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We give Square Enix some friendly tips for keeping the Fantasy alive.

When Jesse Miller, our resident features guru, asked if I would be interested in doing a Final Fantasy retrospective for the series’ 25^th anniversary last year my answer was a resounding “yes!” In the months that followed, I poured all of my love and dedication into a five part series detailing the 14 core Final Fantasy games. It was a labor of love for me; no series of games has been more influential or important to me as a gamer. I’m a staunch defender of these games, even when they go into weird territory like iOS time-wasters. That doesn’t mean that I’m blind to the fact that the series isn’t what it once was, however. As excited as I am for the future of Final Fantasy, I think that the fine folks over at Square Enix need to take a good long look at where the series stands. To that end, I have 5 things that I think could help immensely as we move forward into the next generation.

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Square-Enix gives us an online hack-n-slash experience unlike anything we've seen before on a Nintendo handheld.

Nintendo’s struggles with their online strategy (if you can call it that) are widely known and widely reviled.  We’ve seen some slight improvements as the years click by, but it looks like Square-Enix might be the ones to teach the big N how to really do things right on the 3DS with Heroes of Ruin.  Square-Enix and design house n-Space picked the perfect sort of game to leverage the online functionality of the 3DS – a dungeon crawler.  Keeping far away from the frame-by-frame criticality of an FPS or fighting game, a game in the vein of Diablo should let Nintendo’s network stretch its legs without really angering the hardcore twitch gamers.  Although already released in Europe, Heroes of Ruin doesn’t launch in North America until July 17^th, and the online multiplayer is just one aspect that has us sharpening our swords in anticipation.

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Nintendo disappoints again and the crew does not take it well.

At this point, we've nearly reached the end of our E3 journey. Without being on the show floor to get our hands on the games, we've all just been spectating and deriving as much information as we can from those who are experiencing the show first hand. With another disappointing showing from Nintendo and a general lack of new items at the show, the conference is wearing on this crew's optimism.

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Tap your enemy to win.

With the controversy of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 now in the past, it’s much easier to appreciate the Vita launch of this fantastic fighter for what it is. With a huge cast of reasonably balanced characters, smooth online play, and even some optional touch screen controls, this may actually be the “ultimate” portable fighting game.

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