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President Kondo and the Power of In-House Staff at Nihon Falcom




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Blackiris_



Joined: 06 Sep 2013
Posts: 536
PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2024 10:51 am Reply with quote
Thank you for this interview, it's quite rare to see English interviews with Kondo.
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NeverConvex
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Joined: 08 Jun 2013
Posts: 2487
PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2024 4:04 pm Reply with quote
Kondo wrote:
In the case of Trails in the Sky, which was the very first three titles in the series, there are only three people who wrote that game.


This is kind of wild; Sky is still my favorite part of the series. Kudos to these three for creating Estelle and her character arc.

The article mentions Ys and Trails a lot, but not Xanadu (or Zwei). Wonder if we'll see more of it in the future?
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Mikan-box Glasses-kun



Joined: 21 Apr 2023
Posts: 85
PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2024 10:12 pm Reply with quote
I also would not join Adol on a boat ride.

NeverConvex wrote:
The article mentions Ys and Trails a lot, but not Xanadu (or Zwei). Wonder if we'll see more of it in the future?

God, I wish they'd make more Zwei games, but unfortunately apparently Zwei II flopped so I don't expect to see a comeback for it. (Technically Legend of Nayuta is Zwei III in all but name, but still...) At least Tokyo Xanadu is getting a sequel soon, though!
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light turner



Joined: 13 Aug 2022
Posts: 174
PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2024 11:00 pm Reply with quote
Ys was one of my favorite franchises growing up and in the early 2000s. I felt Oath in Felghana and Origins were peak game design for that series. I haven't been the biggest fan of the Memories of Celceta and onward party-style of gameplay although I did like Lacromosa of Dana quite a lot.
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Fluwm



Joined: 28 Jul 2009
Posts: 958
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2024 9:27 am Reply with quote
NeverConvex wrote:
This is kind of wild; Sky is still my favorite part of the series. Kudos to these three for creating Estelle and her character arc.


Yup. Reading that made me think, "Maybe they'd be better off keeping the writing team's small?"

Granted, I like all of their games to varying extents, but none of them quite hit me to the same degree as the Sky trilogy.

Mikan-box Glasses-kun wrote:
God, I wish they'd make more Zwei games, but unfortunately apparently Zwei II flopped so I don't expect to see a comeback for it. (Technically Legend of Nayuta is Zwei III in all but name, but still...)


Really? That's a shame. Zwei II is one of my all-time favorite Falcom games. It has just the perfect balance of humor, drama, style and action.

I would argue, though, that the Ys series has kind of absorbed the main (titular) element of Zwei -- the on-the-fly character swapping -- so a new Zwei game wouldn't really have a distinctive identity, beyond its (still very, very cool) unique XP system.

But it also kind of seems like Falcom maybe doesn't care about keeping their series a distinct from each other as they used to be? Ys games used to be very gameplay-focused, but they've been steadily devoting more and more time to the narrative, to the extent that the last two titles felt pretty comparable to Trails. And on that end, we've also got Daybreak going for this weird hybridized combat system that combines the series' conventional turn-based fare with a simple, Ys-style action combat system.
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R. Kasahara



Joined: 19 Feb 2013
Posts: 698
PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2024 10:40 am Reply with quote
Fluwm wrote:
But it also kind of seems like Falcom maybe doesn't care about keeping their series a distinct from each other as they used to be? Ys games used to be very gameplay-focused, but they've been steadily devoting more and more time to the narrative, to the extent that the last two titles felt pretty comparable to Trails. And on that end, we've also got Daybreak going for this weird hybridized combat system that combines the series' conventional turn-based fare with a simple, Ys-style action combat system.

There's been exceptions in the past, like Xanadu Next, which is an older game that is very Ys-like.

I do agree that the Ys series has been heading more in a story-focused direction, which I have mixed feelings about.
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Vanadise



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 521
PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2024 10:52 am Reply with quote
Fluwm wrote:
Really? That's a shame. Zwei II is one of my all-time favorite Falcom games. It has just the perfect balance of humor, drama, style and action.


Zwei II infamously sold so poorly that it's the reason why Falcom stopped developing PC games and moved solely to console.

Fluwm wrote:
s games used to be very gameplay-focused, but they've been steadily devoting more and more time to the narrative, to the extent that the last two titles felt pretty comparable to Trails. And on that end, we've also got Daybreak going for this weird hybridized combat system that combines the series' conventional turn-based fare with a simple, Ys-style action combat system.


For what it's worth, Ys X is definitely more gameplay-focused than VIII and IX were, although it's still got a lot more text than earlier games; and I also feel like Daybreaks "hybrid" combat system has been a bit misrepresented by Falcom's marketing, it's really not that different from Cold Steel's field attack system. The main difference is now enemies actually attack you instead of just running into you, and you can attack them until they're stunned before initiating combat without needing to sneak your way around them to hit them from behind. You'll still be using turn-based combat to fight all bosses and anything but the easiest normal enemies.
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