Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Start Your Year on the Right Foot with... Rance?
|
Goto page 1, 2 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Juno016
 Posts: 2581 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
As someone who bought the anniversary box collection of Rance with every not-already-free Rance game in existence, I'm mind-boggle by the Steam announcements. I don't object to them, to be sure. They're important and influencial in the history of Japanese fantasy gaming. I just don't understand Steam's policies.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Beatdigga
 Posts: 5148 Location: New York |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Steam's policies, at BEST can be "whatever Visa and Mastercard don't throw a fit about because conservatives threw a fit about it to Visa and Mastercard." At worst, it's like throwing a dart at a board.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 766 Location: USA |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
We won’t see the real effects of RAM shortage until later this year. I wonder if studios will fall back on less than stellar graphics for their games until RAM prices go down in the future or if they’ll just delay everything that isn’t 100% guaranteed to make profit. As long as GTA 6 and Call of Duty can run on modern consoles and decent gaming PCs I don’t think most gamers will freak out too much. The problem with AI RAM demands (other than the environmental harm) could be an increase in current console and cell phone costs.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2949 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
-Soraya Saga: Oof, that one hits. Xeno has had an interesting journey, but Monolithsoft is clearly doing very well for itself when they're major players for the Zelda franchise now.
-Dragon Quest: Dragon Quest is one that has still never got its due in the West (which is weird to say considering how much effort there is in bringing them out right now), a lot of it just due to timing as the original was localized years after its original release. It definitely doesn't help that too many people play only Final Fantasy instead of other RPGs. Also, speaking of how Dragon Quest and Pokemon are celebrating milestone years, can we just look at what franchises are doing the same 40th: -The Legend of Zelda -Metroid -Castlevania 30th: -Quake -Tomb Raider -Sakura Wars -Resident Evil -Star Ocean -Persona -Dead or Alive Seriously, 1986 and 1996 were pretty big in impact Anyway, as for the RAM shortages, it's gonna be rough. Ultimately I think a lot of is panic buying as AI is already showing signs of fatigue and companies are basically gonna negotiate a hostage deal out of it so they don't go COMPLETELY broke. Also, publishers better get used to optimizing for lower specs because people aren't gonna be in a rush to upgrade their rigs. Once again, it's funny how Nintendo has avoided all this nonsense by not participating in AI. Til next week |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Viren21
Posts: 96 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Some people already expect a heavily censored game for it.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
WANNFH
 Posts: 2080 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Now that's a real question of how the heck Rance (because it's obvious IYKYK even not just about slavery part, dude is literally a glorified R-word) somehow got in, because that is indeed boggling. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Shay Guy
 Posts: 2653 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
I know Rance has been one of the major influences on Narou-kei (I believe the author of Mushoku Tensei explicitly listed it as one of his), and probably some parts of Japanese fantasy beyond that. Does anyone know if there's been anything substantial written about that influence?
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Maopuu
 Posts: 8 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Ah, the Xeno series...
I'd like to start off and say I'm nothing but happy at the success of Xenoblade. It's been a long time coming and I'm always here to celebrate the success of my favorite genre of video games. That being said, as someone who's played them all, Xenoblade doesn't hold a candle to the narrative and world-building masterpieces of the games before it, which speaks to Soraya Saga's talents. I think what put Xenoblade on the map was its balance in making an enjoyable gameplay loop (one of the bigger flaws of the older games) and a decent story/characters. Most video games usually lean more heavily on either side. I hope you get around to playing the older games. it might be a bit rough, but they're at the top of my all-time favorite Japanese RPGs! As for Dragon Quest: I was around during that rough period where JRPGs weren't doing well, but things have definitely improved since then. No, they aren't making AAA money (as if they ever would lol), but when games like the Trails series are talked about and Persona hitting off pretty big--not to mention Xenoblade, I don't think I can say it's hard to find someone that has played or enjoyed any compared to those darker days. Square Enix is a tough cookie when it comes to what they choose to bring outside of Japan and how to market it. I never once believed a game as massive as Dragon Quest X could find major success here, but even if it did, it wouldn't live up to Square's high standards of what profit is. Games made with less and that bring in less have found their communities, so I think this is more of a Square Enix issue than a JRPG one. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Fluwm
Moderator
 Posts: 1625 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
For what it’s worth, I think of myself as a pretty big Xeno fan, and auffer(?) from a hyperfixation on RPGs in general, and yet even after multiple attempts I’ve never been able to play Gears to completion. I think without the novelty factor it had back when it was relatively new, it’s just hard to sustain interest — especially in that back half.
I have no idea how universal this is, but when I’ve seen people in the (gesturing broadly here) fandom talk about the Xeno-series writing, I typically see folks heaping a lot of praise on Soraya while attributing anything they don’t like to Takashi. No idea how accurate that is (I suspect only slightly, at best, if only because of how messy collaborative writing projects can be) but I do think it’s nteresting to see her spoken of so fondly. Especially knowing what gamers are like and how little people in general will pay attention to the individuals working on big media projects like these, and instead just sort of personify the entire development t studio. Anyway, did you ever get to Future Redeemed yet? I’m finally wrapping up my playthrough of Xenoblade 3 (absolutely fantastic game, easily my favorite of the trilogy, small quibbles aside) but am unsure whether or not I ought to play the DLC. I wound up loving Xenoblade 2’s ending, to get an idea of where I’m coming from, but then finishing my time with that game’s DLC was so disappointed it kind of soured me on the whole thing. And then there’s also the matter of holding out against hope for these mythical Switch 2 patches….. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Silver Kirin
Posts: 1763 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
In my opining some of reasons as to why Dragon Quest is not as popular in the West compared to other Japanese RPGs has to do with the fact that when Nintendo and Enix localized the first four Dragon Quest for the U.S. market, other games like Final Fantasy were released and DQ felt kind of outdated, or the fact that Enix's U.S. branch had some financial problems and weren't able to translate DQ V and VI for the Super NES. I believe another reason is that for many, Dragon Quest games feel and play too traditional compared to other games, not for nothing I've seen tons of people referring to the games as confort food for many Japanese players, it's funny because some of the criticisms towards the Dragon Quest games are very similar to the ones directed to Pokémon, but Pokémon is already an established brand, DQ has no such luck. Considering that this year marks DQ's 40th anniversary, I'm hoping we'll get some news about DQ XII, it's been almost five years since its annoucement and DQ XI came out in June, 2017, there's never been such a long gap between the release of a mainline DQ game, though if XII is still in development I'm sure we're getting some remakes. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Zased
 Posts: 144 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
As a huge fan of Xenogears and Xenosaga, the Xenoblade series always kind of failed to hook me in as much. 2 is probably my favorite story wise, but the gameplay isn't as interesting and I feel like they never reached the peaks of the past Xeno titles. Xenogears still remains one of the best RPGs on the PlayStation, which is a high bar to be sure. I highly recommend it.
Steam's content policies always seemed to just be arbitrary and whatever the person in charge of making the decisions feel like at that time. Some nudity is fine, others isn't/ Some sex is fine, others isn't. Some edgy shock is fine, others isn't. That's pretty par for the course for online platforms though. It's all up to their discretion which lets them bend the rules or enforce them as they see fit. The RAM and HDD shortages don't really affect me since I don't play modern games much. The newest game I played was Clair Obscur and that ran fine on my 4 year old PC. I'll upgrade to a new PC eventually but I'm not in a hurry. I know the old joke is people need a $3000 gaming PC to play Minecraft or watch Twitch and use Discord but it's pretty applicable to me. 99% of my gaming time is spent in RetroArch playing games many decades old. One of the nice things about modern gaming not being very good, you can avoid all the discourse about game and console prices, technology limitations, remake fatigue, and graphic wars feuding by just going through your SNES and PS1 RPG library. Just finished Parasite Eve over the Christmas break.
For better or worse Dragon Quest represents the roots of JRPGs and it maintains those roots despite everything else. There's probably a reason people like 8 and 11 the most. They play more like modern RPGs of their era, have actual voice acting (in English: the initial Japanese releases of 8 and 11 did not have voice acting until the 3DS version of 8 and S version of 11). I imagine the localization adding in voice acting was an attempt to make games like 8 seem more on part with other RPGs on the PS2 which had voice acting. Final Fantasy 10 came out in 4 years prior in 2001. And yeah, it does feel like a lot of the complaints people have about Pokemon could apply to Dragon Quest: especially lack of voice acting and the like. Although I imagine Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are more defensive of their games so even if the English version wanted to have their own exclusive voice acting they couldn't. Also they don't need to since those games still sell despite the complaints. Dragon Quest actually had to put some effort to try to get an audience in the west like when companies would bundle strategy guides and huge hint books with RPGs because they struggled to find a foothold in the NES and SNES days. Necessity breeds innovation, as they say. The mock replica tourist magazine Earthbound had still remains one of my favorite examples. And Nintendo offers it for free officially on their website |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7197 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Some have, some haven’t. Don’t hear too many people talking about the awesomeness of I'am Setsuna, Grand Kingdom, or other smaller scope titles from the last 10 years or so.
with some questionable consent on occasion to boot.
Pepperidge Farm remembers “the movie” adaptation of 5 getting flack for not having the Toriyama designs and now the remake of VII is catching the same criticism. Granted that criticism came from the western side of the fanbase don’t know about the Japanese side.
I’ll never get tired of the real is brown debate of the 00’s and eventually comes Diablo 3 which people complained at the time for being being too colorful. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 924 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Kudos for pointing out Quake and Tomb Raider's anniversaries. We focus on Japanese games here, but I'd be remiss in not pointing out just how monumental Quake and Tomb Raider were for American game development. As for Nintendo, yeah, they've not avoided that much by virtue of the RAM shortages. Remember, the original Switch also saw a price hike; their conservative business methods are helping them avoid a ton of problems, sure, but they're going to feel the pinch sooner or later. It's only a matter of time until they too feel the sting from RAM shortages...
Like I said in the column, a thing Shiravune and MangaGamer have done in the past is simply host the game on Steam sans any adult content, and offer patches that unlock the NSFW content off-site. Anyone in-the-know can get the stuff with no problem, the whole process is a snap. Anyone who just stumbled upon Rance would be none the wiser... not that I imagine that would include terribly many people. But it's the safest way of getting the likes of Kuroinu or Rance on Steam; you can't ding a game for erotica if the erotica isn't in the base version of the game and the unlock key is offsite, after all.
Been working on it! I'd hoped to get some progress in during Christmas break, but I had another game review come in that I absolutely couldn't turn down. At the time of writing, I should be good to jump back into Future Redeemed, time permitting. A lot of the callbacks are really nice; seeing spoiler[Colony 9] again made me stop to collect myself. The exact circumstances behind stuff like spoiler[Origin and how people's souls are contained inside of it, plus why some people like Rex and Shulk are walking around but other people like Fiora or Pyra and Mythra are souls living within the Origin metal] still elude me. I'm just rolling with it in the meantime. I'm not quite done (I had reached the mountains and was doing a bit of side-explorations), but I'm quite close. I'm also quite curious about those Switch 2 patches, and I'm stunned that we've gone over six months into the Switch 2 without Monolith really doing them. I imagine they're busy with other projects, but we don't know what those are quite yet 
You're on the money; by the time Nintendo and Squaresoft localized Dragon Quest 1 in the US, Dragon Quest 3 was already out in Japan. And remember, Phantasy Star 1 beat both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy to the punch in the US. Being a far more recent title, it definitely made DQ and FF look their relative ages. Remember, the original JPN Dragon Quest didn't even have directional sprites! Being so behind the curve definitely didn't help DQ gain a foothold in the US. There's no denying that DQ is pretty stuck in its ways; I think the nostalgia angle on the Japanese side is part of why they don't mind the games being the way they are, where Americans want more visceral action moment-to-moment. I still feel the art is a major hurdle for Jo Q. Publics in America, mind, plus general prejudices from the major voices on the American side of things. We're better than where we were in 2000, but it's still a problem when people who position themselves as Mr. Videogame only talk about Japanese games when they're paid or because they're trying to cozy up to the dev.
IIRC, SE also went on the record that they really want DQ12 to hit with Americans, hence they're going for a darker story/aesthetic. It's gonna be tough; Toriyama died partway through development, I wouldn't be surprised if they're still trying to figure out how to handle things. Considering the relative successes of the Erdrick Trilogy HD-2D remakes, it would be pretty safe for SE to push out some HD-2D remakes of the Zenithian trilogy--especially since that means remaking series darling DQV...
SE did a lot of heavy lifting to make DQ8 hit with American fans. The voice acting was part of it, they also went so far as to add item illustrations for the menus. Also, I think the US version of DQ8 on PS2 featured fully orchestral music in an attempt at appealing to American fans; folks in Japan don't mind the MIDI music as much, but that's also a matter of nostalgia.
Pokémon is in a unique angle where including voice acting means now the games have to also include voice acting for a variety of languages going forward, similar to how the games feature translations in so many languages now (English, European Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Traditional Chinese, etc). TPCI knows Pokémon is a worldwide success and has to be aware of any kind of cultural snafu they might step on--which is why the games/anime don't touch on as many traditionally Japanese concepts like Hinamatsuri since the Kanto season of the anime, since that kind of thing might rock the boat too much in China and South Korea. I've heard the suggestion that they could just make a fictional in-universe language, but that's still a ton of work in worldbuilding for something that'll only matter in the games--not the cartoons, toys, card games, etc. There's no easy answer, as opposed to what the armchair pundits will tell you.
Yeah, part of that was because developers were concerned if RPGs would connect with console gamers as much, or concerns that the games would be too confusing. (Fifteen minutes in some of the Dams in Phantasy Star 2 would vindicate their concerns.) But part of it was also the style at the time; many PC RPGs like Ultima or Wizardry came with feelies as part of the experience. Maps, doohickeys, extensive manuals detailing key aspects of lore/worldbuilding... that was just part of how you sold a game to folks in those days. And console RPGs really had to worry about value; remember, the extensive localization process meant that most RPGs at the time were way more expensive than other titles (FF6 retailed for like $80, USD--Phantasy Star IV retailed for around $100). Hence the Earthbound guide: Nintendo added value to a $100 game while also making sure Timmy and Tammy don't drive the parents crazy because they can't figure out Belch's password.
Yeah, not every passion-fueled indie title in the past decade have been Undertale or Expedition 33. A lot of them are Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, which you have to be really in the weeds to even know about. (Plus, there's an extended discussion of Undertale's success being in part through Toby Fox's strong connection to the then-massive Homestuck fandom, or E33 having the story of ex-Ubisoft devs proppign it up.) |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
AiddonValentine
Posts: 2949 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
With 1996 basically people finally got the hang of 3D and were able to utilize it and understand mapping spaces and moving in them. Mario 64 was the best of this which was why Nintendo has barely changed Mario's moveset in the past 30 years. Quake was also the first true-3D shooter instead of having to do a bunch of tricks like Wolfenstein or Doom to pretend it was 3D. Then of course you had Resident Evil starting survivor horror, Sakura Wars starting the strategy game and visual novel hybrid, and Persona having its weird beginnings. Altogether, really shows eventful things were decades ago and what became legends. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
yeehaw
 Posts: 884 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Basically all I know about the Rance games is they are porn and they are good, at least from what I've gathered. I hope we get reviews whenever these steam versions release because this doesn't seem like games that would survive having the porn taken out
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group