New and tentative game announcements (V2)

[Kikki]

That kind of thing is fine here, Sprites

I'm interested to learn that there has been a new mainline Star Ocean game announced (for PS4 and PS5.) It's to be called Star Ocean: The Divine Force. I've only played one Star Ocean game (Integrity and Faithlessness) and I quite liked it even though apparently no one else likes that one, so I'll keep an eye on it, for sure, to see how it's looking. The little trailer was beautiful; the part on the planet gave me Xenoblade X vibes, which...yes, please!...though I doubt it'll turn out to actually be much like it.

EDIT: Afterwards added more consoles to announcement...PC and Xbox.

EDIT 2: Apparently choices matter in this game and the story changes/branches depending on your actions in the game. (Which I love. I started out in gaming on stuff that let you influence the outcome and I never outgrew my taste for it.)

[Mikodesu]

Interesting splash art...those are some serious yaoi hands my man Raymond has there. I follow a streamer who's a pretty big fan of the Star Ocean series so maaaybe he'll pick it up! Another series I've been curious about for a long time but with no easy way to jump in.

Kinda helps to have a sort of 'ambassador' to long series (and long games, really) imo.

[Kikki]

I just jumped in, Mikodesu! Saw Star Ocean 5 repeatedly appeared in games suggested to me on Amazon and eventually went ahead and got it. Liked it a fair bit, though apparently I played the worst game in the series. (But then, I always seem to end loving best the least-well-regarded game of a series. Somehow.) Anyway, I think you could just jump in, if you wanna, like you could with Tales. The games are self-contained.

EDIT: Uhff...this article is better. The concept art, and those region screenshots, wow. It's giving me XCX vibes even more, now. (Not for the art specifically, though.)

[Mikodesu]

Well that's good to know! Thanks, Kikki. It's been a while since I've looked into any of the games in the series, but this is a good time of year for it. See where I might be able to get them and keep an eye out for sales!

Some of the environmental screenshots in the second article are gooorgeous. I'd love to see what ray tracing can do for them.

Edit: Oh lord... why does Raymond look halfway between visual kei and mullet in his game model? I hate it...

[Kikki]

Yeah, his game model is decidedly unattractive compared to the character or concept art, whatever you call the still stuff. Though MAN those are some veiny arms! I don't dislike it, exactly, but it's strangely intense. Made me wonder if he was either an extreme bodybuilder or a drug addict. (Probably neither, just a strangely veiny young fella.)

I like that the female protag is so heavily armoured, without any cutaways or anything. That's kind of unique. She's very cute in the face, but 0% sexy.

EDIT: I should add here that Star Ocean games appear to have a universe storyline, sorta. A world lore/history. So while each game is self-contained, it's kind of like Ys. (Also in that they're not in chronological order even within the in-game universe's timeline.) So if collecting bits of world lore in the order that they were revealed by the devs is important, then I guess it'd be better to play in order. But I think they're fun without knowing any of the other games, and I'm not someone who cares that much about world lore anyway. (The flak I get for that from the Trails community, I tell you...)

[Bluie]

Level 5 has filed a trademark for the Yokai Watch spinoff game 'Y School Heroes', so it's most likely getting translated. While this is cool, I was just looking at this the other day on Play Asia to maybe import, if this releases over here before Yokai Watch 4 and the Yokai Watch Remaster, I am going to be a salt mine. What is WRONG with Level 5 lately???

[Bluie]

Two new recently announced games that caught my eye. Firstly; Little Kitty, Big City

And then today the newly announced Dragon Ball game; Dragon Ball Breakers

Little Kitty, Big City looks like adorably hilarious fun and I didn't know that I needed Dragon Ball Xenoverse+Dead by Daylight, but I do. Looking forward to both of these next year!

[Kikki]

I wanted to play Egglia: Legend of the Redcap, but couldn't (my ancient tablet can't install it). Now Egglia: Rebirth is coming to Switch, at least in Japan, on December 16th. Redcap is available in North America, so...decent chance, there. Rebirth is based on Redcap but has new content, including new characters and stories and so on. (I don't know if it's all new, or just new ones added to ones that already existed in the mobile version.)

Egglia is, afaik, based on Legend of Mana, though I can't vouch, as I've not played either.

[Bluie]

^Same developer and same artist. Egglia definitely has Legend of Mana vibes, though it's gameplay is pretty different. I was playing the game a week or so ago on my phone, stopped because I wasn't fond of all the touch controls, literally said that the game would be better suited for a console, and here we are lol. I swear sometimes I accidentally predict games coming into existence.

While Legend of Mana is an action side scroller(more or less) where you're restoring the world via artifacts, Egglia is a dice based grid game where you're restoring the world via eggs. I'd say the comparisons pretty much stop there (outside the art style) as Egglia has a big focus on your home base and rebuilding (resource management) While Legend of Mana only really has you collecting resources for growing fruit for your pets or finding items to use for making better weapons and spells. Though I will point out that both the MC for the games are wearing red caps and are silent outside of choices. I'd probably wager that Shinichi Kameoka wanted to do another game like Legend of Mana, because it feels like his biggest passion project outside the Magical Vacation duology, but obviously couldn't due to well, not being part of Square Enix anymore. People who have fully played Egglia have said it's very charming and scratches the Legend of Mana itch, but we also have that game remastered now. Honestly, it's great it's getting another chance and I'll pick it up when it gets released stateside.

I hope it does well enough for a third Magical Vacation title, because those games were so charming and I'd love to play another one.

[Kikki]

Cupid Parasite's proper completion (even though it is already released) has been delayed again. On Oct 29 they announced that they had failed to properly edit two of the routes and sections of the script were messed up, so they would take four weeks to complete and patch it properly. But they've just announced that they can't fix it within the month, and will let us know something more on December 3 (not that it will be done then...but that they'll give another update on when it might be ready, then.)

It's nice that they're keeping us in the loop, but I don't get it. I'm not one to say devs (or localizers) are 'just being lazy', because what do people think that really means? I mean, they have no idea what goes into it! They could be so busy even with overtime that they're bleeding from the ears, for all these big-talkers say, but...it's true that I don't get it, in this case. The routes are actually complete, it's just that they weren't properly edited (they are translated, though) in part of two of the routes. What could take so long about changing some punctuation and so on that they couldn't get it done in four weeks? Maybe lines are too long now and formatting has to be changed, but it's hard to imagine why that couldn't have been completed in the entire month of November. Perhaps they only have one person working on it? I could see that maybe being the case...

Not sure I want to wait an indeterminate amount of additional time for some edits to a portion of two routes. Apparently the text is still intelligible, it's just messy in those parts.

[Bluie]

Utawarerumono is getting another game and it's not a retelling/reimagining or a phone gacha, but a miquel between the first and second game.

https://www.gematsu.com/2021/11/utaware ... -announced

I played through the trilogy last year and really enjoyed them, but they were long RPG/VN hybrids that I had to dedicate a lot of time to. I've had zero interest in playing the 'Zan' versions of the games that basically turn them into action games (it's the same story, just different gameplay) and I don't think I could really ever play another game like them again (my interest in VN and JRPG are dying more and more every year...), but I could probably vibe with this when/if it releases over here. I do like the cast of the second game more than the first and seeing them younger + getting a deeper look at how they got their powers could be really interesting. Though we haven't gotten any solid gameplay besides cutscenes and seeing the new girl run past enemies in an environment, I'm going to guess it's action based. It's that or it'll be something akin to Fire Emblem Echoes where you get into a grid battle on touching an enemy, but I somehow doubt that. I'll be keeping my eye on this title regardless.

[Kikki]

While anyone can actually fill this out, this survey is intended for Europe. (I filled it out anyway, as I know one won't be targeted at Canada and not sure if one will go out for the US or North America.)

You can only fill it out once...it detects if you have already done it before.

Anyway, it's basically for Tales of Arise, though some later questions are for the Tales of series in general, including asking which games you'd like to see remade and which unreleased ones you'd like to see brought over, so I thought there might be a few here who'd care to fill it out, even though this is for Europe. (I'd buy Tales of Xillia for PS4/5 from Europe if it was the only place I could get it, believe me!)

[Simply Unknown]

Cupid Parasite's proper completion (even though it is already released) has been delayed again. On Oct 29 they announced that they had failed to properly edit two of the routes and sections of the script were messed up, so they would take four weeks to complete and patch it properly. But they've just announced that they can't fix it within the month, and will let us know something more on December 3 (not that it will be done then...but that they'll give another update on when it might be ready, then.)

It's nice that they're keeping us in the loop, but I don't get it. I'm not one to say devs (or localizers) are 'just being lazy', because what do people think that really means? I mean, they have no idea what goes into it! They could be so busy even with overtime that they're bleeding from the ears, for all these big-talkers say, but...it's true that I don't get it, in this case. The routes are actually complete, it's just that they weren't properly edited (they are translated, though) in part of two of the routes. What could take so long about changing some punctuation and so on that they couldn't get it done in four weeks? Maybe lines are too long now and formatting has to be changed, but it's hard to imagine why that couldn't have been completed in the entire month of November. Perhaps they only have one person working on it? I could see that maybe being the case...

Not sure I want to wait an indeterminate amount of additional time for some edits to a portion of two routes. Apparently the text is still intelligible, it's just messy in those parts.

Well, that makes me feel better about my most recent decision. I ended up buying the game myself partially on accident because I forgot it was in my cart instead of on my wishlist, but I knew I wouldn't be able to play it before the patch because I'm a bit of a grammar nazi and that kind of stuff really bothers me in a playthrough. So I gave the game to my parents to give me for Christmas. It's a good thing because I'm notoriously hard to shop for so it's two birds with one stone. Hopefully they'll have it patched out by Christmas. If not, guess I'll play Shelby's route first hopefully.

As for what happened, I can see it being an issue of only one person working on it and maybe not being able to finish it in time. Another possibility is that while they were making those corrections, they found other issues they wanted to maybe address and thus are delaying the patch? I know that there are some people with minor complaints like how apparently using the text log is accompanied by a car horn sound, so they're adding something to fix that? Or the solution they implemented caused other problems, which is a common thing in coding unfortunately.

As for the text issues themselves, there apparently are things with wrong word translations (I saw an example of rain being written as 'raid', which is a completely different tone), text not fitting in the box, a few examples of the wrong person's name being used. The editing can be an easy fix, but I can also see it as being very time consuming if they have to go through all the text and make adjustments by hand.

[Kikki]

I think, from the wording, that the patch itself might be done, but they don't feel it's sufficiently de-bugged. That's what I think the announcement was saying, anyway...that they need more time to test it for de-bugging. Like...it's done, but they're not sure if there are any glitches in the new build that they'll need to iron out? That's what I got from it.

EDIT: If anyone wants to read for themselves, the exact wording can be seen in their Tweet, here:

[Kikki]

Oh hey...Active Life: Outdoor Challenge is receiving an update! I knew they'd ported the 2008 Wii game to Switch, and was a bit interested, but though it was a shame it doesn't use something like Ring Fit's leg strap to make the activity feedback more valuable. And they're updating it so that you CAN use the leg strap with it! That increases the likelihood that I'll get this a fair bit.

EDIT: Prideful Sloth sent out an update for ALL platforms (for Grow: Song of the Evertree) today. I downloaded it, but can't currently check to see if my problem (the save-game bug) is fixed, as I had no choice but to shut out 1.5 hours of progress and I can't currently go back to redo some progress to see if the bug reoccurs when I start through the story again to the point where it bugged out. I'm not sure when I'll check, as I'm really into my replays right now, but anyway...it's out! They did say this should solve all known problems involving Flora, and Flora did seem to be one symptom of the save bug, so...might be fixed, now.

AND...today is December 3, and as promised, IFI updated us on the Cupid Parasite patch. Basically, they still don't know. They're saying they'll give us another update on how things are going by the end of December, but that they can't say for sure that everything will be done by then. The content is complete but they're still de-bugging it. Once that's done they have to get approval from Nintendo on the patch, too, so...no date in sight, yet. I wish they hadn't released it like this and just waited until it was done. I hate when crucial stuff like this isn't on the cartridge you buy it on...everything you have to download to get the game to be complete is a mark against it, for me.