Prisoners around the world, convicts punished to spend the rest of their lives behind the rotting bars of justice always think of nefarious ways to escape. We’ve seen prison breaks end in bloody fashion, but nothing bloodier that was reported just hours ago. A prisoner in Monmouthshire, Wales took took matters into his own hands by crafting eerily familiar tools of destruction based in the world of Final Fantasy. The convict has reportedly activated his special skill going on a rampage by summoning the blinding light to execute a Blasting Zone, and…

Just kidding!

According to Kotaku, the convict’s replicated set of Final Fantasy Weapons do not pose a threat to the jail’s security since all of them were fake. However, civilians who are unaware of its artificiality may panic at the sight of the convict swinging Squall’s Gunblade while posing for the fanfare. Aside from Cloud’s Buster Sword (those colored orbs were never there in the first place), the convict has also in hand a few swords taken from reference in Bleach.

The prisoner’s Governor, Steve Cross, and his staff were unaware of the weapons’ cultural and iconic status. Cross had no idea that such weapons existed even before the convict surrendered it for security measures. Europe is a military powerhouse, but crossing out Final Fantasy gear out from their war reference is inexcusable.

Image Source: Kotaku

Technorati Tags: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy Weapons

There are memorable mini-games that made Final Fantasy a unique role-playing experience. In Final Fantasy IX, Zidane assumes the role of a treasure hunter by allowing Choco to search around the land of Gaia for hidden treasure. Backtracking with Final Fantasy VIII, Squall gets a break from all the time-bending action through card battles, which allow players to synthesize useful materials in strengthening their weapon models or acquire useful piece of battle items. Finally, who could ever forget the Gold Saucer and the gambling lifestyle Cloud had to go through to acquire his most powerful Limit Break – Omnislash.

Final Fantasy VII was dark all around, but Gold Saucer’s Chocobo Racing helped minimize gameplay tension; players breed Chocobos and register it to compete in a race track entombed with stunning visual effects. After slowly reducing the roles of Chocobos as overworked treasure diggers, Final Fantasy XIII-2 decides to put these giant birds back inside the race track where they “truly belong.”

Siliconera reveals that Final Fantasy XIII-2, along with the returning Chocobo racing mini-game, will also indulge players into slot gambling wherein they can win coins of up to 50,000. Square remains mum on how would these coins assist the players.

Details for the Chocobo Racing mini-game are:

1. There is no Chocobo breeding involved. Players get to pick a Chocobo upon entering the race format.

2. Chocobos are endowed with different skills. Speed determines how fast the Chocobo is, Stamina tests how the Chocobo will last inside the race track, Skills are useful abilities that can give players unfair advantage over their opponents, and Race Points (RP) computes the statistical penalties that the Chocobo suffered after the last race (huh?).

3. Players are free to command their Chocobos. Chocobos can either run at normal speed or dash at top speed, which the latter can drain a Chocobo’s Boost Gauge if used unwisely. Similar with Final Fantasy VII’s racing mechanics, conserving Stamina during the earlier leg of the race and dashing when nearing the finish line is a simple but effective tactic.

4. Races are comprised of five tiers. Winning a particular rewards the player with a useful item.

Image Source: Siliconera

Technorati Tags: Chocobo Racing, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Andriasang’s latest news for Final Fantasy XIII-2 reveals that the game will arrive with one or two DLCs – a monumental leap for the series itself since this will be the first time that a single Final Fantasy game will embrace DLC for additional gameplay content.

Downloadable content (DLC) for the PlayStation 3 is treated as a gameplay extension and bonus for players who have unlocked everything that is to own, discover, and defeat in one single video game. Final Fantasy is the perfect definition of an in-depth role-playing game emphasized by item collection, 100% sidequest completion, optional bosses, and many more hidden content, which does not change the storyline or flow of the game. Therefore, the DLC for Final Fantasy XIII-2 hopes to carry on the tradition of immersing players with additional content that goes far of bringing stylish costumes, powerful weapons, and dangerous enemies into the mix.

In an interview with Dengeki PlayStation, Yoshinori Kitase made it perfectly clear that the upcoming DLCs for Final Fantasy XIII-2 will become synonymous in quality in terms of content and price. Final Fantasy XIII-2′s producer was silent on how much the DLCs will cost players and he instead enlightened the audience by answering key aspects with the game’s upgraded battle system.

Yoshinori Kitase revealed that Final Fantasy XIII-2′s battle system will incorporate a unique reward mechanism called “Summon Raid,” in which players can control monsters previously defeated in battle. Additionally, these monsters will serve roles (or Paradigms) dependent on their style and fighting capabilities. Captured monsters also have the ability to perform powerful attacks via Feral Link. Similar with character Limit Breaks, monsters are gifted with the Feral Link ability, which gives them powerful offensive moves that can trigger quick time events for a more satisfying, fashionable finish.

Technorati Tags: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Well, it has been a month since I abandoned ship (again), but I am finally back with more Final Fantasy updates.

I plan to revamp my approach. The site has festered a bit regarding its choice of topic, and Final Fantasy Girls will now focus more on Final Fantasy from this point forward. I will still feature female cosplayers donning their favorite Final Fantasy attire. This month is so fantastically intriguing that it is so hard to overlook the news surrounding the Final Fantasy title in general.

First up, Dissidia 012 Duodecim.

Final Fantasy Union has gone on a little crusade to inform us about the development of the prequel to the original Dissidia game, and they are quite good at it. The PSP exclusive is going all out with all the game’s recent evolution in terms of gameplay and graphics. Dissidia 012 Duodecim opened the year with a series of fan-cheering additions of Yuna to Cosmos’  lineup of warriors. Of course, she’ll be joined by Lightning Farron, Kain Highwing, Laguna Loire, and Vaan.

What is more startling is that, the extended trailer shown on Final Fantasy Union indicates that some of the previous Cosmos warriors will not join the fight against discord and destruction. It is hinted that Tidus, Cloud, and Terra have joined Chaos’ soldiers of darkness. The trio could not be seen in Cosmos’ corner.

A trailer is just a trailer. Those split second sequences make it hard for us to determine if whether Tidus, Cloud, and Terra have gone rogue and defected from the Goddess of Harmony. More importantly, it is hard to imagine if Tidus is on the side of evil given his jumpy disposition.

The six-minute trailer also features Bartz and an anthropomorphic figure heading straight towards the cheery adventurer.

The swirling figure might be the weapon fanatic, Gilgamesh.

Word of caution: Never travel around the Void alone!

In addition, Aerith Gainsborough can be seen during a short skirmish involving Cloud and Sephiroth.

A trailer is just a trailer. Those split second sequences make it hard for us to determine if whether Tidus, Cloud, and Terra have gone rogue and defected from the Goddess of Harmony. More importantly, it is hard to imagine if Tidus is on the side of evil given his jumpy disposition.

Expect more on these in the next coming weeks.

Anyways, Dissidia 012 Duodecim is picking up steam; the fighting mechanics look fluid and everything about it, especially how a quick North American release would soon follow after the initial Japan release, is impressive.

Technorati Tags: Dissidia 012 Duodecim, Final Fantasy

I’m not a huge fan of Kingdom Hearts mainly because I grew up knowing that there is this game called Final Fantasy. I’ll be honest with you, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is the first KH game that I finished, I just never liked the collaboration between Disney and Square Enix and the fact that some of our favorite FF heroes would be cordially spliced in Kingdom Hearts just so we could get lectured on how similar the two titles are.

After seeing Remorsefulpromises and her Deviation, I said to myself, “Crap, how am I going to do this?”

For those who just visited the site for the very first time, Remorsefulpromises has been repetitively featured on Final Fantasy girls for her contributions as cosplaying Final Fantasy’s most popular heroines and fan service insignias; from Tifa Lockhart to the conservative Crisis Core Aeris Gainsborough, she has become my top feature for everything that resembles the sexy side of Square Enix’s most prized copyright possession.

This time, however, she’s not dressed as anything that came direct  from Yoshitaka Amano’s brilliant hands. Honestly, I just can’t say no from someone whom I believe visits the site everyday for any upcoming Final Fantasy updates and see herself as the main feature proudly posing her style in standstill motion. For now, here she is again as Aqua of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.

Those who had played Birth By Sleep, we could see a tad of difference from the color hue Remorseful promises used in this picture. Aqua sports darker blue hair and Remorsefulpromises humbly stated the reason for this mistake personally on her Deviant Art account, and she wrote:

“The reason i have clips in the wig is because its very long and i couldn’t bear to cut it =[“

Expect more on this in the coming future.

Technorati Tags: Fantasy Girl Of The Week, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy Girls

The Fabula Nova Crystallis Conference will just go down in history as Square Enix’s failed project in succinctly explaining to long-time Final Fantasy fans about what has happened with Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Agito XIII. Both titles have not shownenough flair to market Final Fantasy as the game to beat under the competitive role-playing genre. As we all know, IGN ranked Final Fantasy XIII as 2010′s biggest disappointment of the gaming industry thus, SE hopes to re-affirm its hold in the role-playing market with titles such as Versus and Agito XIII.

The year 2010 may have not been too kind to Final Fantasy: the botched efforts of the developers of Final Fantasy XIV to create a unique MMO experience, the angry player fiasco who in turn was a stockholder of SE and threatened the company that he would be pulling out his shares of the stock because on how lackluster Final Fantasy XIV turned out to be and the direction of the franchise overall, many players doubt that Final Fantasy would be as powerful it once were during the late 90s.

Overall, Square Enix hopes to change it all with a few major setbacks, which will formally introduce Versus and Agito XIII to Japan and SE’s other titles such as The 3rd Birthday and Dissidia Duodecim. What’s that setback you ask? Apparently, Square Enix just pulled another stunt and cancelled Fabula Nova Crystallis Conference without clearly explaining to the public, especially those who had already reserved their seats outside the Makuhari Mess for the abrupt cancellation of the event.

Now known as Square Enix’s 1st Production Department Premier, Square Enix would be merging its first quarter projects in an effort to consolidate the company’s priority line for the year 2011. The newly-named conference will commence on January 18, 2011 would take place at the Toho Cinemas in Rippongi Hills, the same exact spot where Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children were first shown to the public.

The long tail event will pioneer SE’s 2011 projects and will significantly inform gamers on updates regarding Versus and Agito XIII, including exclusive video clips of the upcoming PSP-shooter, The 3rd Birthday and the highly-anticipated follow-up to the 2009 fighting platform Dissidia, Dissidia Duodecim.

Technorati Tags: Fabula Nova Crystallis, Final Fantasy

Vaan’s inclusion in Dissidia Duodecim sparked a lot of debates whether the “Final Fantasy XII protagonist” should have been reconsidered or worse, scraped out of the development arena which developers of the sequel stalwartly ignored. Vaan, if you played Final Fantasy XII from start to finish, never really stood out among his peers of memorable Final Fantasy heroes and heroines; standing around, at least during the early phase of the quest, is Vaan’s unlikely trademark making him one of the series’ most ridiculed male lead characters of all time.

Nonetheless, Vaan will be making his debut next year as a playable character in Dissidia Duodecim and finally, Square Enix has released few details surrounding his role and abilities. Just like Bartz, Vaan can equip any type of weapon, even the long-range armaments primordially known as Crossbows. My predictions came true as expectations for Vaan is currently being polished by the sequel team, who I think are the same guys behind Dissidia.

Battle Planner Takeo Kujiraoka succinctly explained that Vaan is going to be a Switch Attacker, switching from one weapon to another associated with the Bravery attack executed by the player. In addition, Vaan’s EX Burst is similar with that of Judge Magister Gabranth, players shuffle commands with the R button and X will be used to select a particular devastating Mist Knack command.

Kujiraoka proudly boasts that Vaan’s flair for execution Mist Knack commands is among the game’s most graphically-impressive showing as of development time.

Overall, Vaan may be perhaps on the verge of a breakthrough, he’s finally getting the respect that he deserves and the chance to finally show Balthier who the real go-to-guy of Final Fantasy XII is. Take that, original Strahl owner!

Photo courtesy of Famitsu

Technorati Tags: Dissidia Duodecim, Final Fantasy

Technically, Final Fantasy XIV is like Fallout: New Vegas, glitches, bugs and technical hiccups hampers the experience as opposed to what both developers tried to avoid during early stages of testing. Fallout ruins the single player fun while Final Fantasy, on the other hand, ruins the whole experience, destroying the MMO’s chance of competing with the likes of World of Warcraft.

Sqaure Enix’s current mission objective: Fix the game so that players who earlier declined to continue logging in Eorzea would come back, and regain player loyalty by ridding the game of it’s post-gameplay problems.

In a statement releases by Square Enix CEO, Yoichi Wada, SE is currently working on reforms, Final Fantasy XIV did received the hype through some video clips explaining in detail how production for the game was made, and how the likes of Nobuo Uematsu came out of his shelter to provide the game with powerful and nostalgic background music, similar to what he did in previous Final Fantasy titles.

So far, all the honeycombed introductions ended up being harvested by disgruntled players. This is coming from a guy who has yet to play the game since I’m waiting for its PS3 release this March 2011; news and updates about the sudden reformation to make FF XIV enjoyable (as it should be) has been SE’s clockwork mission.

Wada added, “If we satisfy our users, they will return. On the other hand, once the users say, ‘forget this,’ there’s no turning back. We can only recover our trust so far.”

The damage may had already been done.

Technorati Tags: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV

In comes my most favorite blog category of them all; at first I thought that scouring every photo-hosting site for image of Final Fantasy cosplayers is a sign that I’m beginning to inhibit acts of online debauchery. There is no room for proper introduction, I could send the copyright owner of the image a formal letter – a permission to “hot link” the file and praise on how the photography captured the still motion of Tifa’s supple breasts or how perfectly this particular Princess Ashe captured the royalty butt.

As if.

If you’re all still wondering (that is, if you’ve been following the site from its initial Sephiroth theme up until the recent layout overhaul) why Fantasy Girl Of The Week has only featured a Deviant named Remorsefulpromises? The answer is simple, and I’ll draft it for you right now.

Ever since I was just beginning with the site, I thought of a segment where I could show how much depth Final Fantasy has accrued for the past 10 or so years. ; many people thought that the game would die eventually since, every year or two, the game still exists under a denomination that made Square Enix as publishers of JRPGs that developed into something more: a cultural fanfest where everybody could talk about how they got this particular in-game item or how they adore the characters of the entire series, from I to XIV.

Now going back over the site’s development, this segment found its star and her unreal name is Remorsefulpromises. Her habitat is called Deviant Art, a jungle for creative minds who adore the passion of creativity to the next level, and by next level, they ultimately go around each day posting caricatures or self-made, artistic concepts about… life or something. Lucky for me, Remorsefulpromises is a certified Final Fantasy fan, and she knows her way around on how to present to others, that she is indeed one of the Web’s unnoticed cosplay talent.

Here’s just one example. You may have seen her other Tifa Lockhart cosplay art but this one, for me, really stood out as the best.

Why do I keep posting pictures of her? Simple, she took interest in my crude little game of free identity advertising – I also started Fantasy Girl Of The Week in an effort to help solidify a female cosplayer who excels in replicating her favorite female Final Fantasy character. I did it for Ms. Christine Evola. I’d do it for others as well, free of charge! I don’t have PayPal, don’t worry.

Remorsefulpromises been sending me quality images of her donning authentic Tifa Lockhart alternate costumes on Advent Children.

Technorati Tags: Fantasy Girl Of The Week, Final Fantasy, Tifa Lockhart

First and foremost, I’m officially back from a month-long hiatus of bringing you with latest Final Fantasy news and updated feeds from the franchise itself. As you can all see, I dumped my Equilibrium theme for a much hotter web page exclusively designed by my friends from Radioactive Candy, these guys, I mean, can literally turn a dull site into a magnificent work of CSS and HTML art.

Going back.

As we all know, Dissidia Duodecim, the sequel to Square Enix’s successful fighting platformer for the PSP, will be heading to Japan in 2011 and an imminent North American release is yet to follow. Square Enix had already confirmed that Final Fantasy XIII’s Lightning (or Claire Farron) will be jumping aboard in Cosmos’s side along with Final Fantasy IV’s suave dragoon, Kain.

Tifa Lockhart also joins Cosmos’s side with a very convincing trailer of her conversing with Sephiroth inside the Lifestream.

This time, Weekly Jump rests from bringing players hints on who will enlist in Cosmos or Chaos’s camp; character depth is so much hard to judge that anyone from the Final Fantasy universe is eligible to join this war and yes, that includes Red XIII though, there will be fluctuating concerns whether we’re going to get too much Final Fantasy VII on this one, if you know what I mean.

Weekly Jump divulged on how Dissidia Duodecim will emphasize the role of effective teamwork in battles as an Assist system strategically places your character to come up with the  following actions. Assist Change allows your tag-team partner absorb the punishment inflicted by your opponent, Assist Lock prevents your opponent to summon his/her partner, and Assist Charge increases the Assist Gauge when your HP is at critical.

Aside from basic gameplay mechanics, Weekly Jump had some juicy scans where Tifa Lockhart is shown wearing her Advent Children costume; we all know about Lightning getting Aya Brea’s default black sleeveless and vice versa, this time, our favorite female powerhouse gets to enjoy a bit of conservatism with her black gown.

Characters, according to the magazine, will get another Third Form or alternate costumes designed specifically for them to look good while hacking away at cool-as-well adversaries.

Technorati Tags: Dissidia Duodecim, Final Fantasy, Lightning, Tifa Lockhart