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I miss Square soft too.

Perhaps animevice should buy giantbum.com :-P.
 *teases*

Are you blaming Enix for this?
"With the same visuals we've seen on the last umpteen DS square games" I assume you're referring to the chibi 3D style like in FF3 & FF4 remakes. What about things like the World Ends with You? Chrono Trigger? Valkyrie Profile? Dragon Quest 9 (& remakes)?
  Do you think that it would be different if they were still Squaresoft today?

Ah, new ip.
    Didn't answer my question about the ds visuals or whether you blame Enix though?

@John_Martone: You forgot Code Age Commanders which came out in 2005 (as well as a few obscure mobile phone games, probably, but I can't be bothered to check).

Also, SaGa Frontier doesn't really count since that's just a sub-series of the SaGa franchise.

But still, point taken. I personally didn't get into RPGs until the year 2000 and don't have much of an opinion on whether Squaresoft was a better company than SE. All I really want from SE is to develop good KH games and to publish DQ and tri-Ace games. I don't even consider myself much of a fan of the FF series since I'm a more gameplay-oriented gamer as opposed to the narrative-driven approach that most FF games take (my favorite FF games are always the ones that are least liked by the mainstream).

@Zeouterlimits: No, Enix bought Square when they were about to go bankrupt due to the supposed monstrosity that was The Spirits Within (I watched this before I had ever played an FF game and I thought it was fine, really...), but it was mainly the Square peoples that took up leadership roles in the new company (like the company president, for example).

Meaning that whoever decides that a remake/sequel is a better idea than a new IP was most likely originally a Square employee.

All that the Enix merger did was give them a bigger budget. People often cite Enix as being to blame for FFX-2 as well, but that game already came out in Japan a month before the merger (also, it's a good game).

@Zeouterlimits:  Seems to me that he's arguing that Squaresoft seemed to have many titles that were very different from one another in presentation and gameplay before they merged with Enix. They didn't stop making unique games, there's just not as many.

Squaresoft was awesome. Square-Enix is just a shadow of what the company was

I would put down serious cash for a coffee table-style book filled with nothing but concept art for every one to Squaresoft's and Square-Enix's games.

@John_Martone:
  Dude, I agree to an extent, I just wanted to better understand your position.
  *hugs*