Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

shivan128

shivan128

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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!

 
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evilgordo said:
It's a Xmas miracle! My P5 TYH edition arrived from Amazon...in a box...with air bags! It is in perfect condition. I wonder if that's cuz it shipped via USPS and not UPS?

I hope the best for all you other Amazon purchasers!
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That's great! I just checked on mybestbuy and mine says shipped via FedEx with a tracking number, so here's hoping I get it tomorrow. I really want to play it! I just prefer UPS as intrastate shipments get here overnight. My Switch sat at a damn FedEx facility locally for 2 days before I got it. That innovation bullshit where they dump it on the USPS to deliver it...
 
Cloyd said:
I wonder if I should cancel my Play-Asia pre-order and spend the money on this one? Meh, I'll buy both.
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I thought Play-Asia doesn't let you cancel anything or else they ban you?

Ever since the giant debacle with the Blue Rider release, I have been getting bombed with e-mails from them to go back and pay for it again. I'm just ignoring the e-mails and It's pretty funny.

 
I just got the steelbook P5 from BestBuy myself. Mine was sent out Friday though. Can't wait to play and glad to see Senran Kagura Splash coming over so quickly. It looks like stupid fun.

 
Nothing371 said:
I thought Play-Asia doesn't let you cancel anything or else they ban you?

Ever since the giant debacle with the Blue Rider release, I have been getting bombed with e-mails from them to go back and pay for it again. I'm just ignoring the e-mails and It's pretty funny.
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LOL, I've been doing the same thing. I guess I should pay at some point, otherwise I'm sure to the loose the $5 I've already paid, but it's nice to sit back and watch them work.

 
My Persona 5 LE was also shipped this morning from BestBuy. Can't wait to play tomorrow evening :)

Also, glad to hear about Peach Beach Splash getting localized in the Summer. I have been enjoying the game so far. Haven't even started the story mode yet, I'm just doing the challenge missions so I can unlock the cool power-up cards (Love their art).

 
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I suppose I should get out my thoughts on Atelier Firis before I start Persona 5 tomorrow as I know it won't happen if I don't. I haven't touched the game in a couple weeks, so I won't be going into as much detail as I normally would for every part. Without further ado:

Atelier Firis is the first open world (kinda) Atelier game in the series. It's not true open world in the sense that it's one giant world and you can traverse it without any loading screens. Instead it houses extremely large areas that are connected to each other, that's closer to the style of the other Atelier games. Despite this, it's not a bad attempt at going more open world than the small linear hallways that we're used to from the series. The main issue that this game has with this switch is that they do not give you the ability to travel faster for a good portion of the game and then warping between areas campsites comes not long after that, depending on how you go about the game post-exam. Gating the faster travel behind the second part of the game was a very bad design choice.

The story is also one of the worse entries in the series. Not so much for the story itself, but for how broken up it is which causes some very bad pacing. You can go very long periods without advancing the story, which when you're advancing across a large map to a destination point for the first section of the game, it causes some disconnect as to what you're running around for. Even after the exam, while better, it still has pacing issues with the story and I felt very little reason to continue playing. There was very little attachment towards the remaining story and I felt there was no real goal for me to continue towards.

Characters are still decent, but they're mostly a step down from past entries. Like the story, there is a lot of pacing issues with characters stories advancing with your own. A couple characters I'd somewhat classify as fine, but the rest were just pretty bad at keeping my attention because I would rarely encounter events with them. Hell, some I haven't ever had an event with after I initially recruited them.

Now the gameplay I'll split into two sections with the first being battle. Unfortunately I can't really say too much on this because its been too long since I've played. It is very similar to Atelier Sophie in a lot of ways, however one thing that I do remember well is that you can no longer defend any ally who is being attacked to help distribute and mitigate damage received. Instead you are only able to defend Firis. The game doesn't end with Firis faceplants the ground, so I'm not really sure why they limited it to just her. It's not a huge deal, but an odd one.

The second bit of gameplay is alchemy. It still uses the grid system from Atelier Sophie. However instead of the grid being tied to couldrons like they were in Sophie, they are now instead tied to catalysts that you can select after selecting all of the recipe ingredients. Each catalyst you can use has different pros and cons that differ from item to item. I liked it more than Atelier Sophie and made me less distasteful against the grid system.

Despite this there are two things they added to alchemy that I absolutely abhor. The first one being that in order to get better bonuses when crafting an item, you have to keep re-crafting it until you hit gold familiarity with it. Logically it makes sense, but from a gameplay perspective, fuck you GUST. The second one is how you acquire recipes. In Atelier Sophie you had a book that showed you recipes you could unlock and it gave you requirements to unlock the next items within the book. It was annoying, but at least you knew what you needed to do. In Firis on the other hand, you have to gather items to kill enemies until it becomes an "idea". From there you can see what else you have to do to unlock it. You might not think this is bad and for the first half of the game it wasn't an issue. After the exam though, I about flipped my shit trying to figure out how to unlock items. I think it's a good system to use to compliment something like the recipe book from Sophie or recipe books you could buy. This is probably the number one reason I stopped playing even though I have the ability to finish one of the endings done already.

Finally I guess I should briefly touch on the time limit in the first section of the game. I did not find it even remotely close to an issue. You are supposed to get 3 recommendations and proceed to an exam within a year. I was able to get all 5 recommendations and still have around 180 days remaining to futz around doing whatever I wanted prior to the exam. I was able to explore everything possible during my first 185 days, including high level areas. The only places I was not able to explore were ones gated by item/event requirements that weren't possible until the second section of the game.

So in conclusion, while I liked the larger maps it still needs further improvement. Plus there are several design ideas such as learning recipes that I have to seriously question who at GUST thought this was a good idea. Despite this I did still get some enjoyment out of it, but it was nowhere near the level of past Atelier games. I'd only recommend it on the cheap or potentially some kind of rental.

EDIT: Also there will be no impressions/thoughts on Persona 5 from me. No point with this thread. I'll probably do Cosmic Star Heroine as that'll likely be next on my list after Persona 5 unless TitS the 3rd release before I can get to that.

 
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Draekon said:
Honestly I'd wait for impressions since it's Prima and they'll likely print enough copies to buy them for at least a little while after release. Also this isn't the Official Design Works either, which is something most people would find much more enticing than whatever that will turn out to be.
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Yeah, I was wondering why it was 432 pages instead of being around the 512 pages the Official Design Works was. Guess it's a completely different book. I'll just stick with the Japanese version of the Official Design Works then.

 
dsman3717 said:
Yeah, I was wondering why it was 432 pages instead of being around the 512 pages the Official Design Works was. Guess it's a completely different book. I'll just stick with the Japanese version of the Official Design Works then.
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We are talking about Prima here, they probably just missed a few (dozen) pages by accident.
 
Dead_Batteries said:
My Persona CE is at bestbuy but they wouldn't let me pick up...
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Ya, forgot when but happen to me once. I think a manager could probably override it but other then that the system won't let them scan it in. It will just pop up the release date on the screen.

 
Vinn said:
Ya, forgot when but happen to me once. I think a manager could probably override it but other then that the system won't let them scan it in. It will just pop up the release date on the screen.
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Its because stores can be significantly fined for releasing product prior to its street date. They don't mess around with that.

 
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They just ninja changed the FE:H banner when I was at a 4.50% pity rate.  Bunny banner said it was running until 4/14 on the info.  I'm fucking pissed. 

 
in before delete.  You are too fast Draekon!

I didn't remember that we could have multiple banners at once.  It's nuts that there are three banners going right now.

 
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godofwar7 said:
What a time to be alive. When persona becomes a mainstream success.
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I remember reading a Gamepro/EGM article about Persona 3 and thinking "what a crazy game. You have to shoot yourself in the head to fight enemies. That sounds different." Then my wife said she was interested in it so I picked it up, and now we love the series. It's awesome, but somewhat scary to see it becoming a more popular game series. I just hope it doesn't go the way of Final Fantasy.
 
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"I don't get it.  So I'm like this high school student that commits suicide by shooting herself in the head, and then some monsters start attacking each other while all the clocks have stopped.  This doesn't make any sense."

 
I started with Persona 2 PSX English myself...got it randomly with some b-day money way back when. I liked it quite a bit and it was challenging, but Persona 3 is what really got me going. Still my favorite of the series, though P4 was fun and P2 had a good story as well (didn't play the translated other half until many, many years later). 

 
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Looks like Fire Emblem Echoes got leaked somehow, all of the plot and CGs/portraits/music and stuff got dumped.

Not looking at anything else, but I'll be damned if those character portraits aren't beautiful. Also they outdid themselves with the soundtrack

 
nitrosmob said:
Seems like everyone and their mother will be playing Persona 5 including myself. B-day present to myself.
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This thread is gonna become a ghost town real soon. Not even Supplice will be posting news articles.

MdVuD.gif


 
I remember playing P1 on the PSX.  I'm pretty sure I never finished it cause it was actually pretty hard I think.  Missed P2 but yeah P3 is the one that got me really into the series like most ppl.  I still remember ppl trying to explain the whole shoot yourself in the head premise.

 
Never played a Persona game before. Can you change which character you control while not in battle? One of the things holding me back from buying it is the design of whom I'm assuming is the main playable character. 

 
Speaking of Persona 5, does anyone know if the Take Your Heart edition will be available in stores tomorrow? I pre-ordered it at Best Buy not knowing that I would be moving before it came out. I already called corporate and that pickup location, and I can't have my copy transferred over to a closer branch. 

My only two good options that I know of are to call corporate again and allow one of my friends to pick it up and have them ship it to me, or to just leave it there and get my refund. The second choice is really rough because I used a certificate and a few E-gift card codes that I deleted from my email, so I don't even know where my credit would be at that point.

 
WTF AMAZON!

Ordered TYH Edition in June 7th 2016,

Has been stuck in "Shipping Today" all day today, it is now 1:11 am and it still has not shipped. You have 12+ hours to ship and deliver it amazon.....

I've had this on order for almost a damn year, i swear if this doesn't arrive i am officially done with amazon for any preorders. 

Time to Go talk to some outsourced Indian CSR (No offense) to get some BS answer. 

// End Rant. 

Edit- 

Complained to CSR about consistently getting packages late and they extended my prime by a month.

Don't see how that will help when the service itself is the issue, but it looks like ill be getting extensions on prime indefinitely because this will always happen. 

 
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Well, after getting severely fuck ed by Dell for nearly a month, my copy of Nier will finally be arriving tomorrow.

Now the only question is whether their FedEx delivery will get here before USPS with Persona.
 
"Arriving today by 8pm" 

"Shipping Today" (Since Yesterday)

Literally woke up for the day and no movement has occurred on my TYH edition on amazon. 

Complained again to CSR and they again offered me a free month of prime and i declined it.

With 3rd party scamming, lack of delivery guarantee on prime orders and NEEDING to have prime for most "deals" that pop up on amazon. there is no reason to order from amazon anymore, im good. 

 
Hm? Huh? So the japanese dub is dlc. Okay. But I only see the dlc available for PS4. Don't tell me the PS3 version won't have japanese dub...

EDIT: Nvm, the ps3 dlc is showing now.

 
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Say_Jayx3 said:
"Arriving today by 8pm"
"Shipping Today" (Since Yesterday)

Literally woke up for the day and no movement has occurred on my TYH edition on amazon.

Complained again to CSR and they again offered me a free month of prime and i declined it.
With 3rd party scamming, lack of delivery guarantee on prime orders and NEEDING to have prime for most "deals" that pop up on amazon. there is no reason to order from amazon anymore, im good.
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First of all, you need to relax. You said yourself that it's showing arrival today by 8PM, so unless it doesn't show up today, then you have a reason to complain.

Secondly, your constant complaints are only going to get you blacklisted from Amazon over something as silly as being impatient. I know you don't care now, but you'll regret it when games aren't the only thing you need to buy from them.
 
woozie2 said:
Speaking of Persona 5, does anyone know if the Take Your Heart edition will be available in stores tomorrow? I pre-ordered it at Best Buy not knowing that I would be moving before it came out. I already called corporate and that pickup location, and I can't have my copy transferred over to a closer branch.

My only two good options that I know of are to call corporate again and allow one of my friends to pick it up and have them ship it to me, or to just leave it there and get my refund. The second choice is really rough because I used a certificate and a few E-gift card codes that I deleted from my email, so I don't even know where my credit would be at that point.
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My local Best Buy got in at least 4 copies, 3 were store pickups but there was one out on the shelf. This is also at a very low volume store too so larger stores may have gotten larger quantities.
 
itzd4n said:
First of all, you need to relax. You said yourself that it's showing arrival today by 8PM, so unless it doesn't show up today, then you have a reason to complain.

Secondly, your constant complaints are only going to get you blacklisted from Amazon over something as silly as being impatient. I know you don't care now, but you'll regret it when games aren't the only thing you need to buy from them.
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Unless Amazon has some sort of instant delivery that transports from warehouse to my local ups drivers lap, my game isn't arriving.(i still don't have a Tracking # at all).

And you're right i apologize to others in this thread about my complaining, im just warning others on here to limit your ordering from amazon when it comes to your must have items, i know alot of us on here care about having these things day one/ mint condition.

Also i could careless about being blacklisted from amazon, they're nothing but a money grubbing conglomerate at this point. i'll be buying things that i can only find on there (books mainly) otherwise im done with feeding the beast and if need be, i'll use family accounts for my orders.

Edit -

For some context, i actually know why persona hasn't shipped. Its because i also have a Switch Pro controller on order that has not shipped and is supposed to arrive today as well. (made in a separate order last week)

However, i have not been charged for the controller like i have been for Persona already.

Im fully aware that they are withholding sending Persona because the pro controller hasn't arrived at their warehouse and they plan on shipping both together.

They're forgoing my guaranteed delivery on my first item (which i pay $100 membership for) so they can cheap out and send both items together, even though the second item is now delaying my first item from arriving.

 
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