After taking three years off, Square Enix is back with their very own E3 Conference. The consensus heading into this conference is that if Square is doing something it must mean they have a lot to show, right? RIGHT???

The Good:

Square showed off a lot of games with gameplay and a lot of those games had actual release dates. That was really my only complaint about the Xbox conference so at least Square nailed that. So what were some of the titles shown off?

And for me, as someone that has unfortunately missed out on the Tomb Raider series, what was shown today looked great. I loved the stealth gameplay, I thought the environments looked great, I enjoyed the realism that was shown in some of the takedowns. When I shoot a guy in the hand, it’s always nice to see him grab his hand or at least drop whatever he was holding.

The Bad:

Square Enix decided to go more in the direction of Nintendo how they handle E3 every year with their direct videos instead of doing live conferences. While I’m personally not a fan of that style, I do think it’s a safe move because it guarantees there won’t be any awkward moments during the show. Unfortunately for Square, they forgot to include the one thing that Nintendo adds to all of their videos, a personality. This video presentation was cold, emotionless, and lacked any sort of direction.

The Ugly:

I don’t know why this needed to exist. We saw Tomb Raider, Captain Spirit, Just Cause 4, and Kingdom Hearts at the Microsoft Conference and let’s be honest, does anyone really need to see any more of Octopath Traveller? Between the countless number of trailers we’ve already gotten and the fantastic write up that was recently posted by Game Informer, we have all the information that we need on that game. We don’t need to see any more of it.

And while we did get reveals for The Quiet Man and Babylon’s Fall we know literally nothing about those games. In fact, The Quiet Man’s trailer states that we’ll be getting more information in August… with a trailer that was very lackluster, I’m not sure why that couldn’t just be saved for, I’m assuming, Gamescom. And finally, on top of these two so-so reveals, where was Life is Strange 2 and Final Fantasy 7? While I appreciate that the developers of Life is Strange gave fans more information on Life is Strange 2 and it’s relationship to Captain Spirit, the fact that this is all fans were given is a major let down. And speaking of being a letdown, not even having a single mention of Final Fantasy 7 speaks volumes about how credible all of the rumors were that this game is in trouble. And what’s worse is, even it shows up at PlayStation’s conference, it’ll only make everyone ask the question even louder. What was the point of this conference?