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I like Sen 3 (33 hours in right now, better than Sen 1, worse than Sen 2 so far), but this is really over selling the visuals. Yeah, it has good IQ and isn't jaggy/pixelated looking, and it has some slightly better visuals and depth of field effects in talking to people/cutscenes, but the game still looks like a mid-tier PS3 game. I'm pretty sure they could make some changes and port it to Vita if they tried. A switch port would should have zero downgrade in the visuals. I mean on a system where you have stuff like DQXI, it's night & day.
Next game after Sen 4, Falcom should switch to middleware like UE4.0 imo.
To be fair, a lot of those are spin-offs. Barely anybody played TMS #FE and FE Heroes plays differently than the traditional game (plus people probably play it in short bursts compared to console games). If you're just aiming for the main series, then there's really a good spacing in between games in Japan.
CS2 had simultaneous release in Chinese, CS3 does not, and there isn't even a release date yet. Such great push for Asia market. Also one thing I can assure you is that the brand is not as loved as before in China after the horrible CS2. I expect a steep drop in Asia, maybe even steeper than Japan. People in China love their habdheld just like Japan do.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Same strategy Nintendo has followed for the entire year. They hold back stock for major software launches like this. You'll see another one for odyssey. The supply Is substantially supply constrained and thus It's weekly sales are literally just what Nintendo decides to ship.
Like the Switch contractions due to less. That won't change until next year.
lyrick
Member
When a few movie studios decided to go HD-DVD only, choosing to not purchase a dedicated format player that doesn't fit your needs doesn't magically imply that you're not a fan of their movies.
Limiting media to exclusive formats when trends are moving toward other formats is a shit business strategy. These Companies need to be reminded that the supply side of the Market doesn't decide what consumers ultimately choose to purchase.
Not directed to you but since we have the same question at almost every thread, innocent or trolling, Switch sales are since launch and will remain at least until December supply determined.
I don't doubt "visual quality" I'm thinking writing.
It's much worse than the first ones and I mostly always prioritize that over anything.
Plus the gameplay is much easier. The hardest difficulty of Sen games is like normal-hard of previous ones at best.
I'm really not the tech follower. I just want good games (or to be more accurate, games I appreciate, because some games are excellent but not for me, as it is for anyone).
Come on....
I think people really need to play some horrible games from time to time to gain some perspective, lol.
As long as it is in the lotteries it's pretty much determined by weekly supply.
Lord of Ostia
Member
Agreed, the Fire Emblem saturation is only an issue in the West, and that's largely because it took so long for Fates to come out here, something like 8 months after Japanese release iirc.
Fire Emblem Heroes has also more than justified its existence. It's probably the highest grossing game in the franchise by now.
It is kinda "horrible", but only compared to what Ao was building.
Clearly overall it's still pretty good Jrpg, especially as the genre hasn't really been in a good situation for a long time.
I guess the view point is very different from western players since the series wasn't released in the same way.
No I'm curious, for Splatoon 2 I knew about a bigger shipment. So same here for FE I suppose?
It's definitely a little harder to see the drop without having playing Zero/Ao. Zero/Ao pushed the franchise forward in a ton of directions, from characters to pacing, to music, to combat, to story/story/story movement. Sen is a big step back so far. It's going to take 4 games to do the equivalent of 2 games worth of story that Zero/Ao gave and that's just on the story-side.
I wouldn't say the drop was horrible. But it was definitely a big step down. If the Sky trilogy was like a 8-9/10 overall, Zero/Ao was 9-10/10 overall and Sen 1/2 so far is like a 7-8/10 so far. It definitely doesn't help that Rean and crew are a huge step down from the Sora cast of Estelle & crew, and the Zero/Ao cast of Lloyd & crew. I think Sen's cast is a good example of why a huge cast of archtypes and tropes < a smaller cast of well developed likeable characters.
Yeah, luckily I said in my early Sen 3 impressions, Sen 3 is pretty convservatively budgeted. Falcom didn't go crazy with this entry making an awesome graphics full voiced big budget entry. I have some complaints with how low budget the game feels.
Maybe that was the right call. Sen 3+4 sales should be enough even at these kind of numbers (don't forget to add like 10% digital sales, so probably closer to 100k opening, I got Sen 1/2 physical and Sen 3 digital for example), but these sales definitely will not sustain the series going forward to support another 3 years development to the next game after that. There will need to be a change for the next arc.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
By a clear distance.
Laplasakos
Member
I am not trying to make it look like it's a console war thing (don't know why you are getting this impression) i just found strange your comment. Now that you explained your reasons, i can see why you don't want to buy a PS4.
Ok. Personally i like playing on both (home consoles and portables). Although i must say, not playing RPGs that are exclusive on home consoles, you are missing a lot of fun. Just a tip to a fellow gamer
test_account
XP-39C²
~5 million to ~300k, about 94% drop. Knack 2 will highly likely have a bigger drop percentage wise. Knack 1 did about 400k, so Knack 2 needs to sell about 25k to have the same drop percentage wise. Unless theres a bundle with Knack 2, its unlikely to sell 25k. I do think a drop from e.g 1 million to 100k is a lot more noticeable and severe than dropping from 10k to 1k though, depsite both those cases being a 90% drop.
Yeah, a lot of those games hit different notes and some are even different genres. So I don't think there's fatigue in that regard.
you could do something similar for Zelda since 2015 if you wanted
Majora's Mask 3D
Triforce Heroes
Twilight Princess HD
Hyrule Warriors
Hyrule Warriors Legends
Breath of the Wild
or Mario with the Karts, Parties, Tennis, Platformers, RPGs, Strategy games, etc.
Lord of Ostia
Member
There is no question. It's one of the top grossing Japanese and western mobile games. It's a huge cash cow.
Final shipment for the quarter played bigger role than Fire Emblem Warriors. West saw an increase at supply too.
I second that. Ao no Kiseki was basically my most loved RPG with Xenoblade in the past years.
Zero + Ao made an amazing duo no RPG fan should miss on.
It just felt like we were back during the best years of the Jrpg.
Every Trails thread in every gaming forum in China turned into a CS2 shitting thread for the last three years.
yes, this is sooo true.
for a disappointing game, in terms of sales (FEW), Pokken on the other hand is performing well.
BrokenJohnCena
Member
wait,are you chinese?
Principate
Saint Titanfall
This is true but you also have to consider profitability and economies of sale. a drop of 1 million to 100 k will still be a net profit for the game in spite of a a massive and I mean massive revenue drop. a drop from 10k to 1k means losses become likely and you won't be seeing that series again.
Oh, agreed. It's just that as a fan I'd like to play them all, although Revelation and TMS are on my backlog.
We're talking about a 3-year spacing between the main series starting from Awakening, FE Switch included (assuming it's 2018). That's a pretty long wait actually.
No question. Easy money for the series owners.
If they really cared about that they would have moved on to a new Kiseki series arc and get a fresh start with a new interesting cast instead of doing another sequel to Light Novel Rean and his Amazing Genericlassmates. Improve quality of head patting and hot springs incest maybe.
BrokenJohnCena
Member
............................. then I believe you
Nope. FE Heroes still vastly favors Awakening/Fates whenever they do seasonal alt costume characters.
edit: you could field a whole 4-person team of Lucinas (even if one is called masked Marth), but there is still only 1 Hector.
There are 3 Xanders as well.
Yeah, I'd agree that Xenoblade and Zero/Ao are the best jrpgs from the last decade.
Gameplay-wise, I'm still bummed we lost partner S-crafts. Hoping that'll be the final battle sub-system they add in Sen 4. I get why it's harder to do that with such a large cast in Sen, but I really liked characters working together for S-crafts, felt it added something as a team. The link system of generic attacking really isn't the same.
A lot of us are talking from ignorance here regarding Kiseki. We have no idea if development costs have been saved by restricting themselves to one platform with better specs (where Falcom has commented that it's easier to develop for since there are way fewer hardware restrictions) . We have no idea how good the overseas console sales for the series are good enough to make up for dropping a dead portable platform.
Late ports of RPGs (especially sequels), even with added bonus features, have trouble selling; the Switch isn't going to help in this scenario.
I know you are just trolling, but Ao had way worse stuff than hot spring sharing. I won't spoil it but suffice to say if Ao was released as a modern game today there would probably be a 200 page GAF thread with 5,000,000 views about the intermission scenes.
Late ports of RPGs (especially sequels), even with added bonus features, have trouble selling; the Switch isn't going to help in this scenario.
I know you are just trolling, but Ao had way worse stuff than hot spring sharing. I won't spoil it but suffice to say if Ao was released as a modern game today there would probably be a 200 page GAF thread with 5,000,000 views about the intermission scenes.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
Still writing up a response to your megapost, Bebpo.
If Falcom goes with a Rocksmith Agency premise for Calvard or similar, they'll already have a better head start than Sen I. And their rough move to fully polygonal console games seems to have stabilized, meaning they'll take more risks and not feel they have to simplify or avoid certain writing topics/themes because of a new audience.
Really I'm just annoyed at the unending fatalism in Falcom discussions like this. Their biggest problem, if anything, comes from having only 40 active developers which outsourcing can't bolster that much. Having to constantly anticipate and learn to develop on new consoles (plus obtaining dev kits and errata) doesn't help either. Okay, here's what I was working on:
Falcom needs to change for Calvard, that's for sure. They're historically good at taking feedback and criticism, then crafting a new and better set of releases by addressing what went wrong previously. Ys VIII shows this in particular (and I know you won't agree, but a lot of people who didn't like Celceta think much better of this entry.) I think moving away from blatant school-based premises and pushing simultaneous international sales will help make up for decline in the domestic market; even without that kind of launch in China, I can't see the sales dipping by a worse percentage vs. Japan. Ports of the Sen arc should also help their bottom-line for years to come.
If Falcom goes with a Rocksmith Agency premise for Calvard or similar, they'll already have a better head start than Sen I. And their rough move to fully polygonal console games seems to have stabilized, meaning they'll take more risks and not feel they have to simplify or avoid certain writing topics/themes because of a new audience.
Sure, I agree with you. Have you played Sen III yet, at all, or looked at streams showing the writing? I'm reading much more positive impressions about writing in the GAF import thread vs. what Sen II got. The game seems like a big improvement and return to form, even if that won't salvage many disappointments from the last two games.
Really I'm just annoyed at the unending fatalism in Falcom discussions like this. Their biggest problem, if anything, comes from having only 40 active developers which outsourcing can't bolster that much. Having to constantly anticipate and learn to develop on new consoles (plus obtaining dev kits and errata) doesn't help either. Okay, here's what I was working on:
I agree. And even if it was a little more "complicated" I liked the relation system better than in Sen.
It was less obvious but also more coherent and the characters were more likable I think.
I mean, in Sen 2, the only moment I really cared was
when I played with Lloyd and Rixia to kick the ass of this stupidly bad Rean character.
I was probably one of the biggest fan of the series a few years earlier as I actually wrote guides in French for some people to finish Japanese-only Kiseki, but after seeing what they did with the Sen arc, I just lost the motivation and stopped in the middle of my last project.
Fan service is not the problem. P4G has the shittiest of them all and GAF love it. The problem is what remains when you strip away the fan service. Ao has a lot of good stuff.
Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule
Member
test_account
XP-39C²
That depends on what the breaking even point is. If the breaking point is e.g 800k, then selling only 100k would mean a lot bigger loss of money than if the breaking point was 8k (related to 10k to 1k example). It doesnt necessarily have to be about profitability either, but also looking at the drop in popularity as well.
When it comes to Knack 2 and Devilish Brain Training (DBT) in specific about profitability however, japanese sales alone then DBT is more favoritable in that regards. I dont think we'll see a sequel to either game regardless.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Fates 3 numbers worked out great I think. The issue is it makes it difficult to judge growth from Awakening to fates since there's 2 different retail sku's (and a 3rd digital though that wouldn't really impact it since you need 1 of the others), in comparison to just Awakening.
ArkhamFantasy
Member
Nintendo is like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision combined when it comes to japan.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
That's true but that's also why I mentioned economies of scales. Cost ramp down as numbers ramp up. You do not want to get yourself stuck with tiny production orders. This is also Japan centric. There's very few games with a break even of 800k even within those that even sell 1 million. The number with break even higher than 1k is muuuuch much higher.
Sinh_Magnus
Member
Saw this late, what can we conclude about sen 3 sales, gaf?
Problem is I don't have a PS4 and I'm not interested in getting one.
Second, it's not about Sen 3 only but also Sen 1 and 2 as well as Tokyo Xanadu and Ys 8.
After playing these 4 games (1, 2, TX, Ys8), I just felt like they were merging everything together when it comes to writing and organising event scenes.
It's a little hard to explain but the summary would be that I felt they were completely losing the identity of every game to make some kind of "every games is a Sen" game with just a few differences in gameplay.
And since what they re-use is what I disliked in Sen, it creates an overdose.
Not to mention I had been playing Falcom games on PSP and Vita and the perspective of having to only play on home console is even less appealing.
Of course I'd like to try the new episodes, it's not like they look like FF 13 to me, but still, I don't have the money and all to do that. Especially when beside I see Xenoblade 2 coming. And Monolithsoft has yet to disappoint me.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
It received decent amazon ratings and sells well received comparatively.
Rean sucks.