Two weeks ago, the Square Enix Party event brought news that the Wii's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers would be more adventurous, with a Skies of Arcadia feel to it. The video they saw over in Japan is finally uploaded on the net for our pleasure, and the setting definitely has much more altitude to it. The trailer opens with music that reminds me of Titanic, and we're shown a large jewel and many ships, followed by someone falling off one of them, so I'm hoping for a much more hilarious Titanic ending, where we actually get to see the Leonardo DiCaprio hero fall off and go kersplat down below.

The video shows us many sky high brief battle scenes, including the use of the magic system, and even a few indoor cities. The graphics look just as good as the GameCube's Crystal Chronicles game, but not any noticeably better. It would be cool if the reason for flying is to avoid the miasma stream that drifts at lower altitudes, instead of constantly warding off the impending doom. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers comes out this Winter in Japan, so we might not get it here in America until next Summer or even late 2008.

Before this weekend's Square Enix Party kicks off, they got the 2007 conference report out of the way, bringing us many early hints at what's to come soon.

First up is the Star Ocean series, Yoshinori Yamagishi revealed that a full remake of the first Super Famicom Star Ocean game will be coming to PSP as Star Ocean: First Departure, and a remake of the PS1 Star Ocean game will also come to the PSP as Star Ocean: Second Evolution. Damn. These last few months have been treating the PSP nicely, I might finally have to pick one up. Yoshinori also announced that a Star Ocean 4 is being developed by tri-Ace, although it wasn't said which consoles we might get it on. PS3 is the obvious bet, but it's too early to rule out other platforms.

Then Shinji Hashimoto mentioned that a new Chocobo Dungeon game was in development for the Wii, but nobody cared. A chocobo cosplayer fell down on their face, and the next speaker came to the stage. Next up was the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles series, with Akitoshi Kawazu and Toshiyuki Itahana doing the talking. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates is coming to the DS, and to put fans' worries at ease, it will be more of a traditional RPG as far as gameplay and level progression goes. However, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers for the Wii will have more of an adventure feel to it, bringing thoughts of Skies of Arcadia to the minds of those who got to see the short video clip.

Last up was The Last Remnant. They showed a few short clips to go along with the pictures we've already seen, and then Hiroshi Takai gave a few early details. No target release date was mentioned, although it was confirmed as a title for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Combat involves large scale battles and the ability to shout out orders combined with simple button combos to control the crowds fighting with you. Some of the scenes and graphics reminded people of Final Fantasy XII, although the timing aspect of gameplay is more along the lines of Shenmue.

It's still too early to tell exactly what kind of combat style The Last Remnant gameplay is shooting for, but it's high on the list of titles I'm looking forward to hearing about this weekend. No new news on Final Fantasy Dissidia yet, although this should be a great week of news for PSP owners. Expect some sporadic posts this weekend as the Party details trickle in from overseas.

When I started watching this video for the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Rings of Fate game coming to DS at the end of the year in America, I expected to see a few character closeups, some gameplay, or maybe at least an inventory interface or two, but instead it's just Japanese dialogue for over a minute. Even if I could read what was being said, and even if some big part of the storyline was revealed, that's still a pretty lousy preview of your game Square Enix.

The Square Enix trailer above is a completely different story though. Of course it's a different story, it's Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for DS, and its credits video is possibly the best thing I've ever seen on the DS so far. Which probably isn't fair - it's clearly a digitally manipulated scene with the video edited into it, as oppose to just taping the damn screen with a real camera. So don't expect it to look as crisp in the final product. Everything about it is sequenced as you'd expect from a kiddy Final Fantasy title: zoom ins on the characters, showing facial expressions to convey their emotions, panning shots of odd shaped airships, and action shots filled with animations to look at that go from one screen to the next. They even use the dual screens as different camera angles at times, to show the inside and outside of an area simultaneously. Those of you in Japan will get this game later this month, but an American release is still nowhere in sight.