After several delays, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Remastered Edition is now slated to be released August 27th, 2020, publisher Square Enix announced. The game will be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, iOS and Android.

The game is an updated version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, an action RPG that was first released in 2003 on Nintendo’s GameCube. The newest edition features new voiceovers, HD graphics and newly added content like bosses and dungeons. A new “mimic” feature allows players to take on the form of other characters. The multiplayer function has also been enhanced, as online multiplayer is available for the first time in addition to  crossplay across all platforms

War of the Visions features the same grid and turn-based combat of Final Fantasy Tactics. You can also see the influence of Akihiko Yoshida, the character designer who defined the look of Tactics, in the game’s art style.

The story is your usual fantasy fare. It involves a small kingdom called Leonis. The country becomes inevitably drawn into a much bigger conflict involving several other nations. The story unfolds over multiple cutscenes, which you can watch in both English and Japanese. War of the Visions takes place in the same setting as Brave Exvius, the Final Fantasy title best known for its connection to Ariana Grande.

One of your characters can summon warriors to help you in the game’s battles. This is where War of the Visions‘ free-to-play mechanics come into play. You primarily obtain these characters by paying real-world money for a chance to add them to your team. You’ll know what you’re about to get yourself into if you’ve played Fire Emblem Heroes. Some characters are harder to obtain than others, and it can take tens, and sometimes hundreds, of “gacha pulls” to get the characters you want. Still, if you’ve played War of the Lions‘ iOS and Android port to death, War of the Visions looks like a decent homage to one of the best games ever made.

Hardcore players with some time on their hands could try either Romancing Saga 2 or 3. The two titles were originally released on the Super Famicom — the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo — and have never been available to western audiences until recently. The games are exceedingly deep and challenging and take 20 to 30 hours to complete. Collection of Mana is a great deal, too, since it contains three games: Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana for $19.99 — half off the typical $39.99 price.

Square Enix’s games don’t go on sale very often, and the publisher’s practice of charging more than the industry standard has become a cliché in the gaming world, so these lower prices could be attractive to those who want to relive the era when turn-based and 2D RPGs reigned. The length of the sale isn’t clear, so fans may want to jump on this deal while it lasts.

There’s more Kingdom Hearts coming to Xbox One later this month. Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind — a DLC side story that takes place just before the game’s final battle — will come out on February 25th. Additionally, Kingdom Hearts III will be available to play as part of Xbox Game Pass starting on the same day.

If you’ve never played a Kingdom Hearts game and own an Xbox One, now is a good time to start. The mainline games are fantastic action RPGs that meld the worlds of Final Fantasy and Disney movies. And while the plot makes absolutely no sense, the nostalgia and gameplay more than make up for that.

With the blessing of Square Enix, Microsoft will add 10 Final Fantasy games to the service — technically nine if you consider Final Fantasy X: HD Remastered and Final Fantasy X-2: HD Remastered a single entry. The full list includes Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII: Remastered, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XV, as well as the aforementioned Final Fantasy X: HD Remastered and Final Fantasy X-2: HD Remastered. Next year, the publisher will also release Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, along with Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue on Xbox One.

Square Enix developers Shinji Hashimoto and Ichiro Hazama are here to FINALLY share what they have in store for @XboxGamePass! #X019 #InsideXbox

: https://t.co/OKafLf0hRp pic.twitter.com/C8oetrMxzT

— Xbox X019 (@Xbox) November 14, 2019

Each Final Fantasy title will join the service sequentially starting in 2020. While the upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake is still a PlayStation 4 exclusive, this is probably the best news Microsoft could have delivered to its fans given the circumstances.

There’s more good news if you’re a Yakuza fan. Three Yakuza titles — Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2 — are coming to Xbox for the first time, and they’ll join Game Pass some time in 2020.

After a brief flirtation with Japanese studios at the start of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle, Microsoft’s consoles haven’t been much of a destination for JRPGs. That’s clearly something Microsoft is trying to change. During the company’s X019 event, Xbox division head Phil Spencer spoke to all the trips he’s recently taken to Tokyo to secure today’s announcements and went on to add how he knows there’s more work to be done on that front.

Based on a true story, the film is an adaptation of Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light (a Netflix series in most regions). Like the show, the film uses a mix of live action and footage captured in Final Fantasy XIV, the massive multiplayer online game that debuted in 2013 and is still going strong (more than 16 million registered players and around 22,000 people playing via Steam alone at any given time).

Brave Father Online: Our Story of Final Fantasy XIV, to give the film its full title, centers on a family whose workaholic patriarch Akira (Kôtarô Yoshida) is often distant or absent to his children. But, on the brink of a big promotion, he suddenly retires and changes the family dynamic.

Leaving his job has a clear impact on Akira, who struggles with loneliness despite living with a family desperate to connect with him. His son, Akio (Kentaro Sakaguchi), remembers playing Final Fantasy with his father many years before, so he buys his dad a PS4 and a copy of Final Fantasy XIV and gets to work befriending his father’s avatar and rekindling that relationship.

Akio, whose in-game character is named Maidy, saves his dad from an enemy and shows him the ropes in the game. Akira aligns himself with his son’s group and the two start to rely on each other, having each other’s backs during battles and helping each other through their personal and professional woes.

Making a film based partly inside a game presents unique challenges most productions don’t have. The process was split in two, with the live-action filming and game capture taking place simultaneously, each with its own director. Kiyoshi Yamamoto, who handled the in-game aspects, used some intriguing framing and the sweeping scenery of Eorzea (Final Fantasy XIV‘s fictional world) to make his scenes as engaging and perhaps even more cinematic than the live-action material.

The now-famous in FFXIV circles, real-life Maidy and his dad helped with the Final Fantasy XIV scenes by controlling their original characters. And thanks to game developer Square Enix giving the cast and crew access to a private server, they could work in relative peace, away from their online fans.

As with most movies, there was a degree of trickery involved. Yamamoto gathered his main band of players (perhaps actors isn’t the right term here) in a conference room filled with PCs, so he could direct them more effectively than if they were playing at home. He also revealed in a Q&A session after a screening at the Fantasia International Film Festival that they sometimes activated an invulnerability setting during boss battles, hoping to make footage capture easier, but it didn’t always work. The characters still died when they were hit with one particularly devastating attack.

A few other technical issues hampered the process, too. If character models clipped each other, Yamamoto and his team had to go back to reshoot scenes if Square Enix didn’t sign off on the footage.

Many modern games are designed to keep players hooked for years, with more content added all the time. Recent updates to Final Fantasy XIV afforded Yamamoto more tools to play with since Netflix’s Dad of Light debuted in 2017 (filming on Brave Father Online took place early this year). Among those additions are new animations and emotes, which he puts to often hilarious use.

Harnessing animations from games to tell new stories isn’t exactly a novel concept — people have been using game footage and engines to create machinima videos for decades. Still, Yamamoto and co-director Teruo Noguchi seamlessly blend the live-action and game footage into a cohesive, compelling whole, perhaps best exemplified by a training montage that amped me up more than any I’ve seen in a long time.

The directors touch on gaming tropes in fun ways as well, such as grinding through levels to bolster a character. There’s an especially enjoyable sequence in which Akira gets to grips with some of the lingo, too.

Regardless of the filmmaking, viewers have to connect with a movie, and the emotional core here is undeniably relatable. Brave Father Online is all about forging connections, online and offline. It might very well resonate with a broad audience, even those who don’t have much gaming knowledge.

I’m sort of in that same boat. Though I’ve played games since I was a toddler, I never got into the Final Fantasy series. Nonetheless, I adored this movie. It tells a universal story that’ll fill your soul with joy and probably make you want to call your nearest and dearest as soon as possible.

Granted, it’s effectively a feature-length ad for a six-year-old MMO — and there’s some amusing meta subtext given Akio’s advertising career and a message you should only sell things you love. However, Brave Father Online doesn’t feel like product placement. It’s a portrait of a family using games to connect with each other, something that could inspire other families to do the same.

Images: Gaga Corporation/Square Enix (All)

Guaranteed gaming press headlines aside, FF7 is important in a lot of ways. It marked the first concerted effort by Square Enix (then Square) to market its long-running role-playing game (RPG) series outside in Japan. FF7 then went on to sell over 11 million copies. It still peppers best game ever lists and it’s a part of gaming history — definitely part of mine.

Final Fantasy VII was the first RPG I’d ever bought, on the first console I owned. I spent over a hundred hours in the game (not rare for the series), beating the optional Ruby and Emerald Weapon bosses, earning Limit Breaks, betting against giant racing birds and doing other things that make no sense unless you’ve played FF7. I got Great Gospel for Aeris, I mastered all my magic materia and bred a golden chocobo. I even got the bro-date with Barret.

The game became an obsession. I have sold and re-purchased FF7 a ridiculous number of times, across decades, platforms and languages. Also, although I didn’t notice it when I was just 13, the game started my fascination with the Japanese language. A decade later, I ended up moving to Japan — eventually living there twice.

While living in North Japan, I picked up the Japanese copy of Final Fantasy VII International, second-hand, in an overzealous bid to improve my kanji reading skills. I slowly played through the game once more, progressing through conversations and battle choices through sheer muscle memory than through incredible, sudden insight into 2,000 exotic characters. Words written in katakana, like ‘materia’ and ‘chocobo’ were freebies.

I later picked up the digital edition on PSN for the PlayStation Portable, which meant I could play (in English!) the entire three-disc game. On. The. Go. My Japanese continued to improve and two years later, I picked up the Japanese download too (2013). I’m not sure why. But it continued.

At that point, I moved back to the UK. I had sold my disc copy of FF7 in English. I guess when university ended, needs must. Meanwhile, Square Enix didn’t stop. To coincide with the news of the PS4’s Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix announced an iOS version, with level 99 shortcuts, fast-forward and cloud saves. I got that too.

(Don’t buy this, by the way. It is still very expensive, and really isn’t made for touch devices, and there are so many mini-games with unwieldy controls that you really need physical buttons. The game demands buttons.)

Last month, I downloaded the Nintendo Switch version, which uses the same upgraded textures of the PC version, as well as the aforementioned shortcut upgrades found on the iPhone version. It’s also the first time FF7 has ever appeared on a Nintendo console, and is a fantastic way to enjoy a game that is now a retro hit.