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MZero posted...

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dang it

lmao same

and i think it's kinda telling that when someone expresses "i'm glad i don't know about all this toxic stuff", the first response is to immediately try to tell that person more about all the toxic stuff that is going on (that you have purposefully sought out)

like this seems like part of the problem to me. an endless cycle of negativity.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I prefer to know my enemy.

then you should get to know them...? it seems like all you know are strawmen.

i mean, you don't really need AI to generate "fake outrage", you just need news articles that elevate some random tweets by nobodies as "people are outraged about this". which is exactly what clickbait news currently does.

Like, english has, what, hundreds, thousands probably, of phrases and sayings and terms that (of course) only exist in english. If you translate literally and only include phrases that are used in japanese, it's like you're painting a picture except you've removed dozens of shades of colors from your palette "because those shades don't exist in japan". But you can't translate the japan-specific expressions because they're not translatable to english, so you just end up with... less possible phrasings.

And you can't trust the guy making these pics anyway. Like, just looking at the japanese lines myself (as an amateur), it's clear to me that there are lots of nuances about the way the characters are speaking that are completely left out of the "literal translations" on the right. Like for example, in the last quote, the way she says "yo' hands" instead of "your hands"? Imagine if I gave a literal translation of that and I said she said "your hands". But she didn't, she said "yo' hands" which conveys a much rougher tone. That's what the "literal translations" are doing. She's slurring a lot of her words but it's coming out pristine in the "literal translation".

This sounds like these people are saying they want the game to be AI-translated (because they hate localizers), not that they think it is. Their issue is that it was clearly localized by humans.

These people don't understand that it's completely normal for game localization to "change" lines, because the same tone/intention from the japanese can't be conveyed by a literal translation, and certain expressions, when translated literally, won't sound natural.

Like if the best you can come up with (the #1 leading example they started their thread with) is dialogue where all the lines are the same except one of them has "rub-a-dub-dub" in it then you really don't have a case. Especially when they mistranslated one of the lines themselves.

People like this have taken the few cases where localizers did take extreme liberties or inject american politics into lines, and have gone crazy over it, now seeing red at every single localization change ever. Games from 15-20 years ago that were beloved for their localization, they'd hate if they saw it now, nitpicking every single line for not being enough of a literal translation.

swordz9 posted...

Interested in this, but Ive seen complaints about the localization giving bad AI translation vibes?

I couldn't even begin to imagine where anyone would get that vibe from. Can you link to any of them...?

yeah disliking sea of stars is kind of an everywhere thing in my experience

(i am a few hours further in to eiyuden now and i still really like it)

Played til second boss.

First Impression:

I like it. I no longer expect to agree with Jason Schreier.

Of course, I haven't played Suikoden II, so I can't compare if it's lacking "heart and soul". But so far I like all the character designs, the voice acting, the writing. Battle animations are sick.

I have no clue why IGN says it has a slow start. When I hear slow start I think Persona, I think Suikoden V which takes hours to get to gameplay. This game has you in your first dungeon after a short 15-minute intro! And to the second dungeon shortly after! Maybe they mean it'll take a while before the grand epic military stuff starts.

Oh and I hate Lian.

Oh I don't really pay attention to critics at all usually. It was sort of a half-serious remark. I don't actually think I can glean anything from it.

My theory (for this Sea of Stars discussion thread) is that, yeah, reviewers have to play so many games, they probably don't, like, get fully enraptured by them anymore. So, Sea of Stars, on the surface, is beautiful, has nice music, cool character designs, good UI and combat feels good and looks flashy at first... and that first impression just carries them. The fact that the game sort of fails to hook you or really have the charm of the games it's inspired by, doesn't register for them because they play 3 games a week and don't get hooked like that anymore anyway so it's all the same to them. Like having dulled taste buds when you're sick. "Yeah, this game probably tastes good, because it's presentation is really great!"

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I didn't play Sea of Stars, but I don't quite understand what you mean by this. Wasn't SoS good?

The implication is that it wasn't.

(I actually like Sea of Stars mostly, but it's got some major issues and isn't the masterpiece the reviews would make you think it is.)

I'm not surprised at the ratings. I am a bit surprised to hear how "oldschool" (read: lack of modern conveniences) the game is.

You've gotta think, if all these outlets that gave Sea of Stars raving 9/10+ reviews think this game is a 7/10, then oof, how bad is it?

I feel like I'll probably agree with Jason Schreier's take but I'm going to try it anyway.

I didn't love it either (as you could assume) but I tend to stay quiet about that because the people who love it really love it and I feel bad bringing down their vibe.

But this style of storytelling isn't really my aesthetic anyway. I do appreciate what they were doing with the story. Most of my feelings are just gameplay-related where I didn't think the moment-to-moment gameplay was that interesting (because of lack of enemy variety and how most rooms felt very similar when it came to evading said enemies. ah, grey rectangular hallway. run around the edge here... another rectangular hallway, let's just swerve around past this enemy... repeat...)

I didn't look up any explainers of the story after beating it so I still have no clue what any of it means.

ah, yes. this is a change to my experience as i will now no longer see those threads on my topic list. as opposed to before. for sure.

My only idea for the sequel is that Tyrion should defend a Demon at some point. Either as the hook in the very first case, or I guess maybe in the final case. That's assuming we go in further on the angel/demon world stuff, which we may not, I think the post-credits hook seemed like more political stuff in some other country so idk (don't think the spoiler bars are needed at this point but just in case)

To be fair, most of the court segments feel like they last, like, half an hour. They were really quick to get to the point, though maybe part of that is there wasn't much meat to get to anyway.

Yeah, you have to be really careful with feedback. People (especially in 2024, but it's always been this way) have a tendency to want everything to go quick, to "respect my time", etc. I can think of so, so many pieces of media (usually very famous ones!) that are constantly accused of being "too slow". I'm sure you're well aware of this yourself as a writer. But (as a non-writer) I think there's a reason lots of these things are "too slow". Proper buildup is really important for a story, and while you can sometimes go too far and end up with plodding cases like AAI2, there's probably a reason that happens so much more often than the alternative. Better to err on too slow because at least the payoff for the buildup is really earned.

A lot of people are just looking for media to give them their next "hit" of dopamine with an exciting twist, cliffhanger, plot development, etc, they don't necessarily realize how important the buildup is for those moments. The customer is not always right, in this case. And if you're a new writer, I can understand why you give in to the instinct to just try to please people, because it must feel horrible if your already small number of playtesters drops and someone says "eh i got bored it was too slow" and stops playing. Whereas the feedback from people who feel it went unsatisfying quickly might not have as much of an immediate sting.

Stoneheart

I think Octopath did random encounters well.

foolm0r0n posted...

Let's make a Board Eight Two forum

What could go wrong

Probably the same thing that goes wrong with every attempted "migration" when a community shuts down - No one could all agree on their ideal place to migrate, so the attempt would fail.

Oh I don't think there's any better way to ask the question. I just don't really think its migrate-able. I guess I might ask "If board 8 dies, would you spend more time on the discord due to the void left by it" but that would be like "becuase i lost one thing, i now do a different thing", not "i have replaced the thing with another thing that can fill the same role" don't mind me, i am being overly pedantic.

Voted "Maybe/I don't know/Unsure" because I sort of disagree with the premise of the question. Discord and a message board are just not really comparable (unless we use this threads feature which I've never even seen used before tbh so idk how similar it is). I'm already on the discord but the convos there aren't the same as following a thread here so I just don't think it could replace it, and if anything, the chat scrolling by even quicker would make me less likely to try and follow it.

well they literally have p o l in their name!

Fransisco

mnk posted...

Also Famitsu gave it a 33/40 (I think it was a combo of 10/8/8/7), which is kinda low for them. Hmm...

I feel like I've asked this before but have any of these "veteran dev returns after many years to make spiritual successor" games done well? I don't think they have a very good track record. Even Bloodstained, which seems like it turned out okay (I haven't played it yet) didn't seem particularly beloved.

KamikazePotato posted...

The ratings of these last few cases have not exactly inspired me to watch the rest of AAI2.

My own comments have been pretty negative, but I'm also speaking about "the case", i.e. the logistics of the murder plot and the self-contained mystery. There are character arcs happening throughout these cases that are actually pretty good and worth seeing through imo.

Honestly might be the least memorable case in the game to me. I remember there was a lot of stuff that happened but I don't remember the details or why any of it did, much less who died or why or how or what the mastermind's deal was. Perhaps there is such a thing as doing too much in an epic case! I remember figuring out the mastermind being pretty satisfying though.

CoolCly posted...

Haha yeah. What does this mean for how grindy the main game will be?

probably not much. this was a little side-project to drum up interest during the years-long wait for the game, so i'm guessing the idea was to use as few resources/dev time as possible to make something that would still last a decent amount of playtime. i'd be surprised if a modern casual-ish JRPG in 2024 will have that much grinding.

what i do wonder about, in the vein of how streamlined games in 2024 are, is how hard it will be to recruit all characters. in suikoden (and i've only played IV and V actually), it was basically impossible to do on a first playthrough without a walkthrough. y'know, classic "your window of time to recruit this character was by traveling back to the previous town after this one plot event and if you advance to the next plot event you're locked out, oh and there's no reason you'd ever travel back to that town anyway"

this doesn't really fly in modern game design anymore (missables in general, really) so i wonder if they'll cut the strict time windows or put big exclamation marks over people's heads or etc.

mnk posted...

I just unlocked Hogan's shop and did a spit take when I saw how many stamps some of the trades required. I'm only 3-4 hours in with 18 stamps and I already think the game is getting a little long for how simple and repetitive it is, and the most expensive trade requires 160 stamps?! How.

This will not be a game I try to be (quasi-)completionist about, lol.

that's about as far as i got as well, but i would say it's less that "it's getting a little long" and more like i'm still waiting for the game to start. every gameplay segment where you finally get to go into a dungeon lasts like <5 minutes before you're forced to go back to town and talk to more NPCs. just let me actually play for more than a couple of rooms!

Country

Haven't played Radiata. If this is anything like Suikoden, then not all 108 characters will be battle-playable - some of them will add functionalities to your home base, which is usually also a military base, and the JRPG gameplay will occasionally be interspersed with some, like, military/ship battles, and some 1v1 duel minigames I think?

But I mean, it seems you have the gist of what it's about, probably moreso than many people if you've actually played the spinoff, so idk what else there is to say. Battles will use 6 party members and you'll get various co-op attacks depending on which party members you use, I think. Been ages since I played a Suikoden game.

Para's memory is better than mine but I assume I felt similarly. From what I remember, I really didn't like this case. And what's odd is that compared to stuff like mediocre DD cases or AAI1 cases where "didn't like" means "I was bored / not invested", I mean I think I actively disliked this one. Everything about it just felt "off". I don't remember why in particular.

Part of it is likely due to the "pacing" - E2-4 is a "short case." Nevermind that it's still longer than a ton of non-finale cases from before the series got bloated pacing, in context of this game it is filling the "4th case" slot which tend to be short cases. But this case tries to do a lot, if any case deserved more time it'd be this one! But from what I recall, the murder mystery was lame and then everything with Blaise felt like it kinda came out of nowhere. I mean I get he was probably the climax of the "you're losing your badge!!!" plot but we hadn't met him and then we did and then he's taken out and idk it just didn't feel right ever.

We did it for every single person, every single piece/spell/profile though every time.

I don't know why modern AA games / fan-made games haven't yet implemented some way to just highlight which pieces of evidence/profiles will give dialogue. Going through every single one individually and getting the default response 80% of the time just to find the few with real dialogue is not fun. It's 2024, guys, come on!

Hat
Max

MacArrowny posted...

(I thought Kazuma was great in GAA1 but hated him in GAA2)

Yeah I thought his newfound edginess was annoying lol but andy was tripping over himself making excuses for it ("well he's just pasionate! it's understandable!") but that's okay, your unconditional love of kazuma is cute

Maria's the best. One of the rare side-characters in an AA game who entirely just helps you when you ask and is entirely honest and competent while doing so!

Truly we are in the dark age of Gamefaqs.

Fill

Kind of surprised by the low ratings here, though I don't know if I disagree with them. At the time, I remember still riding the high of how good case 1 was and even this case still just felt better than AAI1's cases did. But in retrospect, that's a pretty low bar, and this case wasn't particularly special or memorable in any way. I think if you asked me after I played it I would've been like "7/10! That was pretty good!" but I don't think I'd feel the same way now that I'm not coming out of the AJ+AAI dark ages.

None of these are particularly noteworthy but I guess my best are completing Aria Low % in Necrodancer, getting 100% in Super Meat Boy (though I think you can go above 100 if you do even more hardcore stuff), and, I suppose, clearing DSR and TOP ultimates on-patch in FFXIV (also week 1 cleared all savage raid tiers for Endwalker) (I guess clearing the second raid tier is kind of a big one considering the devs nerfed it a week later and apologized for tuning it to be too hard)

With AAI1, I wondered if maybe the first case was the best in the game, which was an indictment (Though I do think I'd probably put case 5 above it, from the little I remember)

For AAI2, I certainly think this is the best case in the game. (And I played this more recently, enough that I can remember feeling that way for sure) Except that's decently high praise because AAI2 is solid.

Wow, what a stopping point you chose!

wait isn't the release date for this still 10 days away? kickstarter backers get it that early?!

Central

Shovel
Chloe

Libel

Yeah I feel like being really careful about "spoiling" people is (rightfully) such a taboo, but I do kinda think it should be standard practice to let people know that case 4 is just the final case so they don't get disappointed, because that is probably a universal reaction.

Definitely one of the best moments in a video game for the interaction between music + story + gameplay. Still get chills every time I hear that track.

yeah i dunno, i think i may be retroactively judging this game to be worse than it actually was. like, it was unremarkable, but i'm not sure i was bored. they may actually be 5/10s. then again, this was 14 years ago so i may have been easier to impress at the time. wtf has it really been 14 years? if anything, my memory of these cases is surprisingly decent for being 14 years ago.