Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

shivan128

shivan128

CAGiversary!
Feedback
163 (100%)
Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread!  Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here.  Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc.  Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.

I've wikified the thread to make it more friendly and open to others that can actively update with important information. You can find the wiki post directly below this one.

NOTE:  Please, leave the censorship discussion away from this thread.  It's common for japanese games to have questionable content outside of the country.  We want to keep discussions to the game itself and not about cultural/societal tolerance.

A message from Thorbahn:

Our CAG Japanese Niche Games Thread also has a community on PS4, where you can interact and game with other members of the thread.

Our moderators are: Draekon, Las_Hole, and Waffleswanton

You can basically friend any of our members, or any moderator, and you will be able to request to join the community under "Communities friends are in" tab, and a mod will approve your request.

You can also leave your PSN ID in the thread, saying you want to join, and we can invite you directly as well.

As always, have fun and enjoy your stay!

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Upvote 4 Downvote
Covnam said:
Yeah, I didn't see any Xbox Exclusive branding on it. I missed the very beginning of it when the trailer played during the conference though, but unless it said exclusive before the trailer, I wouldn't worry. Though considering Sony recently, it might be better to have it on other platforms anyway...
Click to expand...
Especially given that sony won't likely have crossover with the other servers given their attitude towards it.

 
I really feel like they nailed the graphic style for FF7R, but the combat gives me pause. I don't mind that it's no longer turn-based but it seems a lot like FFXV's combat, which was essentially "hold the attack button and occasionally teleport/change weapons". I've seen people defend it as more KH3-like, but I haven't played KH3 yet and I don't know if that should offer any solace.

 
Olengie said:
Idk about that.
Click to expand...
It's just not an RPG. I know FF hasn't had a traditional turn-based system entry to the franchise in a while, but deviating this far from the original's gameplay doesn't make it more compelling for me. I'm sure it needs to appeal to younger people, but the name of the game is there for a reason, to bring the oldheads back in droves.

I'll wait to play it for myself, but it's very much a style over substance vibe I get from it.

 
tsoul said:
What's wrong with DS3? Many say that's the best FromSoft game made to date.
Click to expand...
There's a lot of stuff I was annoyed with in the game, but my main overall gripe is that is was completely bereft of any originality. It was a snap reaction to do the complete opposite of the train wreck that was DaS2, but in doing so they relied far too heavily on "hey, do you remember this from the first game??" moments. I'm sure franchise fatigue was a factor for me seeing as I've been playing these games since I bought a PS3 to play Demon's Souls on launch day, but I just couldn't go back to DaS3 the way I did the others.

FromSoft already reached their peak with Bloodborne, and created damn near perfection in my eyes in The Old Hunters DLC.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tothoro said:
I really feel like they nailed the graphic style for FF7R, but the combat gives me pause. I don't mind that it's no longer turn-based but it seems a lot like FFXV's combat, which was essentially "hold the attack button and occasionally teleport/change weapons". I've seen people defend it as more KH3-like, but I haven't played KH3 yet and I don't know if that should offer any solace.
Click to expand...
It doesn't look like either of them really, especially KH. Mainline KH games are pretty standard action games, focused more on interrupting and controlling enemies through stagger as you try to make it to the end of a combo for a hard hitting finisher. This doesn't really look anything like that, this game barely even looks like it has a stagger system in place.

What this FF7 remake footage actually reminds me the most of is Lightning Returns. Tightly enclosed battle arenas, very few enemies on screen at a time, camera is really close up to your character, and it looks like you move very slowly and have to depend on attacks to close the distance between you and the enemy. The difference would obviously be the lack of the paradigm shifting and not depending on ATB for your actions. Though honestly if you can actually change who you control in combat on the fly that is a pretty good analogue for paradigms in LR.

Really we need to see more than 2-3 second snippets to get a better idea, but evolved/faster Lightning Returns has honestly been my main impression so far.

 
Zenax[zd] said:
Really we need to see more than 2-3 second snippets to get a better idea, but evolved/faster Lightning Returns has honestly been my main impression so far.
Click to expand...
I actually hope you're right. There were a number of things I hated about LR, but the battle system wasn't one of them. If FF7R is locked into an ARPG (and it is), this direction would be one of the more favorable ones.

FFXV and KH3 were some of the most dumbed-down gameplay experiences I've played in an ARPG.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
SE is going to have their best e3 in years.

Might be some spoilers, but this is what they'll have

FF7 - which looks great imo

Avengers - not my type of game, aparrantly it's like DCU online

Mana collection - Which features a mana game that never came out in the west

SAGA 3 and Scarlet grace - The games have never come out in the west either. Scarlet Grace was a vita game and I'm sure they're porting the switch and ps4 versions.

Kingdom Hearts DLC - what they showed of this already is quite disappointing.

Some honorable mentions:

DQ for the switch might show up

DQB 2 might be there

MY speculation:

The World ends with you 2

It's nice that they're bringing back some of their older franchises like Mana and Saga. I would also like them to bring a port of Chaos Rings or let LRG do a vita release but that's unlikely.

 
Vigilante said:
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III Launches September 24 in North America, September 27 in Europe

Trailer below features some spoilers from the previous two Cold Steel games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9GL-UcQl2E
Click to expand...
Thanks for the update. And this spoiler button - which I am not cliicking, haha. I think it was previously listed at Nov. 1 so 3 months and change is a pleasant surprise.

My plan is to play through the fan translations of Zero and Azure between now and CSIII release. (If anyone knows the best way to do/aquire these, I'd appreciate a pm. Thanks!)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
gospelman said:
I actually hope you're right. There were a number of things I hated about LR, but the battle system wasn't one of them. If FF7R is locked into an ARPG (and it is), this direction would be one of the more favorable ones.

FFXV and KH3 were some of the most dumbed-down gameplay experiences I've played in an ARPG.
Click to expand...
Personally I found LR combat to be almost complete trash, especially the deeper you got into the game and how unbalanced it became to the point you could ignore all the systems. So seeing FF7 look similar worries me on that level. But that said it's not an unworkable system, ditching ATB is a good idea because it held LR back quite a bit and it looks like FF7 has a real dodge roll and block button which is a big improvement. It's something that can work if they actually put some effort into it, which seems to be the case. LR was a literal budget game farmed out to tri-ace with mostly re-used assets so it never stood a chance.

 
Does anyone have an opinion on playing the Trails of Cold Steel 1+2 games on PC vs the PS4 releases? The PS4 seems to include all the DLC, but are the visuals and voice acting the same?

I am just finishing up Trails in the Sky SC on steam (after recommendations from here!) and will probably start Cold Steel in July :)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Katsumi said:
Does anyone have an opinion on playing the Trails of Cold Steel 1+2 games on PC vs the PS4 releases? The PS4 seems to include all the DLC, but are the visuals and voice acting the same?

I am just finishing up Trails in the Sky SC on steam (after recommendations from here!) and will probably start Cold Steel in July :)
Click to expand...
Yes, I own and have played them both. Finishing up the platinum on :ps4: CSII right now. Voice acting will be the same on both. Here's how I'd summarize them, let me know if there's something specific you're wondering.

PS4:
+physical goodies with the recent relentless/decisive editions, especially so with the CS1 release
+reworked UI for high resolutions, slightly better turbo mode, some ingame textures have been improved
+a few less bugs than in the pc version
-still runs with a short draw distance that causes pop-ins I find to be annoying

PC:
+more customizable settings allow for nice things like unlimited draw distance
+have been out a year+ now, so will be cheaper on sale
-takes some work to config a proper controller profile
-no dlc, so missing a few cosmetic-only costumes, attachments, and such

Also don't forget TiTS the 3rd on steam. You don't need to play it immediately after SC though (it is a retread through many of the same areas / characters).

 
Last edited by a moderator:
tsoul said:
The rumor is for FF8 remastered. 7, 9, and 10 already got the remastered treatment.

It was funny how all those were coming to the Switch (including FF12) except for FF8.
Click to expand...
I'm hoping they figured out some way to make Drawing less tedious. I guess a fast-forward function similar to the 3x one in FF7's PS4 version would help. :pray:

 
Last edited by a moderator:
gospelman said:
Yes, I own and have played them both. Finishing up the platinum on :ps4: CSII right now. Voice acting will be the same on both. Here's how I'd summarize them, let me know if there's something specific you're wondering.

-snip-

Also don't forget TiTS the 3rd on steam. You don't need to play it immediately after SC though (it is a retread through many of the same areas / characters).
Click to expand...
Thank you! That's what I was looking for :) I was wondering if PS4 had better textures at all or if there were more voiced lines. I may stick with PC for the better draw distance and cheaper price then so that I can keep all of the games together on the same system. I can always cherry pick DLC if I really want one of the outfits.

I do plan to play the 3rd Sky game eventually, but I don't want to re-tread the same areas for a third time in a short time span.

I really appreciate your input, thank you! JRPG's are my favorite genre and CAG has introduced me to both Ys and Trails so far :) The only downside is that most are 60+ hour games and don't help my backlog! lol

 
Last edited by a moderator:
nagpo said:
SE is going to have their best e3 in years.

Might be some spoilers, but this is what they'll have

FF7 - which looks great imo
Avengers - not my type of game, aparrantly it's like DCU online
Mana collection - Which features a mana game that never came out in the west
SAGA 3 and Scarlet grace - The games have never come out in the west either. Scarlet Grace was a vita game and I'm sure they're porting the switch and ps4 versions.
Kingdom Hearts DLC - what they showed of this already is quite disappointing.

Some honorable mentions:
DQ for the switch might show up
DQB 2 might be there

MY speculation:
The World ends with you 2

It's nice that they're bringing back some of their older franchises like Mana and Saga. I would also like them to bring a port of Chaos Rings or let LRG do a vita release but that's unlikely.
Click to expand...
If they actually bring the Mana collection west, that’d be great, but until a proper announcement I remain skeptical.

Everything else looks like hot garbage.
 
Sorry for the doublepost, but figured there’d be some people here interested: Humble Bundle is having a Kodansha digital manga bundle. It features several volumes of Vinland Saga, Fire Force, Domestic Girlfriend, and Attack on Titan, as well as a few each of Cells At Work, Quintessential Quintuplets, Blame, and Aposimz. These are split up across several tiers, ranging from $1 to $20. If you bought the first Kodansha Humble Bundle, I believe only Cells At Work vol. 1-4 and Fire Force vol. 1-10 are repeats, though Cells At Work vol. 5 and Fire Force vol. 11-15 are included in this bundle. If you’re only familiar with Humble’s game bundles, it’s worth noting that Humble book bundles don’t have a beat the average tier—they’re all at fixed prices.

Find it here if you’re interested.

Personally, I think the first one was a better value in terms of offering both variety and quantity, but if you want to get into Attack on Titan, there’s a whopping 36 volumes of that here, which I guess is a good way to start. I don’t know why they skimped out on that last volume of Before the Fall though, putting in 16 out of 17 seems kind of random. Unless the last one just isn’t translated yet, I guess.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Souffrir said:
Sorry for the doublepost, but figured there’d be some people here interested: Humble Bundle is having a Kodansha digital manga bundle. It features several volumes of Vinland Saga, Fire Force, Domestic Girlfriend, and Attack on Titan, as well as a few each of Cells At Work, Quintessential Quintuplets, Blame, and Aposimz. These are split up across several tiers, ranging from $1 to $20. If you bought the first Kodansha Humble Bundle, I believe only Cells At Work vol. 1-4 and Fire Force vol. 1-10 are repeats, though Cells At Work vol. 5 and Fire Force vol. 11-15 are included in this bundle. If you’re only familiar with Humble’s game bundles, it’s worth noting that Humble book bundles don’t have a beat the average tier—they’re all at fixed prices.

Find it here if you’re interested.

Personally, I think the first one was a better value in terms of offering both variety and quantity, but if you want to get into Attack on Titan, there’s a whopping 36 volumes of that here, which I guess is a good way to start. I don’t know why they skimped out on that last volume of Before the Fall though, putting in 16 out of 17 seems kind of random. Unless the last one just isn’t translated yet, I guess.
Click to expand...
There was also that Attack on titan manga bundle if people got that they would already have the all of the main vol up to 20 and before the fall up to 11.

For the perverts among us, Koikatsu just got a stealth release on Steam! The adult content was removed from the steam version but there's an official restoration patch. Here's the changelog for the patch. Early reports are saying the translation is pretty good, but the voiced dialogue during sex is not translated. It is pretty pricey at $60 but that's the going rate for illusion games. If you're not in it for the hentai, you could still use it as a spiffy anime character creator but the $60 asking price for just that is a bit steep. The uncensor patch adds a vn style story mode where you have to "conquer" all your fellow classmates and build a harem.

 
Katsumi said:
I do plan to play the 3rd Sky game eventually, but I don't want to re-tread the same areas for a third time in a short time span.
Click to expand...
That's exactly how I felt and I still found it fully enjoyable to play 3rd after playing CSI&II. This is optional, but there is one particular memory fragment (flashback cutscene, basically) in 3rd that bridges the plot of SC to CS1. In retrospect, I would have appreciated things even more in CS1 if I had watched this beforehand. It contains mild to no spoliers for 3rd's plot but has bigtime spoilers for SC - so only view this after completing SC. It also has what I consider to be the best music track in 3rd at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bh51hI3QzQ

 
Last edited by a moderator:
No one talking about Persona Q2, so I guess I will.

Only beat the first dungeon so far, so I don't know that much of what's ahead.

Playing on Risky.

Still a more toned-down Etrian Odyssey.

You start with some of the P5 cast only, and it's already impossible to choose a team. Guess wrong, and you have to grind a ton to replace a character, as sidelined characters don't get XP. This might change later with accessories, but I don't have it yet.

Mapping is unresponsive compared to EO. E.g. to draw a floor tile, you can't just tap it. You have to move the stylus. But it's less responsive than EO, so you'll often misdraw walls and floors. Made me had to turn on auto-mapping, and it still happens with doors/shortcuts/etc that aren't auto-mapped.

Money for gear is extremely plentiful compared to EO. Probably due to the balance of needing it for personas.

Failing on the first boss (e.g. due to boss hitting Joker for 150%+ of your max HP) means sitting through 10+ minutes of fast-forwarded dialog to retry again. Having 2 people heal the tank isn't enough to keep his max HP up, and you'd also run out of SP.

Took it close to 10 tries to beat the first boss. Had to grind to level 14 from 11/12 to finally beat him. And had to replace a useless member for that fight, so replacement character was only 11ish.

Tried to fight the first floor FOE after beating the boss. It wiped my party doing like 5x my max health per hit.

tl;dr: Less refined than EO for some reason. Not bad otherwise.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
However, the mana collection IS a switch exclusive and already has a trademark for the west, so it has a possibility of being announced at the Nintendo Direct tomorrow. So I'm not giving up on it yet.

 
Also, Babylon's Fall was a no-show. Something must be wrong with Platinum games. Also, I'm going to to sell my ps4 copy of DQ so I can buy the Switch version

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah honestly after that presentation I feel even more like FF7R is trying to do a lot of the same stuff Lightning Returns did. Though they seem to be going about it in smarter ways. Really prefer an ATB you build up with normal attacks versus how it worked in LR which could bring the combat to a halt at times as you were waiting for an enemy to attack or something like that. Wish I could try the demo out myself.

nagpo said:
Also, Babylon's Fall was a no-show. Something must be wrong with Platinum games
Click to expand...
Honestly ever since the Astral Chain trailer came out with a release date attached and the fact that Bayo 3 is also apparently being actively worked on I just figured Babylon must be like a 2020 or 2021 game. The fact it had a 2019 release in a trailer showing no gameplay always seemed weird to me.

 
nagpo said:
However, the mana collection IS a switch exclusive and already has a trademark for the west, so it has a possibility of being announced at the Nintendo Direct tomorrow. So I'm not giving up on it yet.
Click to expand...
Never underestimate SquareEnix’s willingness to shit on its potential audience.
 
Yeah, FF7 gameplay is a hard pass for me. That boss battle demo was horrible. I didn't mind long boss battles in a JRPG because it's about moves, but I don't want to have to be micro managing meters while dodging and switching characters for 20 minutes at a time. It's all meant to look really cool, but looks a tedious nightmare to manage. 

At least they got Tifa's look down perfectly. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Final Fantasy VI looks good, but I'm still not sold on the combat system entirely. The standard attacks look a lot like FFXV combat ("Hold attack").

Glad we're finally getting more Romancing Saga games localized. They're a good little niche.

Avengers looked really good but it seems like they're trying to make it an online community thing and I'd rather just have an offline game.

I haven't played enough KH yet to make sense of the DLC. Oninaki and a bunch of the other games didn't leave huge impressions. More Switch ports and PC ports, which we already knew about (except maybe the Last Remnant?).

But most of all, I'm glad Square finally dug FFVIII out of the basement and is throwing it on modern consoles. It's my favorite FF game and it's been absent for so long. It's been so weird having VII, IX, X/X-2, XII, XII/XIII-2/XIII-LR, XIV, and XV on the modern PS ecosystem and not FFVIII. That's probably the biggest piece of news to me.

Overall, really happy with SE's showing.

 
I'm super glad by the Romancing Saga 3/Scarlet. I enjoyed what I played of the translated rom ages ago. I also thought FF7Remake looked kind of fun. I am still working through FFXV (not grabbing me honestly). Also glad for FFVIII remaster, though I know the drawing and the GFs are a huge turn off for me now, since it's so grindy and time consuming. I'm not looking at it with nostalgic glasses though, but I'm sure I'll play it again eventually. I'm not as crazy about The Avengers, but that also pertains to the movies as well. I still I want to play super hero games and will gladly support it. Will likely play with my friends. The mobile stuff/MMO stuff bored me but other than that was a good conference. Also lots of RPGs. I'm not sure I like the genre as much anymore, but I'm always nostalgic for them.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
The Dead Texan said:
Yeah, FF7 gameplay is a hard pass for me. That boss battle demo was horrible. I didn't mind long boss battles in a JRPG because it's about moves, but I don't want to have to be micro managing meters while dodging and switching characters for 20 minutes at a time. It's all meant to look really cool, but looks a tedious nightmare to manage.

At least they got Tifa's look down perfectly.
Click to expand...
I'm hoping they intentionally prolonged that fight to show off as much of the gameplay as possible.

 
I thought 7 looked great. I really liked how they've merged ATB with real time combat. Seems perfect. I also love that you can on the fly switch to the other characters. 7 remake looks exactly like what Versus 13 was going to play like before it became 15. I saw somebody mention in the previous posts above that it looked like it had 15's hold button to combat issue, I don't think that's the case. In the video they clearly say that you tap the action button to attack to build combo, if I'm remembering correctly.

I think it's doing everything a remake should do - adding to the original. If it was a 1:1 remake, then why bother remaking it? Just keep porting the original. I'm of the opinion that they should implement all of the extended lore as well, including Genesis. I'm pretty excited for this game.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 looks amazing - leaps and bounds above the original in terms of content. Super excited for this one.

Are the SAGA games digital only? I've been excited for Scarlet Grace since it was a Vita game but really want it physical for a switch.

All of the western games looked either bad or really uninteresting to me. I don't care at all about Marvel except for X-men. If it was an xmen game I'd be more interested.

Like I said I'm going to sell my ps4 version of DQ 11 for the switch version for the new content. Graphics don't matter for DQ.

On a side note, after seeing the trailer for Shenmue 3, I realize why they delayed it and I'm glad they did. They need some more work on the animations for sure.  I love the voice acting, reminds me of the original games.

Unironically, the Square Enix conference was better than Sony's E3 conference last year. The only issue I have with it was a lot of it was previously announced stuff - old material.

 
Very happy to see FF8 get some attention and those Saga games come over.

The Dead Texan said:
Yeah, FF7 gameplay is a hard pass for me. That boss battle demo was horrible. I didn't mind long boss battles in a JRPG because it's about moves, but I don't want to have to be micro managing meters while dodging and switching characters for 20 minutes at a time. It's all meant to look really cool, but looks a tedious nightmare to manage.

At least they got Tifa's look down perfectly.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that boss battle looked like it really went on too long (and that was clearly edited down). There's still plenty of time though to balance that out.

The collectors edition is nearly $400, so I'll be passing on that, but I'll be picking it up. Probably going to wait for the reviews till I open it though :p

 
I'm in for that manga bundle; I love Domestic Girlfriend. Just trying to decide whether to do the extra five dollars for the art book, since I'm mostly indifferent to most of the other manga.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
So who is winning E3 so far? I'm say Square Enix is on top so far. But we got to wait for nintendo in a few hours.

 
nagpo said:
So who is winning E3 so far? I'm say Square Enix is on top so far. But we got to wait for nintendo in a few hours.
Click to expand...
Nintendo has a chance, but as of now Square-Enix easily wins compared to the others. They showed off too many games I want and included gameplay for a few of them unlike most of Bethesda's conference and all of Microsoft's.

 
Vigilante said:
Nintendo has a chance, but as of now Square-Enix easily wins compared to the others. They showed off too many games I want and included gameplay for a few of them unlike most of Bethesda's conference and all of Microsoft's.
Click to expand...
Yeah honestly so far I think Square is winning simply by how bad all the other conferences were. I've already forgotten everything that was in the Bethesda conference other than Fallout battle royale. Ubisoft started strong but then immediately hit a brick wall with the tv show stuff and it never recovered. Microsoft seemed alright I guess, but I didn't have an interest in any of those games. Was especially disappointed by the Ninja Theory reveal, was hoping for something single player or co-op focused. Bleeding Edge looks like a game that would launch on early access and then be cancelled before launch because a lack of interest.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top