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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 28, 2019 22:32:51 GMT -5
I guess I'm making my post now. I feel like the best approach would be to talk about each game on its own, then the collection as a whole.
Final Fantasy Adventure: As a game made in 91, it goes without saying that FFA holds many traits of older games. Yet, for all of this it also possess a simplicity which goes a long way toward making it the least flawed game of the bunch. There’s not a whole lot of variety and some of the late game dungeons can go on for a bit too long, but otherwise there’s not much to criticise that isn’t true of most games at this time (minimal story, lack of direction (if you don’t pay attention), horrid translation, general enemy jankiness).
Otherwise the game is actually pretty commendable for the amount of variety it presents. Magic is a bit limited, but you get eight spells. There are different weapons with non-combat functionality (chains can grapple across ledges, sickles cut plants, etc.). There’s actually a decent bit of variety to the overworld, and it’s all over inside of 10 hours. Not exactly a ‘must-play’ experience, but everything it offers is competent, culminating in a solid adventure game that stays out of its own way.
Secret of Mana: Playing this again shocked me at how much was re-used from FFA. I think every single enemy sprite was taken straight from the GB and touched up. Funny thing is, it says more about the quality of the GB sprites that it worked.
Moving on, SoM embodies most what I think this series has to offer. The vibrant visuals and interesting locations really have this sense of an “adventure”. The biggest tug to keep playing is to see what location you’ll encounter next. Even generic forests are cheerful with bright colours, featuring mushrooms, rabbits and flowers as enemies. At one time you’ll be in a city made of gold, at another you’ll be in an underground subway.
It also offers up the best ‘experience’ of the bunch. Locations aren’t as segmented as they are in the sequel, plus there’s a greater variety. The story also plays a larger part than it does in FFA, but doesn’t completely fall off the cliff like in ToM. Plus having three fixed characters makes each one feel unique. Once again: it’s the best ‘experience’ of the bunch.
Unfortunately it’s also the most flawed. The hit detection is pretty bad (stopping short of awful), and enemies and allies stay stunned for absurd amounts of time. For enemies this means insane invulnerability frames. For players this means getting stun-locked to literal death. Weapons can be charged by holding the attack button, but there’s nothing more frustrating than waiting over a minute for a high-level charge only to have it whiff for no reason at all. I understand the idea of having unique attacks, but for your own sanity it’s best to ignore the feature completely.
The screen also requires all three players be visible, meaning that your AI will often get caught on walls and require manual control to un-stick. Worse, spells which incapacitate can keep you stuck while you wait for them to expire. The AI in general is just horrendous, leading to certain situations that are easier if you simply leave them dead.
All of this culminates in fights that just wear you down with frustration. Bosses are the worst. Trying to fight them without magic spam is painful, which makes the few that block magic a complete headache. Worse, on the few bosses that exclusively use magic, if YOU use the reflect magic spell, you get a funny little message saying it didn’t work. Awesome. While the game never left me seething with rage like ToM, I nonetheless encountered several moments where rising blood pressure demanded a break.
Trials of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 3): If SoM is the best ‘experience’, then ToM is the best ‘game’. It really did fix a lot of the frustrations in SoM. Hit-boxes are much improved, and the ‘hold the button’ charge system is replaced by ‘charge by attacking’ super-moves. In other words, they finally made hitting things satisfying! Your screen is no longer bound by the AI, who themselves are much improved. Bosses are fairly basic, but aren’t cancer. Class changes offer variety to how you build your characters, and since you can only take 3 of 6 characters, there’s grounds for at least two playthroughs.
Unfortunately what it gains in gameplay it loses in the ‘experience’. Locations being so fractured makes them feel less like real areas (didn’t I just talk about this?), and leads to repetition in design. Characters now are limited to one weapon type, meaning the days of slashing and grappling are over, removing an element of world navigation. While the fighting is much improved, the world you fight in is a lot less interesting, which is a huge shame because the sprite-work is, no hyperbole, some of the best on the system.
On the story side of things, as I already mentioned, the plot ceases to exist half-way through. I’m guessing this is a concession to the “make your own party” system, but it highlights just how limited the system is. Because certain pre-drop off points are scripted, it makes the characters lose their sense of individuality. It was funny that Duran was thinking of passing a curse on to one of his party members, because he’s not exactly the thinking type. But then you watch Hawkeye do the same thing, and you realise that it’s not a humourous character moment: it’s just a scripted event. At once your party members cease to feel like individual characters and more like actors playing out the same role.* The end result is that the rare unique scenes are the only thing unique about these characters, at which point why would I feel anything for them?
However I want to also tackle the ‘make your own party’ thing from a gameplay side as well. A lot of people like to herald this as incentive to replay the game a number of times, but I call BS. The reality is that all fighters play more-or-less the same, and all casters play more-or-less the same. Most of your time will be spent hitting the basic attack button, or if you want to have no fun, waiting to select/cast spells. This isn’t the difference between Dante and Nero, this is the difference between how long I have to wait before I can hit the attack button again. The only interesting aspect lies in your party composition, but the game isn’t challenging enough to drive you to min/max or experiment. I want to give the game one more run-through with a buffer AND de-buffer just for giggles, but otherwise I’m hardly frothing to try new combinations.
Rounding things out, I’ve already mentioned the potential for end-game magic to insta-wipe your party the second you walk on screen, so I’ll refrain from ranting about it here.
The Collection as a Whole: Wow, that’s a lot of negativity towards ToM! And a decent amount towards SoM too! Why did I even play these sh*tty games?
The ‘Mana’ series is very much better than the sum of its parts. The stories are all lame, the characters barely developed, and the gameplay ranges from “decent button-mashing” to vein-burstingly awful. In both SoM and ToM there’s not even much to find: the rare chest in SoM offer weapon upgrades, meanwhile ToM has absolutely nothing to offer the player for going off the beaten path. But for me I wanted to explore them anyway, because the aesthetic of the games were so appealing that I felt compelled to take it all in.
In the end, you’re here to go on an adventure through the developer’s imagination. While the gameplay might not stand on its own, it’s serviceable to meeting that end. If the game doesn’t charm you with its visuals and music, then I would absolutely advise against it. On the other hand if said charm strikes your fancy, give Secret of Mana a go on an emulator. I don’t regret the 40 bucks I spent on it, nor do I think it’s a particularly steep asking price considering you get 3 games out of it. However it might have been wiser to offer each game individually with a discount for getting the whole set (say $10 for FFA and $15 for SoM/ToM), because it’s difficult for me to recommend dropping $40 on something that’s so hit-and-miss.
Okay, I think that’s enough. I still have things I could say, but this post is already super-long since I’m trying to talk about 3 games, so screw it: we’re done. On to Judgement!
JUST KIDDING!
* Actually I want to bring this up outside of the context of the Mana games, because I notice it becoming a common trend in other series, particularly with regard to romance in JRPGs. The problem with this kind-of selectable character system is, as I mentioned, it inherently weakens the strength of the characters, their arcs, and in the case of romances, the relationships. Choosing between Jude and Milla didn’t make Tales of Xillia a different experience, nor did it inspire me to play through 95% of the same content just to see the 5% that’s different. Using a VN-style date simulator in a JRPG will never be a good idea because a good romance should develop in tandem with the main plot. It means something when Estelle and Joshua finally get together in Trails in the Sky 2 because you spent two whole games watching their relationship develop. It doesn’t mean d*ck when anything happens in Trails of Cold Steel because the relationship only exists inside of a few select scenes.
Far from adding more replayability to a game, it only makes me want to play it LESS because the characters themselves aren’t as interesting. I’d rather re-experience the same journey with dynamic, interesting characters than re-experience 95% of the same journey with boring, static ones (but heyo, that 5% tho!). At best it’s a misguided attempt to freshen things up. At worst, it’s lame otaku bait (looking at you Fire Emblem).
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Jun 29, 2019 13:27:33 GMT -5
I've been having a really busy week, so now that I had the whole saturday off I decided to... just watch a couple of movies and read. Also sleep. I didn't originally intend to watch any movies, but I learned about Villeneuve movie called Prisoners, so I decided to go and watch it completely blind. After that, I found out that he also did a sci-fi movie called Arrival a while back so I watched it as well. I'm not going to go into too much detail because I'm tired and it would spoil a lot of stuff about all Villeneuve's movies, but I noticed that the director really likes ambiguous endings. In general it seems his movies are very heavy on the "show, don't tell" and it makes them a bit more entertaining to watch. Considering 4/4 of his movies I have watched have been interesting and enjoyable enough, I'm actually looking forward to the Dune movie he's working on.
One thing I have to add to what grain said about the Mana games is that they are were one of the few games on super nintendo that were 100% co-op multiplayer, meaning you can play the whole game from start to finish with a friend without losing anything. Of course nowadays it's not that big of a deal, and the co-op can be painful at times because the game pauses for every spell. But back when I played them it was a huge deal, and probably the biggest reason I liked the games so much. Wouldn't recommend them to anyone for the co-op experience though, there are better games for that.
On the work side, I've been considering switching to macs. Windows is making my work way harder and more complicated than it should be due to all the WSL and virtual machine crap, and now my code editor is running my CPU at 100% all the time because of some magic it has to do with all the Windows-Linux workarounds. So basically it's unusable at the moment. I've also been working on the same issue for a full week now, and haven't made any progress. So I could just switch to mac so my work would be easier in general, or I could try to finish this one issue with windows so I don't slow it down by setting up my stuff and learning all the OSX specific stuff.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jun 30, 2019 0:18:06 GMT -5
Coming from Civ I have a really hard time coping with Grand Strategy games. In Civ you spend most of the early game fairly isolated, with a lot of room to grow and expand through exploration. Maybe you have one (or if you're unlucky/lucky depending on your strategy, 2) neighbours. Even by the end-game you rarely have more than 3 or 4 Civs directly on your borders. So going from that, hopefully one can appreciate how dropping into a game where all the map territory is claimed from the start (resulting in factions covering every single inch of your borders) gives me a panic attack. To me the map feels so claustrophobic. You can't take action against one nation in an isolated incident: it WILL impact your relationship with everyone else. As a result, I constantly feel so hesitant to make any choices for fear of making some horrible error. Pissing everyone off in Civ is annoying, but seeing as how you only have a few civs at your border, it's still a fairly simple matter to defend them against dipsh*t AI. In contrast, if I were to get invaded from more than 3 neighbours in EU4 or Total War, there's a good shot I won't even have the armies to defend every front. Furthermore, the games of Civ I play have ~12 Civs tops (and a few inevitably get knocked out early). In contrast Total War has over 20 different factions, while EU4 has literally hundreds. I don't want to say that I hate it, because it's just different and comes with its own pros and cons. But for now I barely play much of either because I constantly feel one mistake away from a catastrophic defeat. I'm sure once I get the hang of it things will get more enjoyable, but it's a proving very hard adjustment to make...
To Derman: You are 100% correct regarding co-op. Personally though, and I think I've brought this up in the past, I don't buy into the 'fun with friends' argument. Going to the dentist can be 'fun with friends', so I can't count it as a point of praise. Borderlands is trash imo, but everyone loves it because you can fill in the terrible monotony that is playing the game by joking with your friends about other, more interesting things! Yay! Unfortunately this also means that, while there are certainly more co-op games coming out than ever, only a handful are actually worth playing. Seriously, all people wanted from Fallout: 76 was Fallout 4: co-op edition. What they got was Fallout 4: empty grind edition, because why should Bethesda put in the effort of making it fun on its own when you can just make it fun with friends? And yes, I'm aware that Fallout: 76 was panned, and good riddens too! However, how much of that criticism stems from the fact that it's just Fallout 4 but worse in every way? If Fallout 4 did not exist to juxtapose it against (wait, we CAN have actual quests and NPCs!), then I imagine the reception would be completely different.
So just to be clear, I think what you're saying is true. However I personally refuse to allow the addition of co-op to overshadow any of the game's faults. We could have had co-op DMC by now if people weren't so lenient on co-op games (we were soooo close too!).
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 30, 2019 12:09:09 GMT -5
Hmm, I've mentioned earlier that I've been listening to a lot of Pokemon music lately. Still am. I've been thinking a bit about what made the early games so special to me, why I remember them so well, and the general process of growing up and creativity.
My gameplay experience of Pokemon is very different now vs. when I was a kid, and not because of anything intrinsic to the games. I remember spending hours breeding Pokemon in Silver, not because I wanted the bred Pokemon particularly or wanted to fill my Pokedex or train or whatever. It was, however, important to me that I put the hatched Ponyta in the same box as its Rapidash mother, because I imagined them to be a family. I remember visiting Red's house over and over and taking time to check out all of his furniture and talk to his mom, imagining how cool Red was and how his mom must be so proud of him. I remember always hatching my eggs in Celadon City, because I thought it to be a beautiful place to hatch my Pokemon. I remember going to Union Cave where Lapras appeared on Fridays and swimming along with it in the lake for a while, taking pleasure in the idea that we were two Pokemon swimming in the lake together.
I wouldn't do any of those things now. Where's the next place I need to visit? Cool. Check that box. My journey is utilitarian and focused. I catch Lapras right away and leave. I never breed Pokemon except for an explicit purpose. I might visit Red's house, but I leave in less than a minute. I rarely dally, and never imagine.
I don't think that was about Pokemon, either. I spent hours playing OoT around the same age as G/S/C. I'm not sure I actually beat any dungeons by myself until my teens. My sister was the one who actually beat the dungeons and the like, while I watched with rapt attention. I did, however, spend time calling the Sun of Storms and then racing Epona over to cover to save her from the rain. And I always made sure to re-visit the Kokiri Forest and visit countless houses as I pondered what Link's pre-Navi life was like.
When is the end of childhood, do you think? I don't remember doing any of those sorts of things in R/S/E, which came out in sixth grade. My lifelong gripes with R/S/E aside, I just don't think I felt compelled to do any of those things I did in earlier games. Why would I breed Pokemon for no reason and make an explicit effort to put the parents and children in the same box? What's the point? I never bothered visiting Norman at the gym after I beat him, although I almost certainly would have done so repeatedly if I were younger. He was a means to an end, not some fascinating fatherly figure who would inspire imagined conversations of how proud he'd be of his son who beat the Elite Four. (One that has never changed with video games: I've never liked playing as females :-) ). Little details simply ceased to inspire, leaving just the core linear path of the game to enjoy. I love the Wind Waker, which I played at 12, but most of my time was spent, you know, actually beating the game, unlike with OoT a few years earlier. I didn't mess around much. (I mean, aside from harassing the pigs repeatedly and smashing all pots in the room. I think it's an ironclad rule you can't leave a room in Zelda without smashing all of the pots.)
It's fascinating to think about, because I'm not even vaguely a creative person now. Adults used to comment on my creativity--I spent very little time watching TV and mostly did pretend play--and I wrote prolifically. Stories were always bursting into my head, and I'd write on napkins if I had to. Nowadays, tasked with writing a story, I'd struggle to think of any sort of plot, and would derive no pleasure from doing so. If anyone were to describe me, "practical" would be probably one of the top adjectives. Is there a point to me doing something? No? Yeah, I'm probably not even vaguely interested.
But some people retain that spark, to varying degrees. People write books; people make art; people create movies. I have to imagine the gap between the way one interprets and thinks about the world as a child vs. an adult has to be smaller for those people. Certainly, no one is as creative as a child; childhood is an unparalleled fount of endless, pointless creativity. Even the most creative people wouldn't be filled by wonder by the thought of a cardboard box reimagined as a rocketship. But still.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 30, 2019 20:45:22 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm definitely adding "working with CSS" onto the list of things I could be potentially condemned to do forever for eternity as agonizing punishment in the event I go to hell. It's pretty deep on the list, like I am a contender for one of the worst people in the world deep.
I was upset with how complicated a spec I was making was becoming, so the solution was--I'll just make a quick website so the user can just click buttons instead! ...quick.. QUICK.
I have the backend coded up no time flat.
And then... the CSS. The godd*mn CSS. I'm still on the stupid CSS.
I hate it with every fiber of my being. Why can't anything I make look nice without 43 years of effort? I like the idea of making websites, but CSS just makes me want to chuck my computer out the window.
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Jul 1, 2019 11:32:10 GMT -5
I can confirm, grain is the most childish person I know. I think I'm in a similar camp with Joey. Adults were often talking about how creative kid I was, and I even wanted to be a writer as at one point. These days I'm a lot more practical, and I don't think I have the childish imagination anymore. Everything needs to have some logic or reason, otherwise I won't bother. Although now that I think about it, I still enjoy coming up with weird stuff for the heck of it. I often try to do things in a non-traditional way because it's more fun to do it on your own, so I guess I'm just applying my creativity in a more practical way.*
I think the major difference between me as a kid vs me now reading books or playing games is that I no longer care about the world of the story itself. I'm too aware of the fact that it's not real, and I realize that it doesn't matter what happens. So what's left is the concepts and the creativity of the writer that might still make it entertaining. Reading or playing games for pure escapism is just not a thing anymore. I think that's how I approach playing DnD as well: I don't care much about pretending to be someone else or telling a story. I'm more interested in solving problems within the context of the game, or challenging and entertaining my players.
On Mana/coop: You are right, there's definitely a difference between a game being good, and a game being enjoyable with friends. I would've stopped playing Overwatch a lot earlier if it wasn't for the people I was playing the game with. I wouldn't count the multiplayer aspect of OW as one of it's good points. It's the only thing making it bearable, and because of the lack of options we were forced to play it. For Mana multiplayer was the thing that made it more fun to play, while at the same time made the actual gameplay experience worse.
* Something I've been thinking about that's very loosely related to this: I've always thought of myself as fairly cynical and negative person. But recently multiple people who have known me for a long time have commented in separate conversations how I've always been very positive and optimistic. So which one is it? It's weird to run into such a big difference between who I think I am vs how other people see me. I don't think it matters, really, and I'm definitely not very cynical or negative right now. Maybe I'm just always naturally filtering out all the negative stuff before I talk.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jul 1, 2019 17:21:58 GMT -5
I can confirm, grain is the most childish person I know.I was going to make this joke, but then I was too lazy to write an entire post around it. Also I slept for almost 12 hours and lost most of my day as a result, so... oops. And for what it's worth, as someone who is frequently labeled negative and cynical (the nicest I've ever gotten is 'realist'), I find the idea of you as a cynical and negative person laughable.
As for creativity, who knows? I know that creative people are more prone to depression, which isn't exactly what I think of when I picture, 'thinking like a child'. Perhaps creatives are more idealistic, which can often appear similar to a childish niavete? Hence the disconnect between the way they see the world and the way the world is causes that friction? I don't know: I think these terms are extremely broad. I understand what you mean when you say 'practical', but at the same time I can think of ways to be 'creatively practical' or 'practically creative'. Coming up with a new method of running a store more practically might not be the same type of creativity as writing or directing, but it's certainly a type of creativity the same. Creative coding is another one.
Perhaps it's less about losing childish imagination and more about honing in your interests. When you're a child everything seems to contain infinite possibility because everything is new. You think about all these things that -could- happen in games because you don't yet fully grasp that they -can't- happen. However the more you experience them, the more you understand the limitations. Maybe that turns you off of games. Maybe you take that as a challenge to create your own game. Maybe they just become casual time wasters. Point is, when you multiply this by the number of things you could do with your time, it eventually becomes clear that some things will grab your attention more than others.
A really strange analogy that just popped into my head is that it's like getting a new emulator or hacked system. The idea of being able to play any PS3 game for free initially feels like a pretty huge deal: there are so many PS3 games that I could probably spend 5 years just playing the PS3 alone! But once you get the emulator you realise things like, you only have so much time, or you don't actually care enough to find a working ISO, or that you were more attracted by the -potential- of a certain game than the actual game itself... so eventually that PS3 of infinite possibilities winds up with a few games that you really get into and everything else falls by the wayside.
Replace 'games' with 'interests' and hopefully it's not a terrible analogy? I dunno, I just find it funny that every time I get a new emulator it feels like a whole new world opened up, but a few months later I'm back to having nothing to play. I can play any NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii, PS1, PS2, PS3, GB, GBA, DS, 3DS and PSP game ever made, and I still have the feeling that there's nothing that grabs my attention. Is it because I'm just a cynical, dismissive adult, or is it because I've played enough games to have an idea of what I want to spend my limited time on? (you know, 'limited' time... *cough*)
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jul 3, 2019 3:48:46 GMT -5
Microsoft is shutting down their ebooks store: all ebooks bought will be deleted from your device. Gotta love this modern era of not owning your own sh*t, eh?
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Jul 4, 2019 16:23:56 GMT -5
That's pretty dumb. There honestly should be some legal protection regarding some digital services that force companies to provide products drm-free for their customers if they go bankrupt or something. I can understand services that need servers to operate to not be up forever, but stuff like ebooks should be a no-brainer.
In general I'd like to have more control on the stuff I buy. Kindle is annoying because I need to jailbreak it if I want to change its cover, and they are constantly trying to make it harder and harder with every firmware update. It's like I don't even own the device I bought, and they can do whatever they want with the software.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jul 4, 2019 21:16:07 GMT -5
They offered refunds, but I think it goes without saying that if I originally traded money for the thing, I'd rather have the thing than the money.
I've always stood by the irony that pirates actually own their things. As unlikely as the death-day scenario is that Steam or Amazon will crash resulting in the loss of most of your digital products (or rather, ACCESS to digital products, since you never owned them in the first place), this isn't the first time something like this has happened. If you truly want to own something, either buy the physical version (with the actual data on it, not a steam code), or pirate a back-up copy (and savour the irony).
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Post by Umbra on Jul 5, 2019 10:30:36 GMT -5
This time capsule stuff is amazing. I can leave for a year, come back, and have access to all posts ever made. What an incredible invention.
In all seriousness, I cannot foresee any more shiite coming my way, and I've actually played a Tales game recently (Beseria), so I can actually relate to people here now.
Magilou is the best character ever made. Period. Forget Hogwarts, she is a true witch. I want to get a degree in wickedness from her school.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jul 5, 2019 14:59:52 GMT -5
I mean, I never finished Berseria, so I'm not sure I've got much to talk about on the Tales front, haha.
I do like Magilou, though! I also like Bienfu, though. Should I not like Bienfu? I seem to offend other people when I admit to this...
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jul 5, 2019 17:50:19 GMT -5
Publisher Weekly did an article on Light Novels. To borrow a few sections I found interesting: At first the category encountered shelving problems. Should the books be shelved with young adult novels? Or with manga, since many popular light novels have also been adapted into manga and anime series? It seems like a little bit of both works just fine, with most light novels finding their way into the manga section and occasionally shelved in the genre prose sections, such as sci-fi, romance, or horror.
“Bookstores and libraries are familiar enough with light novels to the point where they are effectively reaching customers,” said Hassler. “We’re gratified to see light novels regularly appearing not only at the top of the BookScan Fantasy and Science Fiction bestseller lists but increasingly broken out into their own categories on bookstore and library shelves.”I wonder if online shopping has really done a lot to help. I think nowadays people tend to be more targeted shoppers. For better or worse, I imagine most manga and Light Novels tend to sell based on the popularity of their respective anime, so perhaps it's less important where they are put. I'd be curious to see a market study on how many people buy LNs that haven't been informed by a respective anime series. I know the article in question hints at a larger reader-base, but I'm not entirely sold. “Fundamentally, we see the success of light novels in the English language as helping to open up the appetite for more diverse Japanese content in translation,” said Yen Press publisher and managing director of content Kurt Hassler. “As that market grows, it allows us to expand beyond just light novels, such as the novels of Tomihiko Morimi [Penguin Highway and The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, both adapted as feature-length animated films], and Keigo Higashino’s The Miracles of the Namiya General Store, coming this fall.”So we are harnessing weeb energy to translate more serious works? Holy sh*t, that's brilliant! I'm actually totally down for this. Not only does it mean more translations for non-weebs, but who knows: maybe a couple of weebs will give something a try even without the anime cover so-long as it comes from a recognisable source? I'm hopeful, because while I have no problem with YA, I am concerned with the amount of people who never attempt to move up (forty-year olds who swear Harry Potter is the best thing ever written are just depressing). Hassler said growing popularity of light novels has revealed a real demand for books in translation in the North American market. “Initially interest and demand in light novels may have been driven by the affiliations with manga or anime,” Hassler explains. “Those ties continue, but what stands out is great storytelling and engaging characters, and those transcend a single genre.”Again, harness that weeb energy! Talk about that 'great storytelling' and 'engaging characters' in this sea of interchangable trash! Whatever helps you get at the good sh*t!
Also Bienfu gives me second-hand embarrassment every time he's on screen. I will never understand why Tales feels the need to have a mascot character when they are always the most obnoxious parts of the party. It's a toss-up between who is worse: Meiu or Bienfu (with Teepo taking the third slot regardless). Morgana is the only mascot character that I have ever actually liked, and even then all the aspects that made him a mascot were hurdles to be overcome, NOT points in his favour.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jul 5, 2019 18:56:58 GMT -5
Mieu's voice was nails on a chalkboard, but I actually didn't mind Mieu as a character. Sandy Fox simply shouldn't be allowed to voice act, IMO. Mieu is pretty ignorable/tolerable in Japanese.
Teepo, on the other hand, was terrible. I couldn't stand that thing. There was literally nothing redeeming about him. Not his voice, not his personality, nothing. I'm pretty sure he gets #1 for worst Tales sidekick thing, except maybe if Mormo from Radiant Mythology counts. I'm totally cool with silent characters in games*--I'm less cool with it when they give you an annoying, arrogant flying rat who routinely speaks on the MC's behalf. I wanted to curbstomp that thing so bad.
*Speaking of MCs molded in your image and/or who are silent, there are some rules that I prefer games follow if they take this approach over a character who is distinct from the player's input. In the case of characters who are encouraged to be molded in an image of your choosing, I strongly prefer that that they should not talk. I made the mistake of making my Fire Emblem character to look and be named after myself. I didn't know she had a personality, and I ended disliking her, because she acted in ways I definitely would not have. I'd probably have felt similarly (although to a lesser degree) disgruntled by creating a not-me character, because character creation gives the player an illusion of imagination, control, and self-injection. A defined personality, of course, completely overrides any appearance customization you do, so to me, it completely defeats the point of me customizing the character at all.
Radiant Mythology did not fall into the above trap, per se, since the MC was truly silent. But Mormo is chained to you from the beginning of the game, and he interfaces with the game's characters on your behalf, asserting what "we" believe or what "we" want to do. Of course, you have no input over your party's actions in, say, Dragon Quest, but at least there are other characters who will discuss things and the like, and no one declares what you are thinking. It's much more natural. Mormo asserts it as if he's a mind reader and acts like he's your best bud, which is immensely irritating. It's like if Scrappy Doo spoke on your behalf all the time. (Yes, he's basically on Scrappy Doo level. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Scrappy Doo?)
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Jul 6, 2019 16:48:00 GMT -5
There are two reasons Teepo bothers me least. First, he doesn't have any stupid speech quirk. Second, he doesn't destroy the tone of any major scenes by his mere presence. Watching Luke try to rationalise his actions by talking to a stuffed animal is jarring to say the least. With Berseria, while Magilou toes the line of breaking the tone (as I've said in the past, she mostly gets away with it because Velvet is so serious, and people taking the piss out of Velvet keeps things in balance), Bienfu outright has no place. You can do comedy in a serious setting, but usually the comedy should match the tone (for instance, Rokuro's passiveness about morality both reveals aspects of his character and offers a few laughs while doing so). Bienfu's entire shtick is that he talks funny and is Magilou's punching bag. Whether you think the game is too edgy or not dark enough, fact is it's going for a more serious vibe, and Bienfu doesn't slot into that very well at all. I mean, it's even implied that Magilou's personality is more-or-less the product of extensive torture. Ultimately he just doesn't add anything to the experience. He doesn't grow as a character, he's a comic relief when we already have a comic relief (Magilou herself), and that comic relief doesn't need a punching bag because Velvet fills that role just fine. What's worse, he's tonally inconsistent with the rest of the experience, and every time he opens his stupid gob I want to strangle a kitten. But you know what? At the end of the day it only bothers me so much because I only ever expected a Tales game's story to be so good. Mascot characters are stupid anime bullsh*t, and Tales is the king of stupid anime bullsh*t. It's not like Bienfu is a thorn in the side of some subversive commentary about morality: he's a talking cat in a game where the main character canonically kills (at least) dozens of people with her giant demon hand, all because one man killed her little brother (concentually), and everything turns out okay because that man happens to be trying to destroy free will with the aid of a magic space-god. On that note, you might have noticed that I haven't mentioned Judgement since bringing it up about a week ago (you didn't notice or care: it's fine, I'm not offended). That's because time spent talking about Judgement was time better spent playing Judgement. Now that I'm finished, I can safely say that it was an absolutely enthralling movie... and a pretty okay game. I don't want to downplay the gameplay: it is probably my favourite contemporary open-world game. It's just that, while it reduces a lot of the problems, they are still present. You'll spend a lot of time running around the map, and the story loses a ton of tension every time you finish a major story quest and then proceed to instantly go on a date, or fish, or play darts, or go to the batting cages, etc. I've said this in the past, but it's near impossible to hold a sense of urgency when you cannot control the player's actions. The end result is that, while the gameplay itself is fine, I really wish this had just been a True Detective-esque TV show, because then I could just enjoy the story unhindered. On the other hand, while I might have enjoyed it more as a TV show, what makes Judgement feel like a commodity is that it's a Japanese game that isn't marketed at teenagers. It may have a lot of tropes common to detective and legal dramas, but to see those in a video game without the addition of cyber-eyes or cartoon-exaggerations is such a breath of fresh air. Yagami is 35, and he looks and acts it. All the characters are adults, and act like it. Nobody mentions the power of friendship once!
I could go on, but nobody has a PS4 anyway, so the long and short of it is this: while there are still aspects that could use work, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It definitely airs more to the side of entertainment, though it does have some stuff thrown in there about human experimentation and how far we're willing to look the other way for the greater good. It isn't explored in-depth, nor is it an original concept, but it gets a few points for presenting a situation that is, in broad strokes, plausible. Even so, the presentation and characters are so enthralling that I feel it only serves as further example that whenever Japan decides to branch out beyond the teenaged market, they can make some really compelling sh*t.
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