efralope said:
Square's only "big" (as in blockbuster potential) release this year IMO is Kingdom Hearts GBA
Well, I was kind of meaning "biggest release" by Square Enix themselves, as in the only title they'll put much advertising bucks behind. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is either a Nintendo title, or a Disney Interactive one (anybody know for sure?), so if it gets advertising put behind it, it'd likely be done by one of those two companies instead.
That said, I do think Star Ocean could end up a success if Square Enix plays their cards right. Keep the TV ads going, have a print ad for a few months, and maybe throw in a contest (hey, it helps sometimes

). Just things to promote it. That coupled with word of mouth (I'm thinking it'll generally be positive), review scores, etc -- it could all end up boosting sales quite a bit.
I guess we'll see, but I'm sure that's kind of what they're hoping for.
cvkpaladin said:
Actually, whatever happened to GameArts anyways?
They were originally partially owned by Enix, pre-merger. It was a small stake in the company, with a publishing deal thrown on top. After the merger, though, it seems like it all faded away... Enix hasn't spoken on GameArts' behalf since before the merger, and GameArts has also started XBox development, where-as Enix doesn't even have a publishing license for the system (as far as I know, at least).
Odds are that GameArts has just gone back to having no set publisher, so we'll likely see their games come over by multiple companies again (Lunar by Working Designs, Grandia titles by Ubi Soft, etc), instead of (Square-) Enix handling everything worldwide.
As far as their projects go, they were hiring programmers/technicians for a few online projects awhile back, as well as working on the newly announced Gungriffon game for XBox. They also had that "Pure Dragon" title, but it seems to have disappeared. That's about it...
Alex said:
Grandia II was close to the worst sequel ever made. It had absoluely nothing on the original.
I personally thought the battle system, Skill Book & Mana Egg systems, and the voice acting were all sizable improvements over the first.
However, for the battle system, the improvements weren't really necessary at all in the long-run. Most of the game was painfully easy, with maybe the odd boss fight or two being even remotely challenging. In fact, the only portion of the game I thought was well-balanced was the side dungeon with the Gargoyles. Now if only more of the game was like that...