Well, it happened. I finally want a PS4, and naturally this desire comes at the exact time when I have no money coming in whatsoever, making it both futile and frustrating. Still, I can probably survive without one for a little while at least, though once I have some money coming in again — assuming that actually happens at some point; let’s be positive — it’s going to the top of the list of “Things I’d Like to Spend My Disposable Income On”.

Why? Well, several reasons, but chief among them right now is Final Fantasy Type-0, a game which I’ve been curious about for some time but have never known a great deal about. For the uninitiated, this game was originally a PSP-based spinoff of Final Fantasy XIII’s deep (and, to some, incomprehensible) mythos and is noteworthy for having an astonishingly good soundtrack. This, of course, is nothing new for the Final Fantasy series as a whole, but Type-0 seems to be particularly well regarded in this department by people who know their RPGs.

I don’t even know a whole lot about the game, save for the fact it’s mission-based and has quite a large cast of playable characters, each of whom are useful throughout the game. I’m on board with what I believe is some sort of school/academy situation, and what little I saw of the demo version at PAX East certainly looked enjoyable enough — though with every new installment of Final Fantasy which doesn’t incorporate traditional turn-based battles, I’m a little saddened, though Square Enix has made it pretty clear that they intend Bravely Default to continue fulfilling that niche for at least the immediate future.

I’m also intrigued by the bundled demo of Final Fantasy XV which comes with it. Again, I haven’t been following the development of XV in great depth, but I feel it’s got a great concept: the idea of a game taking inspiration from road trip movies is an inspired one, and eminently suitable for the always-on-the-go nature of most role-playing games. The demo, known as Episode Duscae, sounds like it’s an enjoyable, impressive time, and it gives me happy flashbacks to the PlayStation 1 era, where a number of Square Enix games were well-known almost as much for the demos they came with as for the games themselves. (I remember buying Brave Fencer Musashi largely for the Final Fantasy VIII demo, only to be delighted to discover that Brave Fencer Musashi was actually a great game in its own right.) Sadly, the flip-side of this is that there are people out there — including journalists — who are whingeing about the demo being an exclusive bundle deal with Type-0, and others still who are fleecing others by selling on demo codes, or buying the game purely for the demo and then selling the game on without giving it a chance.

Outside of Final Fantasy territory, it seems that some of my favourite developers and publishers — most notably Compile Heart/Idea Factory and Nippon Ichi Software — are finally going all-in on the PlayStation 4. A localised version of Compile Heart’s adorable-looking idol-themed RPG Omega Quintet is coming soon, and the latest Hyperdimension Neptunia game, Victory II (or V-II) is on the way to Japan, with a localisation announcement surely not far off. Then there’s smaller games that I’d very much like to play, like Resogun, and I’m sure there’s plenty more goodness coming down the pipe too, even discounting the impressive, big-budget end of the spectrum typified by most Western publishers these days.

The timing here is unfortunate, then, but as I’ve said recently, I have a couple of irons in the fire that will hopefully lead to something a bit more meaningful in the near future. It remains to be seen if any of them will prove fruitful, but at least this newly awakened desire for a PS4 at least provides some sort of incentive to get things sorted sooner rather than later, I guess.