Summary
It was a wild day when Squaresoft and Enix combined into one company in 2003. That merger was odd, but it has proven to be a fruitful one for both companies. Now, they alone rule the Japanese RPG scene with an iron fist.
Even stranger still are the games thatSquare Enixhas produced. Some of the oddities begin with their name choices like withKingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue. It’s a bit nonsensical, but so are the cores of the following games. To note, some of these titles were made before the merger to help give the list a bit more variety and should provide a blast of RPG nostalgia.
Games developed or published by Square Enix, Square, or Enix will be considered.
E.V.O.: Search for Edenwas an Enix game released for the SNES. It was an action RPG that was about the evolutionary chain. Players began as small amoeba-like creature, but they could eventually turn into a fish, and from there, the branching paths became even bolder. Should players stay in the water, or should they sprout legs and go on land?
There was virtually no story to speak of, so it was a game for the RPG player who adored mechanics above all else. That, and a game made for Darwin.
There are a lot of weird spinoffs in theFinal Fantasyseries, butWorld of Final Fantasyhas to be at the top. It was originally released as a PS4 and PS Vita game, but it eventually got ported to new consoles, too.
It starred two siblings, Lann and Reynn, who wound up in a magical land filled with classicFinal Fantasycharacters like Cloud, Lightning, and Squall. The multiverse aspect was not the weirdest part; it was the turn-based gameplay that had players stack monsters on top of their heads. It’s certainly the strangestPokemonclone to come out in a while.
Itadaki Streetis a huge franchise that started in Japan on the NES. Some of the entries are based around other propertieslikeFortune Street, which is the only game in the series to be released outside of Japan. It combined characters from theDragon Questseries and variousMariogames together to compete in a board game on the Nintendo Wii.
Itadaki Street, as a whole, can best be described as an RPG version ofMonopoly. Mario is no stranger to board game parties, but it was strange addingDragon Questcharacters to the mix.
Kingdom Heartsis still one of the most surprising collaborations in video game history. Disney characters like Donald Duck running around with Yuffie fromFinal Fantasy 7was not something fans thought was possible when that game launched in 1997.
The crossover idea worked when the first game launched on PS2 in 2002 and the series is going strong two decades later. Fans are just waiting to see where the series will go next withKingdom Hearts 4. WillSora meet upwith Marvel andStar Warscharacters in another epic action RPG?
Nanashi no Game, roughly translated toNameless Game, wasa horror gamefor the DS. The game played a lot like its console contemporaries at the time in first-person with a focus more on puzzles than fighting odd creatures. That’s only half of the game, though, because the other gameplay hook occasionally sent players to a colorful 8-bit world.
How do these two worlds fit together? That won’t be spoiled here, but the game does feature an unexpected twist. It was only released in Japan, but there is a fan patch for it in English for those interested.
The 3rd Birthdayis technically the third game in theParasite Evefranchise. Why did Square Enix change the name? It’s due to a complication with the rights holder of the novel, which forced their hand to change a lot of the gameplay and core ideas. While Aya Brea was still the lead, her powers differed.
A chaotic attack happened inNew York Cityonce again and Aya had to use a machine to travel back in time to figure out what went wrong. She had to possess bodies to keep active in the field. This body swap concept was later reused in another Square Enix game,MindJack, which is probably even more obscure than this PSP action RPG.
The Quiet Manis one of the worst-reviewed games on Metacritic from Square Enix. The game starred a deaf man named Dane, and players, like Dane, couldn’t exactly hear what the characters around him were saying. The cutscenes were live-action, but the gameplay was rendered in-engine, and it did not look great.
It was a brawler by nature, but it didn’t have the oomph of aStreets of RageorFinal Fight. For so many reasons, it is absolutely one of the most baffling decisions the company has ever made. In this way,The Quiet Manis kind of “so bad, it’s good,” and it needs to be played to be believed.
In the early days of Square Enix, back when they were just Squaresoft, the company made a lot of licensed-based games. Of the many,Square no Tom Sawyer, orSquare’s Tom Sawyer, for the NES has to take the cake, which turned the classicTom Sawyernovel intoa turn-based RPG.
It was another Japan-only game, which might be a good thing since the depictions of some of the characters were racist. It’s one of those games that needs to be played to be believed, but unfortunately, there is no full English fan patch for it yet; there is just a partial one that goes through the very early stages.
