The holiday season is usually crowded with new game releases, but this year Square Enix appears to be releasing games like it’s Christmas all year round.

Back in March 2022, Square Enix had a string of big releases all throughout the month: Babylon’s Fall, a live-service action game; Triangle Strategy, a strategy RPG game; Chocobo GP, a racing game spin-off of the Final Fantasy series; and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy, an action RPG game in collaboration with Koei Tecmo.

However this year, Square Enix has not only released more of these mid-tier games but also some of a higher quality.

It was quite disorienting to see Square Enix releasing a new game week after week.

We saw games like Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, a remaster of the classic JRPG; The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story, a full motion video game; and Live a Live, a remake of a SNES classic game, all of which added a far more interesting variety of genres to Square Enix’s release schedule.

With all those games, you’d think that Square Enix blew its load for the year already, especially after the announcement that its big action game, Forspoken, was delayed again to 2023.

The first game, The Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars, was released in October 2021, with Square Enix releasing two additional follow-up titles this year: The Forsaken Maiden and The Beasts of Burden.

The Isle Dragon Roars received positive reception, so it’s nice to see Square Enix continue to publish more games in the series—it’s great to see creative endeavors like these flourish.

Thank goodness for games like The DioField Chronicle and Triangle Strategy, because one aspect of Square Enix’s experimentation that I’m concerned about is how some of its legacy franchises are being changed from turn-based games to action RPGs.

While Final Fantasy VII Remake managed to pull the transition off successfully, I’m hoping that this trend doesn’t go too far within Square Enix’s catalog.

So to emphasize the scale of the releases that have just arrived and are still to come from Square Enix this year, in order of release we have: Voice of Cards: The Beast of Burden (September 13), Various Daylife (September 16), The DioField Chronicle (September 22), Valkyrie Elysium (September 29), Star Ocean: The Divine Force (October 27), Front Mission (November), Harvestella (November 4), Tactics Ogre: Reborn (November 11), Dragon Quest Treasures (December 9), and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion (December 13).

It was only after the summer games showcases that we got a clearer picture of what Square Enix had planned for the rest of the year.

Triangle Strategy and Tactics Ogre also have fantasy settings like Fire Emblem, while Front Mission is more sci-fi and focuses on mechs.

It’s a treat that we’re getting two big Final Fantasy games this year.

As you can tell, I’m very excited about Square Enix’s upcoming lineup of games coming out within the next year, and RPG fans are going to be eating well