Fantasy News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

If you’re looking for an anime that will force you to interrogate the inevitable passage of time and reconcile with the fact that one day you, too, will be forgotten, then boy do I have a show for you.

Final Fantasy 16’s PC port has been in the works for a while, with producer Naoki Yoshida confirming earlier this month that it was in the final stages of optimization. And though a specific release date for the port has yet to be unveiled, in a recent interview with Famitsu, Yoshida provided further details on what to expect.

The Legend of Zelda movie director Wes Ball has outlined his vision for the upcoming Nintendo adaptation.

Yesterday, Square Enix announced the final release date for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, the latest expansion coming to its popular MMORPG. Dawntrail will go live on July 2 on all platforms. Funnily enough, Game Director Naoki Yoshida said it could have launched sooner, but they wanted to give players (and themselves) a bit more space to play Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, which launches on June 21.

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, as well as the original Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake.]

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is full of great moments, it can be difficult to choose just one that stands out. However, when it comes to moments that improve upon the original game, you'd struggle to find one better than the parade in Junon, as Cloud forms an unbreakable bond with several members of the Seventh Infantry, a group of Shinra soldiers tasked with representing their unit in the parade.

release date and time have been revealed. The episode will air on Crunchyroll. In the previous episodes, we saw Ryoh and Nerey arrive at Easton Academy, where Zero’s spell has frozen Nerey. Ryoh learns about recent events from Kaldo and Olter. Meanwhile, Olter investigates Cell War’s disappearance, suspecting another Innocent Zero member’s involvement.

Jyamma Games has «officially apologised to the Xbox community» after deciding not to release the soulslike Enotria: The Last Song on Xbox in order to ensure a «superior experience» for players on PC and PS5.

Final Fantasy 14's director dived into the MMO's upcoming expansion earlier today, announcing the Dawntrail release date and a wave of other information. But one particular line has only bolstered rumors about a potential Final Fantasy 9 remake.

Final Fantasy 14's Dawntrail expansion has officially received a release date for its early access and full release. 

Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Dawntrail, finally has a release date. As revealed at PAX 2024, Dawntrail is launching in early access on June 28, before getting a full launch on July 2.

It wasn’t the combat that intimidated me most when starting Rise of the Ronin — it was the history.

Final Fantasy 14 is getting a Final Fantasy 16 questline, but more importantly, why is Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida referring to himself as a different person?

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a fascinating open-world fantasy role-playing game that gives players great freedom to explore and deep customization options to build their character and party. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is also incredibly restrictive. It doesn’t care much about your expectations of it based on other games you might’ve played (e.g., Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3), nor does it follow many conventions of modern game design.

The second expansion for Final Fantasy 16, titled The Rising Tide, now has an official launch date. It arrives on the 18th April, and costs $19.99 if you're buying it by itself. The Expansion Pass, priced at $24.99, gets you this second DLC and the previously released Echoes of the Fallen.

Ahead of (or maybe alongside, we're not sure) the release of its second expansion, Final Fantasy 16 will be getting a free update that includes some rather positive-sounding changes. Patch 1.30 was detailed during the developer's PAX East panel, so we've gone ahead and sorted the additions and improvements as bullet points:

Final Fantasy 16 players better hold onto their seats as we are getting a second DLC expansion for the game, called The Rising Tide. Square Enix announced this DLC saying it will be launching for the PS5 on April 18.

Final Fantasy 16's final DLC, The Rising Tide, will launch on PS5 April 18.

We’ve known Final Fantasy XVI would be getting a pair of story expansions for some time now, with the first one, Echoes of the Fallen being more of a bite-sized experience. Thankfully, the second, The Rising Tide, will be much meatier, and today at a panel at PAX West, Square Enix pulled the curtain back on what to expect. The DLC will introduce a new area, the coastal land of Mysidia, an additional ally for your team named Shula, and the powerful water Eikon, Leviathan. You can check out a trailer for Final Fantasy XVI - The Rising Tide, below.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthdropped only a few weeks ago, but fans of the series won't have to wait long at all to play a new addition to another recent entry. The Rising Tide, the second paid expansion for Final Fantasy XVI, will arrive on April 18.

Square Enix has announced a release date of April 18, 2024, for its upcoming Final Fantasy 16 DLC, The Rising Tide.

Last week, we asked you to share epic moments from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (without spoilers) using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:

Following the release of Echoes of the Fallen last December, Final Fantasy XVI’s final DLC chapter, The Rising Tide, is set to release on April 18! Available individually or in the discounted Expansion Pass on the PlayStation Store, the upcoming paid DLC, which takes place before the ending of the main game, includes plenty for fans to look forward to! Learn more about the DLC, as well as a new update and purchase bonuses, below:

If you recently picked up a PlayStation 5 and are looking for games, you’ll be happy to know that there are a lot of great deals out there, ranging from the very budget-friendly to only slightly cheaper than the list price. It can be a little bit overwhelming to find something good, especially if you’re not in any particular mood for a game and just want to grab something fun and enjoyable. To that end, we’ve rounded up a list of our favorite PS5 game deals and discounts so that you don’t have to. In fact, quite a few of the games appear on our list of best PS5 Games, so you’re getting quite a lot of bang for your buck.

Final Fantasy 16: The Rising Tide will be adding everything from a new explorable location to a challenging new endgame activity, but it’s fair to say that the DLC’s biggest highlight is going to be its boss fight against Leviathan. As part of a recent panel at PAX East, producer Naoki Yoshida and DLC director Takeo Kujiraoka revealed more details on what to expect from that particular set piece.

Enotria: The Last Song was initially set to release in June, but its launch date is being pushed back by developer Jyamma Games, ensuring it avoids a certain Elden Ring DLC.

Fantasy Flight Games was founded in 1995 on the shoulders of a single board game called Twilight Imperium, an epic space opera starring space cats and peace turtles. But as of this week, the Minnesota-based company’s biggest success is thanks to slightly more conventional space opera — fan favorite Star Wars.

It’s hard to write a review of Unicorn Overlord: the game is big, and after over 30 hours I’ve covered little more than half its map, traversing grasslands, desert, winding mountain paths, and a magical forest on my prince’s conquest to liberate the fantasy land of Fevrith and reclaim his throne. It’s hard because a lot of the games I’ve seen people compare Unicorn Overlord to — Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics — were released before I was born. I was worried about not getting it, not connecting with the supposed fun of spending hours in menus when the tactics games I played most growing up with a DS found their wider appeal through other systems, like romance. And it’s hard for me to write a review of Unicorn Overlord because I’d have to stop playing it long enough to write.

Souslikes come in all shapes and sizes, including colorful seascapes with cute crabs.

Modern video games are a constantly shifting and bracingly ephemeral medium. The steady flow of patches and updates, the fickle nature of licensing and server shutdowns, the state of a given user’s internet connectivity — there are dozens of things that can crater or enrich a given video game experience. This means that games can take on all kinds of unusual narrative arcs: Disappointing games can undergo a renaissance (most famously Final Fantasy 14and No Man’s Sky), forgotten titles can be rediscovered (Among Us), and old favorites can die the death of a thousand cuts (Overwatch 2).

Last month, developers Jyamma announced Enotria: The Last Song, an Italian-inspired Soulslike where masks give you powers. It was originally due out on June 21st, but then FromSoftware announced that Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree would also launch on the same day. Not ideal. So, Jyamma delayed Enotria's release, and in an announcement at last night's Future Games Show, we now know it's launching in August. It has, however, dropped itself into another conundrum: Black Myth: Wukong, another hotly anticipated Soulslike, arrives a day earlier.

Final Fantasy 15's director believes that game developers should familiarize themselves with generative AI.

Dragon's Dogma 2 will be out in mere hours, and to celebrate the impending release, Capcom have revealed a new launch trailer as part of the Future Games Show, teasing some of the fantasy perils waiting for us on the other side.

Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke dropped the bombshell today that the developer doesn't plan on releasing any Baldur's Gate 3 expansions or DLC, nor a Baldur's Gate 4, but he also made the point that there's already a lot of content in their Game of the Year-winning RPG.

By and large, Korean developers have a reputation for announcing wildly ambitious MMOs that rarely ever actually materialise. Without sounding too sceptical, we can’t help but wonder whether Chrono Odyssey will fall into that bracket. Due to be published by Kakao Games, this new trailer has been attracting plenty of attention for its stunning dark fantasy vibes – even though there’s zero gameplay or even a target release date.

A new PS5 patch is available now for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth which makes further improvements to the title’s presentation. Despite being critically acclaimed, many have been disappointed with the quality of the sequel’s visuals – especially in Performance Mode, which targets 60 frames-per-second. In addition to improving the graphics, the update adds a ‘Sharp’ and ‘Soft’ filter, allowing you to finetune the title’s looks.

Tower of Fantasy gets a mecha makeover as it teams up with Neon Genesis Evangelion! Starting March 28th, you can join iconic characters in a battle against a mysterious new threat. Pilot giant robots, explore new areas, and collect special rewards in the Tower of Fantasy x Evangelion Collaboration.

The former NPD Group (now named “Circana”) has released its full North American sales data for February, and it seems like it was a pretty solid month for the industry. Players spent $4.7 billion on games, additional content, and hardware in February, up 2 percent year-on-year. Hardware was a weak spot, down 30 percent year-on-year, with PS5 #1 in terms of unit and dollar sales, Switch #2 in terms of unit sales, and Xbox Series X/S #2 in terms of dollar sales.

A new Dragon's Dogma 2 ray tracing comparison video was shared online, highlighting how the game's implementation is far from being the best we have seen recently.

A new Final Fantasy VII Rebirth patch has gone live today, introducing graphics improvements and bug fixes. Unfortunately, the patch fails to address the game's most critical visual issues.

Games Workshop has debuted a new trailer teasing the fourth edition of Age of Sigmar, the fantasy tabletop game set in the ashes of Warhammer Fantasy Battles’ Old World. The bad guys won, and basically deleted The Old World — but the divine Sigmar, along with a cast of key characters, helped forge new realms where mortals could take refuge. This trailer shows a battle between Sigmar’s chosen, the Stormcast Eternals, and it heralds the return of the fan-favorite Skaven.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth update 1.020 is out now on PS5, bringing new graphics options and improvements to visual quality in general.

It’d be fair to say Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s next-gen makeover of characters, monsters, and more from the 1997 original has been a spectacular glow-up. The modern console era has returned an iconic cast and world to us with a level of realism in gameplay that even pre-rendered cutscenes over 25 years ago couldn’t match. We asked Square Enix if they could crunch some numbers and share some insight into the changes nearly three decades of technological advancement have wrought. Here, main character modeler and lead character artist Dai Suzuki walks us through a selection of characters, creatures, weapons, and more.

Amiibo collectors are in limbo right now as the future of Nintendo's interactive figures hasn't been revealed. Sora's Smash Ultimate amiibo was released last month and it seems likely that will be the last one we get during the Switch era. Not only because Nintendo seems set to announce its next console any day now, but also because it has been reprinting various older amiibo, giving collectors a second chance to grab them.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's new patch, out today, takes another stab at improving the graphical and frame rate aspects of the game.

Famed Kingdom Hearts composer Yôko Shimomura revealed that she is "knee-deep" in work right now, composing the fourth game's soundtrack.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was the big winner at the 24th annual Game Developers Choice Awards.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar is a great wargame, but it is a little dense - and publisher Games Workshop seems to recognize that, because it's launching a more accessible match type.

Skaven are confirmed to be making a grand return for the next edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar in Summer 2024.

Riot Games has provided an update on its League of Legends MMO, which is still being worked on but remains years from release.

Aerith herself doesn't care if you want to ship Cloud and Tifa. Briana White, the actor behind the English voice of beloved flower girl in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, says headcanon is the true canon in this instance.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 has arrived, and the game is a bit of beast on pretty much any hardware you’ll play it on. Not only is it a “dynamic” 30fps on current-gen consoles (in other words, often under 30fps) but not even a high end PCs are free from troubles – Wccftech’s reviewer Alessio Palumbo had issues despite rocking an RTX 4090 and a Ryzen 7800X3D. A lack of promised DLSS 3 at launch also means there are limited ways to smooth over the problems.

It's taken 12 years, but Dragon's Dogma 2 is finally swooping onto store shelves this week, and judging by the early review scores, the wait has been worth it. 

Manjuu Games, the team behind the hit mobile title Azur Lane, has just announced that they’re cooking a new Azur game. Titled Azur Promilia, Manjuu Games has tossed an announcement trailer on their fresh website for us to ogle at.

Hero Quest: Idle RPG War Games is a new title that has been launched on Android. Published by Fansipan Limited, it’s free to play. Fansipan is a Hong Kong-based game developing company known for other popular titles like Monster Slayer: Idle RPG War, Stickman Survival: War Games and Family Farming: My Island Life.

There are lots of ways to customize your PlayStation 5 experience and ensure that everything runs exactly the way you like it. One of the newest features added to the settings is the ability to turn down the brightness of the blue light on the front of the console that indicates when it's powered on. Since this can be a bit distracting in dark rooms, you may want to hop into the settings and adjust it down just a bit. We'll tell you how to do that below.

Throughout my gaming history, few titles have offered the sheer scope and ambition of CAPCOM’s Dragon’s Dogma 2. Set to release on March 22, 2024, this highly anticipated sequel is currently poised to be one of the biggest RPG releases of the year – if not this generation. However, as a continuation of the 2012 cult classic Dragon’s Dogma, newcomers may find themselves grappling with several aspects that are deeply rooted in its predecessor’s niche appeal. Here’s our review of Dragon’s Dogma 2.

I was more than a dozen hours into Dragon’s Dogma 2 when I found my first ropeway — a transport system that would potentially save me time traversing the game’s vast open world by taking me to the skies. I turned a crank to get the ropeway’s wooden gondola moving, then passed said duty onto one of the Pawns in my party. Quite pleased with myself for discovering this new method of travel, I decided to soak in the views of the expansive desert below me until this journey’s end.

Pirates make everything better, so if Blizzard's announcement that World of Warcraft now has a standalone battle royale mode isn't enough to get your tootsies twitching with excitement, then how about this: it's called Plunderstorm and is all about the piratical booty.

Bungie has changed Marathon’s game director, reportedly as part of a wider shake-up of the project’s creative leadership team.

Finally, there's a minor break in the busy release schedule. But don't worry! Rise of the Ronin and Dragon's Dogma 2 will both release later this month. You are on top of your backlog, aren't you?

One of the big stories this year so far has been Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s relative underperformance in its home territory of Japan. Historically one of the region’s most popular franchises, the Square Enix sequel couldn’t even outsell fellow PS5 console exclusive Final Fantasy 16 in its first week on the market – a surprise considering its strong critical reception.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink will take a PS5, PS4 patch today that bundles a new late-game quest into the RPG, and makes some microtransactions available on the PS Store. On the Proud difficulty option, a new quest titled The Final Vision will allow you to battle Lucilius alongside Supreme Primarch Sandalphon. This updates the game to version 1.1.0, with two more content drops planned for April and May that will add more playable characters.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that no great RPG can be complete without a quality collectible card game, and Square Enix brought the heat with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and its exceptional Queen’s Blood. The mode has proven a welcome distraction for adventurers working their way through the PS5 console exclusive, and word is there may be more on the way.

Blizzard has announced Plunderstorm, a new battle royale-inspired limited-time event for World of Warcraft.

Final Fantasy 14's Xbox versions include microtransactions not found in the PC or PS5 versions of the MMO.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion voice actor Shaun Conde, who played Genesis Rhapsodos in the English dub, was seemingly too sexy for Square Enix and repeatedly told stop sounding so seductive. 

Final Fantasy 7's Sephiroth is currently on a tour of games where he doesn't belong, as the 'Sephiroth should be in every video game' meme travels Twitter. 

The Xbox Series X|S version of Final Fantasy14 will require players to have an Xbox Game Pass subscription.

The Xbox Series X and S version of Final Fantasy 14 has a unique virtual currency that must be bought from the Microsoft Store before being spent in-game.

Square Enix has released the last Final Fantasy 14 Online patch ahead of the launch of the Dawntrailexpansion this summer.

Final Fantasy 14 is finally launching on Xbox in just two days, but those delving in on Microsoft's platform will have to use a new premium currency called FFXIV Coins to make store purchases.

Last year’s controversy surrounding the Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License not only damaged Wizards of the Coast’s relationship with its biggest fans, but also helped to turbocharge the sales of competing game systems. Chief among them was Paizo’s Pathfinder, which sold through nearly a years’ worth of stock in just a matter of weeks. Now the Washington state-based publisher is throwing some serious funding behind its marquee fantasy role-playing franchise. It’s next effort, Pathfinder Lost Omens: Tian Xia World Guide, boasts a team of more than 40 authors. Polygon sat down with senior designer James Case to learn more.

The Xbox Series X/S version of Final Fantasy 14 will introduce an Xbox-only currency this week.

Microsoft's latest Xbox Series X sweepstakes features a Fallout-themed vault that probably won't fit in most folks' gaming setups.

Spring is in the air, which means it’s time to do some Spring cleaning. Thankfully, that doesn’t mean cleaning out your wallet because Steam has launched its seasonal sale event to cut prices on tons of amazing games to some of the lowest we’ve seen.

PlayStation 5 players have been raving about the second part of the FF7 remake project Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. As with the first part, it was made clear well in advance that this game would be a PlayStation exclusive at launch, however, we did eventually get Remake of the first part on PC around a year later. This gives PC players hope that the same treatment will be given to Rebirth, but the big question becomes how long will we have to wait this time? Is it possible to see it come to PC storefronts faster than its prequel, or will we need to bide our time avoiding spoilers for months on end? Here’s our best estimate as to when you can expect to see Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PC.

One Dragon's Dogma 2 player has taken the Character Creator demo too far by recreating Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's ugly Moogles in Capcom's sequel.

16.74 million video games were sold across Europe during February, according to the latest GSD data.

In 1974, my aunt and uncle returned to the United States from a honeymoon world tour. Over the course of their travels, they ventured through India, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, before winding up in Israel, where my aunt’s sister — my mother — had recently lived for two years on a collective kibbutz.