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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Nice. Was literally signed in all morning (Just signed in on mobile barely 10 minutes ago). Added it to cart when it went live, showed up in cart, then got signed out and cant sign back in or check out

 
SgtWiggles said:
Nice. Was literally signed in all morning (Just signed in on mobile barely 10 minutes ago). Added it to cart when it went live, showed up in cart, then got signed out and cant sign back in or check out
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I was able to log back in using an incognito browser. Still can't add to cart though

edit: now there's a waiting que

 
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BoxPizzaBox said:
it's definitely off-topic but could I ask how you store yours if you aren't displaying them?
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Most stuff now is in a storage box. A few things I keep in my media closet on a shelf (Crazy Taxi cars, Silver Surfer figure, ...etc) . Without posting a pic, imagine a walk in coat closet that instead of having the rod to hang stuff up is lined on each side with shelving that is 6" deep and the shelf spacing is perfect for media of all kinds. Some shelves have spacing intended for handheld games up through the vita... the other shelves are focused on DVD/SNES and smaller content... where you can get a finger in above to pull it. Every house I've owned, I've taken the time to setup a media closet. It makes things a lot easier when trying to find something.

My gaming stuff though is in the process of being downsized. I posted about it last year... I played at least a few minutes of most of the games I own and separated things into a keep (or keep to at least play) ... or sell off (or give to the kids). My keep stuff is now in a couple small media cabinets as it's only around 210 games. The sale stuff (I think it's around 400 games... maybe it was 600.. I forget) moved to boxes and bags and is in a closet in a spare bedroom waiting for my attention to start listing for sale on ebay. I've ebay'd parts of my game collection off several times through the years so I know the kind of attention and stress that goes into it. I don't "Need" the money so there's no rush to get it done.

 
My 3 things that take the most space for me are books, board games and video games. I'm slowly downsizing all of them. I'd rather own a 100 board games that I usually always want to play than the 250 or so I have right now. Same with video games. I own a lot of niche/RPGs and some just aren't too amazing. This is especially true for IFFY games. I'll sell what will sell well, but if it's worth like $5 or $10 I'll likely give it to my sister or just donate. I don't care about the money either. I know I've bought a lot over the years (many, many sales as well), but for me playing is what's most important.

 
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In happier news, NISA just tweeted that this Friday will have news regarding the release of Trails to Azure.

An unrealistically optimistic take is that they might be moving the release date up from 2023.  Perhaps it's a reveal of the CE contents or a cover art poll.

 
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nitrosmob said:
This is especially true for IFFY games. I'll sell what will sell well, but if it's worth like $5 or $10 I'll likely give it to my sister or just donate. I don't care about the money either. I know I've bought a lot over the years (many, many sales as well), but for me playing is what's most important.
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That's roughly what I've done for awhile. If it's under $10, I just donate it. But with the rising cost of postage in the last couple of years, it's gone up to like $15.

 
Was able to snag a Xenoblade 3 special edition at around 6pm EST yesterday, then panicked for an hour until I finally got a confirmation email. Nintendo's website is still broken, with the cart and order history options grayed out. We all knew it would be a shitshow, but mother of God was it a DISASTER. Nintendo tweeted last night that there will be another opportunity to order the special edition and they'll let us know when that is. I hope they honor the orders that people managed to get yesterday, because I don't want to go through this again.

Side note, I know the limit was 2 per customer, but I was still a little disheartened by how many people saying yesterday that they got 2. These things should really be one per customer. I don't want to tell people how to live their lives, but "one to play and one to keep sealed" is just silly to me. It's a game, it's meant to be played. And besides, "one to play and one to keep sealed" often really means "one to play and one to sell."

Sorry, judgmental mode deactivated. If anyone here didn't get one yesterday, I wish you all the luck for next time!

 
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I downloaded and played through the Yurukill demo yesterday on my PS4 Pro. It was OK overall, but there was near-constant slowdown/lag during dialogue (so practically every minute not in the shmup section), which was odd considering not a whole lot seemed to be going on from a technical perspective to explain the lag. Maybe it runs better on PS5?

I'm glad the demo was available because I don't think I'll be picking the game up at launch anymore. Something about the gameplay and writing made it feel like a junior version of 999/Virtue's Last Reward-meets-Danganronpa.

 
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It may seem silly but since certain nintendo stuff not only holds value usually but goes significantly up in price yeah it is somewhat a gamble but can pay off.  I sold smt4 for nearly 4x what I paid for it and smt4a for over 36x what I paid for it.  Which was good timing since I had emergency medical bills and needed the money. 

1 to keep and 1 to play isn't as terrible as the scalpers that buy out stock so no one can get a copy that there usually are. 

 
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Therein lies the problem: stop advertising drop times.

Let the people whom really want the item F5 the webpage.  Instead of crashing your own website and letting the bots + DDOS win.  Instead of fueling hype + greed, and enticing non-fans to purchase.  It's just like advertising the baby formula shortage on the news every night; what do you think happened in response to that??  A: people went out and bought infant formula for no reason besides that other people wanted it. 

I never understood the fully blown drop time announcement thing, and then acting super surprised when your website fails and the "sale" extraordinarily crashes and burns for everyone who tried. 

 
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Id like a XC3 SE since I have all the others but if I don't get one oh well. I do wonder if next year when the IRS takes a big wet bite out of everyone's "profits" if a bunch of people exit out of the reselling market. The number of teenagers who are flippers now and don't understand they have to pay taxes on their gains is going to make things very interesting.
 
beenaround said:
Id like a XC3 SE since I have all the others but if I don't get one oh well. I do wonder if next year when the IRS takes a big wet bite out of everyone's "profits" if a bunch of people exit out of the reselling market. The number of teenagers who are flippers now and don't understand they have to pay taxes on their gains is going to make things very interesting.
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That only applies to sales over a certain threshold from what I understand and the platforms already have the forms you need to fill out readily available if you do hit it. Much like gambling amounts or other jobs you don't have to report it if you make under a certain amount. For gambling its over 500 iirc. Though that might also vary from state to state.

Teenagers wise I'm not sure what the rules even would be for them since minors have different tax rules than adults.

 
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It's 600 bucks in a year.  On each and any individual platform. 

and yeah, half of people have slowed their online sales, and the other 50% have no idea that tax time is coming in the mail. 

 
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shadowysea07 said:
That only applies to sales over a certain threshold from what I understand and the platforms already have the forms you need to fill out readily available if you do hit it. Much like gambling amounts or other jobs you don't have to report it if you make under a certain amount. For gambling its over 500 iirc. Though that might also vary from state to state.

Teenagers wise I'm not sure what the rules even would be for them since minors have different tax rules than adults.
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Yeah like Nothing said, it's 600 dollars period. You will get a form 1099k for that and any gains you will be required to report as income, doesn't matter if you are 12 or 112 if it exceeds $600. You might be thinking of the fact that you don't pay tax on income under 12,550 but that only applies to an actual job, not a side hustle. The threshold is the same for a teenager or an adult by the way.

 
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Nothing- said:
It's 600 bucks in a year. On each and any individual platform.

and yeah, half of people have slowed their online sales, and the other 50% have no idea that tax time is coming in the mail.
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Yep. It used to be much higher, eBay/Mercari would only send you a form if you had something like 200 or more sales AND went over a large dollar limit. Now it's just $600 for the whole year, so I suspect some scalpers may be surprised for sure. The IRS keeps saying it's meant to be more informational, and that they intend to go after people running businesses not people paying friends for their part of a meal (as digital payments like cashapp, venmo, etc are included), but who knows where they'll draw lines.

For 'collectibles' you can keep track of how much the item cost and do capital gains (or even loss) more or less.. Prove cost basis and only pay the applicable rate on the gains, but for most of us that's just way more trouble than it's worth unless you're running a business.

Technically you were always supposed to be paying the tax anyway, regardless of amount and sales. Profit is income is taxable, you just only got the form if you met a fairly high bar of criteria.

 
It makes trade-in for store credit a little more appealing in my opinion. My local store does "about half of what it sells for on eBay" as store credit. If you consider ebay and paypal combined is around 12.5%, then a hypothetical 20%(+/- for everyone depending on total income) income tax under this new system, plus your shipping expenses, time and just having to deal with people and potentially tax forms. It kind of just becomes ~20% less with a lot less fuss as long as you're fine with credit. lol No sales tax when using credit to buy new things either so that's another 6% or so in a way.

Math is fuzzy - I'm recalling fees from memory and tax rates will vary of course. I suspect the eBay/Paypal fees you could deduct from the income part, so they aren't directly additive. You could also start a business and consider the shipping costs expenses, perhaps even devote part of your living space as an 'office' for the business and rent from yourself on paper blah blah... but again, more trouble than it's worth for many of us.

 
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Yeah, the value from selling trading cards to the store that pays good (~50%+) rates has vastly gone up now.  Instead of selling on TCGplayer.

Same with (collector) items you can occasionally sell locally on Craigslist.

Ebay has started lobbying its users to pester congress over these tax changes.  Compare Ebay to something like the gun lobby.  I would guess that additional changes to the tax laws are coming.  Ebay is furious over this.  I wonder how much their revenue has decreased.  It's going to sink much further in 2023. 

 
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Yeah my sister runs an Ebay business, and I'll give her really high ticket items to sell only really, as the profits for small cost items just isn't there after shipping and fees. Of course she's always been paying taxes, but many will get that fun too. I just feel good getting rid of crap for some of the cost, hopefully more than what I paid, but whatever if it doesn't happen. Frankly things are just things, and I'm even looking at digital only a bit more fondly these days. This is why I pass on massive LEs these days.

 
Wait, people haven't gotten their 1099-ks yet? I got mine in Jan, which is when you're supposed to get it. Pretty shitty of eBay to put gross collections (meaning what the buyer paid, even if I never saw it, like fees) on there though.


Nothing- said:
Therein lies the problem: stop advertising drop times.

Let the people whom really want the item F5 the webpage. Instead of crashing your own website and letting the bots + DDOS win. Instead of fueling hype + greed, and enticing non-fans to purchase. It's just like advertising the baby formula shortage on the news every night; what do you think happened in response to that?? A: people went out and bought infant formula for no reason besides that other people wanted it.

I never understood the fully blown drop time announcement thing, and then acting super surprised when your website fails and the "sale" extraordinarily crashes and burns for everyone who tried.
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I could be wrong here but I think there are bots who can just auto check a page all day and buy stuff once available. Feel like scalpers have more of an advantage if the times aren't announced in advance.
 
Looks like no steelbook for the launch edition of Soul Hackers 2, just some characters cards.

I'm a little tempted to get it on Xbox just because I think it's neat for them to get the release, or my inner contrarian is showing.

Unfortunately that whole 'smart delivery discs usually contain the Xbox One version and do a one time online check to download the Series S/X version' is kind of lame if you want to take the paranoia approach for physical media.

I'm still undecided on platform myself, may go with Steam this time.

6509804_rd.jpg


 
Vigilante said:
I downloaded and played through the Yurukill demo yesterday on my PS4 Pro. It was OK overall, but there was near-constant slowdown/lag during dialogue (so practically every minute not in the shmup section), which was odd considering not a whole lot seemed to be going on from a technical perspective to explain the lag. Maybe it runs better on PS5?

I'm glad the demo was available because I don't think I'll be picking the game up at launch anymore. Something about the gameplay and writing made it feel like a junior version of 999/Virtue's Last Reward-meets-Danganronpa.
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I only played the initial shmup level and the first dialogue section before you meet your partner and didn't notice any lag on the PS5. If I notice anything whenever I finish it I'll let you know, but I'd have to guess it just a technical issue as I agree it shouldn't be stressing the PS4.

 
Any play asia Coupon code that still works..besides Mypsvita & Gematsu. Thinking of ordering Aloy Nendroid

Edit: NLIFE worked for me. Gives 5% off

 
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BoxPizzaBox said:
Looks like no steelbook for the launch edition of Soul Hackers 2, just some characters cards.

I'm a little tempted to get it on Xbox just because I think it's neat for them to get the release, or my inner contrarian is showing.

Unfortunately that whole 'smart delivery discs usually contain the Xbox One version and do a one time online check to download the Series S/X version' is kind of lame if you want to take the paranoia approach for physical media.

I'm still undecided on platform myself, may go with Steam this time.

6509804_rd.jpg
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Just a heads up those cards will most likely be extremally small given the size of the ones included with the Switch release of 13 Sentinels. It's also worth waiting for a month of so as nearly every new Atlus title goes on sale in that time.

 
gospelman said:
In happier news, NISA just tweeted that this Friday will have news regarding the release of Trails to Azure.

Perhaps it's a reveal of the CE contents
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Today's announcement is that preorders are live for the Azure LE.
:switch:
https://store.nisamerica.com/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure-limited-edition-nintendo-switch
:ps4:
https://store.nisamerica.com/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure-limited-edition-ps4

 
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gospelman said:
Today's announcement is that preorders are live for the Azure LE.
:switch:
https://store.nisamerica.com/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure-limited-edition-nintendo-switch
:ps4:
https://store.nisamerica.com/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-to-azure-limited-edition-ps4
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Now that's more like it. NISA basically has me stuck buying every TLoH LE, but at least they include a steelbook and have a reasonable price at $90 plus free shipping.

 
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I keep almost buying it, but talking myself out of it. I have the expansion pass digitally, so it's hard to justify buying it again just for a physical copy. Seeing that VGP listing constantly get sold out makes it tempting though!

In general trying to shift to that 'buy it when I want to play it and get whatever version is cheapest' mentality I always fail at. Double dipping is a little easier to skip, Soul Hackers 2 will be the real test..

On that note, if anyone wants to get Soul Hackers 2 on Steam GamesPlanet (I'm not very familiar with them, but my Steam addon pointed them out as the current lowest price) has 17% off all editions of Soul Hackers 2 pre-orders:

https://us.gamesplanet.com/game/soul-hackers-2-steam-key--5694-1

 
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I think a couple of PLAY Exclusives on Play-Asia are getting reprints on the standard editions too - at least I'm pretty sure they were sold out before.

Ghost Blade HD (Switch):

https://www.play-asia.com/ghost-blade-hd/13/70d0cb

Pawarumi (switch)

https://www.play-asia.com/pawarumi-definitive-edition/13/70doi5

I also saw they have the foreign English physical version of Needy Girl Overdose up for pre-order. I wouldn't be surprised if a North American version pops up later though:

https://www.play-asia.com/needy-girl-overdose-english/13/70ffiz

I also saw a multi-language copy of Mistover for PS4 (switch is sold out on their site unfortunately), this game will be out of print including digitally at the end of June - it's always possible it could be republished by someone else:

https://www.play-asia.com/mistover-multi-language/13/70d669

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/05/dark-dungeon-crawler-mistover-being-removed-from-sale-at-end-of-june

 
Sorry to post so much in a row, but Target also has a Buy 2 Get 1 game sale starting tonight/tomorrow (internet says they update their website between midnight-2AM central). It says it excludes pre-orders, but it seems like sometimes they miss something.

Last time newly announced and added games were eligible, so be sure to check back if there are any new game announcements this next week you're interested in. Microsoft/Bethesda and Capcom still have presentations to give. There maybe could be a Nintendo Direct, but no official confirmation. The most interesting suggestion I've heard about one is that apparently Neon White had an email that said it would be in 'next week's direct'.

I'm pretty curious about Microsoft's show, to me it seems like some kind of shift has happened. Many of the new Limited Run Games announcements have Xbox versions, which is either rare or maybe even a first? (LRG's website doesn't even have an option for Xbox under platform filters lol) That plus Soul Hackers 2 getting an Xbox physical version. I have a feeling they might be making a push into more niche segments, but it's just a feeling. Previously the reason LRG didn't do Xbox releases is because Microsoft had a requirement of a minimum order number to do a physical run, meanwhile Sony/Nintendo didn't care how many you wanted. I wonder if they did away with that rule, and for a company pushing more into digital and subscriptions, I think it's an interesting time for them to decide to do it, if so.

 
The Target B2G1 always has stuff slip through right when it goes live that will be fixed an hour or two later. Thats true for movies, games, etc.
 
Yup though it varies on how long it takes to get fixed. Sometimes it lasts a day or two. Others it gets fixed within the hour. Eitherway always a good cheap option for preorders. 

For recommendations of the preorders pending

soul hackers 2 ps4 xbox ps5

trails from zero ps4 switch

xenoblade 3 switch

pokemon scarlet switch

pokemon violet switch

pokemon scarlet violet double pack switch

Live a Live switch

Fire emblem warriors 3 hopes switch

Digimon Survive ps4 xbox switch

Soul hackers is the only one I don't already have preordered but I'd feel better having backups just in case.  

Hoping ff origins and triangle strat will be part of the sale since both were excluded from all the previous sales. 

 
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I know I've got a few games preordered at Target because of all their previous sales and stuff... but I have no idea what. They don't have a way to filter order that haven't shipped yet. 

 
Vinny said:
I know I've got a few games preordered at Target because of all their previous sales and stuff... but I have no idea what. They don't have a way to filter order that haven't shipped yet.
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Do you save the preorder emails and shipped emails? That's what I do.

Like that's how I know I'm still waiting on digimon survive from gamestop to ship one day.

 
Vinny said:
I know I've got a few games preordered at Target because of all their previous sales and stuff... but I have no idea what. They don't have a way to filter order that haven't shipped yet.
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I keep a google docs spreadsheet labeled preorders and just throw in what I ordered and from what store, along with if it had a discount. Sometimes I'll just add a pre-order to a Best Buy order to get free shipping for something else. I'm okay with keeping the pre-order unless somewhere else has a discount beforehand, so I keep track of them that way.

I'll be up late playing some games and checking periodically since it's the weekend.

Any tips for the best way to periodically check if it has gone live yet? My thoughts are: look for the 'BOGO' filter option under browsing video games. Click 'show eligible titles on the weekly ad (right now it just brings up some text). Maybe a front page banner. Add some stuff that's probably eligible and keep refreshing the cart periodically.

 
shadowysea07 said:
Yup though it varies on how long it takes to get fixed. Sometimes it lasts a day or two. Others it gets fixed within the hour. Eitherway always a good cheap option for preorders.

For recommendations of the preorders pending

soul hackers 2 ps4 xbox ps5

trails from zero ps4 switch

xenoblade 3 switch

pokemon scarlet switch

pokemon violet switch

pokemon scarlet violet double pack switch

Live a Live switch

Fire emblem warriors 3 hopes switch

Digimon Survive ps4 xbox switch

Soul hackers is the only one I don't already have preordered but I'd feel better having backups just in case.

Hoping ff origins and triangle strat will be part of the sale since both were excluded from all the previous sales.
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I'll add a few suggestions, if they work, some of these were available last time but I missed them:

Prinny Presents Vol 3

Chaos;Head double pack

Ys VIII

Made in Abyss

Jojo's All Star Battle-R

Super Bullet Break

Yurukill

 
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Looks like B2G1 is live on Target.com - the preorders I had an eye on so far aren't eligible, unfortunately but I'll still browse through.

 
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