Samantha Lienhard's Blog, page 73

No News From the Ace Attorney Concert, But…

There was an Ace Attorney concert this past weekend, and many fans thought a new game or collection might be announced at it.

Following the reports from the ransomware attack on Capcom that Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1 & 2 would be released in a new collection and localized, together with Taiwan rating The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles earlier this year, fans have been eagerly waiting for an official announcement.

The concert seemed likely, especially since the concert announcement said it would feature music from Ace Attorney and The Great Ace Attorney, the first time the English title for Dai Gyakuten Saiban had ever been used by an official Capcom source.

Well, the concert came and went without any announcements.

However, it did leave us with more reason than ever to believe the localization news is real. At the concert, they used several titles from Dai Gyakuten Saiban that weren’t direct translations of the Japanese titles, and even referred to a character specifically by the localized name “Albert Harebrayne.”

What makes that even more significant is that Albert Harebrayne was one of the localized character names from the leaked (stolen) data.

So while The Great Ace Attorney collection hasn’t officially been announced yet, let alone its localization, it’s all but official at this point. I feel like it’s safe to say Capcom knows that we know and is just waiting for the right time to announce it. Personally, I can’t wait to finally get a chance to play the Dai Gyakuten Saiban games in English!

Do you think we’ll get Dai Gyakuten Saiban localization news soon?

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NEO: The World Ends With You Release Date, Trailer, New Details

I still can’t believe we’re actually getting a sequel to The World Ends With You.

It’s not a pipe dream or a faint hope anymore; NEO: The World Ends With You is really happening.

I’ve been excited for it ever since it was first announced, and it’s currently my #1 most-anticipated game of 2021.

Now, alongside the start of the TWEWY anime, we’ve gotten new details, another trailer, and a release date for the upcoming sequel.

NEO: The World Ends With You will be out on July 27 for the Switch, PS4, and PC (via the Epic Games Store only, at least for now).

A special edition was announced for Japan, but since the Square Enix Store only lists the standard edition here and is selling the merchandise from the special edition separately, it seems we might not get one.

But let’s get into the details.

According to the new information, detailed here by Gematsu, the new combat system lets you equip each team member with a pin to use its ability in battle.

I’ll miss the unique style of the original’s combat system, but I’m sure this will still be fun.

Scanning is back to read people’s thoughts and see Noise, and you’ll be able to chain together Noise encounters like in the original. From the trailer, it looks like directly fighting other teams in the Reaper’s Game will be important, too.

So, let’s take a look at that trailer.

I love the way this game has brought the original’s visual style into 3D. It looks fantastic! The trailer also gives a glimpse of the equipment system, which once again features brands for the clothing and pins.

In addition to the returning characters shown in the announcement trailer, Uzuki is also back with a new look this time. Coco from the new epilogue added to The World Ends With You: Final Remix also appears, so A New Day might be relevant. And the very end of the trailer reveals that Neku is back as well, although what role he’ll play here is left ambiguous.

Strangely, it seems like the new protagonist is able to rewind time, letting you replay the day’s events to change the future. It’s not clear yet how big of a role this will play in the story.

I am so excited for NEO: The World Ends With You. Will it be as good as the original game? I almost feel like it can’t be, because I just love the original that much. Yet at the same time, I can’t wait to see what the sequel has in store for us when it comes out on July 27.

What did you think of the newest NEO: The World Ends With You trailer?

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World of Demons is Out (and Looks Very Okami-Inspired)

Remember World of Demons, the mobile action game from PlatinumGames announced back in 2018?

It’s out now, and while it’s still a mobile game, it’s no longer a gacha game. Instead, it’s become an Apple Arcade exclusive (which means no microtransactions), and it’s pretty different from the original concept.

According to an interview with IGN, PlatinumGames decided to completely rebuild the game after making the switch to Apple Arcade.

World of Demons is described as a 10-15 hour game about fighting and befriending yokai cursed by Shuten Doji to serve him, with a story inspired by the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons legend. It should be longer if you do side content.

I checked out some of the gameplay videos, and it still looks incredibly Okami-inspired, even more than I remembered.

So if I ever get Apple Arcade and a device that can run these games, World of Demons will be another one I play in addition to Fantasian.

This release also makes World of Demons the second game to be announced and released since the announcement of Bayonetta 3… or the third, if you count The Wonderful 101 Remastered. With the April Fool’s Day joke game Sol Cresta now planned to be released for real, that’s on track to be the fourth. (The first, of course, is Astral Chain.) Here’s hoping we don’t get up to five…

Meanwhile, should I finally give Okami another chance… or at least finish my original playthrough?

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Games to Buy Before the PS3/PSP/Vita Store Shutdown

By now you’ve probably heard the news: the PlayStation Store for the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita will shut down permanently this summer.

The PS3 and PSP stores shut down on July 2, while the Vita has until August 27.

You’ll still be able to download games you own, and game vouchers will supposedly work, but you won’t be able to purchase any PS3/PSP/Vita games or DLC anymore.

So that means we have until July 2 and August 27 to buy any digital games we want for those platforms (and since they already took away they ability to access those stores from the web, that means you’d better hook up your PS3 and get out your Vita if you plan to do some shopping).

PlayStation Classics

One of the big losses to come out of this is that a ton of classic PlayStation games will no longer be able to be purchased as well… and physical copies of those can get pretty expensive nowadays.

I picked up copies of Alundra and Arc the Lad the other day, and if I enjoy Arc the Lad, I’ll buy 2 & 3 as well. I prioritized those because they appear to have been delisted in Europe, so the same could happen here.

I also have my eye on Vagrant Story, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, Saiyuki, and Echo Night.

Now, I didn’t list a whole lot of classic PlayStation games that I already have copies of – but you might not! So keep in mind that Breath of Fire IV, Xenogears, Legend of Dragoon, Wild Arms 1 & 2, Suikoden 1 & 2, and our beloved Silent Hill are also classics to keep in mind.

PSP and PS Vita

As far as I know, the ability to access the PSP store from an actual PSP was taken away a while ago, but digital PSP games can also be played on the Vita.

This means I’ll probably get Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Sweet Fuse, Mana Khemia, and Jeanne d’Arc. I’m also considering Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection and Persona 3 Portable, since I’ll finally need to decide which version of those games I want to play.

And from Vita exclusives, I might get Uncharted: Golden Abyss, since it’s supposed to be pretty good.

Once again, there are some Vita exclusives I already have that you might want to look into. Tales of Hearts R, Bad Apple Wars (which I played and enjoyed), and Norn9: Var Commons are all exclusive to the Vita.

PS2 Classics and PS3

In addition to all of those PS Classics, a number of PS2 games are also available digitally for the PS3 (and not for the PS4, even though it got a number of PS2 ports before they seemingly abandoned that program).

So I’m hoping to get Suikoden 3 & 4, Tears to Tiara 2, and possibly Fatal Frame 2 & 3, although I keep hoping they’ll announce a Fatal Frame collection. I’m also considering GrimGrimoire and the Digital Devil Saga games.

Meanwhile, from the PS3, why didn’t Ratchet & Clank ever get a second collection for the games after the original trilogy? I have the trilogy, but that leaves me with four mainline Ratchet & Clank games to consider. I’m also interested in Sly Cooper, so I might pick up The Sly Collection and Thieves in Time as well.

And then there’s the one PS3 game I’d already planned to get this year, Yakuza: Dead Souls.

PS3 exclusives beyond this that you might want on your list are Tales of Xillia (which I loved) and its sequel, the God of War Saga collection (which is how I played all those God of War games ahead of the new one), and the Jak & Daxter Collection.

Conclusion

That’s a lot of games. That’s too many games. I keep going through my list to weed out the ones I’m not sure about, which is why Parasite Eve 2, Dino Crisis 2, Grandia 3, and Valkyria Chronicles 2 aren’t currently on my list.

Don’t forget that once digital versions are no longer available, games that still have reasonably-priced physical copies might start to surge as well.

I’m slightly suspicious that Sony might shut down the stores and then announce that the PS Classics line, at least, is moving to the PS5… but not suspicious enough to count on it happening.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of resources out there for you to look into more games to consider before the shutdown. This one is just my personal list. I’ve found a list of digital-only titles that won’t be available at all after this, a current list of Vita exclusives, and many other videos and articles about recommended games.

Do you know of any notable ones I missed? Are you planning to buy any PS3, PSP, and PS Vita games before the stores shut down this summer? Let me know in the comments!

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London Detective Mysteria: Great Otome, Where is the Sequel?

During my big visual novel buying spree a few years back, another otome I picked up was London Detective Mysteria.

London Detective Mysteria follows a young noblewoman named Emily who gets the queen’s blessing to attend an academy for young would-be detectives. There, she meets characters who are largely descendants of famous fictional detectives (and other related characters), like Sherlock Holmes’s son and Miss Marple’s granddaughter.

At first I thought this was just a way to avoid using the actual characters, but that’s not the case at all. Most notably, the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Herlock (yes, they actually named him Herlock Holmes) is an important part of his story and motivations.

That gives the story a neat “second generation” sort of feel that I didn’t expect when I started.

The common route deals with Emily and her classmates encountering various mysteries, and the game even provides a special journal feature to let you save any line of dialogue to check it later while trying to figure out a case. There’s only a handful of times when that’s actually useful, but it was a nice thought.

Based on your choices, you end up on one of several character routes.

I liked all of the love interests, and each route had a fairly interesting story that ties into the overarching story about a sinister organization and Emily’s personal investigation into her parents’ deaths. Once you see every ending, including the bad endings and non-romance routes, you unlock the “grand ending” that follows up on that.

Unfortunately, the grand ending route feels underwhelming compared to the individual character routes. It’s clearly intended to build up to a sequel – in fact, the grand ending epilogue actually ends with an outright teaser for the next game.

There has been no word about the London Detective Mysteria sequel, but I hope it’s still being made. This was a fun otome and an entertaining mystery story, and I’d really love to see it continue.

So if you like visual novels, romance, and mysteries, London Detective Mysteria is worth checking out… as long as you’re okay with it ending on a cliffhanger that might never be resolved.

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Blue Reflection Sequels Announced!

A few years ago, I reviewed a game called Blue Reflection for MonsterVine.

Blue Reflection is a magical girl JRPG developed by Gust about a girl who gains the powers of a Reflector, which allows her to enter another dimension to fight demons and stabilize people’s emotions.

I found the story and social elements to be better than the JRPG sections, since the dungeons weren’t too interesting. Boss fights were a lot of fun, though.

Overall I enjoyed Blue Reflection and hoped the recent announcement of a Blue Reflection anime meant we might get a sequel game as well.

And… we are!

Actually, we’re getting two!

On the weekend, Koei Tecmo announced not only Blue Reflection Sun for mobile devices and PC, but also Blue Reflection Tie for PS4, Switch, and PC. Koei Tecmo also confirmed that Tie will be released in the west as Blue Reflection: Second Light.

Details are still pretty scarce, but I’m thrilled that Blue Reflection is getting another game.

Blue Reflection is getting a sequel, The Caligula Effect is getting a sequel… what next? I feel like I should start looking through other lesser-known JRPGs I enjoyed to see if there are any others I’d like to hear a sequel announcement for!

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Light Fairytale Episode 1 Feels Like a Prologue

After seeing the recent launch trailer for Light Fairytale Episode 2, I remembered that I had Episode 1 and decided to give it a try.

Light Fairytale is an indie turn-based RPG inspired by classic JRPGs, and the developer opted to split it into multiple episodes and release them separately.

Episode 1 is set in an underground city, where a boy named Haru has dreamed of the sky despite not knowing what it is. After spending some time in the city, he and his friend Kuroko end up running into trouble with the empire that rules over them.

I was impressed by the number of secret conversations you can get by exploring and checking various things. They might be there for achievement hunters, but those sorts of missable secret scenes make a game feel more alive and detailed in a way I find hard to explain. It made me want to check everywhere and try everything, just in case I’d get a few lines of funny dialogue or an item.

The turn-based combat system is fairly straightforward, although it has some oddities. For example, Haru’s weapon includes an elemental attack that uses MP on each turn, after which it becomes much weaker. There’s no way to choose whether or not to use the elemental part, though, which means you’ll simply deplete all of his MP and then be stuck with his weaker attack for every fight after that until you rest again.

It features random encounters, but only in certain areas that you can see by using Haru’s special AR goggles, with a set number of possible battles in each location.

That’s fine… except some are also locked by story progression, so you might only be able to fight half of an area’s battles on your first trip through and need to backtrack later to fight more. I still wouldn’t mind that system, except that when I got stuck on the final boss and looked it up to see if there were any tricks, the official recommendation was to fight all battles in the game.

Necessary grinding + set number of encounters in each location + backtracking required to fight them all makes for a tedious combination.

Anyway, you’ll notice I didn’t say much about the story. That’s because there isn’t much to say. Haru and Kuroko seem like enjoyable enough characters, and they have a good dynamic with each other, but not a lot happens. It takes about five hours to complete, and that includes playing through a second time as Kuroko for a couple of altered sections.

When the first episode feels more like a prologue than anything else, releasing each part of Light Fairytale as a separate game might not have been the best choice. Maybe Light Fairytale will have a deep, compelling story by the time it’s finished, but Episode 1 didn’t show me enough to sell me on Episode 2 just yet.

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Fantasian Sounds Much Longer Than I Expected

The more I see about Mistwalker’s upcoming JRPG Fantasian, the more excited I am (and the more I wish it wasn’t exclusive to Apple Arcade).

Fantasian is a turn-based JRPG where the environments are all hand-crafted dioramas, and it looks great.

A features trailer released earlier this month showed off some of its gameplay mechanics, such as how you can save up random encounters to fight the battles in a chain later on instead, and the story trailer really does remind me of classic JRPGs.

The soundtrack is composed by Nobuo Uematsu, and it might be the final game he composes the full soundtrack for.

Now, up until now I’d expected Fantasian to be a short JRPG. Yet a recent Famitsu preview, translated by Gematsu, suggests it will be much longer than I expected.

Fantasian will be released in two parts (which seems to be common for Apple Arcade games for some reason), both of which are due out this year. The first part has an estimated playtime of 20-30 hours.

Even taking into account that developers tend to exaggerate game lengths, that’s longer than I expected and it’s only the first part. It won’t necessarily be split perfectly in half, but if the length of the second part is similar, we could easily be looking at 40+ hours of playtime for Fantasian. The second part will reportedly have a more quest-focused, open structure.

Unfortunately, Fantasian is exclusive to Apple Arcade, and after looking at its page on the App Store, I’m not sure my old iPad will be able to play it anyway. On the other hand, the official website FAQ confirms that once it’s downloaded, you can play Fantasian offline, a major point in its favor if I do get to play it.

Several games have started on Apple Arcade and come to other systems later, so I can’t help but hope Fantasian will be ported once both parts are out. It’s looking like a JRPG I don’t want to miss.

In other JRPG news, Kazushige Nojima has a mobile game called Zodiac: Orcanon Odyssey that is now being reimagined for Switch, PS4, and PS5, so I’ll be keeping my eye on that.

Meanwhile, there have been a lot of rumors going around lately that I’m not going to write a full post about until we have something more official. I’m planning in case the PSP/Vita/PS3 store is really shutting down, but we don’t know that for sure yet. And as much as I’d love to believe the claim that “Lost Judgment” is a Judgment sequel, I want to see it from more than an anonymous source.

Getting back to the matter at hand, what are your thoughts on Fantasian? Are you surprised by its potential length, and do you expect we’ll see it on platforms other than Apple Arcade in the future?

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My Time With Animal Crossing: New Horizons

A year ago, I had never played an Animal Crossing game and had no intention of doing so.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons looked like it had some interesting ideas, but I didn’t see myself enjoying it when I prefer story-driven and/or more focused experiences. I worried that I’d find myself bored and my interest in it would fade away.

But several of my friends pestered me to try it, and once it came out, I found myself getting caught up in everyone’s excitement and thinking that maybe it would be nice to have a more relaxed sort of game to put a little time into here and there over an extended period of time.

So I bought my first Animal Crossing game.

Once I got into it, the first thing that really caught my attention was the world’s most adorable owl, Blathers the museum curator. For a long time, I played New Horizons as more of a collection game than anything else. All I wanted to do was catch bugs and fish and dig up fossils to give to Blathers.

(It even occurred to me that an Animal Crossing spin-off solely about collecting things for Blathers would be perfect for me.)

I eventually did start doing other things in the game, with holidays being a big draw especially because of this past year. No fireworks because of the pandemic? At least I could see fireworks in Animal Crossing. Special events were cute and entertaining and helped me appreciate the game’s real-time calendar, although I wish I didn’t have to go online every time.

Sadly, the villagers were probably the weakest part for me. At first I was excited to talk to them and get to know them, but once I realized villagers with the same personality type will give the same dialogue and I started hearing the same lines over and over again, I lost a lot of interest in that.

Soon I switched the major focus of my attention from the museum to my house, and I began making plans for customizing my Oak Island themed island, as well.

Oddly enough, the feature that held my attention the longest was the stalk market. Tracking turnip prices along with friends to find the best price, visiting other islands to sell turnips for the biggest profit, checking each Sunday to find the best price to buy them at; this appealed to me so much, I finally got a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, and I kept checking in each week for turnip prices long after I would have otherwise stopped playing.

Now that it’s been several weeks since I felt any real urge to play, I officially consider my New Horizons playthrough to be “finished.”

I never finished customizing my island. I never built a bridge beyond the one you’re required to build. I finally built a single ramp this weekend after a friend implored me to. I have a bank full of bells I’ll never spend. In a sense, my prediction came true – my interest gradually faded. But I got 150 hours out of it, and while that’s nowhere near the playtimes I’ve seen from some people, I can hardly say it wasn’t worthwhile to play a game I enjoyed for 150 hours.

My time with Animal Crossing: New Horizons has left me curious about whether there are other slow, low-key games I’ve written off as not my sort of game that I might enjoy after all, or if I might even like playing another Animal Crossing. Thoughts? Suggestions? Let me know in the comments!

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After 6 Years, I Returned to Ys I

Six years ago, I decided to play the very first Ys game, which I have through the Ys I & II Chronicles+ collection on Steam.

Then I got stuck on a boss fight, so stuck that I quit the game and never returned.

…Until this year, when I decided to finally restart Ys I and play it through to the end this time.

Ys I is an old game, and one of the most unusual things about it is its combat system. The “bump” combat system is a form of action combat where instead of swinging your sword or anything like that, you attack enemies by… bumping into them. Hitting them straight on lets them damage you as well, so you want to hit them off-center to safely deal damage.

It’s a strange system, but it’s fun once you get used to it. Boss fights are a little different, where it becomes more a challenge of getting close enough to bump the boss without taking damage.

(Oh, you also bump into NPCs to talk to them, too.)

You play as Adol Christin, a swordsman who tries sailing through the wall of storms that surrounds the land of Esteria and gets shipwrecked there, after which he decides to investigate what’s going on and why monsters have filled Esteria. Now, for as much as people describe Ys as being more focused on gameplay over story (especially compared to Falcom’s other big series, Trails), there’s a surprising amount of interesting lore, frequent new dialogue from NPCs, and even a journal with descriptions of every single character you talk to.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying the story and lore. It’s straightforward, but it’s also a fairly short, old game.

What I didn’t care much for was the “what if we make everything a maze?” approach to dungeon design, as well as the boss fights. Aside from the dreaded boss that stopped my playthrough six years ago, the final boss was so annoying that I might have given up again if I wasn’t almost at the end.

Anyway, I’m happy I finally returned to Ys I after all this time, and since I’ve been assured Ys II has better boss fights, I’m looking forward to playing that as my next Ys game.

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