While I can't defend Ignition at all (they really were just plain terrible) they at least did do one good thing in bringing us Deadly Premonition.
Oh, and I liked El Shaddai too. So I guess that's two. Still, terrible company overall.
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Rumor: Imageepoch is possibly closing down
- Thread starter desmax
- Start date
While I can't defend Ignition at all (they really were just plain terrible) they at least did do one good thing in bringing us Deadly Premonition.
Oh, and I liked El Shaddai too. So I guess that's two. Still, terrible company overall.
DXB-KNIGHT
Member
Our Saviour Noooooooo!
It's always sad to see a studio go, but they didn't have a good track record. They peaked with their publisher owned titles and subsequently ruined their name with some poor self-published efforts.
Luminous Arc Infinity is being developed by Felistella. As far as we know, Imageepoch isn't involved.
Luminous Arc Infinity is being developed by Felistella. As far as we know, Imageepoch isn't involved.
Arkage
Banned
I only know them because I was looking up Xenogears stuff and read that many of the staff moved to work on the game Sands of Destruction, developed by Image Epoch
http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/04/24/xenosaga-developers-deliver-new-rpg
It was a good jRPG, but not as good as one would hope with all that talent.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2008/04/24/xenosaga-developers-deliver-new-rpg
It was a good jRPG, but not as good as one would hope with all that talent.
Uncle Rupee
Banned
The only game of theirs I have played is Sands of Destruction, which was very disappointing given the staff that worked on it. In fact, while I did slog my way through most of the game I did not bother to finish it. And man, those dungeon mazes were some of the most tedious I have ever seen.
Dragonslayer_023
Banned
Time and Eternity might be the worst JRPG I've ever played. Very unfortunate.
Their PSP titles actually did well, at least in Japan. Last Ranker, Black Rock Shooter, 7th Dragon 2020, 7th Dragon 2020-II, Fate/Extra, Fate/Extra CCC all sold over 100K copies. It was only after that they began to go downhill.
RyougaSaotome
Member
If it makes you feel any better, Final Promise Story and Sol Trigger are both bad games.
The reality is that their best games were publisher owned titles. Stuff like The Last Ranker et all.
Farewell sweet princeI think the only game I wanted to try from them was Luminous Arc. That's about it.I played the demo of Sol Trigger. Presentation actually looked nice, but it didn't feel too fun. Oh, I guess I did want to try out Fate/Extra.
If the rumor ends up being true, nothing was really lost for me.
If the rumor ends up being true, nothing was really lost for me.
Uchigatana
Member
Aww, that's so sad. I've been curious about their output for the longest time. BTW, was The Last Promise was a good game?
With the sound off.
You'll thank me for this recommendation later.
Bad voice acting don't bother me, or is it the music? Both?
ArtHands
Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
then there's no need to get excited for LAI now.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
They released a game that was the winner of my worst best soundtrack of the year 2013!!!
WOOOOO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQn0FVmyrcI
Seriously, though. Gotta agree: IE had a lot of things going for them before. Last Ranker was good. Arc Rise Fantasia was pretty good and had some Tales staff on it and a pretty decent soundtrack with tracks composed by some newer composers who did a better job than Mitsuda on it. 7th Dragon was fun. The two Luminous Arc games I'd played were okay. World Destruction had some good ideas.
...then shit happened, they proclaimed that they were a saviour of Japanese-developed RPGs which didn't need saving in the first place and released a funny trailer about it, and they started pumping out crappy game after crappy game.
I don't particularly think, if the rumour proves to be true, that we are losing anything significant right now since the staff that worked on the good games they released years ago likely left.
(though to be fair, Ignition Tokyo worked on it and they released a lot of merch and art books and jeans and whatever alongside it so the pressure was on to get the localization right from the get-go)
WOOOOO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQn0FVmyrcI
Seriously, though. Gotta agree: IE had a lot of things going for them before. Last Ranker was good. Arc Rise Fantasia was pretty good and had some Tales staff on it and a pretty decent soundtrack with tracks composed by some newer composers who did a better job than Mitsuda on it. 7th Dragon was fun. The two Luminous Arc games I'd played were okay. World Destruction had some good ideas.
...then shit happened, they proclaimed that they were a saviour of Japanese-developed RPGs which didn't need saving in the first place and released a funny trailer about it, and they started pumping out crappy game after crappy game.
I don't particularly think, if the rumour proves to be true, that we are losing anything significant right now since the staff that worked on the good games they released years ago likely left.
The funniest thing to me in retrospect is that El Shaddai managed to be their best localization pursuit. Talk about goin' out with a bang!Clov said:
(though to be fair, Ignition Tokyo worked on it and they released a lot of merch and art books and jeans and whatever alongside it so the pressure was on to get the localization right from the get-go)
You can actually toggle the voices off. The soundtrack is pretty good.
Karsticles
Member
Horrendous voice acting. Not just bad, but ruinsome.
Luminous Arc was pretty unremarkable. Standard anime RPG fare.
SatoAilDarko
Member
Haven't played a game of there's yet but I do have Arc Rise Fantasia and am excited to play it.
Love they got the Eureka character designer and I will enjoy the horrific voice acting.
I also Time and Eternity digitally for like $7 last year.
Some day I will experience that horror.
Love they got the Eureka character designer and I will enjoy the horrific voice acting.
I also Time and Eternity digitally for like $7 last year.
Some day I will experience that horror.
Worst voice acting in the history of voice acting. It made me literally shut off the game about 20 minutes in and walk away from the console, I literally could not even.
I considered selling it before I had even played through 10 bloody minutes.
It's that fucking terrible. Worse than anything you could imagine.
But then you turn the sound/voices off, and it becomes pretty awesome. The game is unplayable otherwise, and shows how there is truly a reason to want better English dubbing in games.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
nah.
i'm all for hyperbole and all, but nah bro.
Definitely would recommend turning the voices off if you care that much though, or just playing it with the Japanese undub. There are probably like 1-2 decent VAs in the English version but lol, the first 1-5 hours of voice acting in the game are pretty bad!
Pennywise83
Banned
Probably, some of them needed more than barely crack the 100k mark to break even. At some point, imageepoch was seriously investing in their games.
Hahaha....my favorite is #3 and #7. I've seen this before and forgotten about. This make me want to hear it even more.
The fact that this game isn't even listed on this website, let alone in the top 5, when nearly every single review ever written about this game mentions how terrible the voice acting is, tells me that this website means nothing. #3 on their Top 5 Worst is Resident Evil Director's Cut, which by comparison sounds like angels heard on high reciting poetry to the tune of a harp (albeit poetry about sandwiches and mastering the locksmith trade).
The example you cited was literally the publisher didn't even hire voice actors because they were so out of money that they couldn't (hence their closure the same year that game was published).
They HIRED people to be as bad as they are in Arc Rise Fantasia.
Nothing will trump this absolute madness. EVER.
jaundicejuice
Member
Maybe if I got to play a localised copy of 7th Dragon I'd care. That's kind of the only worthwhile looking game they published and/or developed.
Do you have a source for this?
Even so, their later titles on PS3 and 3DS sold way less; Time and Eternity 34K, Toushin Toshi 22K, Sonipro 6K. Surely they did the most damage.
Pennywise83
Banned
No, that's why I wrote probably. Considering how much they pushed those games, 100k units on a sales monster as PSP might have been disappointing.
Not even close. I think those who are actually familiar with their output would mostly agree that was the game which first soured expectations of what the company was. Overhyping and building expectations based on contracted art/music/scenario staff with good portfolios, only to deliver a shittastic game with no balance or proper game design. It was a poorly managed project which got really bad word of mouth.
I would say the games people consider better are the 7th Dragon series and Last Ranker, which sold the most and actually has positive post-release buzz, but Arc Rise Fantasia has fans too, if anyone bothered to play it.
The sad history of Imageepoch is that they really only had one or two good directors who could actually lead projects and game design and ship a game which wasn't totally mediocre or worse. Hiroyuki Kanemaru was from Tales Studio, and Kazuya Niinou was from Atlus. Eventually Niinou left and joined S-E (he's now the quest director for FFXIV 2.0), and it was all downhill from there. IIRC there was one planner who worked under all of Niinou's games who was promoted to director for 7D 2020 and 2020-II, but beyond that the studio didn't really seem to have any promising talent at all.
Actually, back when he was still happily talking about the progress of the company, the Imageepoch head had very good things to say about the sales of their games up until Black Rock Shooter at least. Being able to attain over 100k for almost every title they had released on portables was consistent progress. Their sales completely fell off after that, and they've been having problems getting more publisher work to support their own publishing deals in the last couple of years, and seems to have contributed to the company going into radio silence and possibly total demise.
Yeah as I pointed out the fact that publishers didn't hire them even for the sequels to their games shows something was going wrong. It might also be worth pointing out that Imageepoch originally announced their SRPG on 3DS for a 2012 release. Even if it does release it will be three years late.
Pennywise83
Banned
As for self-published games, only Black Rock Shooter was able to crack the 100k mark- Both Final Promise Story and Sol Trigger failed to do so. Those published by Capcom and Sega sold better.
Ehh, their titles didn't fare much better on the more popular DS at that time. It's funny how you consider over 100K on PSP to be disappointing, especially without any source, yet totally ignoring the bombs on PS3 and 3DS which are more likely to be the cause of their situation right now.
Sad news.
Their hearts were in the right place. 7th Dragon is legitimately well-designed. Black Rock Shooter and the Fate/Extra series were flawed, but they had some of the most interesting and unique combat systems I've played in a JRPG in years, and I really appreciated them. All joking about "saving JRPGs" aside, the genre really does benefit from games like those.
Their hearts were in the right place. 7th Dragon is legitimately well-designed. Black Rock Shooter and the Fate/Extra series were flawed, but they had some of the most interesting and unique combat systems I've played in a JRPG in years, and I really appreciated them. All joking about "saving JRPGs" aside, the genre really does benefit from games like those.
But imagine if they were focused on the DS. They would have probably sold a million each. Probably.
Sammy Samusu
Member
Sad, but Marvelous will buy the rights for Arc Rise Fantasia and release a sequel for the 3DS.
I imagine its their IP anyway, Luminous Arc is. It would also more likely to be Vita.
The games published by Sega and Capcom were also the games where they put their best staff, and had the most buzz. ARF and their Fate games were also published by Marvelous. As a publisher, Imageepoch was never really successful, but as a small developer they had a pretty decent run in the first few years of developing their own titles.
I remember being really excited for Imageepoch around the time they announced Arc Rise Fantasia, 7th Dragon and World Destruction. All of those games looked so promising, but all of them ended up being disappointments for me due to various reasons. World Destruction just didn't live up to the promises and turned out to be pretty mediocre, Arc Rise Fantasia might have been a good game - I seriously don't know -, but I never managed to play it for more than a couple hours thanks to the horrendous localization and 7th Dragon never released around here, which of course isn't their fault, but was still a disappointment. After that I never really paid attention to them anymore. With the exception of Last Ranker - which was again JP-only - everything they've put out looked mediocre at best, downright embarassing at worst.
Can't say that I'll miss the output of the company. It's sad to think what could have been, though.
Can't say that I'll miss the output of the company. It's sad to think what could have been, though.
That's right, but those are the only 2 titles on PSP which didn't break 100K. Still, Final Promise Story did 91K, and Sol Trigger did 51K. Toushin Toshi did 22K, and Sonipro did 6K. I'm sure you can tell which are worse.
I may be mistaken but I believe their best selling title on DS was 7th Dragon which sold 137K copies. Not sure if 1 million is possible.
http://officee.jp/detail/35198/116635/
Well this is the office building the article is mentioning about. It does say the office will be available for rent from June, 2015, so at least the company is indeed moving out from the current office. Still no proof yet regarding their closure though.
Well this is the office building the article is mentioning about. It does say the office will be available for rent from June, 2015, so at least the company is indeed moving out from the current office. Still no proof yet regarding their closure though.
Kresnik258
Member
208 PSP Final Promise Story 57,023 / 91,376 Imageepoch 2011-04-28
132 PSP Black Rock Shooter: The Game 108,716 / 135,951 Imageepoch 2011-08-25
274 PSP Sol Trigger 38,69 / 61,320 Imageepoch 2012-10-04
200 3DS Toushin Toshi 22,423 / 23,684 Imageepoch 2014-01-30
280 3DS SoniPro 6,032 / 6,032 Imageepoch 2014-07-31
Are we really singling out their PSP output as the culprit here? Especially considering the date we're hearing this news.
I'm sure there are a range of factors which have led to this, not least a general decline in sales of their stuff beginning on the PSP, but still...
I assume any losses from publisher-led titles like 7th Dragon or Time & Eternity would've been eaten by the publisher rather than Imageepoch.
And I'd guess that's been more of the problem for them. Less publisher-led titles for them in general these days unless you get in good with Bamco and make licenced stuff for them. The kind of output that helped them on PSP (bigger publisher original IP's) doesn't seem to be getting made anymore.