Originally I had planned to review Rayman Legends this evening, but due to my becoming engrossed in the 2013 Australian Federal Election on TV (For those who missed it, Tony Abbott and the Coalition came out victorious) and being lying in bed feeling unwell… that has been put aside until most possibly later on today. Rather than leave it at that, I have decided to write up a small impromptu review on something I had never expected to find simply sitting on a store shelf.
With a number of issues stemming from the digital distribution of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn on the Playstation 3 over the last couple of weeks, which in my case left me with an active review code and no means of actually downloading the game, I went out to pick up the game from my local EB Games Australia store when I spotted the Collector’s Edition sitting on the shelf. Considering that I never expected to see a Collector’s Edition sitting on the shelf I swooped it up and over the past couple of days have been working towards a conclusion as to if Square Enix have finally reached the mark with this major update..
As someone who has spent many years at time searching for particular games (My most challenging quest being Disgaea: Hour of Darkness on the PS2), I think it is always good to have some motivation to search for a particular game – or in this case as it is commonly available on shelves a rare edition if you didn’t pre-order. For that purpose I have chosen to write up a small review providing brief incite on each of the goodies within the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Special Edition.
The entire collector’s edition is contained within a hard cover artbox that folds out like a usual game case. It featured a nice piece of artwork on the front designed by Yoshitaka Amano. Mr Amano has had his hands in the Final Fantasy project since its very first release in 1987, and recently had his Final Fantasy artbook collection The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy published internationally by Dark Horse Comics.
Unfortunately while there is a nice piece of artwork on the front cover, the rest of the box is plain black aside from the games logo on the spine. While it does come with a wrap that it appears with on store shelves and promotes its contents, I was expecting more in this regard. Despite its cost the packaging material isn’t anything fancy like you would see on (for example), Nippon Ichi Software America’s premium edition anime releases. Still, it looked pretty nice on my shelf next to my The Sky artbook collection.
While this may differ slightly with the PC Collector’s Edition, the first aspect of the collector’s edition that may catch your eye upon opening the artbox is the standard blu-ray case with cover artwork and the words “Collector’s Edition” emblazoned across the top. Nestled in the case is the entire game client stored on a blu-ray disc, in addition to another bonus “The Waning of the Sixth Sun” blu-ray disc. This bonus disc contains a small film and a few other menu-derived features that highlight the events leading to “A Realm Reborn” – as I take it was assumed many newcomers would be picking up this edition.
Other small additions to the case itself include the game manual (Very short with the main manual available in-game), a registration code pamphlet and a Square Enix EU registration code.
Hidden directly behind the cover is the “Sounds of Eorzea” soundtrack for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I am a big fan of soundtracks with games, however company’s seem to differ considering their approach on how to offer it to regular gamers. Some publishers offer most of the games tracklist while others only offer a slim selection of the tracks.
Unfortunately Square Enix have opted to go with the selection of tracks and the soundtrack contains a grand total of six songs. Fortunately however not all of these are just two or three minutes in length with the shortest “On Westerly Winds” coming in at 5 minutes 22 seconds and the longest coming in at more than twelve for a total of 51 minutes. Given the price of this edition I was expecting more…. but it wasn’t a complete loss.
The one saving aspect of the Collector’s Edition was its 80-page hardcover artbook “Art of Eorzea” that featured both artwork and concept art produced by the games art team. Despite its small page count, the book is considerably big with many pieces of artwork usually included on each page. While this does mean they don’t give great pieces of artwork the opportunity to showcase on full-page or double-page spreads, they did include a wide selection of production artwork that was laid out and categorized well. As well, the production quality was quite nice with a cover that tied in well with the game and solid print quality.
As another artwork related bonus, five additional art cards were included with the release which given the potential for them to be five individual full-page features in the artbook itself didn’t come across as being that interesting to me. The edition also comes with four additional pieces of in-game content for each new character which I found had limited practical use for some of the included goodies.. Another addition included in this release was a standard Final Fantasy XIV branded authentication device for extra security when logging into the game.
While the artbook was a nice addition, with the collector’s edition coming in at between double and triple the retail price of the standard edition here in Australia, personally I didn’t feel like there was enough weight in this release to warrant its hefty price tag. Do I regret picking it up however? It was still a nice collection with some solid goodies, but perhaps some additional gametime or a more extensive game soundtrack would have appealed to me more.
Check out my review of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn in the coming week.
