If Square-Enix didnt exist....

[T.G. Oskar]

What Hiro said was, "Well actually if I'm not mistaken Grandia 3 was made by Square Enix. Your reply goes off into the uknown. Hiro said nothing about Grandia being made by Square Enix but Grandia 3, get your game right. There is more errors in your recollection: the Grandia series has always been developed by Game Arts. Working Designs is an American company that localized JRPGs. Enix has published Grandia 2 in Japan for the PS2, Grandia Xtreme for Japan and U.S. Square Enix published Grandia 3 in Japan and the U.S as well.

From what I gather Enix never bought out Working Designs, they just closed up shop due to conflicts with SCE, and the president, Victor Ireland, created a new company, Gaijinworks.

Just to clarify things

I guess that "recalling correctly", emphasis on recalling, doesn't mean anything to you? Thanks for the clarification, tho.

The TC didn't really give a clear definition of what games would be lost; would they just be the games developed by Square Enix or plus the games published? I will take only the games developed approach. Thus here are my entries:

Star Ocean series
-snip-
Breath of Fire series
-snip-
Valkyrie Profile

Considering your approach as developers, I find it rather bizarre to imagine how would Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile would have reached US lands, let alone perhaps get a foothold in Japan, without a publisher. The closest assumption would be Namco (since the creators of tri-Ace developed the first of the Tales of games if the info is reliable enough), but that would imply the game probably would never have a chance, if any, to get a foothold in America (considering how late they brought Tales of Phantasia here)

Also, considering how Capcom portrayed the American audience, I feel there would be a difficulty at seeing the Breath of Fire games in America either. They needed Square to publish the game, using their established name in order to promote the series; hence why, after some time, Capcom took to publish the series by themselves.

You know, "Just to clarify things "

Not to say that American audiences may never get to play them (the advent of emulation and the eventual decision of remakes of the games), but at least two more series would be endangered had they failed to secure a publisher in Enix (BoF would be secure, since Capcom published it on Japan anyways) That would make sense with Xenogears, as unless they secured the game with Namco as developer/publisher, there would be big chances of the lack of existence of Monolith Soft; hence, Xenosaga would also be endangered.

But, furthermore, with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest out of existence, the face of RPGs would be quite different. Consider that one of the reasons why Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are so popular is their "heritage", so to speak, of older American RPGs along with new combat systems. If those two had never existed, there would be a shift in the formation of new RPGs, inclined mostly towards American style RPGs (such as Wizardry, Ultima, Might & Magic, Elder Scrolls and Rogue), with only a few setting trends such as Phantasy Star and Shin Megami Tensei.

[Zargabaath]

I know that Tri-Ace for the longest time only had their games published by Enix and then Square Enix, so there is no need to clarify I can recall correctly. I don't think Tri-Ace would have went to Namco, if you can recall correctly, Wolf Team and Namco had some fighting over Tales of Phantasia which caused the three major developers and other employees of Wolf Team/Telenet Japan. They could have went to Capcom, Konami, or Sega who had a great reputation in Japan as well as a better reputation in America than Enix.

Squaresoft only published the first Breath of Fire game in America, though I think Capcom could have done it themselves. I would say the reason behind the move was that they wanted a company who was known for RPGs for the American release.

It's quite hard to say which direction RPGs would have taken because nobody knows what could have happened. Some japanese developing company could have created the JRPG that would have been the spark that Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy were. Dragon Quest was made to be more accessible to other players- especially in Japan, where Ultima and Wizardry were too hardcore. I think it "the JRPG" would have been made, we just won't ever know.

I would like to add that Squaresoft would have been a better option than Enix if Tri-Ace wanted a company that was popular in Japan as well in America. I know this is a non-existent Square or Enix thread but since they did exist, I find Squaresoft a better pick.