Square EA had a small portion of the Sony booth at this year's E3 expo. Among the circus of titles available for attendees to try, one of them was the controversial Final Fantasy XI, which occupied 8 booths - a smaller than expected presence. Sony seems to be trailing behind Nintendo and Microsoft after viewing their pre-E3 press conferences. I for one was skeptical about Sony's plans for Squaresoft... despite the phenomenal success of Final Fantasy X, only a 5-10 second mention was given to FFXI. In addition, the title was delayed until the beginning of 2003.

It would be unfortunate if Sony failed to ignore the importance of the Final Fantasy franchise. While Final Fantasy XI is fundamentally different from all of the other games, it manages to hold its own in the MMORPG genre by keeping classic elements of the Final Fantasy games and implementing them on Square's "PlayOnline" service. It was good to see that every one of the 8 terminals was connected to the PlayOnline network. Occasionaly, one of the gamers would pop in saying "How's everyone enjoying E3?" Kind of a nice touch.

The playable demo was the Japanese version of Final Fantasy XI, and each terminal had a keyboard which was occasionaly used for hotkeys and typing messages to teammates. Despite the dual nature of Sony's online capabilities (which include support for both broadband and analog modems), very little network lag was present and some Square EA reps were on hand to help explain the basic functions of the game, as well as provide some quick menu pointers. The game was presented in a format similar to Everquest, however the way actions such as attacking and using items were carried out is similar to all of the recent Final Fantasy titles.

Most of the demo took place directly outside one of the game's towns, as attendees got to try out the battle system. Again, it was uncertain to make out many of the skills, spells, weapon names, etc. because of the kanji - but the effects are very similar to Final Fantasy X, and it was able to support multiple characters attacking a single target at once. For a title that was just released in Japan the previous week, it was very promising to see the game up and running like it was, and to be able to play with some of the Japanese gamers and Squaresoft employees as well. While the release of Final Fantasy XI has been delayed until next year, it looks as if the game will come out on time without problems if the demo is any indication. Although many of the MMORPG's at the expo are very similar to titles like Everquest, Final Fantasy XI may yet differentiate itself from them - even if only for the elements of previous Final Fantasy games it brings.