The CoNCast: A Caves of Narshe Podcast Kinda Gig

Yeah, of course you heard, duh. And you probably heard also that there will be changes coming to the new version, and we're not yet sure what most of them are. So, the CoNcast Team jumped at the chance to do some supposition while we wait for something more visual or playable, and we recorded an episode with our thoughts. Listen now, to be sure you can point out all the ways in which we were wrong later. Also listen to more talk about Four Job Fiesta, as I played my FJF run and streamed it to Twitch as we recorded. It was a trainwreck.

Yeah, we know we just published a CoNcast on the topic of Final Fantasy V. So, the fact that we're doing another already might seem weird, right? Well, not really, because this one is very specifically about what is fast becoming a summer tradition in the Final Fantasy community - Four Job Fiesta.

Final Fantasy V is sometimes maligned among the canon of Final Fantasy games, but that's not really fair. There is a great deal of stuff in Final Fantasy V that is done exceedingly well, and we're here to point those things out to you as a public service to those who haven't played it in years or at all. That said, because the consensus around this game isn't as easy to get to than our previous games, you'll get more debate to enjoy this time around as well.

PAX East 2015 is nearly here, and CoN will be attending a day again this year. So, we got our group together to preview things that might be there, and things that we should try to seek out while there. This time around, there's some added stuff for CoN readers, as Square Enix will have both their standard booth and additionally will be running two panels on Saturday, March 7, the day I'll be there. We'll talk about all those things and more, and we'll have some entertaining anecdota that goes well off-topic.

For a long time, Square Enix treated the PC as a bit of a wasteland, at least in terms of the flagship Final Fantasy franchise, with no games released for Windows for many years; now, though, the company is experiencing a renaissance on the platform with the two rereleases of Final Fantasy VII followed closely on by iOS 3D ports and the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. We discuss the history and future of playing the Final Fantasy series on PCs herein.

Last Christmas, we did a CoNcast of holiday memories and mairocrat wii. This year, mairocrat 8 is out, so here's another cast! It's full of us yelling at our Wiis and sharing the best parts of gaming at the holidays, like unwrapping games on Christmas morning or buying games we'll never play on Steamsale. It's also a nice, compact, exactly-forty-minutes that you can devour on the train or plane as you travel for the holidays.

We went the weird angle again, and Tiddles and I decided to blow a day and a CoNcast on Twitch-streaming a big chunk of the preeminent dating sim video game featuring birds, Hatoful Boyfriend.

This time around, our panel is reviewing the subjectivity of "retro" gaming, particularly as it relates to Final Fantasy. The idea of what makes a Final Fantasy game "retro" is something that can change based on your own experience or lack thereof with the series, and to address that, we talk not only about what makes particular games in the series retro to our minds, but also what we as gamers can do to communicate effectively about the series to those who have a different perspective.

We spend some time touching on what the big three will or won't have around for E3, and of course we take some time to talk about what Square Enix might bring for their big franchises like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, Tomb Raider, and Deus Ex. Join Stiltzkin, Lasz, Tiddles and me for a (p)recap of the games you're going to be looking for soon.

A series like Final Fantasy - 25 years old, with twenty-plus games bearing the name - is sure to have an extremely diverse set of characters. Or, is it sure after all? Perhaps the series uses the same archetypes over and over again with slightly different twists. The CoNcast team spends 45 minutes dissecting the lead characters of the series and distilling them to work out the similarities and differences, as well as just the good from the bad.