Game news (again?)
Nothing that interesting is happening in the Big Blue Room, so more game news. Fortunately there's been some activity on the RPG front.
-Persona 5 announced for winter 2014. It's quite a ways off but one assumes that the fans would have invaded Atlus headquarters in an enraged mob if they'd done their big announcement of all the various spinoffs without announcing 5. Said spinoffs include Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (random dungeon crawling game), Persona 4: Dancing All Night (rhythm dancing game?), and Persona 4: The Ultimate Ultra Suplex Hold (yet another installment in the fighting game series). Not much info is available yet on P5, but instead of shooting yourself in the head or wearing funny sunglasses, we're now apparently in the realm of furniture emancipation. The surprise is that the platform is still PS3 despite a release date a year from now, when one assumes that the next-gen systems will be in full swing.
-The Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki mostly lived up to expectations... and then concluded on a complete cliffhanger, which is apparently not that unusual to the series. So the sequel being all-but-announced (via magazine interview) for summer 2014 is welcome, but raises a few questions regarding how fast the developers can work given the technical problems that plagued the original. One assumes that things like UI, character models, and combat system can be reused, but new areas and cut-scenes would have to be created from scratch. Here's hoping it doesn't turn into one of those infamous rush job disasters.
-Also on the horizon is the next Tales game, Tales of Zestiria. After giving up on mostly-English-coherent names like Destiny and Phantasia, the series appears to be heading towards names with partially-made-up-words. In this case, "Zestiria" is meant to be based off of "Zest", as in enthusiasm. Landed west of Albuquerque, etc. The plot as thus far revealed appears to be the standard "everyman protagonist meets magical girl", a bit like Xilia, except there's also a dragon involved and some sort of sage/prophet legend (導師 never translates well, BDFF went with "Devout" apparently), who may or may not be the magical girl.
-Koei and Capcom are having something of a Sengoku event competition as both have new Sengoku games in the works and are stepping hard on the PR with grandiose seiyuu events. Basara 4 looks pretty much like Basara 1 because the series never changes character designs, while Musou 4's characters have taken a turn for the whacky, perhaps because there are only so many ways to arrange samurai armor and kimonos and they'd used up all the saner variations. Which of these approaches is better is quite debatable.
-Patch 2.1 of Final Fantasy XIV will be released on 12/17, featuring a new raid tier, player housing, ninja barbers, a fight against moogles, and finally some new instances that provide Myth Tomes so that players will finally leave Ampador Keep.
-The Elder Scrolls Online release announced for 4/14/2014.
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Unrelated: Should merge blogs or something, have too many.
-Persona 5 announced for winter 2014. It's quite a ways off but one assumes that the fans would have invaded Atlus headquarters in an enraged mob if they'd done their big announcement of all the various spinoffs without announcing 5. Said spinoffs include Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (random dungeon crawling game), Persona 4: Dancing All Night (rhythm dancing game?), and Persona 4: The Ultimate Ultra Suplex Hold (yet another installment in the fighting game series). Not much info is available yet on P5, but instead of shooting yourself in the head or wearing funny sunglasses, we're now apparently in the realm of furniture emancipation. The surprise is that the platform is still PS3 despite a release date a year from now, when one assumes that the next-gen systems will be in full swing.
-The Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki mostly lived up to expectations... and then concluded on a complete cliffhanger, which is apparently not that unusual to the series. So the sequel being all-but-announced (via magazine interview) for summer 2014 is welcome, but raises a few questions regarding how fast the developers can work given the technical problems that plagued the original. One assumes that things like UI, character models, and combat system can be reused, but new areas and cut-scenes would have to be created from scratch. Here's hoping it doesn't turn into one of those infamous rush job disasters.
-Also on the horizon is the next Tales game, Tales of Zestiria. After giving up on mostly-English-coherent names like Destiny and Phantasia, the series appears to be heading towards names with partially-made-up-words. In this case, "Zestiria" is meant to be based off of "Zest", as in enthusiasm. Landed west of Albuquerque, etc. The plot as thus far revealed appears to be the standard "everyman protagonist meets magical girl", a bit like Xilia, except there's also a dragon involved and some sort of sage/prophet legend (導師 never translates well, BDFF went with "Devout" apparently), who may or may not be the magical girl.
-Koei and Capcom are having something of a Sengoku event competition as both have new Sengoku games in the works and are stepping hard on the PR with grandiose seiyuu events. Basara 4 looks pretty much like Basara 1 because the series never changes character designs, while Musou 4's characters have taken a turn for the whacky, perhaps because there are only so many ways to arrange samurai armor and kimonos and they'd used up all the saner variations. Which of these approaches is better is quite debatable.
-Patch 2.1 of Final Fantasy XIV will be released on 12/17, featuring a new raid tier, player housing, ninja barbers, a fight against moogles, and finally some new instances that provide Myth Tomes so that players will finally leave Ampador Keep.
-The Elder Scrolls Online release announced for 4/14/2014.
-
Unrelated: Should merge blogs or something, have too many.