Birthday Special: Top 5 GWJ editions!
I turn 33 as Games With James passes its first year! Plus, my interview with Final Fantasy 16's producer
If I’m lucky I’ll live to 99: that most hallowed of video game numbers — the final limit of many a two-digit tracker, from Dark Souls skills to Pokemon levels to Super Mario lives.
As of July 6th, I’m a third of the way there. My friends and family kept my weekend busy with copious birthday cake, Magic: the Gathering, Decrypto, Jackbox, Elden Ring, and Hunt: Showdown — not to mention the curry, pizza, and burgers!
Far more relevant to you, dearly beloved reader, is the fact that Games With James also marked an anniversary — this is my 53rd newsletter and I’ve never missed a week. We’re officially a year old!
In celebration, I’d like to highlight my favorite five past editions:
Finding my eternal companion in Unicorn Overlord — in which I spend way too much time composing a romantic tier list.
Baldur's Gate 3, and where D&D shines — pithy musings on Baldur’s Gates past & present (since writing this, I completed a co-op BG3 campaign and launched a second one).
My top 10 games of 2023 — straightforwardly summative; I later finished Lies of P, which would have certainly made the list.
Magic: the Gathering's most interesting format — a reflective apologia of Pick-Your-Poison draft.
How I grappled with game addiction — my most personal post yet.
I also can’t help but leave some honorable mentions: Blasphemous II and games on-the-go (wherein I rhapsodize about handheld gaming devices), Mars After Midnight justifies my Playdate purchase, and Memorial Day Picture Show.
Thank you for sticking with this experiment; I hope to continue it for many years to come!
In other news, on Monday I published an edited interview with Final Fantasy producer Naoki Yoshida:
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail launched last week with the game’s highest player count in over a decade. Despite this popularity, the new expansion for the massively multiplayer RPG hasn’t been without its issues. Series producer and director Naoki Yoshida announced imminent changes to the game after polarized player feedback.
Yoshida has long guided such course corrections. He took the helm after the game’s initial 2010 release, which was so disastrous that studio Square Enix shut it down after two years. Yoshida then orchestrated a complete overhaul in 2013, dubbed A Realm Reborn.
In addition to addressing numerous technical and design complaints, Yoshida says “the original Final Fantasy 14 was criticized as not feeling like a Final Fantasy.”
So after bringing the game’s player experience closer to the then-dominant World of Warcraft, Yoshida prioritized its atmosphere: “I felt that we needed this to be a sort of theme park where you have various elements from all of the different Final Fantasies.”
Yoshida has climbed the Square Enix ranks ever since. He joined the company’s board of directors in 2018 and went on to produce Final Fantasy 16, the latest numbered entry in the series. I spoke to him about the franchise’s past, present, and future, ahead of the release of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth earlier this year. [Click here for more]
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