Review: Final Fantasy Spirit

This is a paid review.

[Author's Disclaimer. Call me biased. I've been playing Final Fantasy games since they game out first in Japan. Yes, I had a Famicom. Squaresoft is in my heart and soul. Every single one of their world's are beautifully designed and a lot of well thought out battle scenarios and balancing of jobs and skills. At one point in my life, I even had Ergheiz and Einhander (both little known Square games except by fans). Of all of the large world's that definitely be in itself a MMORPG, I have yet to lay my hands on FFXI, the only true MMORPG by Square-Enix. Why? Asian companies rarely have their players pay upfront for a game, and then ding them for a subscription and on top of that, micropayment. It just doesn't happen. That's a total western thought process. I can't help but feel screwed when I don't play for a month because my real life just happens to take priority. Thus, sorry Square. Otherwise, I'm still as big a fan as any. ]

Design: FFspirit.net is a well thought out site although there’s something to be said about the navigation. The overlay images for the cover is very much like opening sequences for FF. The maroon and light grey scheme is a typical light and dark color contrast scheme which makes it easy to read. There is plenty of imagery from FF covers, concept art and such which somehow makes me doubt that it constitutes as fair-use even though there’s a disclaimer at the bottom with “no trademark infringement intended.” I’m no copyright attorney, but I’m pretty sure you can’t use imagery like that especially if you’re integrating it directly into an advertisement. At least that’s the thought.

Content: There might be something to be said about trying to navigate from one page to another on the menu system, as well as the GKWorld links for the merchandise. The total straight off link to GKWorld makes you wonder if this site is affiliated with GKWorld, or if they’re just trying to look bigger than they are. The forums have massive amounts of posts from FF readers and I personally really like the fact that while they are reproducing news from other sources, they link the source and give their take on it. It’s good to see that credit is given where due. On the flip side, like the imagery issues above, I’m also pretty sure that the ringtones that they provide are out of fair-use rights. One of the songs is the complete FF X-2 Opening themes. I didn’t listen to the rest, but I assume that they were also complete songs instead of the usual under ten second clips. Again, not an attorney, but this could become a serious copyright violation if Square-Enix decided to run down the sue-happy route.

Overall: The design is good, and for a fan site (at least that’s the way it seems to be), it’s a well-managed seems to have very recent news about all things Final Fantasy. There is also a link to a buy/sell gil site that I would assume is against FFXI TOS. I personally would probably use the forums if I had more time, but the rest of the site needs some work in removing the infringing items in case some legal issues arise.