Square Enix is synonymous with fantastic role-playing games, thanks to series like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts. But very few games are lucky enough to enjoy that kind of longevity. Over the years, the company has released plenty of games that had enormous potential, but for one reason or another, didn’t turn into a long-running franchise or are nearly impossible to play today.
Here are a handful of Square Enix RPGs that deserve a comeback, whether it’s simply a port for modern hardware, an attentive remaster, or a full-on remake. These games may not have been forgotten by fans, but all of them have suffered a bit of neglect from the developer-publisher, for one reason or another.
1
Parasite Eve
Long before Insomniac’s take on Peter Parker “really made you feel like Spider-Man,” Parasite Eve had Manhattan. Set in December 1997, the game follows police detective Aya Brea as she tracks a mutant entity called Eve in locations like the Natural History Museum, Central Park, Chinatown, the Chrysler Building, and Carnegie Hall. Eve has an unusual power — she can cause the mitochondria in people’s cells to “awaken,” leading them to spontaneously combust. The story is a sequel to Hideaki Sena’s popular novel of the same name and part of a worldwide late-’90s surge in popularity for Japanese horror. It was built on a modified version of the Final Fantasy 7 engine, and was described by contemporary critics as a mash-up of that game and Resident Evil.
Parasite Eve inspired a couple sequels — 1999’s Parasite Eve 2 and 2010’s The Third Birthday for PlayStation Portable — but the original feels especially ripe for rediscovery today. The two games that inspired it are more popular than ever, and the action-oriented combat system was ahead of its time. Heck, Square Enix could repeat history and use the FF7 Remake engine for a reimagined Parasite Eve.
2
Bloodmasque
Would you play a splashy, stylish Square Enix RPG set in an alternate version of 19th-century Paris that’s been taken over by vampires? I sure would! As it turns out, that game already exists, and it’s 2013’s Bloodmasque. Problem is, it launched exclusively for touchscreen Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad, which is probably why you haven’t heard of it. Last September, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles director Kazutoyo Maehiro told me that he’d written extensive lore for the Bloodmasque, which he worked on as a scenario designer.
“I wrote about 3,000 years worth of Iore for that game. This is the first time I heard that name in such a long time — I basically just remembered it myself. But now that I’m remembering it, I do feel it’s a game that would maybe be interesting to launch, even in this day and age,” Maehiro said. “The intention for that game, we really wanted to be able to make it so you can have the story take place at any point in time, from a chronological perspective. So yeah, I had depicted or written out the story of the history of these vampires throughout a very long course of time, ultimately into outer space.” Let’s reboot this idea! The children yearn for more Bloodmasque!
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