It's always something, isn't it?

After elven years, I've got to think that
my wild lurches between political diatribe and 
Star Trek minutia is what you're here for.

With Square Enix I mean. Huh? Oh, you thought I was going to rail against the cold, dead hand of the Republican party continuing to makes lives miserable despite being the minority party. I mean, there are only so many times a week I can call them garbage humans and really, sometimes I need a break. And that break usually comes in the form of me having a one-sided discussion about Star Trek, or whinging on about some retro video game re-release. And if that's not your cuppa, that's fine, but I think we both know that you think about these things too.

So on to the whinging. You might recall a couple of weeks ago when I was going on and on about the grave injustice that is the re-release of the 2-D Final Fantasy games being limited to Steam and iPhones? No? Well, I did. 

And you're going to hear about it again.

Introducing The New MacBook Pro:
Now with zero ports. Just throw
it away when the battery runs out.

To sum up, these games have been re-released many times before but always with a dumb caveat, like: here's Final Fantasy V for the first time in English, except that now there're load times for some reason. Or, here's Final Fantasy VI, except that now it looks like a shitty mobile game. Apple has the Apple Tax--you know, the several hundred dollar we pay to upgrade to a new computer or phone from which even more ports have been stripped away? Well, Squeenix, has the except now: the caveat that takes otherwise great news and makes you go: "oh..."

Except now, there are three except nows. The first being, as I've remarked upon before, the bewildering decision to not release these on actual game consoles. Like, just put them on everything and take all of our money. It's business 101. 

"Thanks no, we're good."

-Square Enix, evidently

"Actually, yes, we'll take that."

-Also Square Enix

The next, and really the least surprising is that the re-releases cost between $12 and $18 dollars each and everyone's upset. I think a lot of the consternation and seriously?'s comes from the fact that that's steep for iOS games. But it's nothing new. Square Enix titles are always expensive on mobile. And since they're not actually mobile games (which are objective trash), but real console games ported to the platform, it's not unreasonable. In a sense, Square Enix's second except now, is their own Apple Tax. Still with me? Super. Let's press on.

Wh...what did he say?

But the new except now is the decision to use a tiny, ugly font in all of the games. Yeah, I know how I sound, complaining about something as dumb as the font, but hear me out. RPG's, as a rule, require lot of reading. You're going to be staring at--fine, one is going to be staring at this text for a long time, so it probably should be easy on the eyes. Which, at least according to the screen shots we've seen so far, this font, is not. Like aggressively.

"Yeah, we actually do know what we're doing."

-Again, Square Enix

I'm not a programmer or a marketing person but like, how hard is it to not screw this up every single time? The terrible font is actually really similar to the terrible font from the much maligned previous iOS versions from a few years ago, except now it's even smaller and harder to read. Surely they hear the feedback right? Surely they must know that people hate this, and that there's a market out there for good, un-tampered with ports of these games. So why do they keep--oh...wait, you don't suppose it's because despite all the except now's, we chumps keep buying these do you?