Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Wouldn't That Be Level-5 Five Times Over?
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malvarez1
Posts: 2145 |
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That new Sonic game is so frustrating. It actually looks good, but Apple Arcade? Who thought that was a good idea?
Thank goodness Level 5 is finally trying to release their games in America quicker. I’ve been wanting to play the Megaton games for awhile; the anime was sadly underrated because no one streamed it. |
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HyperGatack
 Posts: 216 Location: MA |
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Man, WKC to WKC2 gave me whiplash.
I LOVED the first game. Kamen Rider Escaflowne?! YES PLEASE. Grizzled old War Veteran named ELDORE? Odd choice. Eldore being voiced by the dad from The Nanny? WHAT?! But Mein gott they dropped the ball hard for 2, especially gutting the DLC quests for the avatar. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4660 |
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The only way that the GameStop replacement change is "good" is that the company saves a buck by just handing over whatever used item the store has on hand that it got for a fraction of its value. If they replace something with a new item, that means potentially having to buy another one from the manufacturer.
Those "protection plans" are frequently a joke, but replacing a new item with a refurbished one is ridiculous. I have to question the quality of GameStop's refurbishing process if the company doesn't stand by it enough to continue to replace it until they give you one that works. Instead, they want to charge you to take the exact same gamble. |
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GNPixie
Posts: 322 |
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The weird ass thing about 2 was while your character was largely irrelevant to the plot, they had the entire DLC campaign called the Avatar Story which was entirely about their own little story post the main game's. Never came out in English whatsoever. And then there was the game Level 5 had nothing to do with (Dogma Wars/Origins) arguably being the best game in the series but it only came out in Japan/Europe and Australia weirdly enough with no NA release either. Don't get me started how bad of misfire the LBX release was either. They released the anime, censored the hell out of it and outright skipped episodes (in turn causing plotholes) and THEN releasing the game a year later and then just dropping the franchise in the West in general. Not even releasing W, Wars or anything. Heck, I'm pretty sure the model kits were both short runned and didn't even finish the first wave that JP got. Man, I hope Musashi is handled better since I actually quite like Musashi since its an outright classic-style robot story like Mazinger, Getter, Combattler, etc. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2412 |
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Damn, the gacha debt sounds like the sort of shit a fatman would pull on a Taimanin in one of the games. Even FGO wouldn't pull something that stupid.
I don't use GameStop much these days but I'll always have fond memories of their midnight preleases for Pokemon and Smash Bros. Meeting up with a bunch of fellows to play and talk games is a great experience. Also going there to download Mystery Gifts. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 559 Location: PA / USA |
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Purchasing anything that is not heavily discounted & on some sort of a sale at Gamestop has always been a scam, it's just now even more apparent than it had been back in the day. Gamestop isn't a place where collectors shop, it's where kids with impulse-buy issues hand over all of their Gameboy Pokemon carts so that they can pay $20 for a single GBA game. It's where parents and grandparents with no gaming literacy are duped into thinking this or that Shrek game is even remotely valuable to someone that was wanting Mario for the holidays.
White Knight Chronicle is a real tragic, sore spot for me. The original is rather unplayable but a lot of the QoL and system upgrades that WKCII got were absolutely phenomenal. You get a lot more out of WKCII if you have not played the first game, as both WKCI and WKCII are on the disc with the WKCI part of the campaign now containing all of the system upgrades that the sequel's campaign got. If you were playing this thing live when the servers were up, it was honestly a really great alternative to stuff like PSO. WKCII had essentially perfected the on-console MMO feeling, in a way that Realm Reborn's original console release was never able to. White Knight Chronicle absolutely got thrashed back in the day by all number of issues - localisation problems, microtransactions were a turn-off, bad western publishers, short online service..... Honestly, if WKCII got a 1:1 port to modern systems with no upgrades and the online server was working, I legitimately think it would do fairly well with all of the mismanagement out of the way. It's baffling to me that Dark Cloud (two in particular) has a trainwreck of a story with barely-meaningful gameplay and yet is often identified as more memorable than WKCII. The likelihood of White Knight Chronicle ever surfacing again is likely pretty null - I don't get any vibes that even the JP market is asking for it. I have to imagine most players would rather Genshin-style combat now compared to a more ATB/Neverwinter Nights-style combat..... 
It just really kills me that here was this online RPG that was blowing FFXII's western PS2 release out of the water with its party gameplay, and was a mashup of Dragon's Dogma aesthetics, Escaflowne, and PSO. It really hurt me bad when the servers went down. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6356 |
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Damn did you hit an artery with that deep cut?
Wow I did not know this.
This gave me pause due to never knowing about this, until I remembered that I have a digital copy how the hell did Altus screw this up? |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3019 |
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I get that something being an Apple Arcade exclusive is pretty disappointing, but on the other hand, if Apple Arcade doesn't have exclusive titles (and I'm talking real titles, not "Generic Match-3 Game #2001" or "Castlevania mobile game that very clearly had microtransactions in it until Apple told them no") how else are they going to convince people to keep paying into the service?
 I really feel like Apple is "damned if they do, damned if they don't" here.
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wolf10
 Posts: 931 |
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I also feel a great need to shill Inazuma Eleven as the best TRPG that TRPG fans have never heard of. Seriously. It's goofy as hell, and the stakes really start going out there in the sequels, but I logged a great many hours training up my soccer boys (and girls!) to take on increasingly powerful threats to the world, the timeline, the galaxy, and most importantly soccer itself. As if that wasn't enough, the music is by Yasunori Mitsuda, and some of his best work besides, completely deadpanning what could otherwise be dismissed as pointless fluff. Why? Because why not. (The later musical contributions by Natsumi Kameoka and Shiho Terada are also excellent.) Basically everything from Level-5's current self-published era is at least entertaining (an acquired taste, perhaps), though the Japan-only status of gems like Yokai Gakuen Y often leaves me in the position of being that guy hyping up games nobody else can play. |
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Hal14
 Posts: 727 Location: Heart of africa |
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I love Ni no Kuni (only the first game) but i still forget Level 5 are its developers. I only think of Ghibli when I think of that game (and I'm not even a major ghibli fan). Anyway, the series is dead to me after the mobile game
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2359 |
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Level-5 has had a very rollercoaster career. They start as a promising up and comer with the Dark Cloud series, hit it big with Dragon Quest which then has them do a bunch of popular and innovative titles like Yo-Kai Watch, Professor Layton, and Inazuma Eleven and then...they crash. Not a complete disaster, but DAMN, did they take a beating, they haven't even had an overseas release of a title since 2020. I hope they've gotten it together as while their games almost universally have corny, even bad stories (save for Professor Layton), they're always interesting at least.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6356 |
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This is a thing with exclusives in general. People don’t like the idea of something that piques their interest only being available for a platform they don’t or will never engage with. Eventhough as you noted without exclusives what’s the point of paying money for a platform if it’s widely available everywhere else?
If that stuff was being overseen or hosted on servers run by level 5 why would Sony be responsible for that stuff no longer being available? |
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light turner
Posts: 190 |
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I'm now remembering I never did play Seven Sirens because by the time I heard about it and it was multiplatform it was already pretty old. And also Half-Genie was a bit of a step down from Pirate's Curse so I think I kind of prioritized other stuff at the time. It's unfortunate the Apple Arcade exclusive Sonic game looks more interesting than Superstars.
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NeoStrayCat
 Posts: 634 |
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Gamestop: Well, besides the bad news Gamestop's going through lately with the warranty thing (replacement plan, while its bad in itself), there's other things not mention in the article that has also made the rounds as of late.
-The $5 off monthy PRO credit no longer being used on digital anything (POSA/Point-Of-Sale-Activation cards) starting December 1st. Even had one of the staff at the nearby GS I go to actually telling me this. -Gamestop gift cards, as of now, cannot be used for digital anything as well. It used to before. -And changes to employee benefits starting next year with a couple of those being healthcare related will no longer be offered. Man, I don't see GS lasting long after all these bad desicions lately. --- Radiant Silvergun: Well, while it is nice that the Steam version is finally out, its not a perfect port though. Its marred by some issues those that reported in the game's steam forum and those mentioning on socials. Hopefully those can get fixed. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 653 |
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I'm willing to give Atlus a pass for it because it was apparently some kind of error they couldn't have forseen; basically, the cartridges just borked out after a few years and the issue was really widespread. Atlus was nice enough to establish a program where people who mailed in their defective cartridges would get replacement in the form of a free digital copy. Just a shame that at this point, there's no way to retrieve the DLC for PQ 1--so there are a ton of DLC-exclusive Personas that are now lost to the aether... |
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