Random JRPG News Thread

[Tehdagah]

I always wanted to play Crystal Chronicles.

 

[aweigh]

Even Squeenix wants to pretend Squall never existed.

Whatever... talk to a wall.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Even Squeenix wants to pretend Squall never existed.

Whatever... talk to a wall.

I utterly hate that game, but Squall wouldn't even make a top 10 list of worst characters in it.

 

[aweigh]

Resonance of Fate launches on October 18th for PC, and Squeenix also dropped a trailer showing the graphics comparisons in the Last Remnant remaster.

Too lazy to drop links, dealwithit ^_^

 

[Hyperion]

A classic cutscene in the history of JRPGs

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVibNKrp8sQ

 

[Abu Antar]

A friendly reminder that this is SEGA, not Square Enix.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Tell me about Resonance of Fate!

 

[Abu Antar]

Look at this customized gun.

 

[Reinhardt]

So many japanese games on pc in last few months. GOOD games.

 

[aweigh]

I had been waiting for Resonance of Fate to become playable on RPCS3 (still isn't) but thankfully that's no longer necessary. It's considered a "hidden gem" of a JRPG by many though how accurate that is remains to be seen!

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Resonance of Fate has this horrendous escort mission early on that's a brick wall of difficulty. If you can get past that it's a pretty fun game. It's also got this odd, episodic story. Its pretty much 12 vignettes rather than one over arching plot.

 

[ghostdog]

Resonance was surprisingly good.

I did a mini-review sometime ago:

Finally finished Resonance of Fate for the PS3.

Surprisingly good jrpg, with very interesting gun mechanics in a turn based combat model with power-ups and combo moves. Decent story and art. Very cool gun customization schematics where you mod your gun by combining gun parts like a puzzle. Various exploration mechanics. Hexes galore! Much better than any recent Final Fantasy crap.

So why was this game a flop? First of all it's by Sega so it most likely had absolutely zero marketing. Also it has some convoluted mechanics and the tutorial/manual are shit at explaining any of this. Read a FAQ if you want to understand how combat and exploration works. Also the main city hub is atrocious and to navigate it you must go through many screens like it's some PSX game.

But all and all it's a pretty good game that keeps being challenging for a long time. This one and Nier are the diamond-in-the-rough jrpgs for PS3.

Excuse the crappy screens. It's fucking PS3 what can i do.

Spoiler

phew ... 135h ! I hadn't done this in a long time.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I never expected a remaster for the game - but I'm glad to replay it on PS4 / PC. It already looked dated on the PS3, but was a great game. I really liked the atmosphere and setting, the weird characters and the combat system, I hope they don't change that other than maybe explaining it better.

And good to see that "the classic cutscene" didn't get #metoo'ed.

 

[Grauken]

was just released

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/09/19/exclusive-details-on-grandia-and-grandia-ii-hd-remaster

Exclusive Details On Grandia And Grandia II HD Remaster

While in town for Tokyo Game Show, we had the opportunity to stop by GungHo’s offices and have them dish to us about what’s in store for the Grandia and Grandia II HD Remaster. The Remaster of the first two Grandia games was announced last month for Switch and PC. The Grandia series captured fans hearts in the PS1/Sega Saturn era for its lighthearted nature and fun battle system where you interrupt opponents’ attacks by timing your own correctly.

Here is the list of new and updated features Gung Ho provided us:

Grandia

• Enhanced details to UI, sprites, and texture art.
• Original cinematic videos receiving visual enhancements
• Widescreen support and customizable resolutions for PC
• Addition of MSAA, bloom, normal mapping, and blur effects
• Steam cards and Achievements
• Japanese Audio & English Subtitles
• Language Support: English & Japanese
• Digitally converted game manual
• Utilizing PS1 & Sega Saturn source code
• Gamepad and keyboard support with remappable controls

Grandia II

• Digitally converted game manual
• Utilizing Grandia II Anniversary Edition source code, which originally was based on the Sega Dreamcast source code
• Fix PC video/audio desync and switch to XInput
• Add support to exit to title
• Japanese Subtitles added, for Switch version

In a surprising move, GungHo confirmed it currently only has plans to release this collection in North America and Europe – to much dismay of Japanese fans clamoring for it.

So...

• Enhanced details to UI, sprites, and texture art.
• Original cinematic videos receiving visual enhancements
• Addition of MSAA, bloom, normal mapping, and blur effects

... will it Prosper like Chrono Trigger for PC?

 

[Rahdulan]

• Enhanced details to UI, sprites, and texture art.

All of these can be disastrous, though.

Grandia 2 had it easy because it's essentially all 3D.

I'm just amazed they actually held onto to game's source code and even from multiple platforms. Especially compared to industry titan like Squeenix.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Their work on Grandia 1 will likely mirror their work on Grandia 2 HD, which is already available.

 

[LESS T_T]

Romancing Saga 3 remaster in early 2019 in Japan, for PC (Steam, Win10), PS4, SW, XO, PSV, iOS, AD: http://www.jp.square-enix.com/romasaga3/



They also announced a new Romancing Saga game in over 20 years, but it is a free-to-play and mobile game so whatever: https://www.jp.square-enix.com/saga_reuniverse/

 

[Rahdulan]

Still a shame the first game was skipped, though.

 

[Grauken]

It did get a fan translation
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/2377/

 

[Lyre Mors]

Romancing Saga 3 remaster in early 2019 in Japan, for PC (Steam, Win10), PS4, SW, XO, PSV, iOS, AD: http://www.jp.square-enix.com/romasaga3/

Jesus christ. Every day I come to this thread, a new glorious piece of news is announced. THIS IS FANTASTIC!

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Resonance of Fate on PC boyyyyySsss!!!

Dragon's Dogma, Vanquish, Yakuza series, now this... How many more games are going to end up being ported to PC/remastered before I get the time to play them on my ps3?
One fewer game for which ps3 (and x360) is even worth having around, which is a good thing.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.pcgamer.com/dragon-quests-creator-hopes-to-bring-more-of-the-series-to-pc/

Dragon Quest's creator hopes to bring more of the series to PC
In an interview for Dragon Quest 11, Horii reflects on 80s PC history, working with Akira Toriyama, and making a PC game for the West.

Dragon Quest 11 releasing on PC was a major milestone for Japanese PC gaming, and a moment of symmetry: creator Yuji Horii was first inspired by computer games like Ultima and Wizardry, and now his series finally shares a platform with them, all these years later. It's the first, though he hopes it won't be the last. "If Dragon Quest 11 does sell on the PC, hopefully we can bring some of the older games in the series and port them to the PC," Horii said when we spoke in a recent interview.

I asked Horii, along with Dragon Quest 11's director and producer, about making the first Dragon Quest for PC, and to look back at the PC scene of the 1980s. Would the series have become as popular if it was released for the PC, rather than Nintendo's Famicom?

"There's no saying what could have happened if they had released on a different platform," Horii said. "From the very start of developing Dragon Quest, I only had the Famicom system in mind. It was the gaming device that most children were playing on.

"When you really look back at the state of PCs back then, they were very expensive hardware. Back then I was writing articles for Shonen Jump about PC games like Lode Runner, and oftentimes I would receive surveys or comments from readers saying 'that looks so fun, I want to try playing it.' But PCs were so expensive, kids couldn't play those games. The year after the Famicom came out, and it became more accessible and a lot of children tapped into it. So that was the motivation I had in developing for that platform."

Horii had once wanted to become a manga artist, but was drawn to computers and started to learn programming—partially by playing games like Nobunaga's Ambition, which were still written in BASIC, and reprogramming them to see how they changed.

When he made Dragon Quest with Enix, the company was still largely focused on releasing games for Japanese computers like the NEC PC-98 and Sharp X1. That changed with Dragon Quest's success—but despite being intentionally designed for the Famicom, Enix did still commission ports of the first two games to the MSX, another popular PC. They don't look great.



"At that time, they had quite a lineup for PC software, but when the Famicom came out they started porting some of those PC games to the Famicom, including Door Door and Portopia, which happens to be Horii-san's game," said executive producer Yuu Miyake. "From that they gained the know-how to develop for the Famicom. ... When you look at where the PC was going at that time, when Dragon Quest 1 and 2 were releasing, the PC was still selling quite well. So that's why they decided to do an MSX port. But thereafter, in Japan at least, the Famicom became more of the main console for gaming, and the PC industry shrunk a bit, which is why presumably there wasn't a port thereafter."

Horii and his (then much smaller) team didn't work on those ports themselves, but for Dragon Quest 11, the PC was part of the plan from the very beginning. Historically, Dragon Quest has always been developed for the platform with the most Japanese players. For years that was the Famicom and Super Famicom; then it was the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, and the Nintendo DS. But times have changed, and Horii said that "in this day and age… when you think of where the biggest market is, at least for North America, we can say it's for PS4 and PC, which is why we're bringing the game to those platforms."

We also chatted a bit about what it's like working with Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, who's been doing art for the Dragon Quest series since the beginning. Typically, the dev team comes up with a description for a character or monster and supplies it to Toriyama, who then sends back a rough line drawing, and they go back and forth from there to refine it. But with every game, Toriyama tends to have something in particular he's unpredictably interested in drawing.

"For Dragon Quest 11, it seemed like Toriyama-san was very particular about the accessories, this time," Dragon Quest 11 director Takeshi Uchikawa said. "For example, the main character's bag, or the way he straps his belt. Those kinds of fine details and ideas were brought up by Toriyama-san, and with the illustrations he creates, the development team would convert that into 3D models. Of course the development team wants to bring his illustration to life as much as possible, so even if they were encountering some difficulties with how characters would move with a specific accessory or whatever, they tried their best to make that come true."

My favorite detail was that when Toriyama drew the game's final boss, he was clearly excited about the design—instead of his usual black-and-white sketch, he turned in a fully colored illustration.

Like Toriyama, Horii's passions have manifested in different ways over the life of the series. Dragon Quest 11 was meant to be a culmination of 30 years of history, and he said he wanted people to feel that progression. Around the development of Dragon Quest 6 on the Super Famicom, the idea of "finding yourself" was popular, so he reflected that theme of self-exploration in the game. And even at the age of 64, he's still a big fan of pranks, which commonly appear in the Dragon Quest games.

An unexpected bit of history came up when Horii spoke of how his childhood influenced Dragon Quest. He didn't go adventuring in the hills as a boy, the way Shigeru Miyamoto did and famously channeled into The Legend of Zelda, but Dragon Quest's collectible mini medal items do have a childhood origin story.

"I actually grew up on a very small island, and there was a small hill on that island and a cliff," Horii said. "We had these small frisbee-like discs. Basically, you would throw them off the cliff, and I would enjoy running down the hill and gathering those. That kind of became the inspiration for the small medallions, the mini medals, in the Dragon Quest games."

While Dragon Quest 11 hasn't lit up the Steam charts like Monster Hunter: World, or matched the PS4 version's great success in Japan, it remains on Steam's top sellers list more than two weeks after release. Time will tell if that's enough to bring the rest of the series, and their mini medals, to the PC as well.

 

[Expon]

They also announced a new Romancing Saga game in over 20 years, but it is a free-to-play and mobile game so whatever: https://www.jp.square-enix.com/saga_reuniverse/

https://www.4gamer.net/games/434/G043482/20180922073/
the game takes place 300 years after romancing saGa 3 and will feature characters from unlimited, frontier, scarlet grace, first three romancing games and that werid stage thing they did. the dev team mostly consist of the guys who did scarlet grace and imperial so at least the combat system will be good. and kenji ito.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

If anyone was curious to see more of how the forthcoming Langrisser I and II remake would look like (I believe this hasn't been posted here yet):