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XSEED announces Unchained Blades for 3DS/PSP (eShop/PSN only)
- Thread starter Volcynika
- Start date
When they finally start showing off the eShop website that lets you buy content, we should have a better idea.
I mean they're going to need some way to sync your purchases between devices.
AHHHH HAHAHAHAH
I should have worded that differently. What I mean is a mechanism to tie what you purchase through the website to your eShop account on your 3DS.
Ehh I probably would have picked this up, but in first person dungeon crawlers like this I usually like having the ability to creat my own party like you would in Wizardry games for instance.
Might still check it out, but If Class of heroes 2 is good i'll probably pick that up instead.
Might still check it out, but If Class of heroes 2 is good i'll probably pick that up instead.
AndyMoogle
Member
When you purchase something on the website, you'll get a QR code that you can scan with your 3DS. That's according to these rumors.
EDIT: It does say that you'll be able to access the eShop account from other devices... Oh, well, we'll see what happens.
That rumour is more than likely just a collection of things Iwata has said previously. Like here is what he said about the eShop on smartphones/PC thing.
we can't read but we love guns and oppressing sexuality
Not at all. But I watched the JP trailer for this game, and if you want to talk about shitty voice acting...
... This is one of those cases where you'd want the foreign VA not because it's better, but because you can't understand it, isn't it?
NeededSleep
Member
wow horrible VA, would rather have NED from South Park with a cancer kazoo do the voice acting.(actually that would be very entertaining)
But at least the game looks decent? Either way, its on psn and playable on psvita, im in.
But at least the game looks decent? Either way, its on psn and playable on psvita, im in.
Azure Dream
Member
The VA's not great, but I've heard worse. I usually prefer the original language, but I'm glad this is seeing a US release either way.
I will always prefer a game or movie to be in it's original language even if the voice acting was originally bad. But I'm not going to complain much about an English dub for a game we probably wouldn't otherwise be getting. And I'm a fan of Troy Baker's so no qualms there.
Mostly I'm just glad we're getting Unchained Blades in English because it's the type of the game that we usually don't get and I like 1st person RPG's.
Mostly I'm just glad we're getting Unchained Blades in English because it's the type of the game that we usually don't get and I like 1st person RPG's.
charlequin
Banned
I think I will be picking this up.
I swear to God, if XSeed were to announce right now that they were taking digital preorders for RGC2 I would write them a staggeringly large check before they could get to the "...PSYCH!" part.
I swear to God, if XSeed were to announce right now that they were taking digital preorders for RGC2 I would write them a staggeringly large check before they could get to the "...PSYCH!" part.
I would tape mine right over that guy's mouth before he could say 100000 again.
((definitely picking up Unchained Blades, too!)
PixyJunket
Member
They should kickstart an RGC2 release while the DS still has a Pokémon game on its schedule.
cultureculture
Member
I have. Can't see the appeal, game is mediocre if anything. Fang's the only good character and you're forced to change parties every chapter. The grind is absurd, and I say this with a long history of dungeon crawling. The subsystems like party creation (minion recruitment/management) and item creation are a chore as well and provide very little reward and lots of frustration. I think people would be better off saving up for EO4.
There are some quirks due to being a PSP port. One thing is that some UI elements are damn near impossible to see, like minion health bars. The Japanese font was pretty small, so hopefully they fix this in localisation. Saving took forever as well.
Is this the first Nintendo downloadable title that's intended as multiplatform from the start? I know a few have migrated to (or indeed from) iOS/PC, but I don't think any have been an original multiplatform release unlike happens frequently on XBLA/PSN.
Well, that's a bit of a buzzkill. But the mention of Etrian Odyssey 4 makes it all better
That's I think the second mention of someone actually playing it. Actually, I guess I should be satisfied with three people so far saying something about it; I mean, hell, I barely knew about the game :x
How is the difficulty, though? Most of what you say doesn't really bother me ye (though maybe it'll be different when actually playing) but the only part I'm concerned about is how hard the game is. EO1-3 are pretty much easy modo and I don't have high hopes for EO4 being any different (even with the supposed raised normal mode difficulty).
I mean, it's not a breaking point by any means but ... I do hope for it to at least be challenging somewhat.
cultureculture
Member
What I played wasn't particularly difficult. Rather, I'd describe the game as unfair and unreasonable. You have the classic dungeon crawler slow burn at the start, where you can survive maybe two or three battles before going to town to heal, and you definitely need to grind a several levels before you can start exploring the first and second floors of dungeon 1 comfortable. That's fine. Basically, the game is built around grinding and slowly filling in your FFX-style sphere grid for each character. That's fine too.
The trouble is, it's no fun to grind. You have to recruit monsters as minions. To do so, you need to get them down to at least half health and hope the recruit prompt triggers (it seems to be random). Once recruited, you can assign up to a certain number of minions to each party member, and they take attacks, do damage, buff your attacks and so on. You have to level them up as well, and after every battle they harass you about something or other, kind of similar to demon negotiations in SMT. However, it's basically a glorified guessing game, which is problematic because a) it's a constant interruption, b) you get penalised for angering your minions and c) b) if you ignore your minions, you can't proceed in the game. There are checkpoints where you have to 'test your strength', which means have your minions fight a group of monsters in a mini-game, and if your minions are underlevelled, it's literally impossible to win because no skill or strategy is involved aside from 'mash butan'. There's no other incentive to level your minions, because the only thing they tend to be substantially good for is taking hits, and they tend to die quite easily. The whole system isn't particularly fun or interesting; it just feels like a tacked-on chore. There isn't much to distinguish the monsters aside from stats.
Additionally, the 'economy' is horrid. Basically, you have to spend money to make money. The item shop only offers bog-standard stuff at absurd prices. So far, so Wizardry. To make your own stuff, you have to go to the item creation shop and make items from monster drops and foraged items there. Foraging is similar to Etrian Odyssey, except you need items to forage with and they have a high chance of breaking. Monster drops are fairly rare, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that sometimes you need to kill monsters in certain ways. Making items costs money proportionate to the value of the item, and it can fail, meaning you lose your money and the drops. This is unfortunate, because selling the stuff you make from item creation is your main source of income. You get hardly anything from quests and fighting monsters, and basic items and drops don't sell for much. You won't have much money until you've spent a lot of time grinding, because you'll be spending nearly all your money on healing and healing items.
Additionally, you have to grind your item creation skill hard before it becomes in any way useful. So, for example, to get a better longsword than the one the item shop sells, you have to make XX longswords in category 1, then when you level up to category 2, make XX more longswords. This means you need to grind different kinds of armour, different weapons, potions, and so on. It's very frustrating.
So you have these two key systems which you have to spend dozens of hours grinding, in addition to grinding up your characters, while getting constantly harassed by your minions asking if you still love them. The item creation doesn't tend to be particularly rewarding even when it works, and managing your minions feels much more like a chore and overhead that sucks the fun out of exploring and developing the main characters.
I think this design is poorly thought out and half-assed. Maybe they were going for artificial difficulty - I think the game would have been far better if they ditched the annoying minion system and improved the item creation and foraging systems to be a bit less stacked against the player, and found more fun ways of providing a challenge.
Incidentally, when you finish the first chapter, you get switched to a new party, and you have to start everything all over again with a party of 3 rather than the party of 4 you have in the first chapter. I understand that in the third chapter, you have to go solo.
This is what I had in mind when you said grindy (well, maybe not the sphere grid part). And it's this part that I'm in agreement with you on it being fine.
Well ... well ... shit. I'm curious from a mechanics standpoint on how some of those work and part of me wonders if there's some gaming of the system to be had to make it less tedious. But ... damn. That's really a tad bit disheartening to read.
cultureculture
Member
I tried gaming the system, and scoured the internet for info, but all I could find was people talking about how absurd the grind is.
It feels a bit like a free-to-play MMO with a cash shop that is absolutely required to get anything useful or interesting to play with, but without the cash shop.
Though, if I'm honest, I hope it does OK despite being not very good because I'd like to see more 'full' games on eShop. (The 3DS version was cartridge-only in Japan.)
I tried gaming the system, and scoured the internet for info, but all I could find was people talking about how absurd the grind is.
It feels a bit like a free-to-play MMO with a cash shop that is absolutely required to get anything useful or interesting to play with, but without the cash shop.
Though, if I'm honest, I hope it does OK despite being not very good because I'd like to see more 'full' games on eShop. (The 3DS version was cartridge-only in Japan.)
Well, I'll still give it a shot and see what I can work with in it. Breaking these games is fun stuff for me.
That or maybe XSEED will tweak a few things in the localization. I'm torn on how I feel about that from this ... :x
I was directed here by a concerned gamer who didn't like what he was reading and wanted to see if I had any sort of rebuttal.
I know it won't mean much, coming from someone who works at XSEED (and is thus naturally biased), but do bear in mind that I have very little personal connection to this game -- the translation was handled by a trusted third-party contractor and the editing was handled by Jess, with my only major contribution being (of all things!) a bit of graphic design work (those anima icons are all me, yo!).
Anyway, I finally had a chance to spend some quality time with this title recently for QA -- not just casual playing, but NONSTOP PLAYING FOR SEVERAL DAYS -- and in all honesty... my opinion of this game differs *very strongly* from Cultureculture's.
Simply put, I had an absolute blast with it. Work or no, I *wanted* to keep going, and only stopped because I had other things I needed to finish.
It's no more grindy than Wizardry or any given Shin Megami Tensei game, the economy is perfect for what it is (and a major part of the game's challenge, forcing you to pay careful attention to every item you get and make lots of tough decisions about what to sell, what to buy, what to keep and what to craft, and rewarding you greatly for thorough mining trips), and the story and characters are all quite charming and likable (if you're an anime fan, anyway!).
Most of all, though, the game seems really perfectly balanced. When you first enter a dungeon, the enemies in it absolutely KICK YOUR ASS, and you have to make constant trips back to town... but gradually, you're able to get farther and farther, usually opening up shortcuts along the way to make your trips back to town more convenient. You're constantly introduced to new enemies, and especially when they're big bruisers, you really WANT to unchain them, because you know they're going to be *awesome* to have in your party.
And the dungeons themselves are intelligently designed, making exploration a lot of fun.
Overall, this is the kind of dungeon crawler I've always wanted. It offers so much more variety than the genre is known for, yet retains the skull-crushing challenge and constant resource management that makes anal-retentive gamers like myself lose hours upon hours of time as if they were mere seconds.
Obviously, Cultureculture disagrees, and you're free to take his/her word for it over mine (since, as noted, I am admittedly biased here)... but if you like dungeon crawlers, I feel you'd be doing yourself a tremendous disservice by missing this one. It's one of the best games I've played in the entire genre, and is definitely worth your time if you like a good challenge and enjoy RPGs with heavy resource management and lots of variety.
-Tom
I know it won't mean much, coming from someone who works at XSEED (and is thus naturally biased), but do bear in mind that I have very little personal connection to this game -- the translation was handled by a trusted third-party contractor and the editing was handled by Jess, with my only major contribution being (of all things!) a bit of graphic design work (those anima icons are all me, yo!).
Anyway, I finally had a chance to spend some quality time with this title recently for QA -- not just casual playing, but NONSTOP PLAYING FOR SEVERAL DAYS -- and in all honesty... my opinion of this game differs *very strongly* from Cultureculture's.
Simply put, I had an absolute blast with it. Work or no, I *wanted* to keep going, and only stopped because I had other things I needed to finish.
It's no more grindy than Wizardry or any given Shin Megami Tensei game, the economy is perfect for what it is (and a major part of the game's challenge, forcing you to pay careful attention to every item you get and make lots of tough decisions about what to sell, what to buy, what to keep and what to craft, and rewarding you greatly for thorough mining trips), and the story and characters are all quite charming and likable (if you're an anime fan, anyway!).
Most of all, though, the game seems really perfectly balanced. When you first enter a dungeon, the enemies in it absolutely KICK YOUR ASS, and you have to make constant trips back to town... but gradually, you're able to get farther and farther, usually opening up shortcuts along the way to make your trips back to town more convenient. You're constantly introduced to new enemies, and especially when they're big bruisers, you really WANT to unchain them, because you know they're going to be *awesome* to have in your party.
And the dungeons themselves are intelligently designed, making exploration a lot of fun.
Overall, this is the kind of dungeon crawler I've always wanted. It offers so much more variety than the genre is known for, yet retains the skull-crushing challenge and constant resource management that makes anal-retentive gamers like myself lose hours upon hours of time as if they were mere seconds.
Obviously, Cultureculture disagrees, and you're free to take his/her word for it over mine (since, as noted, I am admittedly biased here)... but if you like dungeon crawlers, I feel you'd be doing yourself a tremendous disservice by missing this one. It's one of the best games I've played in the entire genre, and is definitely worth your time if you like a good challenge and enjoy RPGs with heavy resource management and lots of variety.
-Tom
We have a few more weeks yet. We're still good, we're still good!
-Tom
Which version is better?
cj_iwakura
Member
Sounds good to me. Not liking the contracted localization bit, but... ah well, as long as it's quality.
PixyJunket
Member
I'm still excited for the game and I'm hoping it does well enough to have XSEED looking at the sequel.
My only real concern is that as an eShop only game on the 3DS, I have a strange hesitation on paying (presumably) around $20 or so for a game that is tied to the system. ESPECIALLY on a portable device that is a little easier to lose or have stolen. Hopefully, some time during this hectic week, Nintendo lays out concrete plans for their account system and insuring that digital content licenses are tied to it and not the hardware.
Let's be honest, they pretty much HAVE to if they plan on getting ANYBODY to buy retail games on the eShop.
My only real concern is that as an eShop only game on the 3DS, I have a strange hesitation on paying (presumably) around $20 or so for a game that is tied to the system. ESPECIALLY on a portable device that is a little easier to lose or have stolen. Hopefully, some time during this hectic week, Nintendo lays out concrete plans for their account system and insuring that digital content licenses are tied to it and not the hardware.
Let's be honest, they pretty much HAVE to if they plan on getting ANYBODY to buy retail games on the eShop.
PixyJunket
Member
3DS, probably. 3D (an effect made for this genre), persistent mapping on the second screen (a godsend in these games) and (maybe) no dithering.
Don't quote me on that third one though, that one is speculation.
CJ: We've contracted localizations many times before. All our Falcom titles, for example (except Ys Seven), and Lunar as well, to name just a few.
We have a very select few contractors we trust, though, and we never let any of our games go until we've had a chance to go over the text in-house and make sure everything is up to spec. So don't you worry!
Man God: They both have their advantages. The 3DS version has rudimentary 3D effects as well as a persistent map on the bottom screen, while the PSP version has the ability to play it via TV-out. The latter always wins out for me, personally, but functionally the two versions of the game are virtually identical. I'd say just go with your preferred platform.
-Tom
We have a very select few contractors we trust, though, and we never let any of our games go until we've had a chance to go over the text in-house and make sure everything is up to spec. So don't you worry!
Man God: They both have their advantages. The 3DS version has rudimentary 3D effects as well as a persistent map on the bottom screen, while the PSP version has the ability to play it via TV-out. The latter always wins out for me, personally, but functionally the two versions of the game are virtually identical. I'd say just go with your preferred platform.
-Tom
cj_iwakura
Member
Weird, I thought Lunar was in-house.
Seriously though, as great as Corpse Party's quality was(I know you're to thank!), I doubt you guys need them... except to keep the games coming of course.
Also, even though I have a 3DS now, I'll probably go with PSN. So long, sweet prince.
Seriously though, as great as Corpse Party's quality was(I know you're to thank!), I doubt you guys need them... except to keep the games coming of course.
Also, even though I have a 3DS now, I'll probably go with PSN. So long, sweet prince.
That will be out of our hands, I'm afraid. That's all up to Sony.
And CJ: Lunar was... sort of in-house? But not really. We used the Working Designs translation as a base, modifying it as necessary with the assistance of a third-party contractor (one of the guys who then went on to assist in the translation for Trails in the Sky).
-Tom
i dont know if this is discussed elsewhere but,
http://www.destructoid.com/unchained-blades-is-crawling-to-3ds-in-january-240663.phtml
this game is released next month. is it good at 30 dollars?
http://www.destructoid.com/unchained-blades-is-crawling-to-3ds-in-january-240663.phtml
this game is released next month. is it good at 30 dollars?