What happened to "SQAURE ENIX" after Ps2 era?

[GoOnKid]

Hiku said:

For some reason I was always under the impression that it had something in common with Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. In that game you can see a counter above people's heads that shows how many days they have left to live. I didn't play enough of it to know how exactly you'll be able to intervene with their fate in order to help them survive, but it might have been the mind reading in TWEWY that I was thinking of. Or maybe it's the Tokyo setting.
Either way, I knew there was some unique mechanic like that, and the mind reading sounds pretty interesting.
I'll look into the pins because I'm not sure if they are expendable attacks (like magic in FFVIII) or some type of permanent upgrade that gives you access to new abilities.
I do like the ability of changing difficulty at any point in the game. I used that in Nier: Automata a few times when I wanted the enemies to get stronger while I was farming them for certain drops. One function that isn't in Nier though that I would have liked is the ability to lower my own level, because while farming I inevitably gain EXP and level up, and I didn't really want to do that at some points.

Pins function in different manners, but most of them are activated via touch controls. Some pins let you shoot projectiles if you tap empty space, for example. Or slash across an enemy and Neku will slash it in the game. There are tons of different actions, I'm actually pretty impressed how creative the inputs are. One even requires you to shout into the microphone.

The resemble towards SMT might derive from the story - kind of. I won't spoil too much, but apparently the main characters participate in some kind of game, against their will, of which they cannot esacpe. It consists of various challenges across a timespan of seven days. At the end, only one can win and everyone else will be erased. So this is pretty heavy shit there.

You last paragraph is interesting: what is your motivation to stay on a low level? Do you like the challenge? I see this in Xenoblade Chronicles in a somehow similar way. Your level grows with experience points gained in battles, but you get far more of those in the background by other factors. The game lets you decide then how many levels you want to rise when you sleep in an inn instead. I always rise as fast as I can :D