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
BoxPizzaBox said:
I kind of zoned out with the Play-Asia free shipping promos recently as there wasn't something I wanted, but now there is (though it's a figure). Did I just miss one and is there usually one in December?
Click to expand...
It's still active now through the end of the month, only on $49+ Airmail orders.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Some visual novel news.

First of all Mangagamer released Horny Elves and a Moral Orc. It is 10% off on release week.

Mangagamer (NSFW)

Steam (NSFW)

Frontwing released Aikagi on Steam. There is an 18+ patch and it is highly recommended to patch it, as I've heard even CGs with school in them are replaced by white backgrounds to get around Steam's ridiculous anti school romance things. This is a kinetic novel about a guy whose parents make him leave home and he goes to live with a girl for a month to get used to this situation.

Steam

18+ Patch (NSFW)

VNDB (NSFW)

Denpasoft/Sekai Project released Kimagure Tempation. An 18+ patch is provided for the Steam release. This a mystery horror game where the main character lives with a succubus in an apartment building in a cursed building where 4 people died with their organs removed. This is by the same people as Nanairo Reincarnation, which also was a mystery horror game. I enjoyed that one a lot so this one is a high buy likely.

Denpasoft (NSFW)

Steam (NSFW)

18+ Patch (NSFW)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Dead or Alive 6 Season Passes are 50% off on Xbox Store

(PlayStation prices appear to not be discounted, for now at least).

On xbox the first two are named "Dead or Alive 6 Season Pass 1" and "Dead or Alive 6 Season Pass 2"

The second two are named "DOA6 Season Pass 3" and "DOA6 Season Pass 4"

IE, a search for 'Dead or Alive 6' season pass might not show them all, nor would 'DOA6 season pass'

https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/dead-or-alive-6-season-pass-1/c0mn5tts0515

https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/dead-or-alive-6-season-pass-2/bqxlmrs6b722

https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/doa6-season-pass-3/9nkhdzfqbdgd

https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/doa6-season-pass-4/9pdx0kwdt6w2

There are costumes outside the season pass too, because this game insists on being insane about DLC.

High Society, Alluring Mandarin, Santa's Helper, Hot Getaway, Sexy Bunny, Maid, and Deluxe costumes are not a part of any season pass.

None of those are on sale, but you can get the Deluxe Costumes as part of the Digital Deluxe version of the game which is on sale for $19.99, which is cheaper than buying the costume set alone at $35

Non-deluxe version of the game is also on sale for $14.99

You can also preview all the sets here, and any set which doesn't say "included in season pass", isn't included in any season pass:

https://teamninja-studio.com/doa6/us/dlc_costume.html

You're probably best off just buying the costumes you like for the characters you like for anything not on sale as getting every set is out of control, (and quite possibly even if it's on sale getting only what you want a la carte could be way cheaper, but some season passes do have characters too). But I did the quick research so figured I'd post anyway :p

And if you missed it, DOA1 Ultimate, DOA2 Ultimate, DOA3, and DOA4 are all on Xbox One / Series Backwards compatibility now. (The Xbox 360 Onechanbara was added too!)

The full list of the more recently added games you can view by going here and clicking 'Notes' until it's sorting 'NEW' on top:

https://majornelson.com/xbox-one-backward-compatibility/

Gunvalkyrie and Ridge Racer 6 are also there :3 Plus others, those are just the standouts to me.

Most are about $9.99 (not a sale price)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Guilty Gear Strive for PS4 is down to $39.99 on Amazon (was apparently the same price at Target too but is already sold out) and currently works with their B2G1 deal!

https://www.amazon.com/Guilty-Gear-Strive-PlayStation-4/dp/B08L4SX96P/

Games seem to be randomly added/removed from their B2G1 sale (a few games I was considering were removed from the sale while I was trying to figure out what to get) so order asap if you want a copy.

I ended up getting:

$39.99 Guilty Gear Strive (PS4)

$29.99 Akiba's Strip 10th Anniversary Edition (PS4)
$29.99 Apsulov: End of Gods (PS4)

Plus I had $20 in Gift cards so it was an even better deal! :)

 
Xseed Store is having a flash sale.  I picked up Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin Divine Edition (PS4) and Granblue Fantasy: Versus Premium Edition for $29.99 each.

 
Vinny said:
Me three!
Click to expand...
Four here! Thanks for the heads up! Been waiting for a good price to grab the premium gran blue. Was the merch unavailable for anyone else? They advertised it on the main page but it was all product not found. Wanted to throw some goodies in with my order
 
Want to pick up Sakuna Divine, but that's the only game on their site I currently have any interest in, free shipping is only on orders over $49, shipping kills the deal, and there appears to be no way to access their merchandise store. Like I would buy some artbooks or stuff depending on price, but I keep getting PAGE NOT FOUND or SITE TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE whenever I try to access some portion of the site that should have merch. And yes, I've tried on different browsers and even different devices.

Any way to get free shipping by adding something and then canceling it later or something for Xseed?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I already have Sakuna, so Granblue is less tempting with the shipping cost (though still a good deal). I can't access the merch page either to try to fill up my cart -_-

 
I noticed the two Senran games they have for $29.99 are both the LEs, so I went ahead and added PBS for the extras. Not entirely sure I’m satisfied, but I’ll see when they get here.
 
Souffrir said:
I noticed the two Senran games they have for $29.99 are both the LEs, so I went ahead and added PBS for the extras. Not entirely sure I’m satisfied, but I’ll see when they get here.
Click to expand...
its not letting me add burst renewal to cart

tried trails 2 for ps3 but same thing

says its in stock but when i hit add to cart it says it wont add to cart cause its actually out of stock

 
Tales of Arise (PS5) is $30 on Amazon, so I picked that up. Only wanted GBV on the Xseed store, but nothing else to pair it with for free shipping.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ordered SMT3HD, Yakuza 7, and Collection of Mana from Best Buy for $20 each. Not positive which ones I’ll be keeping yet, but figured it’s worth grabbing ’em in case they run out.

If it matters to anyone, BB’s offering the Yakuza 7 steelbook as a free bonus with the game.
 
Souffrir said:
If it matters to anyone, BB’s offering the Yakuza 7 steelbook as a free bonus with the game.
Click to expand...
Also worth pointing out it's the best buy exclusive steelbook and not the Day Ichi edition one lol. Because two different steelbooks for a game is the world we live in apparently.

 
Zenax said:
Also worth pointing out it's the best buy exclusive steelbook and not the Day Ichi edition one lol. Because two different steelbooks for a game is the world we live in apparently.
Click to expand...
Dissidia NT had three!

I think they may have been different regionally, too.

 
BoxPizzaBox said:
Dissidia NT had three!

I think they may have been different regionally, too.
Click to expand...
Dissidia NT actually had four - there were three with different sets of characters that were widely available (it was random which one you'd get) and then one that was limited to the collector's edition.

 
I think this might end up the first BF in years where I buy no games at all... and possibly nothing non-gaming either.  Kind of strange, but nice feeling.

 
nightc1 said:
I think this might end up the first BF in years where I buy no games at all... and possibly nothing non-gaming either. Kind of strange, but nice feeling.
Click to expand...
Not exactly the case for me, but then I didn't buy many games earlier in the year.

As I'm in no hurry to get a PS5 (intend to eventually but looking like late 2023 or 2024, at the earliest), I can see my physical media purchases basically hitting near zero next year.
 
I ended up picking up Judgement and Lost Judgement on PS5 from GS since I had my $5 cert. Figure $50 for the two is the best I am going to get on them for a while. Beyond that nothing else is really enticing and the sales are pretty crappy all around. The standout sale is for RE VIII at $20 everywhere. 

 
Yeah the b2g1 new and used at gs are the deals I've focused on, since it's just burning excess trade credit. I did Lost Judgment, Neo twewy, and akiba's trib 10th aniv. edition all new on ps4 for $60.

Astral chain for $25-27 used/new/digital also seems to be a new low point. But I already own a copy. I played 10 minutes of it and put it down for later - distracted by the constant jaggies and low framerate. Like the xenoblade nsw titles, it will take an unlikely pc release or some kind of switch pro console for me to enjoy them.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Mattiful-Joe said:
Not exactly the case for me, but then I didn't buy many games earlier in the year.

As I'm in no hurry to get a PS5 (intend to eventually but looking like late 2023 or 2024, at the earliest), I can see my physical media purchases basically hitting near zero next year.
Click to expand...
I've done better with the Switch since it launched of buying games I want either at launch with the launch discounts or when they hit $20 to $30. I'm also waiting on the PS5. I'm not opposed to late 2022. I'm fully caught up on all the series I collect for. So it's just picking at the scraps with what's on sale.. and I'm done with collecting scraps as it just distracts me from playing what I really enjoy the most.

 
Anyone with some experience have a ballpark figure on how long Xseed usually takes to ship stuff? Since they don’t offer tracking on orders under $99, I have no idea when to expect my crap.
 
I got an answer from XSeed regarding the merch being unavailable on their site. This is their response:

Thanks for notifying us, but our merch has been turned off for our current sale. Once the sale ends in a few minutes, we will get everything back up :)
 
Also it looks like Iffy store sales page is up. Not sure if this is their BF prices or not, nothing great compared to prior years, but death end re:quest 1 and 2 are available for $20
 
itzd4n said:
Also it looks like Iffy store sales page is up. Not sure if this is their BF prices or not, nothing great compared to prior years, but death end re:quest 1 and 2 are available for $20
Click to expand...
Other than Death Ends and Dragon Star Varnir, CE/LE discounts are terrible

Sent from my SM-N970U1 using Tapatalk
 
Only decent(somewhat) prices on iffy sale for LE are Death end for $39.99 & Azure Lane for $49.99 

Don’t think they ever went lower. Death end has been out of stock for a while & I would expect it to go OOS first

 
Also, originally came to just post about SMT5.

Not a review, per se, but my impressions/minor gripes.

After about 25-30 hours on hard, there's some weird difficulty spikes. Especially since it's really easy after said spikes.

(Trying to be vague and not too spoilery.)

Until I hit around level ~14, the game was extremely hard to the point of unbalanced. The lack of xp, demons, and skills made me have to run back to heal after 1 fight a lot of the time. And I got to the first boss under-leveled despite exploring and doing quests first. Like, 2-3 levels lower. I had to grind a level to beat the boss on the third try.

From 14 to low 20s, it was a breeze. Most demons available are strong against the area, and enemies rarely got a hit in.

Then from low 20s, on the third boss, there was another mini wall. Wasn't too bad,but I was basically a level below what I needed to be again to have the proper demons for that fight. No big deal, it's SMT, and felt like a fair wall. (Sidenote: a lot of people seemed to have issues with boss #2, but I didn't.)

After that, smooth sailing again til about... 28 on the fifth boss. WTF is this thing, it hits like a brick, doing like 450 damage a move when he's not hitting weaknesses, when you have 100-200 hp at best. So I went to prep myself for this specific fight, and ended up getting 3ish levels in like 30 minutes due to some lucky RNG. Fight was still hard, despite being now 3 levels higher than I think I was supposed to be.

A couple hours after that, everything's a cakewalk again.

Tip: Like a lot of SMT games, immunity against dark is great on MC. I'm pretty close already being able to get strong against 3 elements / immune light and dark, and no weaknesses. Haven't done it yet, cause it'll probably be too easy after that.

My only real non-gameplay gripes are that the camera makes it hard to see flying monsters coming at you, and docked seems to have a lot worse performance than handheld.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
If anyone who was only interested in Sakuna and merch from the Xseed sale over didn't find anything else for free shipping and didn't just eat the shipping cost, Sakuna Divine PS4 is still $29.99 even after the sale has ended and the merch is back up in the main shop page.

Pretty lame, Xseed.

I know some people just wanted Granblue, but that seems to have gone back up in price, sorry.

https://store.xseedgames.com/shop/?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
elessar123 said:
The standard Death end re;Quest games (especially 2) are good prices too at $20.
Click to expand...
For standard games, all of these at $19.99 each are good prices. I was referring to limited editions

Dragon star varnir

Death end re:Quest

Death end re:Quest 2

Azur Lane

Date a Live

Don’t think you can get any of these even used at these prices

 
elessar123 said:
Also, originally came to just post about SMT5.

Not a review, per se, but my impressions/minor gripes.

After about 25-30 hours on hard, there's some weird difficulty spikes. Especially since it's really easy after said spikes.

(Trying to be vague and not too spoilery.)
Click to expand...
Have you been abusing dampeners? I am near the end of the third area myself and personally have found the story bosses the easiest part of hard mode. Actually beat the first boss 2 levels lower than him and have been lower or equal to everything else so far.

Despite being a turn based game they sort of gave bosses attack patterns which make them very controllable in my experience. Their magatsuhi actions are completely wasted turns which means you often get 24 actions vs their 1 action (assuming they do not crit on the attack they use before activating magatsuhi.) I just play extremely defensively during the "normal" parts of the fights and then go all out on the magatsuhi turns.

Something I will say though is I've been 100%ing the compendium as I go which I am sure helps. When I get to a boss, I do a test run to see what they like to do during normal turns and then reset to fix up my team accordingly. It's surprisingly easy to very quickly make a half-decent demon in this game thanks to the essence system.

 
Zenax said:
Have you been abusing dampeners? I am near the end of the third area myself and personally have found the story bosses the easiest part of hard mode. Actually beat the first boss 2 levels lower than him and have been lower or equal to everything else so far.
Click to expand...
I don't abuse them, but yes I use them. Being able to carry 3 in a 20-30 round fight is still not exactly enough to abuse.

 
elessar123 said:
I don't abuse them, but yes I use them. Being able to carry 3 in a 20-30 round fight is still not exactly enough to abuse.
Click to expand...
Eh abuse is the wrong word I guess, but my point was mainly that they basically just let you ignore very large parts of fights and give you so many free actions. It feels kind of cheap honestly, I don't think I like it from a design perspective because it's so easy to make the encounter flow around that in a peaks and valley sort of way. I've yet to have a boss where I actually run out of them since it's not like they magatsuhi every turn obviously.

Also not sure how you've been building your main character but I went full strength with mine which I think helps a lot since you're not worrying about matching elements on boss fights. Not to mention guaranteed critical multi-hits are absolutely disgusting damage.

Funny enough the boss I actually found the hardest was the most recent one I finished which had physical resistance. Made me realize just how much I have been leaning on my main character.

 
So funny enough, on the time I beat the third boss, none of the dampeners I used activated because she didn't use the element skill on the boost turns.

Edit:

Zenax said:
Funny enough the boss I actually found the hardest was the most recent one I finished which had physical resistance. Made me realize just how much I have been leaning on my main character.
Click to expand...
I just realized that the one that I'm calling the fifth boss doing 450 dmg a move is probably the same one you're talking about. So we're actually at the same point.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
elessar123 said:
I just realized that the one that I'm calling the fifth boss doing 450 dmg a move is probably the same one you're talking about. So we're actually at the same point.
Click to expand...
Yakumo? If so I'd def say it was the hardest boss in the game for me so far but mainly because like I mentioned I had just been leaning too much on my main character for DPS. Got way too comfy with charged Damascus Claw just slaughtering stuff. I ended up just turtling completely and having my Belphegor using Mudoon until he died. It was slow, but also safe as I didn't lose anyone during the fight. Belphegor does not have high magic but it's very simple to have him become immune or resist every element and he has pretty high Vit. The other demons I had out were just other tanky ones with heals/buffs.

 
Finished 13 Sentinels last night and I found it overall pretty meh. The lauded story was actually pretty unoriginal and so packed with time looping/clones/dopplegangers etc etc etc that I didn't know what was going on two thirds of the way through and honestly didn't care. I felt no connection to the tropey characters or anything that happened really. Surprisingly, I found the the RTS segments, which are completely forgettable in their own right, to be the more exciting aspect of the game. Heaps of romance content bored me to tears and I actually fell asleep playing it. 

The positives for me were the always excellent Vanillaware art (Morimura is dummy thicc!) and I appreciated how it was more dynamic/animated/interactive than a proper VN. Beyond that though I'm glad I got it for cheap. I played hundreds of hours between Muramasa, Dragons Crown and Odin Sphere but I can confidently say I won't be playing this again. I'm glad people liked it and that it's doing well because I love VW but it was a miss for me and somewhat overrated imo. I hope their next foray includes the action gameplay they do so well. 

 
I'm not big into visual novels granted I've only played a handful miles edgeworth investigations, tears to tiara 2, underwater ray romano mask of decepticons and mask of truth, re zero prophecy of the throne off the top of my head. 

I'm hoping when I get to it that the gameplay distribution is more like utawareumono and less like re zero.  Though if it's decent slice of life and or I like the characters and am invested in them that helps things out considerably. 

 
Based on what I've seen I'm definitely in the minority by not being crazy about the game so you'll probably like it. I absolutely disagree that it's some transcendent masterpiece ala Nier Automata but it was okay. Also, I just noticed that the game's two year anniversary is coming up on the 28th and there's a celebratory event.

 
You thought 13 Sentinels was overrated but not Nier Automata? I thought Nier was overrated because it has a top-tier waifu who has a lot of hentai for online. Time travel stories are always a loopy mess, and 13 Sentinels doesn't differ in that regard.
 
I guess I was the opposite with 13 sentinels, I thought it was a pretty good VN with great artwork.  The battles I found uninteresting so I just breezed through them on easy with interceptors and turrets.

My biggest issue with the game as a VN was a [customspoiler='storytelling method'].  Namely, the game straight up lies to you, frequently, in the first half of the game to set up plot reveals later.  And it's not just done through characters who view things incorrectly.  In the game's database menu/catalogue it directly delivers false information to you.  For me this made plot reveals feel a little cheap afterward.[/customspoiler]

Edit:  In other VN news, a new Utawarerumono title was announced by aquaplus.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Long as we're talking about Automata, I thought it was a bit overrated as well. It's definitely really good, but so many people make it out to be a an absolute masterpiece (I think only its music is deserving of that title).

The plot was a little questionable at times. What it really excels at is being a human (so to speak) drama; delving into the hearts of people and what drives them. In that way I think it's very similar to the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, which oddly enough, is widely hated. The strength isn't in the plot progression, it's in pretty much everything else.
 
I connected much more with the characters and world of Nier A and I thought the storytelling was handled far more deftly. I found the combat beautiful and captivating if simplistic and the music exquisite. The story wasn't super original but the implementation of actual gameplay as a storytelling mechanic was transformative of my perspective on gaming as a medium. So yes, I concur with the praise for Automata.

 
Also I went into Automata pretty much blind and was blown away whereas I've been hearing 13 Sentinels hyped for a while. I went in expecting to be blown away but it just never happened. I wanted to like it. My main thought coming away from it is if they'd ever consider a remake/remaster of GrimGrimoire.

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