Kitsune does the happy dance

Games
#1

Not only has this weekend in gaming news revealed that Dragon Quest VIII will use a brand new skill system, let you do martial arts moves when you’re unequipped with weapons and teach Jessica in the ways of flirting, among other things that made me run around the apartment in circles. Not only did Hayarigami get an awesome review in Gamewatch, practically requiring me to buy it. Not only did Tales of the World 3: Narikiri Dungeon get announced and shown when the earlier is my favorite GBA RPG, but now this:

http://www.famitsu.com/game/coming/2004/09/16/104,1095305074,30841,0,0.html

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II is coming out here, and is set for a preliminary release date of December 22nd! Woo! It says Interplay, but unless Miguel will be distributing copies to players through his hermaphrodite website, I’m guessing Capcom, Sony or EA is distributing this one over here. Nevertheless, I’m psyched. I’ve wanted to play this game for ever so long, I really enjoyed the first one, but it certainly could have been improved massively.

Yeah, yeah, what do you care, this is old news to you. Well, just keep in mind I can say that about just about every Japanese game that releases over there? Silent Hill 4? Welcome to three months ago! Paper Mario 2? Been there, done that. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne? What took you so long? Spy Fiction? Last December, buddy. Otogi 2? It may be a year later, but its for your own good to pay more attention to this one, especially since the first game is included inside it. Phantom Dust? Just came out and you’re not getting it. :P Dororo/Blood Will Tell? Okay, so the releases are pretty close, you got me there. :D Anyway,

Let me have my fun. runs around in circles

I’m off to go read up on it again and run around in circles! This is where all of you start talking about what you thought of the game in retrospect and fill up the thread with your thoughts and DON’T link to the old Dark Alliance threads.

-Kitsune (weeeeeeeeeeeeee!)

#2

You need a cup.

Also I get a whole bunch of “???” in that link, but if that’s the game in the screen shot then it looks groovy.

#3

I’m really hoping to get Phantom Dust over here. There have been impressions coming out from people that got the demo version on Famitsu, and they have been very positive, even if they couldn’t understand all the skill descriptions. Apparently the full version has all the englishg language stuff already done and included as an option in the languages, so I’m really hoping that the positive reception over there and the petition online bring it out here.

As for BGDA:2 I really didn’t enjoy it. I got as far as getting to the point where you could just craft your own weapons, and got very, very bored. I really want to find that loot, no just make it myself- you’re taking half the fun away when you do that. Plus the dungeons were linear and always the same- no random dungeons there. All in all, a dissapointment. :(

#4

I see all the Japanese writing fine here. Using Firefox 1.0PR and Autodetect Japanese encoding under Character Encodings in the View menu. According to the page the encoding you need is Shift JIS. If you are using IE you will need to install support for “Eastern Languages” or whatever nonsense they are calling it these days (i.e. unicode and other character sets).

#5

Oh, yeah. And this was announced:

http://www.the-magicbox.com/0409/game091504c.shtml

Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion

Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: PC
Genre: MMORPG
Origin: Japan
Release: TBA

#6

-Kitsune (weeeeeeeeeeeeee!)

Gonads and strife

#7

Gonads in the [size=6]lightning!!![/size]

#8

Why is everyone pissing on Kitsune’s parade?

#9

Whatever happened to those guys, anyhow? I mean, 2 college musicians with flash skills were crossing the street, and they weren’t run over by a car, so OMG, Wheeee!

Sorry for derailing, we now return you to your regularly scheduled Kitsune enthusiasm.

#10

To take a more positive angle: I’m playing BG:DA2 right now. I liked how you’ve got more varied characters this time over. I don’t recommend the barbarian; fighting was too easy, and I switched part-way through the game. Soon this became kind of a disease though. I think I’ve got a save game for every character by now, all except the barb in the first act.

An interesting new aspect is that many of the characters have unique “contacts” in the city that you can hook up with. For example there is a seer who helps the necromancer learn about his past through-out the game.

If only the maps and enemies had the same high quality as the first one, it would’ve been a super game.

#11

BGDA2 isn’t a bad game by any means but if you like that genre you must, as I have said before, pick up Champions of Norrath. What’s keeping you? Localization on a ps2?

#12

I thought BG:DA2 was an excellent game, much improved over its predecessor and also a good deal better than Champions of Norrath so far.

I’m playing Champions right now (close to the end of Greater Elven Forest With Silly Name) and while the game is okay I’d have to judge it vastly overrated at this point. The cutscenes suck, the story is (amazingly) even dumber than in the DA games, the areas and enemies are extremely repetitive (hope this gets better later on), and what do you mean I can only play Elves!?

The actual gameplay is good but no better than BG:DA2. Oh, and the game barely fits in the PS2 hardware. When you bring up the inventory you see item graphics getting paged in from the DVD, one by one! Area transitions also seem (even) slower than in BG:DA2.

#13

Bah. Based on your most recent column, I now choose to look at it this way: that Japanese gamers are paying for the privilege of beta-testing games; so that when they get released overseas, we get to play the “best” versions. You’re not getting games sooner - you’re performing QA for the rest of the world! :D

That, on the other hand, was just rude. :?