Marvelous Showcase 2024

[Meowie]

That was so whatever LOL. This Switch era for SoS/RF made me go from a diehard fan to pretty much not caring much about these series much so let me try to give my lengthy neutral take and analysis on this showcase and the future of SoS.

First, this presentation shouldn't have taken place. At least not right now. I get pleasing the shareholders but I think the fiscal year end report was enough information for them. It's very clear they're holding information about their games because they're intended to be released for the Switch successor. I think this presentation would've gone very differently if the Switch successor didn't get delayed because that in turn made Marvelous delay promo roll out of both Project Dragon and Daemon x Machina 2 which were expected to come out later this year. There's no other explaination to why they teased them as if they were coming out this year in the new years greeting in that devs focused Famitsu issue and why they filed in the trademarks for these two games alongside Farmagia back in March before the internal delay was announced to them. They all were supposed to come this year. Just pure speculation from my side but it somewhat makes sense. I just think they shouldn't have done this presentation, not until after the Switch successor was announced so they could actually give out more information on their games. This presentation feels even more useless when you realize they didn't even reveal anything about their only game dropping this year. Just why would you hold one if the only video game you have to show is being reserved to be shown at the June Direct? The only reason I could justify this showcase is because of the arcade announcements but I don't think they were that important to save this whole event.

Project Dragon probably was almost ready last year from judging how the gameplay and graphics look pretty much the same so this game is just sitting in the vault now I think. I somewhat feel pity because this does seem more blame worthy on Nintendo's side for delaying the next console. The Switch is probably too weak to run this, I mean have we seen the amount of those detailed floating rocks? I'm concerned about the words they said. If it has no farming, what even makes this Rune Factory? Hopefully they were just bad at phrasing that the focus is on dancing over farming. I still don't have that many hopes for this one. This seems more on the same caliber as RF5 the more I see it. The first few teasers last year were good but what we got last night just showed the same barren world issue. « Harvest Goddess », RF6 better be really good because having two bad RF games in a row is gonna send this game right back into hiatus LOL.

As for SoS, I'm not hopeful at all. I don't mean to bring down anyone's excitement because I know many still love this series a lot and just hope to see a good game. The most positive thing I can say is something what Kikki just said. We haven't seen anything gameplay related so there's still a chance this game might be good. But here's why I suggest not keeping your hopes just in case. The team was intitally very proud of PoOT's release and only retracted their words when the hate (even from the JP fanbase) got extreme. That means they actually thought this vision for the series was right. Now obviously under normal conditions, this feedback would make them change the direction they were going but here's why I don't think they will, atleast drastically the way we want it. PoOT did numbers; it sold 1M+ copies. Marvelous is a company that will listen to these numbers. Someone on Reddit described it the best way: "Positive feedback doesn't pay the bills or put money in their pockets, nor does negative feedback alone take it. If they get negative feedback but make a lot of sales, that just sends mixed messages doesn't it?". I think, to them, they thought PoOT had the right formula and people were just angry over its minor flaws when the main issue was much more fundamental than that. I know it's foolish but why I'm led to believe this is going down the same path as PoOT is because all they had to share with us was we will now have gliders and cute pets are coming back. They still don't understand the real charm of SoS. It's not just the cute visuals. Now Nakano did clearly state their goal is to please the longtime SoS fans as well as the new fans which can be a positive indication depending on what longtime fans really means here and what they think longtime fans want. All we can do is wait. It just will be what it will be.

My biggest frustration which I believe is killing this series' momentum real quick is the remakes and the fandom's obsession with them paired with it. Bokumono has had times where they would release a game that's not really well received (many DS era games come to my mind) but since the wait for a new better game was pretty much a year long, it would subside people's doubts on this series. With the current formula of one new game every 2 years + remake -> original game -> repeat, we're only getting new games every 4 years. It's really embarassing to see how well other dev teams are doing with 4 years development time games as compared to SoS. My Time At Sandrock being the prime example. I think if all the resources being spent on the remakes would be rather allocated for the new games combined with the current resources they have, the scenario right now would've been very different because we would get games more often so they would have more chances to find out what went wrong and what didn't as well as the team load would be reduced because there would be more people working to make ideas work bringing out more fleshed out features as an end result. I seriously think they should stop letting this series have two different teams and just combine them now. This series is suffering from its resources being sparsely spread. The AWL remake did poorly so I hope that somewhat pushed them to go easy on remakes and rather focus more on making new games but the fandom constantly asking for the remakes over new good games definitely doesn't help.

If you look at Natsume, they've already managed to upgrade their previous game's formula and pretty much the right direction because they only made new games within all this time SoS was obsessed with remakes. To me, Natsume used to slack very behind Marvelous just few titles before but now if you ask me if I prefer Marvelous' latest SoS title or Natsume's HM title, I would go for Natsume. And because Natsume has figured out what works for them, at this stage I can safely assume the next Natsume HM console title most likely will be much better than SoS if they play their cards right.

[Kikki]

Project Dragon isn't really Rune Factory, imo. It's a Rune Factory spin-off. (A spin-off of a spin-off...anyone else getting dizzy?) They're exploring a new take on earthmates, where the MCs are still earthmates, but connect to the earth via dance. So it doesn't have to have farming in it at all. Bokumono has a lot of farming. Rune Factory, Bokumono's spin-off, has some farming, but not a lot. (You CAN do a lot, if you want, but game progression doesn't require very much farming). Project Dragon, Rune Factory's spin-off, has no farming.

It takes this spin-off's spin-off to a realm I'm probably not interested in, since I LOVE digital farming, but I don't think it's actually that strange that it doesn't have farming in it. They're leaning it further into the RPG genre, out of the farming genre, I guess.

Didn't they say something about east versus west in PD in 2023? Or was that for RF6? I'm a little confused, because it appears very much that the protagonists are east and east. The male is a Japanese character and the female is rather overtly Chinese with her music and drums and parasol and all of that. Nothing 'Western' about any of that. Unless in Japan they consider JUST Japan to be the east, and everything else, including China, is 'the west'?

I have no idea if I'm interested in playing Project Dragon, since I don't understand the gameplay, yet. What would we be spending most of our time doing, in PD? I can't tell. So I don't know if it's for me. But I'm interested in seeing more, at least.

I do think that they can't say much more about Project Dragon until the Switch 2 is officially announced. They must need to talk about enhanced performance or something that takes advantage of Switch 2 features or...something. I don't know, but I do think the game is probably READY to be shown, yet can't be because the Switch 2 hasn't been revealed yet.

[Shan O 123]

From what I’ve seen on the video the game looks good. I’m excited to see more.

[Milo]

It takes this spin-off's spin-off to a realm I'm probably not interested in, since I LOVE digital farming, but I don't think it's actually that strange that it doesn't have farming in it. They're leaning it further into the RPG genre, out of the farming genre, I guess.

I have no idea if I'm interested in playing Project Dragon, since I don't understand the gameplay, yet. What would we be spending most of our time doing, in PD? I can't tell. So I don't know if it's for me. But I'm interested in seeing more, at least.

I'm potentially interested in seeing something other than farming for a change, but I'm like... dancing? That doesn't exactly sound like the most useful profession. I mean, these dances are, because they're magic, but in general dancing is pure entertainment, and it's very subjective whether you're actually doing it right or not. It's not even a form of entertainment I'm all that interested in (unlike, say, video games). It doesn't feel like something all that compelling to make a game about, unless you put it on the backseat and focus mostly on dancing-themed combat.

Then again, maybe that's the right thing to do. I've felt that typical Rune Factory games keep trying to portray the protagonist as a multiclass farmer/warrior, and while both the farming gameplay and the combat gameplay are decent (but not groundbreaking) on their own, they're kind of glued together awkwardly and don't have much to do with each other.

As for the combat, it gives me the impression of being the kind of flashy stuff that would look cool in an anime, but that in actual gameplay would mostly result in button-mashing because I have no clue what's going on. But then, I've felt that way about most action games since the 3D era. The only way to do 3D games right is if you use a camera angle that makes them function effectively like 2D games.

You could almost have been able to fool me into thinking these were cutscenes rather than actual gameplay footage, but no, a few shots with things like aggro indicators indicate that this is real gameplay.

Didn't they say something about east versus west in PD in 2023? Or was that for RF6? I'm a little confused, because it appears very much that the protagonists are east and east. The male is a Japanese character and the female is rather overtly Chinese with her music and drums and parasol and all of that. Nothing 'Western' about any of that. Unless in Japan they consider JUST Japan to be the east, and everything else, including China, is 'the west'?

Prince-Regent Shotoku of Japan once sent a diplomatic missive to China that included the words "the Emperor of the land where the sun rises sends a letter to the Emperor of the land where the sun sets". This angered Emperor Yang of China, as China traditionally considered itself the center of the world, not the west, and was not amused at these barbarians from some tiny islands claiming to be on equal footing with him.

This spat sounds rather silly from the point of view of modern Europeans, who see China as being on the far eastern end of Asia, and clearly neither the center nor the west of anything. (The perspective of Americans is even weirder, as they often still think of China and Japan as "the East" due to their European heritage, even though if you actually wanted to travel from the United States to Japan, you'd be far better off hopping on a boat going west.)

This, however, was in 607. The perception of Japanese people in 2024 is probably somewhat different.

I don't know where they stated that game is going to feature "conflict between East and West" or what the exact words they used are, but if so, it's likely that the Westerners will be villains, or at least well-meaning-but-misguided NPCs, while both of the player characters represent the East. Remember, the male and female player characters in these games are usually supposed to just be a way for players to choose their gender, and differ little beyond that, so one of them being more Japanese and one being more Chinese is already more distinct than usual.

Though if this is anything like past Rune Factory games, you'll be able to choose which weapons you want to use, and their choice to mostly have the male character showcase swords (not even katanas, I'll note) and the female character showcase magic was merely a decision they made for this demo playthrough, and not something the game will force on you. Also, the default names for the characters are apparently Subaru and Kaguya, which are both very Japanese names. So I don't think the more Chinese impression of the female character was intentional, and it's just coincidence that they happened to have her showcase the more Chinese parts of their Eurocentric-culture-is-so-pervasive-that-it's-started-to-influence-even-how-Japanese-view-themselves Japan-and-China mashup.

[JustABeautifulGuy]

From what I’ve seen on the video the game looks good. I’m excited to see more.

Visually the game does look gorgeous. I feel like I didn't really appreciate this aspect but that's probably because I never really cared about the graphics that much. They do look a bit superficial if I had to judge them critically but still very gorgeous. Especially that view with the mountains in the back covered with snow. The richness in texture quality feels more akin to Trio of Towns so I really like that as well. Actually, I'm doubting the footage they're showing is intended for the current Switch. The amount of grass assets makes me think they're going all out so the visuals we're seeing might be different than what we will get on the Switch as compared to Switch's successor.

[simside]

Visually the game does look gorgeous. I feel like I didn't really appreciate this aspect but that's probably because I never really cared about the graphics that much. They do look a bit superficial if I had to judge them critically but still very gorgeous. Especially that view with the mountains in the back covered with snow. The richness in texture quality feels more akin to Trio of Towns so I really like that as well. Actually, I'm doubting the footage they're showing is intended for the current Switch. The amount of grass assets makes me think they're going all out so the visuals we're seeing might be different than what we will get on the Switch as compared to Switch's successor.

Conversely, Project Dragon looked like a Switch game, which is a little bizarre. I would expect a dual launch (I just don't think Marvelous would gamble on an early Switch 2 exclusive, I suspect they need more consoles sold to cover their niche), maybe they were only showing the Switch version?

[JustABeautifulGuy]

Conversely, Project Dragon looked like a Switch game, which is a little bizarre. I would expect a dual launch (I just don't think Marvelous would gamble on an early Switch 2 exclusive, I suspect they need more consoles sold to cover their niche), maybe they were only showing the Switch version?

I agree, I don’t think these games are big enough to risk launch window exclusivity. They will be cross gen titles; with the Switch getting the poorly optimized versions so they can get away with the weak hardware excuse. I guess they also expect that the early console adopters will boost the sales since usually there’s not many new games specifically intended for the console out at the very start so there’s a higher chance they’ll get these games.

I might be the only here who feels like this but I think Project Dragon looks worse as compared to the footage last year. The most recent footage looked very… barren and the lightning seemed way too bright as compared to the footage we got last year. The new eastern monsters look very different from the RF5 monster models they simply imported and it’s a very weird contrast that makes everything look inconsistent. Maybe this really was a Switch version that we might get earlier than we think?

[Harvest Moon kawaii]

I hope it's still okay to post here. I know I'm really late. I've been busy, and indecisive on when to post here, which I've really wanted to do.

I was really disappointed in the Marvelous Showcase 2024. I have no idea what Farmagia is and how it's different in concept from the Rune Factory series. (And while I'm glad it has a release window and got an opening video/trailer; we don't know anything about the story or gameplay. Or how it will look graphically on the Nintendo Switch, or Nintendo Switch successor.).

And I'm glad that we got see a tiny bit more of the Story of Seasons game that's upcoming and is single-player. I know game development takes a long time, but we didn't get to know anything about the game at all except what the graphics might look like. Not even a tentative release year/window or even a title. (The online multiplayer one from the 2023 Showcase was completely left out.)

Sad that most of the arcade segment in the video was Japan only.

And while Project Dragon looks awesome. I think it's crazy that we're getting a spin-off of a spin-off and that it won't focus on farming. (Will it have any farming in it at all?! ) Also, Rune factory 6 wasn't mentioned at all. (And I really want to give the Rune Factory series a second chance.)

I might be missing something from the Marvelous Showcase 2024, but hopefully that's the major stuff I remembered.

[Milo]

And while Project Dragon looks awesome. I think it's crazy that we're getting a spin-off of a spin-off and that it won't focus on farming. (Will it have any farming in it at all?! )

If the player isn't a farmer, I hope that one of the romanceable NPCs is, so that we can see it from the other side for once

(But why do you just keep giving me the same item every day!?)

[simside]

If the player isn't a farmer, I hope that one of the romanceable NPCs is, so that we can see it from the other side for once

(But why do you just keep giving me the same item every day!?)

This would crack me up, though I would also hate not getting to farm in Rune Factory. XD

I did play a game like this, where the spouse gave you the same item every morning (it might have been Stardew, or... maybe RFF?!), so we've... kinda seen it. Sadly, I may have been a jerk that took them for granted after a while.

[Kikki]

In RF4 and in A New Beginning you get food from your bf/gf or spouse each day if you talk to them when your hearts are down a certain amount. It's not always the same thing but it is from a small list of options, each different depending on who you're with, iirc. The same might be true of Stardew, but I'm not sure.

Spoiler:

I just know Elliot often gave me coffee in the morning, but I don't know if that's an Elliot thing since he loves coffee, or if everyone hands out coffee in the morning (BLARG, gimme TEA, dammit!). He has 4 different things he'll offer for supper, all fish-based. I think only rainy nights? And you get a bottle of wine from him on New Year's.

Checking, it looks like each person is different, but they all offer something in the morning and evening, but only when certain conditions are met, and always from the same small pool of items, but each pool is tailored to the person. So basically, the same as RF4 and ANB in some ways, except that it's twice a day, and it depends on things like weather conditions, whereas in ANB and RF4 (and Trio? I can't remember about SoS) they'll give you a dish to eat no matter what, once a day at any time, as long as your hearts are below a certain point.

No one gives you the exact same thing every day, though. So if someone gave you a single turnip every day, that'd actually be pretty weird. Even though, yeah, it's what we, The Player, do...find their most favourable gift and give it to them every day!

I seem to recall playing ONE game where you can't gift the same thing every day or they get tired of it, but I don't remember which game it was.

So having someone give YOU a gift each day wouldn't be all that unique, but if it was literally the same exact item every day, it would. It'd be particularly unique if it wasn't even someone you were dating or married to, who was trying to, you know, woo you with turnips. That would be quite peculiar, even though it's what we do (cuz we have the internet and can look up what rewards the best FP!) But the thing is, WE know what they love best. They don't know what WE love best. They can't look us up on some wiki.

I sure wouldn't want to be given a turnip every day. I love pink-pickled turnips, best pickles EVER, but three or four of them would make a jar that'd last you a month, and what would you do with the rest? My green bin would be the one eating them up.

For some reason, Project Dragon doesn't feel like the game that's going to have marriage candidates hand out turnips, though. I think they're trying something they suspect could catch a trend. It looks very Genshin, and the addition of bows and the fighting style supports that similarity, to me. It could be fun! Even without farming, it could be fun. MOST games have no farming, and many of them are really fun! Genshin itself is very fun...I just deleted it because I find gacha so enraging. I refuse to be Hoyo's prey. (None of the free characters were NEARLY as fun as the gacha characters. They let you try that gacha fire guy for free and he was awesome and all the other characters play like garbage after you go through that one dungeon with the red hair guy who is NOT free and only yours to use in that one dungeon. And you'd probably have to spend HUNDREDS of dollars to get him via the gacha, unless you're just that lucky.)

But we'll probably need to first resign ourselves to the fact that our Earthmate expresses his/her magic (their connection to the planet) via dance, not farming. But when do they USE the dancing, I want to know? Is this like Okami, where you bloom trees with your magic paintbrush? Do we bring the earth back to health in damaged areas by dancing? Do we CONTROL the dance that we do in any way, or is it just a cutscene every time?

I just don't know enough, yet. I'm actually quite willing to give this a try, but I'm nowhere near sure it'll be of interest to me, yet, just because it has the name 'Rune Factory' attached to it. This is a whole new animal, so I need to see more. After all, of all the games produced, I buy, what...0.001% of them? This game is going to have to be judged on its own merits; for me it won't be able to ride on the RF name (I'm not even sure how much of the RF development team is working on Project Dragon. RF6 is still in production right now, too.)

[FarmingForDaysMan]

Yeah, I miss the days when your spouse made you lunch

[Milo]

I did play a game like this, where the spouse gave you the same item every morning (it might have been Stardew, or... maybe RFF?!), so we've... kinda seen it. Sadly, I may have been a jerk that took them for granted after a while.

In RF4 and in A New Beginning you get food from your bf/gf or spouse each day if you talk to them when your hearts are down a certain amount. It's not always the same thing but it is from a small list of options, each different depending on who you're with, iirc. The same might be true of Stardew, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, but is there a game where someone you're not married to yet but is trying to court you does that?

Doesn't live with you, just drops by your house once a day to hand over a gift and then skedaddles.

So having someone give YOU a gift each day wouldn't be all that unique, but if it was literally the same exact item every day, it would. It'd be particularly unique if it wasn't even someone you were dating or married to, who was trying to, you know, woo you with turnips.

Yes, exactly what I was getting at!

I seem to recall playing ONE game where you can't gift the same thing every day or they get tired of it, but I don't remember which game it was.

Then you just find the two most efficient gifts and alternate them, right?

or if everyone hands out coffee in the morning (BLARG, gimme TEA, dammit!)

But the thing is, WE know what they love best. They don't know what WE love best. They can't look us up on some wiki.

At least one game, Animal Parade, actually asks you what kinds of gifts you prefer at the beginning of the game, though from what I recall the only thing it affects is what people give you on your birthday.

No coffee/tea though. The choices were vegetables, dairy and eggs, or fish.

For some reason, Project Dragon doesn't feel like the game that's going to have marriage candidates hand out turnips, though.

Probably not. I was mostly joking about that part, but I was more serious about expecting a "normal" love interest character who just happens to be a farmer. (It's already happened in some Harvest Moon games where you aren't the only farmer in town, and have the option to date your rival.)

Still, it would be amusing to see, even if just in some indie parody game