Final Fantasy 19 (Bushido Games)

Final Fantasy 19 is the 19th entry in the Final Fantasy series, developed by Square Enix and Italian company Bushido Games for the Sony Playstation 6.
It's an RPG-shoot 'em up hybrid and involves mech combat.
This game's directors are Naoki Yoshida and Yuji Horii, known for the MMO FFXIV and Dragon Quest respectively, and as such this game has been referred to as "Dragon Quest 4's gritty dieselpunk cousin". 
== Gameplay ==
For the first time, this game alternates between on-foot and mecha battles. 
On foot, the game has a real time battle system based on a shoot 'em up with a few RPG mechanics, akin to Mass Effect or Cyberpunk 2077, however the player is locked into using specific types of guns (and sometimes melee weapons and special skills) depending on the character they play as. Magic takes the form of elemental grenades the player can pick up and throw and are consumable items, without MP. 
Summons can be called through the Summon command. The Summon Spheres have an energy meter which needs to be refilled through kills or through special items. Once summoned, energy for a specific Sphere starts counting down, and once it reaches zero, the player is ejected. Instead of monsters, Summons are special mechs with their own HP which encase the player in them and allow them to use magic: if their HP reaches zero, the player has to go to specific shops to repair them and their energy will stop refilling. 
The Junction system from Final Fantasy VIII makes a comeback. The player can junction Summon Spheres to a character, and grind AP for each Summon Sphere to unlock new skills, commands and stat bonuses. Elemental grenades can be junctioned to various slots such as weapon and armor in order to raise attack and defense, making attacks elemental, protecting from statuses, giving statuses through attacks, increasing elemental resistance, etc. 
While controlling a Summon, the player can use a selection of various weapons by expending fuel, and battles tend to be more close-range. Each skill is given by a sub-weapon equipped in one of the mech's slots
== Setting ==
The game is set in the Communist Republic of Yokosuka, a dieselpunk nation reminiscent of the Soviet Union. A civil war is going on between the Seinaru Guntai (literally "Holy Army"), a disorganized army of loyalists to the recently-overthrown monarch led by General-Archbishop Absalom, and the republican army known as the Akakishi (from Akai, "red" and Kishi, "knight"). A mysterious sect known as the Black Order manipulates both sides, looking to cleanse the world from the "Children of the Earth" and stop the "plan for the New World Order".
== Plot ==
This game's first part, before the timeskip, is split into three chapters which have Baatar Temuulen, Alisa Morizane and Dmitri Karatsev as their lead characters. Similarly to Dragon Quest 4, each protagonist is silent when they're the chapter's lead, with their dialogue sometimes chosen by the player in the form of options (unvoiced) and sometimes have voiced grunts in cutscenes but never actual voiced lines. When they are not the main character, however, they appear as regular talking characters. Each protagonist has a chapter, with Q's chapter being the longest. 
=== Prologue: ===
The game starts in the steppe known as the Sea of Grass. The settlement of the nomadic tribe of Wakinyan is surrounded by Horned Snake mercenaries. Suleiman al-Hazmu is Hasan al-Qudzik's second-in-command, and receives from his commander the order to go further in the village and take "the Resonant" at all costs. Wakinyan spearmen attempt to resist, but the more technologically advanced mercenaries gun them down in a massive bloodbath, setting fire to the village in the meantime. Of all those warriors, Baatar is the last one, and he means to sacrifice himself to protect his daughter. Suleiman defeats him, but refuses to kill him and instead throws him away and takes his daughter Sarnai. As the Horned Snakes retreat, they meet a black-clad man (Dmitri Karatsev), who asks for the Resonant: Suleiman stops to think, remembering Baatar's screams and pleas as he lay on the ground wounded, and then refuses to give Dmitri the child (the player has a dialogue prompt showing only one option: "She needs a family!", though still unvoiced), to which Hasan reacts by shooting Suleiman in the back. Dmitri then touches Suleiman's body and drains his blood, causing him to agonize and scream in pain. Before blacking out, he sees a bullet pierce his commander's head, then a helicopter flying in the sky. "She's seen us!" says Hasan as he drops dead on top of Suleiman, then Dmitri stops for a moment and replies, "Alisa Morizane, ace of the Ritsar Division... We have to retreat for now". Then, drained of all his life force, Suleiman exhales his last breath and closes his eyes. 
=== Baatar's chapter: ===
Five years later, Baatar wakes up, having had another dream of the day Suleiman had shot him. He has completely healed from his wounds and is now a member of the Thundering Birds mercenary company. TBA
=== Alisa's chapter: ===
=== Dmitri's chapter: ===
=== Interlude: ===
=== Q's chapter: ===
Q's chapter is set two years after the Interlude. After the three heroes had killed Q inside the machine Alexander, they have connected with the Spiritual Domain. In a dream, a Spirit tells Q that they will serve as the protector of the Spiritual Domain, and that they have to awaken to save it from its impending annihilation. Then, the player customizes the hero's looks. Q wakes up, takes away their mask and reveals the face the player has given them, then the Spirit explains them that Herschel Cohen (the CEO of Abraxas Corporation) is the last Child of the Earth and is on the verge of awakening the Demiurge (which Alexander is only a part of) in order to give humans eternal life, peace and harmony by connecting their bodies and souls to a massive net and making them all one massive being, as the Children of the Earth led by Abraxas the First had attempted ten thousand years before. This is dangerous for the Spirits as the creation of the Demiurge Net causes the Material and Soul Domains to detach from the Spiritual Domain (which is where time and space are coded and which acts as the pillar which supports the two lower domains). Alexander is now completely regenerated, and Q is synchronized with it through the Spirit's influence, meaning they can pilot it through their spiritual presence. The Spirit then orders Q to go find the three men that had defeated Alexander in the past, in order to for the Spirit Army and defeat Cohen. TBA
=== Epilogue: === 
== Characters ==
=== Player characters: ===
Suleiman al-Hazmu: The protagonist of the prologue. A mercenary from the Horned Snakes, he has taken Sarnai Baatar as a hostage after his men razed the village and is on the run from the girl's father. He apparently dies at the end of the prologue, being almost killed by Dmitri after resisting a wave of Black Order soldiers. 
Baatar Temuulen: A member of the mercenary company Thundering Bird, which has a contract with Absalom. He hails from the Wakinyan, a nomadic tribe from the steppe known as the Sea of Grass. Most of his relatives have been killed in an attack by the Horned Snakes. He pilots a mech named Ifrit. His weapons are grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, gatling guns, axes, shields and bludgeons. His special skill is Desperation, which triples his melee attack in exchange for HP.
Alisa Morizane: A sniper, stealth expert and hacker working for the Ritsar Division of the Akakishi. Her weapons are sniper rifles, knuckles and daggers. Her special skill is Hacking, which allows her to hack into machines and vehicles to take control of them or instakill robotic enemies. She uses a mecha named Garuda. 
Dimitri Karatsev: A Prizrak of the Black Order. His only weapons are handguns, though as a genetically-engineered soldier injected with Kudlak DNA, he can use the special skill Kudlak State, which transforms him into a half-undead Kudlak and allows him to use Blood Arts (with effects such as drain life from enemies, summon wight-like familiars, control enemies through their blood, inflict various status ailments and become immune to physical attacks at the cost of being undead and extremely weak to magical attacks). He uses a mecha named Shiva.
Protagonist (canonically "Q"): Originally a faceless puppet-like cyborg and one of the strongest soldiers of the Yokosukan Army. After the timeskip, they enter in contact with the Upper Domain and are possessed by an existence from the Spiritual Domain. After being possessed, Q's mask shatters and their face is customized by the player. They're the main character of the post-timeskip segment of the game, and do not have a voice actor at all. They can use all kinds of weapons, and their special skill is Spirit Release, which deals massive damage to all enemies in a large area around the user at the cost of stunning them. Their mech is named Alexander and is an explicitly magical creation from an ancient civilization, animated by a Spirit consciousness which acts as Q's voice. They're a clone of Sarnai, who communicates with them through the Spiritual Domain. The player can influence Q's stat growths by choosing to assign where to assign stat points after leveling up. 
Sarnai Baatar: Baatar's daughter (Wakinyans have patronymics instead of last names), originally taken by Suleiman as a hostage and believed to be dead when he was murdered. She's a Resonant, AKA a person that can communicate with Spirits. She survived, and is the protagonist of the epilogue. After the final boss, the player controls her for a final stealth section and can then freely roam the capital and interact with the various formerly-playable characters. Her epilogue has no fighting involved, as she cannot fight.
=== Guests (cannot be controlled by the player): ===
Hasan al-Qudzik: The leader of the Horned Snakes. He betrays Suleiman and gives Sarnai to the Black Order. 
== Trivia ==
* This game is the fourth single-player Final Fantasy game to have a silent protagonist, after Final Fantasy I, XVI and XVIII. 
**Sarnai is the only player-controlled character not to be silent under the player's control, though the epilogue starring her involves no fighting. She can as such be considered an "inverted protagonist".
***Talking to Q yields the "..." response while the other three playable characters have dialogue in the epilogue.
**Q and the Warrior of Light of FFI are the only characters to lack a canon name and voice actor altogether.
**The new series director Yuji Horii once said that a protagonist that has a personality outside player control alienates the player and makes it impossible to immerse them in the game, this is why most Dragon Quest protagonists are silent. He also confirmed any mainline Final Fantasy game written by him won't have a talking protagonist, though it's not known whether or not remakes of pre-Horii games will retain non-player-chosen dialogue for protagonists. 
**Due to a specific rule of Horii, that protagonists represent the player and as such they must not appear in crossovers, this game's representatives in Dissidia are Alisa, Dmitri and Baatar, but never Q. All of the protagonists that appear in spin-offs speak in cutscenes.
* As the game has a single-character party, there are no Raise/Arise spells, which makes it more believable that death is mostly permanent in this setting. Resurrecting the dead can sometimes happen in this universe, but very rarely and has a lot of repercussions on the body, such as amnesia, sterility, permanent Zombie status and obsession with a certain memory, similar to how resurrection works in A Song of Ice and Fire. However, once the player dies in gameplay, they respawn near the point they died in and usually don't lose a lot of progress.
* Chocobos are called Chocobos by the Wakinyan, but are referred to as "Waka Horses" by non-Wakinyan. This is a call back to FFXVIII, where Americans soldiers refer to Chocobos as "Nazi Horses" (because the Nazis rode them in battle). 
Category:Final Fantasy (series)
Category:Final Fantasy Games
Category:Japanese Role-Playing Games
Category:Shoot 'em up
Category:Shooter Games
Category:Shooting Games
Category:Action Role-Playing Games
Category:Action Games
Category:Mecha Games
Category:PlayStation 6 Games