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The X Button - First Outing


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AiddonValentine



Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 2201
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:07 pm Reply with quote
I just find it funny how people constantly have to bend over backwards to try and justify the train wreck Ninja Theory has made. Tam Tam's gigantic ego has only made things worse.
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Paul Soth



Joined: 06 Jul 2010
Posts: 140
Location: Columbus, Oh
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:29 pm Reply with quote
sainta wrote:
Also if you think about the lack of haircuts in The Last Story makes sense since I've never seen a hairdresser in an RPG.


It doesn't exactly count, but there's one in Fable you can even marry.
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NeoFireHawk



Joined: 20 May 2007
Posts: 14
PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2013 4:10 pm Reply with quote
GiriOni wrote:
Those dating sims are strange??
It seems pretty normal compared to... a lot.

Those are "strange" to him since he is completely unfamiliar and lacking knowledge on the subject. How can you expect Todd Ciolek to know what he is talking about when he thinks the term "Dating sim" is synonymous with "Visual Novel"? There is NO excuse for that. The difference between the two is extremely obvious when you play the two of them, and even if you do a fast Google search to look up for the definition of "Visual Novel" the very first search result, Wikipedia, clearly states:

Wikipedia wrote:
Visual novel
Not to be confused with Graphic novel, Anime game, or Dating sim.


That Todd Ciolek still calls Visual Novels "Dating Sims" is a clear sign he has not even bothered to do the minimum research on the subject, which is unforgivable for someone who writes a "professional" column on the matter.

Todd Ciolek wrote:
To be fair, Growlanser requires certain tolerances from the player. For one thing, you'll need to appreciate (or at least look past) the glossy sensibilities of Satoshi Urushihara. As Growlanser's artist since the start, he crafts some rather silly outfits for his invariably voluptuous female characters, and the cover shows a bunch of Urushihara-designed characters stacked in an awkward totem pole of titillation. Nor does Growlanswer look all that modern, being a port of a PlayStation 2 game over ten years old.

Todd, it's interesting to see that you spent like seven lines criticizing the game's cover and how much you hated the "silly outfits" and "awkward totem pole of titillation", yet you only spent two lines speaking about the game itself, which were incredibly general and also incredibly unhelpful for anyone looking for a review of the game. Again, it makes me wonder why you work on an anime site if you find standard elements of anime culture "creepy" as you have called them in the past (like in your Mugen Souls "review").
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Dimlos



Joined: 02 Mar 2008
Posts: 226
PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2013 9:56 pm Reply with quote
PrecisionCrab wrote:
Their basic argument is "It doesn't play like it did 10 years ago!"
I thought their argument was that the reboot was unwarranted in a series that just had its most successful entry with its previous game.
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yaminokaitou



Joined: 15 May 2010
Posts: 15
PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 12:43 am Reply with quote
Quote:
The Last Story concentrates on a band of hard-drinking, hedonistic mercenaries entering the service of Lazulis Island's ruler.


That describes only two of the members. The only real hedonistic character is Lowell, who flirts with every pretty girl he sees, and the only drunkard is Syrenne. The others drink casually, but they're definitely not hard-drinking in any case.

Quote:
New in town, their slightly naïve leader Zael runs across a young woman who, to the surprise of no experienced RPG players, turns out to be the rebellious princess Calista.


Zael is not the leader of their mercenary group, at least not in the beginning. That's Dagran's job. Sure, Zael will give orders and is basically second in command when Dagran's not around, but the other characters give orders as well that Zael in turn follow.

Calista is not a princess. She's the daughter of the deceased count. That would make her a future countess.

Quote:
The plot unfolds in paths quite familiar and perhaps sexist (every female character has to be rescued at some point)


I wouldn't say that only the girls have to be rescued. Both girls and boys seem to need to be rescued a lot in this game. Zael has been rescued not once but twice from prison by (LE GASP) a GIRL! and and Dagran. Yurick also gets rescued by Zael on the sunken ship. And Dagran and Lowell both get taken by the vampire in the haunted house and need saving (to be fair, almost everyone gets kidnapped there, but they're all males). There are just as many boys who need rescuing as girls, so I don't really get why TLS is sexist....

Get your facts straight before you publish an article, dude!
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Paul Soth



Joined: 06 Jul 2010
Posts: 140
Location: Columbus, Oh
PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 3:04 am Reply with quote
NeoFireHawk wrote:
That Todd Ciolek still calls Visual Novels "Dating Sims" is a clear sign he has not even bothered to do the minimum research on the subject, which is unforgivable for someone who writes a "professional" column on the matter.


He does it just to PISS YOU OFF.
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Sir Amyas Leigh



Joined: 14 Sep 2009
Posts: 91
PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 3:50 am Reply with quote
NeoFireHawk wrote:
GiriOni wrote:
Those dating sims are strange??
It seems pretty normal compared to... a lot.

Those are "strange" to him since he is completely unfamiliar and lacking knowledge on the subject. How can you expect Todd Ciolek to know what he is talking about when he thinks the term "Dating sim" is synonymous with "Visual Novel"? There is NO excuse for that. The difference between the two is extremely obvious when you play the two of them, and even if you do a fast Google search to look up for the definition of "Visual Novel" the very first search result, Wikipedia, clearly states:

Wikipedia wrote:
Visual novel
Not to be confused with Graphic novel, Anime game, or Dating sim.


That Todd Ciolek still calls Visual Novels "Dating Sims" is a clear sign he has not even bothered to do the minimum research on the subject, which is unforgivable for someone who writes a "professional" column on the matter.



Well VNs are pretty much never going to get the respect they deserve :/ Alas we must perservere and continue bugging our friends to play the good ones we've imported and found fan translations for, and we must continue to tell the misinformed that date sim does not equal visual novel, but in the end folks that don't know much else about em other than *tons* of harem dreck that is produced every few seasons is based off of them will still continue to think they're icky despite the fact that its actually a pretty solid... 'game style'(modernized text adventures!) that'd actually work wonders for the more intellectual (aka likes to read) mobile gamers in both the smart phone/tablet *and* handheld departments in the west if we'd just get over the fact that quite a few games using the same format are soap operas with occasional skinimax scenes.

Wow thats one bigass sentence Anime smallmouth + sweatdrop
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tasogarenootome



Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 593
PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 5:38 am Reply with quote
Sir Amyas Leigh wrote:



Wow. How'd I miss this Shocked still probably better than half of the dreck that gets official translations... Wink


AGHHH!! MY EYES!!! THIS IS MY PUNISHMENT FOR MENTIONING IT!!

In all seriousness, it does seem a lot of work went into that game (and the voiced version is like a who's-who of male seiyuu).
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toddc



Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 164
PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 10:52 pm Reply with quote
NeoFireHawk wrote:
GiriOni wrote:
Those dating sims are strange??
It seems pretty normal compared to... a lot.

Those are "strange" to him since he is completely unfamiliar and lacking knowledge on the subject. How can you expect Todd Ciolek to know what he is talking about when he thinks the term "Dating sim" is synonymous with "Visual Novel"? There is NO excuse for that. The difference between the two is extremely obvious when you play the two of them, and even if you do a fast Google search to look up for the definition of "Visual Novel" the very first search result, Wikipedia, clearly states:

Wikipedia wrote:
Visual novel
Not to be confused with Graphic novel, Anime game, or Dating sim.


That Todd Ciolek still calls Visual Novels "Dating Sims" is a clear sign he has not even bothered to do the minimum research on the subject, which is unforgivable for someone who writes a "professional" column on the matter.


I don't understand why it's controversial to describe a visual-novel game as a "dating simulator" when its primary focus and selling point is a cast of characters for the player to romance. It's justified further by the fact that the line between visual novels and dating sims is none too clear.

Since you brought up Wikipedia, let's use it as an example. The entry for dating sim explains that visual novels and dating sims aren't the same (without citing any sources), and it lists School Days under the examples of dating sims. Click through to the entry for Schools Days, however, and you'll see it described as a "visual novel."

NeoFireHawk wrote:

Again, it makes me wonder why you work on an anime site if you find standard elements of anime culture "creepy" as you have called them in the past (like in your Mugen Souls "review").


I also don't understand this argument of "If you like some things about anime, you have to like EVERY LAST THING about anime."

yaminokaitou wrote:

Quote:
The plot unfolds in paths quite familiar and perhaps sexist (every female character has to be rescued at some point)


I wouldn't say that only the girls have to be rescued. Both girls and boys seem to need to be rescued a lot in this game. Zael has been rescued not once but twice from prison by (LE GASP) a GIRL! and and Dagran. Yurick also gets rescued by Zael on the sunken ship. And Dagran and Lowell both get taken by the vampire in the haunted house and need saving (to be fair, almost everyone gets kidnapped there, but they're all males). There are just as many boys who need rescuing as girls, so I don't really get why TLS is sexist....

Get your facts straight before you publish an article, dude!


People bring up this "What about the GUYS?" nonsense whenever someone points out sexism in video games, and it always misses the mark. There's no history of men being portrayed as marginalized objects of rescue in RPGs. Equating the two doesn't make sense when you consider just how female characters are typically treated in genre fiction.

The Last Story isn't as sexist as some other RPGs of late, but it's still a male-centric fantasy. You're not doing the game or yourself any favors by ignoring that.
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TitanXL



Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 4036
PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 11:34 pm Reply with quote
toddc wrote:
Since you brought up Wikipedia, let's use it as an example. The entry for dating sim explains that visual novels and dating sims aren't the same (without citing any sources), and it lists School Days under the examples of dating sims. Click through to the entry for Schools Days, however, and you'll see it described as a "visual novel."


A square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle doesn't have to be a square.

Quote:
People bring up this "What about the GUYS?" nonsense whenever someone points out sexism in video games, and it always misses the mark. There's no history of men being portrayed as marginalized objects of rescue in RPGs. Equating the two doesn't make sense when you consider just how female characters are typically treated in genre fiction.


So in other words, the only way to be truely equal is if only the guys get kidnapped and not the girls. That way, the guys being kidnapped 'makes up for' other previous instances that are totally unrelated to this work where a girl was kidnapped, because the girls in this game automatically have a mark against their score, so now it's more even. Sorry, that's not how it works. Please don't hold a specific game accountable for what other things in 'history' have done.
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