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- FF Odyssey
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FF Odyssey History In
Review: 2001~2005
By: wsim
This editorial outlines
various notable portions of the site through the four years of operation.
Here are the following sections:
Best News Stories
Best Poll
Best Editorial
Best Fan Art
Best Fan Fiction
Best Wallpaper
Site Successes
Site Failures
Best Review
1) Best News Stories
2002:
http://www.ffodyssey.com/archives/news/02_oct-nov2002.shtml
Bishop presented a pretty significant news story on November 28th, 2000
entitled: “Square/Enix merger”. This was a massive merger between two of the
largest gaming companies in Japan. The merger occurred on April 1st 2003 and
it combined two of the biggest RPG giants in the gaming industry in Square
and Enix. The new company would later change its name to Square-Enix.
2003:
http://www.ffodyssey.com/archives/news/07_nov-dec2003.shtml
Final Fantasy XII Preview Impressions
On November 21, 2003, I wrote a news story regarding my opinions and
thoughts about a trailer video for FFXII that was shown at the SquareEnix
conference. It was a short trailer consisting of about 3-4 minutes and FFXII
provided plenty of things to be optimistic about. Airships apparently played
a big role in FFXII and I commented on the fact that the character designs
were similar in style to the ones found in FFX. There are new camera angles
in FFXII and this provides a fresh look at the world. Observing some of the
FMV sequences in FFXII, I think there will be a “darker” feel to this
particular FF than some of the previous games. Looking back at this, we now
know that FFXII was been delayed and pushed back several times already. It
should see a Japanese release in 2005 and a 2006 release in North America.
The wait has been long but hopefully, it will still be worth it……
2004:
http://www.ffodyssey.com/archives/news/10_may-aug2004.shtml
New FFXII character revealed: Basch; new battle system details
On May 23, 2004, I reported on a recent addition to the FFXII character
cast. More importantly, there were new details regarding the battle system
found in FFXII, which presented quite a few changes and surprises. Active
Dimension Battle promises to seek new life in the FF series as far as the
battle system goes. Random battles appear to be gone entirely and characters
could be equipped with “Gambits”, which gives them special commands and
spells. Finally, the in-game battles take place directly in the field. For
the record, I do welcome changes in the battle system in hopes to make
things innovative and interesting.
2005:
E3 2005: FFVII: Advent Children to release simultaneously in Japan/US
On May 21, 2005, events from E3 unfolded and we were finally able to have a
confirmation from Square-Enix on the subject of FFVII: Advent Children and
its anticipated release date. Much to the delight of fans in North America,
FFVII: AC will release simultaneously in both Japan and North America on
September 14th, 2005. There has been a lot of buzz about this DVD title and
from what we know so far, it seems rather intriguing. From a personal
standpoint, I have been anticipating this DVD for quite some time now.
2) Best Poll
2001
One of the more successful polls in 2001 posed the question about what
next-generation consoles would people most want to buy for the upcoming
holiday season. It came during a time when the console wars were in the
beginning stages and competition was fierce between Nintendo, Sony and
Microsoft. It was clear that the PS2 was the preferred choice among viewers
of our site. This poll ran throughout December of 2001.
2002
In April of 2002, we put a poll asking people about which FF game had the
best musical score overall. I think that music is a very important part of RPGs along with storyline. This poll was a close fight between FFX and FFVII.
In the end, FFX was chosen by the readers of this site. While I disagree
with this viewpoint, it isn’t entirely surprising that the newer FF games
happened to get more votes. I liked the music in FFVI and FF Tactics the
best but most people have never played FFVI before.
2003
This poll was a classic question that is commonly asked on many sites. No
surprise, FFVII won this poll as it is clearly is the most popular FF game.
Quite surprisingly, FFX-2 managed to squeak out 2nd place, ahead of FFVIII.
As usual, all of the more recent FFs did much better on this poll than the
older ones.
2004
In March of 2004, we asked about how viewers knew about FF Odyssey. As
expected, most people found out about our site through search engines or
other online sources.
2005
The poll on FF Odyssey, which ran through July, asks which hero
would you most like to be. FFVII once again dominated the poll and Cloud
easily ran away with it. There were a few surprise choices on the poll and
some of the lesser characters didn’t do too badly on it.
3)
Best Editorial
Music artists and theme songs in Final Fantasy
This editorial article was written in February of 2005. Quite an interesting
piece, as it explains about some of the various artists that have done theme
song to FF games and some of the information is rather unique. This includes
some songs that are for some of the lesser FF titles, not just the main FFs.
If you are ever curious about this sort of thing, check this article out.
4) Best Fan Art (3)
Squall Leonhart (FF
VIII)
By: Rachel York
This is a pretty solid fanart,
good use of colours and this was an excellent job on Squall.
Lulu (Final Fantasy X)
By: JMai
Pretty cool sketch of Lulu.
Yuna
By: Janet Cheung
Nice use of colours, bright and captures the
anime side of this character pretty well.
5)
Best Fan Fiction
Final Fantasy VII: Movie script
6) Best Wallpaper: Fan Submitted (2), Official
(3)
Fan submitted (1) – FF XII
Collage (4)
By: Kenji Sasaki
1024x768
Fan submitted (2) – Final
Fantasy Collage
By: LionHeart
1024x768
Official (1) – Final Fantasy Origins (2)
1024x768
Official (2) – Final Fantasy XII: Airship artwork
1024x768
Official (3) – Final Fantasy VIII: Squall (4)
1024x768
7) Site Successes
Topsites (ie: 15 buttons symbol) – While the topsites no
longer exist due to server load issues, the system itself worked out relatively well and was fairly
successful. We had a few pretty large sites sign up for it. The 15 different
summons for the buttons resemble those found in the FF series.
Guestbook
8) Site Failures
Forums - The forums did pretty good back in the earlier days of the site. We
had a small but dedicated and friendly community. The problem was that our
old format of the forums suffered from some problems and it was hard to
implement certain features. Eventually, we moved to an easier to use and
efficient forum concept but it was plagued with spam and many of the posts
on the forums were filled with garbage. After this bad experience, one has
to wonder if we are ever going to put up forums again.
Chat - Some sites use this feature but there wasn’t really enough interest
or traffic to make this work out.
Mailbag - Again, this was another feature that our site could live without.
It wasn’t entirely necessary in the first place. After all, people could
always just ask questions via email or MSN.
9) Best Review (2)
Final Fantasy Tactics: This game was a pleasant surprise as I didn’t
expect much out of it. However, it turned out to be a rather enjoyable game
and the review itself was pretty detailed.
Final Fantasy VII: The first review on FF Odyssey and it still remains a
true classic. Not everyone is going to agree with my opinion but this is
still one of the better reviews around.
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