Eh - not 2018 in Japan. #metoo went by with barely a whimper. (probably a topic for the politics board though)
It’s not like the article doesn’t have a point, but of all Japanese releases it’s this one that gets singled out???
I’ve read some about it and I don’t think the picture is entirely clear on this character as no one had gotten far enough in the game yet to see how his whole arc played out?
A little different, but there was a kerfuffle over Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as well, so I don’t this is getting singled out. More like Japanese and Western (American?) cultures are clashing a bit after the rise of awareness of this sort of thing recently.
The game’s been out in Japan for ages
I could understand it over XC2 (even if I don’t care, I see how it can be problematic), but this is pretty mild given the game’s cultural context and narrative.
So far, at least.
Translation can often change things up.
True, but it seems unlikely it became more problematic in localisation. And it’s been brought up on at least two pretty Japan-ocentric podcasts I listen to.
Well, so far (I’m still early) this seems to have a much more interesting mission design than VC1.
My only complaint so far is that by having played VC1 I’m now getting As in every mission, and it seems I might be overleveling, since that’s a lot of extra XP and money. At least they gat equipmet to story progression.
The OCD in me also missed taking weapons from enemy elite units.
Edit: about one third into the main story (probably one fifth to one quarter overall progress taking into account increased mission length and unlockable missions). It’s pretty crazy how much better than VC1 this can get without really changing the mechanics that much (through mostly mission design and mission scope). I’ll ellaborate later, but so far I think it’s a keeper.
Is it still as “puzzley” in it’s mision design? That was my only gripe with the first. I remember a mission against some big huge tank in the desert, and you couldn’t actually win until some units showed up, or it was fake loss, or something scripted like that that really pissed me off 'cause I kept reloading trying to do well, and in reality I just needed to play through until certain scripted events happened on certain turns. Fire Emblem likes to do this too.
There are certainly scripted mission moments, specially when the missions are not filler and are pushing narrative.
But there’s certainly nothing as grating as the huge tank mission in VC1. I would say mission design is way, way better than in the first game.
I was going to ask about how progression felt in this one, but as I have next to zero tolerance for Japanese tropes on the matter anymore, I’ll just pass!
It’s really not that bad. So far it’s two so short scenes early game (I’m 3/4ths into the campaign) and the rest is pretty tame and surprisingly inclusive in some ways.
It’s not a great scene, to put it mildly, but the game in context is better than, say, Persona 5 in that regard. Not to speak of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or other more exploitative works.
Did this do terribly on release? It’s been deeply discounted pretty consistently since Black Friday at 50-60% off.
I have it, but I’m saving it for my next deep dive game, so I haven’t touched it yet.
Don’t know, but from what I’ve read from people who’ve played it and reviews it sounds like a pretty solid sequel to the first one and I look forward to picking it up. I hadn’t yet just because I’ve got other stuff to finish first.
It’s really good. I got 80% through before having to stop playing due to crazy schedule, but it’s the first game I’ll pick up once I go back to my Switch.
Fixes most of the system issues with VC1 while adding some new cool toys. The story is decent, but maybe it doesn’t work as well as VC1. It’s not bad, though, just a little less focused.
Where have you seen discounts recently? I’ve been looking…
It was discounted on Nintendo eShop during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, IIRC.
On sale on PC now:
Ah… ok… I was focused on consoles, probably PS4 version. Thanks though. PC isn’t out of the question. Christmas gift…
Well, I finally got around to playing this, and I think it’s pretty great so far. Grenadiers work way better than the medics and musicians and stupid shield-hammer dudes they’ve experimented with, and so far, they’ve done a much better job of balancing such that Scouts are no longer as overpowered. Shocktroopers get much more use than in previous games, and there are scenarios that definitely require different class combinations.
Also, while there are occasional mid-turn fuck you’s still (oops, pass this point and tanks appear!), they’re way toned down from previous games. I can think of 3 missions I’ve played so far where that happens. In two, the mission is structured such that it’s tripped multiple times, so it’s fairly well telegraphed after the first time, and it more or less rewards otherwise good play (not overextending, etc). In the other, the game just gives you 5 extra command points when it happens. Like, “Hey, sorry, you’re probably not set up for this, here’s your chance to triage it.”
Ever since I read about the Russian White Army’s Armored trains in WWI, I’ve felt that would make an amazing game somehow. Well, somebody else thought so too, because VC4 has a mission with battle trains! They’re kind of just tanks on rails, but they’re very cool, conceptually.
VC has always had a kind of core of progressive politics, or at least anti-racist, since it’s just WWII Europe, but Sega (or maybe just the localization team) seems to be leaning into it. There’s what might be the first identifiably black soldier in a VC game on your squad, at least the first I can remember. There’s a trans…ish character who is surprisingly well handled, in that it’s kind of never even mentioned. She’s simply a character that presents as a woman, but nobody ever makes a big deal of it. (It isn’t entirely clear if Rosetta is actually trans or just cross dresses, but the character descriptions are pretty vague in general.)
While there is a bit of an anime child prodigy issue (i.e. teenage Commanders), most character are at least in their low 20s, and there are also several “older”, e.g. 30+ characters, and they all seem to be presented pretty sensibly. The ages are assigned kind of randomly (the 60 year old man looks more or less the same as a 20 year old), but by and large the ages, as presented, seem reasonable.
Also, there’s a trait called “Darcsen Discriminator”, which gives a penalty when deployed alongside a Darcsen soldier. The audio bark for when that ability triggers is “I’m not racist, but…”, which is now one of my favorite audio barks in any game ever.
There’s also still lots of dumb anime writing, because dumb anime writing is just part of the package. But I like lots of dumb anime, so those parts don’t bother me.