIV Lodestone, producer and director Naoki Yoshida raises issues with the Dawntrail benchmark character creator released on April 14 that his team is reworking. Yoshida explains that the problems stem largely from lighting elements that impact the character creation environment where the Dawntrail graphical update wasn’t applied. The existing benchmark software will be replaced once the character creator is patched and reflects Dawntrail’s graphical capabilities. Yoshida calls out specific problems that the insertion of the graphical update will improve. “Lifeless” eyes due to a lack of highlights in the pupils Facial contours appearing flattened d...
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PlayStation recently updated its list of titles leaving its PlayStation Plus library and 7 Final Fantasy favorites are included. Players have about a month to enjoy these Final Fantasy classics before they depart the PlayStation Plus stable on May 21. These are all the Final Fantasy games headed out the door. Final Fantasy VII (PS4) Final Fantasy VIII Remastered (PS4) Final Fantasy IX (PS4) Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster (PS4) Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (PS4) Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition (PS4) World of Final Fantasy (PS4) The Final Fantasy titles leaving the PS Plus library (World of Final Fantasy not pictured). Technically 7 titles are on the chopping block, but...
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A new patch for Final Fantasy XVI dropped today in preparation for the game’s second and final DLC, The Rising Tide, which comes out tomorrow, April 18. This sizeable update comes with skill and accessory balancing, bug fixes, and some pretty cool quality-of-life changes that should make gameplay even more dynamic. First, Clive now has Skill Sets. Have you ever found yourself in an encounter where a certain skill you don’t have equipped would’ve come in really handy? With the ability to swap between five customizable Skill Sets by pressing L1 or R1, this should become less of an issue. In all likelihood, the arrival of Skill Sets right before the release of The Rising Tide makes sense consid...
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The latest Live Letter from the Producer was held over the weekend, and the presentation focused a lot on the anticipated graphical update that drops with the Dawntrail expansion on July 2, 2024. And to help make sure PCs are ready for the hefty overhaul to Final Fantasy XIV visuals, a Benchmark program was also released over the weekend to test system performance. The benchmark will give tested systems a numerical score and one of eight possible ratings depending on test results. A score of 4000-7999 generally means a system should be capable of handling Dawntrail’s default settings. Scores higher than that window signify high-performance systems that can easily run the default setting...
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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth players waking up on the West Coast will notice that Patch 1.030 has arrived. This nearly 5 GB update fixes a handful of bugs, including the Chapter 12 “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” bug that prevented players from finishing the sidequest even after completing all its requirements. Here’s a rundown of the Version 1.030 patch notes. Fixed a bug in the sub-quest "Can't Stop, Won't Stop" that occurs in Chapter 12, where the quest would not progress even if the clear conditions for G-Bike were met. To proceed with the quest, you will need to meet the G Bike clear conditions again after the update. note that. You have already cleared the relevant quest, your progress wi...
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The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth original soundtrack (OST) is available for purchase or preorder now! You can buy it digitally for immediate access to all 175 songs or preorder the seven-disc CD box set. There’s also a special edition CD box set which, at the time of writing, is no longer available for preorder. In addition to a mini memo pad featuring Rebirth art, the special edition box set includes a bonus-track CD with exclusive background music from Rebirth minigames. As an added surprise, all three versions of the OST come with the track “No Promises to Keep LOVELESS ver.” If you remember from the gut-wrenching trailer, “No Promises to Keep” is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s theme song ...
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The Gamer sat down with some of the key minds behind Final Fantasy XVI at PAX East 2024 to talk about the game’s future and The Rising Tide DLC, but some of the juicer interview tidbits came from responses to a few interesting fan questions. Featuring Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida aka Yoshi-P, The Rising Tide DLC director Takeo Kujiraoka, and localization director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox, The Gamer got more details on why Final Fantasy XVI won’t be getting a direct sequel and also Yoshida’s thoughts on the possibility of a Final Fantasy Tactics set in the world of Valisthea. The fact that Final Fantasy XVI isn’t getting a sequel has been known since the game’s two D...
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Chapter 6 in the Final Fantasy VII storyline dropped yesterday, delivering new draws, gameplay features, and everyone’s favorite fortune-telling feline, Cait Sith, into the Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis world.   Entitled “On the Road,” Chapter 6 chronicles Cloud and the gang’s journey through Costa del Sol, the Gold Saucer, and Corel Prison. Once again, Ever Crisis lets fans relive these iconic locations and plot points from the original Final Fantasy VII with its updated look and mobile-friendly combat system. And, in case you’re lamenting another Easter gone by or you’d just like to see Tifa with bunny ears, some spring-themed Draws are also available for a limited time. Players have...
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It’s been a big year for Naoki Hamaguchi. The director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has been enjoying nearly universal praise for Rebirth since its February 29 launch, and now he’s been promoted. Hamaguchi shared via X (formally Twitter) that he's now an Executive Officer at Square Enix. There are no specifics on how this promotion impacts Hamaguchi’s authority and day-to-day at Square Enix, but based on his announcement, he’s clearly not done with making games. We’ve seen developers-turned-executives at the famed Final Fantasy publisher continue their careers on the development side with great success. Just look at Naoki Yoshida who was promoted to an executive office in 2015 but hasn’t pu...
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Hello everyone it is now April 1, 2024, and it has been nearly 6 months since I last did a site update announcement so first I would like to apologize to everyone for not keeping you informed of what is going on and why you might have noticed some changes happening around the site. While we have continued to bring you the latest happenings and news of the Final Fantasy universe, thanks to Jeff de Leon, you may not have seen anything else on the front-end change. Unfortunately, the holidays and new school semester took a lot of my time away, much more than I originally expected, and it has slowed down my work. With the holidays over I have been able to dedicate more time to working on the bac...
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