I'm not 100% sure about how rare the One Piece physical copies for the 3DS and Vita will be (they were available at the Namco Bandai web store as well). Tales of Hearts R is also the same predicament of getting at Gamestop and also the Bandai Namco store. Senran Kagura Versus is also getting a limited physical release......it's hard to tell if any will be high in the aftermarket after their stock goes low (I'm guessing Tales of Hearts R will eventually). It's a risk but it's more of a risk for us physical copy lovers, since the digital downloads will be available for all these games.
Like heck I want digital Vita games....I just don't want to go above a 32 gig for the moment though once 64 gig reaches about 50-60 dollars shipped i'm all over it.
BTW I have ArNoSurge first impressions. I'm going to start by saying i'm enjoying the game a good amount after about an hour and 20 minutes of playing yesterday. This is more a call back to both Ar Tornelico 1 and 2. This is a great thing IMHO as I thought Ar Tornelico 3 was a huge step back in the battle system and overall fun factor of the first games.
First of all the graphics are relatively decent for the enemies and characters. They look pretty nice and also the diving areas look clean and nice as well. The main problem is that there is noticeable lag when going around the over world and town. You get a bit of lag when interacting with an element such as talking to a character, going to a shop, or picking up materials from the world. This also just occurs randomly when moving around. I also didn't mention but to me the environments I've seen so far for the town and dungeon have extremely simple looking geometrically. Not terrible looking but not great.
The gameplay for the most part is great fun. I like the battles for the most part, and these go back a lot to the battle systems of the first 2 games. So far this is no stripping your songstress to power up her songs in this game. It's similar to the first 2 games where you choose a song, do battle with your front line characters protecting your songstress including a defense phase where in a correct timed action could give some protection to your songstress. After a while the synchronicity of said front line and the songstress goes up and the song gets stronger as well as her helping you in actions. The more weak enemies you kill and when you break enemies (cause them to lose their actions) you get more player actions and your stats go up for your song. You can then unleash the song when powered up enough and lay waste to your enemies.
Returning from the previous games is diving, purification ceremonies and synthesis. Diving is quite fun, as this is the area where you meet all internal forms of the player you're diving into. These are great VN segments where you get to really get to know who you're diving into. Depending on DP which you gain from battles, you can do many actions and a lot more of the intimate actions (such as saying you're cute or something) cost a lot of DP but likely get you more stills of the characters for your pictures. You get to meet versions of the character including stuff they may be hiding from you. I've only done the first stage but it was good. Also what's new is you know get a chance to get emotional crystals which materialize in the physical world. These come into play in the purification ceremonies, which I'll get to in the next section. What has changed is the way the you move around the diving world before diving. Supposedly as you get more people to dive into, the tracks of the diving may interact and such so multiple people will be in each other dive states. I'm not 100% sure of this but the game seemed to hint at it. Also unlike the previous installments I believe you can dive back into completed nodes and replay events taking different DP actions, such as the ones that costed a lot of DP and getting new events and likely new event pictures from them. That's a nice touch as some of the DP actions costed a lot in the first world alone.
Purification ceremonies are pretty basic so far. You get to go into the purifcation spa thing and you get to be with yoru songstress in her future bikini type outfit hubba hubba. you pretty much choose a part of the body and stick the previously mentioned emotional crystals you get from diving and bam you get stat ups. You can also stick these emotional crystals in your front line warriors like the main character but they can't use most of them. That's basically it there. You also sometimes randomly earn new dialogues from different events and I believe you can read these when you interact with others walking around and in dungeons and such. This is a light form of the Tales game segments where the character you choose to walk around in the dungeon with you can talk to you about stuff. You may be able to get this conversations done otherwise but I haven't figured it out yet. This is very similar to Ar Tornelico 2 where you talk to the girl in the night and get to know them better, though I don't think this unlocks when you can dive deeper into them like that game.
Synthesis is basic and easy it seems like the previous games. You get ingredients and you get recipes and you make stuff...that's basically it. Enough said though the little video when they're making stuff (only done one food item so far) is a pretty silly dance.
All in all I'm really enjoying the game, as I'm quite a big fan of this series. I never really got going with Ar Tornelico 3, but I'm glad this is more a return to form. There is some technical issues, but I haven't seen anything game breaking yet, and heck Ar Tornelico 2 had lots of bugs and still remains my favorite in the series. I strongly recommend it mainly if you want to break away the usual kind of RPGs released. It feels pretty awesome, is silly but also a bit serious so far, seems to have an okay story line that eventually segways into the first game, and there is the silly and cute innuendo for the characters. The innuendo doesn't seem s blatant and in your face as the previous games but I know that will likely change as the game goes on. I do warn others that as you go farther into the diving you do see a lot more mature stuff and I wouldn't recommend that to younger players.
Sorry for the long rant, but this is easily one of my favorite niche series so just spreading a little love for it esp after a more average 3rd game IMHO.
ed up my copy's cover art/case/manual/case (courtesy of disgusting Gamestop employees). I'm surprised that it's in stock still, but I wish I had ordered it to begin with. Anyone have spare NISA coupons?
