It’s level 11 of Level-Up Friday’s, won’t you come in?

There hasen’t been much news this week and I have a good topic to get into so I will give you the little bits we got and get moving.

The Lufia game that was talked about last week has been confirmed to be coming to the DS (Just as I thought it would). Nothing is known about gameplay details as of yet – I will do my best to keep you posted.

Next for those that care (which should be all of you) Atlus has released a launch trailer for 3D Dot Game Heros. For those unaware, Atlus will be bringing this incredible ode to classic RPG’s to the states next year and have just released a launch trailer for the game so be sure to give it a Google and check it out.

Lastly Namco Bandai has disappointed pretty much everyone with their most recent countdown clock. A bit of background if you will. Late last week Bandai posted yet another countdown clock and started teasing a new game. Soon after the site went live the words “That RPG Returns” Indicating that whatever it the game was it was certainly a sequel. Speculation ran rampant and fans began hoping that the game was a new game in the Xenosaga series.  However the game has been leaked and it is nothing but a mere Digimon game for the DS. Quite the let down indeed.

With all that out of the way lets get into this hotly debated topic of the week.

Recently Square-Enix announced that Final Fantasy XIII would have a new English theme song and the reaction around the world was one of anger and confusion. Why is this a big deal you ask? Well I will get into the top reasons behind fan reactions and will try my best to give you an idea why everyone (Including my self) are quite angry by this announcement.

Now for those that don’t know the song Square-Enix is using for the US theme song is a song known as My Hands by a little known artist (at least I had never heard of her) Leona Lewis. Leona Lewis is a winner of a British talent show(think something along the lines of American Idol) and is in my opinion an only moderately talented fad. One reason for fans anger is the songs significance. Or should I say lack thereof. For those that don’t know, when a Final Fantasy game is made in Japan a theme song is written and composed specifically for the game. Then a highly talented singer is asked to sing the lyrics. The result is a beautiful song that actually has meaning to the story line and makes sense to be there. However what Square is doing is taking a random single of this random pop stars random album and putting into the game. The song has no meaning to the story line and any emotional connection is thus lost as a result.

Another reason fans are angry is that this is the first time a Final Fantasy game will be released in the US without any music from series composer Nobuo Uematsu. While Uematsu has not composed a full final Fantasy game since IX he did lend his talent to various songs within the Final Fantasy X, XI and XII soundtracks. In Final Fantasy XII the only song Uematsu did was in fact the vocal theme song. This is the same for XIII however as the song as been replaced by a random English song Uematsu’s original Japanese theme song will never be heard in the game. Thus being the first time a Final Fantasy game will be released in the US without any of Uematsu’s music. This is a big deal to fans as Uematsu is credited as giving the series much needed heart via the music he composed throughout more then a decade of Final Fantasy games.

The last point is that fans in the US have already heard the Japanese theme and enjoyed it quite a bit. The Japanese theme song was played during one of the recent Final Fantasy XIII English trailers so many fans had the chance to hear it and most loved it. With this being the case one wonders why Square-Enix changed it at all. Marketing or better sales is not a good enough reason. It’s a song you will hear once throughout the game and it’s highly unlikely that it will sell more copies based on that fact. If they wanted to use a song to promote the game then they could have simply used it in a commercial. No real reason to mess with the game for that reason.

To me I am somewhat angry about this whole thing. There is no logic in what Square Enix has done here. If they wanted a English song for the English speaking market they could have easily done what they did with Kingdom Hearts and what Namco Bandai did with Tales of Vesperia. Hire a well known Japanese singer who can also sing fluently in English and have the same song performed in two different languages. It was done to perfect effect in Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 however this time Square Enix has certainly dropped the ball.

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