Tales of Graces THERE'S HOPE!
Jan. 25th, 2011 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eastofthemoonLast year, Tales of Graces was released on the wii in Japan and as awesome as the game sounded it unfortunately was never released in North America. (Instead we got that bad Tales of Symphonia sequel. @_@) They apparently are planning to release a PS3 version, but Stu and I weren't getting our hopes up.
However, it was announced on Abyssal Chronicle (the best site for Tales info) that they might MIGHT be releasing the PS3 version for North America. *crosses fingers*
Here's the main article
Right now it's all speculation and rumour, however the guy in charge of Namco USA has neither denied nor confirmed this claim. So, while I'm not getting my hopes up, it would be so awesome if this game finally got released to North America.
Figures this would happen after some fans have started to discuss doing a fan translation of it
(With that said, Stu and I don't own a PS3, but our friend Jon has told us we can borrow his easily. ^_^)
However, it was announced on Abyssal Chronicle (the best site for Tales info) that they might MIGHT be releasing the PS3 version for North America. *crosses fingers*
Here's the main article
Right now it's all speculation and rumour, however the guy in charge of Namco USA has neither denied nor confirmed this claim. So, while I'm not getting my hopes up, it would be so awesome if this game finally got released to North America.
(With that said, Stu and I don't own a PS3, but our friend Jon has told us we can borrow his easily. ^_^)
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Date: 2011-01-25 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 08:05 pm (UTC)Argh, now I'm tempted!
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Date: 2011-01-25 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 08:41 pm (UTC)I just hope we see Tales games over here. It's a shame they've not been selling well enough for it to be common sense for Namco to release them here. Can't really blame anything other than gamers being stupid and deciding Japanese RPGs are a waste of time.
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Date: 2011-01-25 08:50 pm (UTC)Also, surprisingly, Stu did a sales comparison between Tales games of North America and Japan as the North American games did 80 percent as well as the ones in Japan (and that includes the Symphonia sequel). So, it can actually be considered myth that they don't sell well here.
Anyway, let's hope they bring more Tales games over.
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Date: 2011-01-25 10:08 pm (UTC)It's good to remember that the North American population is much larger than Japan's, so it's not that great if a game does almost as well here as in Japan. If something is selling worse overseas than in my homeland, I'd focus more on appeasing those who actually buy my product, not worry about trying to win over those overseas. And it's not myth so much as fact that a lot of gamers have taken to decide that anything that comes from Japan is complete garbage. Quite the turnaround from a couple of decades ago where if a game didn't come out of Japan, it was considered garbage.
We're in strange times, game production-wise...
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Date: 2011-01-26 02:23 am (UTC)Here, have some numbers. Symphonia 2 sales, since launch. Japan: 239,320. NA: 194,060. So NA sales are about 81% - that's with the only cost of producing the NA version being the localization itself, without the need to compose new music, create new art, et cetera.
And for comparison, Final Fantasy 12. Japan: 2,329,314. NA: 1,906,379. Ratio there is about 81% again. But hey, Square-Enix keeps translating the FF games, so that seems a worthwhile percentage boost to shoot for, right?
This is the post of numbers. Next post addresses the other point.
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Date: 2011-01-26 02:30 am (UTC)ToS: DotNW ignores the fact that summons already exist to add in Centurions, a previously unmentioned lord of monsters, argues that the world regeneration has mana going out of control despite Martel being there to manage that side of things, and puts the focus of the plot on a couple of original characters created solely for the sequel. The Heroes of Regeneration are relegated to cameo roles when they're not being derailed further, and are forced to pale in comparison to the main cast.
This is a bad fanfic of Tales of Symphonia.
Not to mention that for gameplay, the controls mean that the backstep method used by every other Tales game ever results here in you turning around to take double damage from the incoming attack. Yay. Oh, and there's no World Map - there's selecting locations and going there instantly.
And for good measure, you get stupid headgear instead of alternate costumes.
Now, I'm not saying a Tales sequel is impossible. Tales of Destiny 2 - not the Tales of Eternia we got, the Japan-only sequel - did it right. It was set a couple of decades after Tales of Destiny, centred on Stahn's son, and explored the existing mythology in more depth, looking into the source of the ancient war alluded to in the original game. As opposed to tacking on a bunch of things in order to have a plot.
Playing through Dawn of the New World would involve paying for it, and I've yet to find it at a price that I deem acceptable.
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Date: 2011-01-26 02:33 am (UTC)*is sick of always feeling like she's wrong for disliking this game*
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Date: 2011-01-26 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 02:48 am (UTC)What I've been saying about the poor market isn't coming from left field. As it so happens, I just came across an article about it earlier today, so have at it.
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Date: 2011-01-26 02:55 am (UTC)I believe I acknowledged that the JRPG market here is not as good in my 'numbers' post earlier. Or did you miss the bit where US/Canada sales were 81% of the Japan ones for both Tales and Final Fantasy?
This doesn't change the fact that it's another 81% in sales, for the investment of a localization rather than producing a whole new game. Namco-Bandai America's last attempt at creating a new game for Western shores was a massive flop, whereas Tales games seem to be doing decently.
Just saying.
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Date: 2011-01-26 03:21 am (UTC)Keeping in mind that it does cost more money to go back in and translate the script, hire actual voice actors to voice roles, localization...etc., etc., into infinity. Take up your figures with Namco, not me. Convincing me won't convince them. I'm just a consumer sad that I can't have Tales games because other people haven't bought enough copies to justify Namco's wanting to sell them to me.
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Date: 2011-01-26 03:29 am (UTC)My point is, 81% of the sales. You can not seriously believe that the cost of translating the script, hiring English voice actors, and performing the localization is /more/ than 81% of the cost to write the script in the first place, design the characters, compose the music, hire Japanese voice actors, code the game engine, build the world, and everything else that goes into making the game in the first place.
Incidentally, that's just the Symphonia 2 example. Tales of Vesperia for the XBox 360 sold better in NA than it did in Japan. Again, for the lesser cost of localization versus creating the game from scratch.
I'm not trying to say localization is free. It's not. But it's still a bargain at those sales prices - and that's with Namco-Bandai barely advertising.
As an aside, you could play more of the Tales games if you tried out a console not made by Nintendo. Is it hard to rent/borrow a PS2?
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Date: 2011-01-26 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 03:54 am (UTC)How was Other M, by the way? I tried it out, but the gameplay didn't sit well with me. Far too awkward a 3d setup.
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Date: 2011-01-26 04:27 am (UTC)As far as PS2 goes, one of my local friends had a nickname for the system. "POS2", because his was always having issues and needing to be repaired or some such thing. I honestly cannot think of a single local friend who has a PS2, or at least will admit to having one. I'm pretty sure they were all tossed out when the PS3 and 360 came along.
Other M. If you believe the internet, it is THE WORST GAME EVER MADE. Personally, I greatly enjoyed it, but it does take some platforming/shooter skills to get through the whole game. Beating it does unlock all of the cut scenes into an actual movie, so if you do manage to beat it, you can cheat and watch the movie instead of playing it again. As for me, I know I will be playing it again since again, I greatly enjoyed it.
But then, I always was aware of the fact that Samus is in fact female with female emotions, so I didn't cry angry fangirl tears when she revealed herself as thus in the game. If you haven't played Metroid, Metroid 2, or Super Metroid, I'm not sure how much you would enjoy the game since it continues a lot of themes from the previous games. The opening cutscene with Samus lamenting the loss of the baby metroid alone refers to all the previous games.
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Date: 2011-01-26 04:41 am (UTC)Other M - I've heard praise for the story, I've heard condemnation of the story. I've seen a few of the in-game cutscenes, and can't say I'm entirely fond of them. I'm more concerned about the gameplay, to be honest.
I can't say that I got the same enjoyment the time I tried it out. Fixed cameras can work in 2-d, but I didn't like Other M's camera for the 3-d environments. The ability to look around for secrets would have been nice. Platformers are all well and good, but I didn't like how it was handled there. And the shooting was worse.
As for Metroid games - I've played a bit of Metroid, all of Zero Mission, Super Metroid several times, and Metroid Fusion. And Prime 3: Corruption most recently, though I'm still working on that one.
To be honest, the opening cutscene of Other M didn't do the Mother Brain fight justice in my opinion - but hey, maybe that's just me. In any event, what I saw of it didn't justify the sixty dollars it would have cost me.
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Date: 2011-01-26 05:09 am (UTC)Other M is not supposed to be a 3D game. It's more akin to Donkey Kong Country, where it had the 3D look, but in truth is a sidescrolling platformer. You can only move around while in "2D" mode, when you go "3D", you are rooted in place (sans being able to dodge, but that does not give you any control on where you go). The 3D mode was actually put in there, not only so you can use missiles, but so you can look around to discover secrets. You make me wonder what game you were playing, or what your understanding of it was when you tried it out. ^_-
On that note, did you play the tutorial at the beginning? That lets you know everything you can do and in what mode. I can't advise skipping past it at all.
The cutscene was just of the last part of the fight, not the entire fight. I thought it worked just fine in conveying the in-game scene when the baby metroid shielded Samus from Mother Brain...before being blown to bits (or fading away in the original). Plus, it's Samus' dream after all, and I doubt even she would want to go over each and every painful moment of that last encounter. It's brutal!
I keep forgetting games cost more for you all up there. If you ever find it used, I say grab it. I'm glad to have it in my library, and it even got me interested in finishing off Zero Mission and replaying Fusion. One of these days I ought to hook up the SNES and play Super Metroid. Heck, on that note, Other M helped Fusion make more sense. It actually fits between Super and Fusion perfectly, so if you ever wondered about certain elements in Fusion, the answers are in Other M.
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Date: 2011-01-26 05:22 am (UTC)My complaint about the opening cutscene isn't that it skipped the majority of the fight. It's that it cut out before we got to see Samus in full blown Mama Bear mode. A charged shot? That is not the Hyper Beam I remember.
I was trying the game on someone else's console, so no, I didn't play the tutorial. I grasped the basics of the controls readily enough, and still did not enjoy it. It didn't feel like a sidescroller to me, it felt like an awkward third-person shooter-platformer on a plane with some jumping involved. Not the same thing.
Long story short, I did not enjoy Other M, and I'd rather just play the Prime series if I have a hankering for 3D Metroid. Sorry to disappoint, but different people get to have different tastes.
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Date: 2011-01-26 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 12:45 am (UTC)I think Tales of Symphonia is one of those games where a sequel ruins it. If anything, they needed a prequel set during the Ancient Kharlan War and the formation of Cruxis, Martel's death, splitting the world in two, etc. They have a ready-made party in Kratos, Mithos, Yuan and Martel. Even though a good bit of their story was told in the main game, there was so much more they could have added to it. It would have been a fantastic video game and a much better companion to Tales of Symphonia than Dawn of the New World.
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Date: 2011-01-26 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 01:49 am (UTC)