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The X Button - Battle Mania


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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:25 pm Reply with quote
Curse you, Shin Megami Tensei series! You are increasing my Xmas/B-day wish list by too much! I am totally going to end up getting the Persona PSP remake, aren't I?
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Captain Crotchspike



Joined: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 355
Location: Phoenix, AZ
PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 11:57 pm Reply with quote
I can't really agree with that Endless Frontier review.

As someone who has not liked RPGs for years and years, I heartily encourage everyone to give this a shot. Yes, even if you don't like RPGs like I typically do. Try it.

I wasn't burned out by the battle system at all. The visceral feel it brings that RPGs usually lack kept me glued to it - timing things correctly to avoid c-c-c-combo breakers, deciding whether or not sacrifice a few hits on a cancel for extra Frontier Gauge, whether to break off the attack prematurely if you're not sure you can carry them long enough, etc. That, and the way the attacks are animated in general adds to that feel in a big way. The game wouldn't have been as satisfying if they messed that up: Nailing suckers with Reiji's over the top sword/gun combos, Kaguya's surprisingly entertaining ring sword shooting antics, everything Suzuka ever does ever, etc. They succeeded in a big way here, I think.

And man, I'm surprised you couldn't get over the breasts and sex humor in this game, nevermind spending half the review on it. It's all in good fun and it never comes off as creepy.

I love how you assume that obviously the original developers were too busy being slack-jawed perverts to write the often clever dialogue - I'm sure Atlus put a little of themselves in as usual, but you're assuming too much to say it was obviously all them. This whole game just has a great colorful, fun, carefree feeling throughout. I'm not sure how you could not assuredly get that from the whole "explore the worlds to save the endless frontier I guess but oh more importantly make fat stacks 'o cash while doing it" story that had to be there from the start.

I think you're selling the characters far too short. I had the same worries early on about it basically being the usual stereotypes from several anime genres just mixed into the same pot, but the character designs are fantastic and the way they play off each other in the dialogue is great fun. Haken makes for a nice lead, a refreshing change of pace from the typical teenage type feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders - he takes everything in stride and has fun with it. And Suzuka (who rarely fights directly, but instead controls her giant robot puppet with strings on her fan by dancing. That's awesome), whose haughty nature adds tremendous personality to both the dialogue and the battle sequences, and poor Reiji (who, again, is insane cool in battle) having to play the straightman for Xiaomu, and cripes I could go on all day.

Man, I'm just really disheartened you're largely writing the game off this way. You know so many people are going to see the first half of that review and think "omg perverts, I'm obviously so above this!!" and never read about/some day try the battle system, right? Sigh. :/

This game is one of the big reasons I'm glad I bought a DS: along with Shiren the Wanderer, it's now a personal favorite of mine.
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momogoldfish



Joined: 01 May 2009
Posts: 135
Location: New Zealand
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:05 am Reply with quote
Argh, I want the Super Robot Taisen Neo if only for the nostalgia factor. Actually saw some of the obscure anime titles mentioned in Canton dub since Hong Kong showed them back in the 90's.

Last edited by momogoldfish on Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:01 am; edited 1 time in total
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Charred Knight



Joined: 29 Sep 2008
Posts: 3085
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:18 am Reply with quote
I should also point out that I love Endless Frontier's jigsaw nature like finding out who Katze really is. Also the dialouge is just so hilariously.

I mean I love the scene where the threaten to beat the crap out of Kyon to find out what she knows and one of them remarks that they might be the villains in this.

Though really the breast jokes are the best. I mean who doesn't love the scene where Kaguya is mistaken for a cow. It's like what Eiken was trying to be but failed.
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Captain Crotchspike



Joined: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 355
Location: Phoenix, AZ
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:19 am Reply with quote
Oh, and upon reading the Trouble Shooter part: I think DaiGinJou is even better than you give it credit for. The stages are outstanding examples of keeping things lively in both the setting and the level design. I'm sure a third game likely would've been excellent as well, but what we got in the second is just too good to say "well this is solid, but it's not that great yet".


lol I'm all "Anime cry come oooon" today


p.s. I suppose such things are on the d-l round these parts, but there's an excellent fan translation patch for DaiGinJou. The sense of humor from the first is quite intact.
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yuusha



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 16
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:24 am Reply with quote
For the record... Daiteioh was supposed to be the last chapter in the Eldran franchise (which includes Raijin-Oh, Gozaurer and Ganbaruger). There was never a pilot made, just a video game for the PS1 and a manga.

James
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toddc



Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 164
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:20 am Reply with quote
yuusha wrote:
For the record... Daiteioh was supposed to be the last chapter in the Eldran franchise (which includes Raijin-Oh, Gozaurer and Ganbaruger). There was never a pilot made, just a video game for the PS1 and a manga.

James


Really? I was mostly going by the ANN encyclopedia entry for that, and some Japanese sites say that the pilot episode of Daiteioh was included with the DVD set of some other Eldran shows.
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zanarkand princess



Joined: 27 Oct 2007
Posts: 1484
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:05 am Reply with quote
Oh good I was really hoping we got that persona port.
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Raven Shinobi





PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:20 am Reply with quote
As much as I'm glad that they'll be releasing the original Persona in English --meaning that I don't have to brush up on my kanji reading skills to play the import-- I'm quite upset that they changed the soundtrack. Meguro's work on Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga was awesome, but his talent deteriorated when working on the Persona games. The new tracks that I listened to weren't as satisfactory when compared to the original's.

I'm on the other hand was hoping that Kaneko would return to design more characters for the MegaTen series, and his absence from P3 and 4 was one of the reasons why I didn't find those games as aesthetically appealing and as haunting as Nocturne and DDS. It's sad that the P3 and P4 fans don't give his work enough credit compared to Soejima's generic designs, especially since 80% of the Personae they were summoning were actually Kaneko's work. At least, Devil Survivor seems it plays good.

I loved Battle Mania -a.k.a. Trouble Shooter- when I first played it back in the 1990s. I remember I made some art works of Madison back then Anime hyper I hope that both the game and the sequel will be available in the Wii shop.
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RedLeader



Joined: 28 Mar 2009
Posts: 310
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:59 am Reply with quote
FINALLY! An SRW for the Wii! And with both G Gundam AND regular Shin Getter Robo (As awesome as Texas Mack was in GC, a Shin Getter without Stoner Sunshine is no Shin Getter at all!)! Very Happy 'Course, that means I need a Japanese Wii now.... [GRUMBLE, GRUMBLE]

Yeah, I have to agree... That's a little bit of a harsh treatment there for Endless Frontier. The jokes MAKE the game! As does trying to figure out how this jigsaw world goes together with OG I'm only about 30 hours in myself but I'm still wondering... What're the Alternate Universe ATX team units doing on a Shadow Mirror ship? Were there stragglers still on 64 World after Lemon and company jumped at the Tesla-Leicht Institute? And the Eisnts... Is Alfimi here too, somewhere? >_> Still so much to find out... I'd probably be done with it already, but I lost a nasty boss battle and suddenly found myself addicted to Retro Game Challenge, but that's almost over so... ^^;;;;
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trescaballeros



Joined: 02 Oct 2008
Posts: 71
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:16 am Reply with quote
I AM surprised by this move for the SRW, even as a long-time fan of the Eldoran series. Although, even if one of the primary promotion vehicles of the franchise is toy-selling (the show being sponsored by a toy comapny and all), it's a bit unfair to assume that that's the ONLY, de facto driving force of the series' creation, unlike the likes of say, Beyblade or Crush Gear(the latter is also by Sunrise), whose main purpose of existence is mainly on toy-selling--I said this even as a long-time Beyblade fan too. Sure, it's not as "mature" as most popular mecha today, after all, it's for kids; but I'd dare say it has much more brains than your average kids' fare of today. It's sad that a LOT of people harshly judge something just because it's not their thing/ in line with their tastes; like the SRW fans that are frothing in the mouth over this move of piling up "s2pid kiddie shows" in their turf.

BTW, I don't know if this was brought up here at ANN but this startup company had licensed Raijin-oh and is slated to release it on DVD sometime this year.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:38 am Reply with quote
toddc wrote:
yuusha wrote:
For the record... Daiteioh was supposed to be the last chapter in the Eldran franchise (which includes Raijin-Oh, Gozaurer and Ganbaruger). There was never a pilot made, just a video game for the PS1 and a manga.

James


Really? I was mostly going by the ANN encyclopedia entry for that, and some Japanese sites say that the pilot episode of Daiteioh was included with the DVD set of some other Eldran shows.


No, Daiteioh was fully done in manga form. The official SRW Neo website even lists it as being run from 2000-2003. So the game will most likely adapt the manga but use the voices form the pilot episode.

Also, you got the wrong Getter Robo listed in the article; Neo is using the latest version, which Geneon released over here as New Getter Robo. Neo is not using Getter Robo Armageddon, but New Getter Robo, so it's a brand new title for the SRW series.
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yuusha



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 16
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:32 am Reply with quote
toddc wrote:
yuusha wrote:
For the record... Daiteioh was supposed to be the last chapter in the Eldran franchise (which includes Raijin-Oh, Gozaurer and Ganbaruger). There was never a pilot made, just a video game for the PS1 and a manga.

James


Really? I was mostly going by the ANN encyclopedia entry for that, and some Japanese sites say that the pilot episode of Daiteioh was included with the DVD set of some other Eldran shows.


The Daiteioh pilot was more along the lines of the clips from the game being strung together for 15-20 minutes worth of footage. I've gotthe Go-Saurer box with the special. The Daiteioh game features all of the Eldran robots in it (and its not like the Brave shows where they are all in a different universe except for the games, as it was stated in Go-Saurer and Ganbaluger that they take place in the Raijin-Oh universe just in different districts of Japan).

I'll say this much, the design for Daiteioh was awesome but the oy would've been nigh-impossible to make

James
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:12 am Reply with quote
Quote:
They're laughable twaddle aimed at teenagers and deprived adults, and yet I also remember what it was like to be 14, when even the idea of cartoon sexuality was compelling.

With a little variation it can remain so for years beyond. I can't say I'm enticed by RPG games however, so the show's 'assets' fail to sell anything to me.
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panzer.time



Joined: 25 Oct 2008
Posts: 65
Location: Hippie camp
PostPosted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:55 am Reply with quote
I can imagine that the variation you mention is simply added gratuitousness.
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