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This Week in Games - Hack The Past


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TsukasaElkKite



Joined: 22 Nov 2005
Posts: 4032
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 9:51 am Reply with quote
I'm desperate for a remake/port of .hack//IMOQ on the Switch.
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b-dragon



Joined: 21 Apr 2021
Posts: 500
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 10:07 am Reply with quote
As much as I'm relatively fond of .Hack, a remake would have to change the mechanics considerably to really catch my interest. I think it would need more of an overhaul than the grind streamlining that GU's re-release got, personally.
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NeoStrayCat



Joined: 14 Sep 2011
Posts: 634
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 11:08 am Reply with quote
Well, for a couple things, I get the Dungeon Travelers Steam fiasco is BS in a way considering, yeah, it did get released on Vita stateside, same reason on Chaos Head's situation (since it was released for Switch stateside), but I guess that was more of an exception than the rule that whoever's on the steam review board for titles approved needs to stop with the double standards considering there's "other" problomatic titles there with no Q/C.

At least Shiravune's not going to just stop there, "White Album: Memories like Falling Snow" is going to be on Steam eventually though. (Though my pipe dream would be a native PC port of Aquapazza, lol. Though that would be something they'd have to ask Team Arcana [formely Examu] for, sadly. >.>)

And as for .hack, I'd rather I just want myself a Xenosaga HD trilogy, but that too is also a pipe dream I'll never see happen, unless Bamco agrees on something with Monolith Soft, lol.
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Posts: 931
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 11:28 am Reply with quote
Quote:
In what could be one of the biggest blows to Japanese PC gaming, I received news that Illusion will be closing down.
I drafted one or two eulogies for last week's comment section, but I'm glad to see it didn't even need me pointing it out. Illusion was a big deal in their heyday, and their influence is very keenly felt in pretty much anything by Team Ninja, Compile Heart, or Gust, to name just a few. Even PSO2's best-in-class character creation relies on techniques pioneered by Illusion. Hell, quite a bit of what I know about 3D modeling comes form my time wasted in the Illusion modding scene.

I think Artificial Academy remains the only life sim series I've ever seen to represent sexuality as more than a simple binary or trinary, and even let you do ace characters if you knew which traits to combine. So yes, that icky Japanese porn studio your parents and pundits warned you about understood queerness better than, well, many indie teams and any current AAA studio. And that's without even getting into the shenanigans their TEATIME brand got it up to...

So pour one out (or rub one out Laughing ) for one of the greats. Here's to 30 years of impression, inspiration, and innovation.
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Blanchimont



Joined: 25 Feb 2012
Posts: 3588
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 11:39 am Reply with quote
Quote:
In the meantime, Shiravune will sell both Dungeon Travelers 2 on Johren, where they are currently available.

Well, if there's any silver lining, at least they didn't cancel the PC release outright. Of course the market won't have the same reach as if it was on Steam...
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4671
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 12:19 pm Reply with quote
Once again, Valve makes it hard to believe that somebody there doesn't have it out for anime games, specifically.

Sad to see that about Illusion. It was a company that was definitely willing to get out there and be experimental with what it let people do. Individual titles aside, the in-game tools for interaction tended to be things that weren't common in the adult game area.
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DRWii



Joined: 16 May 2007
Posts: 642
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 12:23 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
All the while, many fans of the Dungeon Travelers games point out that Valve's decision is doubly-nonsensical, as Dungeon Traveler has already seen release in the U.S. before on the PS Vita, with an ESRB rating and everything.

To be fair, the US Vita version had a few images changed (4 out of over 70) because the publisher was "advised" to by their contacts at the ESRB. Looking at discussions from the time, 3 of the images were of lolis, but the changes were fairly minor (pun intended). The non-loli image is actually the most drastic one, and I think the original goes beyond a "PG-13." I'll leave a comparison image so others can make their own opinions (NSFW warning; US version on top, JP on bottom).

None of this is to go against your broader point of "screw Valve and their double standards," because I agree.
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Abraham Omosun



Joined: 05 Mar 2020
Posts: 158
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 12:56 pm Reply with quote
Really strange that Gundam Evolution never had the Aerial (or any WfM mobile suit) in it. Seems something like putting the main mech from your currently airing show into your game abouts mechs was preety obvious cross promotion (WfM even debuted first)
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AiddonValentine



Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 2359
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 2:07 pm Reply with quote
The whole thing with Dungeon Travelers just shows that Valve can't really live up to the courage of their convictions and why it's bad that Steam has such a monopoly on digital distribution. It's similar to a few years ago when Valve took down some visual novels and you could practically hear the handwringing as they tried to justify it. Just another black mark in how Valve has become more disappointing as its leadership has gotten older
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NormanS



Joined: 15 Aug 2014
Posts: 167
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 3:48 pm Reply with quote
The one thing i noticed was odd about Illusion's current and final game Room Girl was how few mods and modding for that title. Pretty much every Illusion title has a whole bunch of mods available.

I've asked in a modding discord for Illusion titles and apparently Room Girl is very difficult to mod.

I guess the lack of mods could contribute to the game's lack of success. Another thing is that Room girl feels like a demo in terms of depth compared to other titles. I assume that Illusion is in their prototyping/demo phase that they would make a more fleshed out game from Room Girl's engine.
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Posts: 931
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 5:24 pm Reply with quote
Illusion modding ran into some pretty significant setbacks when the company first switched over to Unity as well, but the key difference there was that people actually cared enough to want to mod SBPR and, more importantly, Honey Select. Room Girl was built mainly from recycled Honey Select 2 assets, and didn't really offer enough of its own to motivate people with HS2 already right there. If I had to guess.

For me, their twilight years output peaked with the highly underrated Emotion Creators, which was basically a full VN creation engine with Koikatsu character creation attached, not to mention an extremely versatile posing/animation editor that (I assume) was the final evolution of TEATIME's toolkit. It's kind of a shame it never got an expansion, or even much long-term support at all.
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Vent



Joined: 22 Aug 2009
Posts: 323
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 6:25 pm Reply with quote
Strongly disagree with the notion that Gundam Evolution felt "not as exploitative" as its counterparts. One of the largest complaints throughout the game's life span was that it was absurdly stingy with the free currency you could buy new suits with, requiring you to either get it from events (none of which happened in the first couple of months of operation) or putting in a ton of time for fully completing the battle pass (which would give you enough currency to buy exactly one MS so...hope you don't buy something you end up hating!). The devs were very aware people hated this but never changed it, likely because it was a mandate from higher up the chain and not something they had any control of.

What they might have had control over was the other half dozen or so things that lead to the game bleeding out players: overly long matches, people constantly disconnecting the second the match didn't go their way, poor map design (ask any veteran player about the old Harbor City layout with the choke point of death and watch them stare into the middle distance as the flashbacks kick in), and MS that were frankly incredibly unfun to play against for any new player due to a prevalence of one-hit kill scrub crusher suits like the Barbatos and GM Sniper II. By the time any of these were addressed - and the first two points never were - it was far too late. The damage was done, most players weren't coming back, and the while release of new suits including clearly pandering choices like the Heavyarms would get a few hundred or so logging in they'd all fall off again when it was clear nothing else about the game had meaningfully changed. Balance changes rarely happened and when they did they were bizarre and scattershot, suits becoming OP or completely nonviable from patch to patch with no clear reason behind it.

Oh yeah and their counter programming for the OW2 launch being Literally Nothing, not even an event or advertising or anything, probably didn't help.

Evo closing down is kind of sad in a general sense I guess, but it's the kind of sad where you mourn the wasted potential of a game that was essentially already dead.
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FilthyCasual



Joined: 01 Jun 2015
Posts: 2420
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 6:55 pm Reply with quote
[quote="DRWii"]To be fair, the US Vita version had a few images changed (4 out of over 70) because the publisher was "advised" to by their contacts at the ESRB. Looking at discussions from the time, 3 of the images were of lolis, but the changes were fairly minor (pun intended). The non-loli image is actually the most drastic one, and I think the original goes beyond a "PG-13." I'll leave a comparison image so others can make their own opinions (NSFW warning; US version on top, JP on bottom).

None of this is to go against your broader point of "screw Valve and their double standards," because I agree.[/quote
Imgur killed your image, like it does all NSFW images.
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Blanchimont



Joined: 25 Feb 2012
Posts: 3588
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 7:19 pm Reply with quote
FilthyCasual wrote:
DRWii wrote:
I'll leave a comparison image so others can make their own opinions (NSFW warning; US version on top, JP on bottom).

Imgur killed your image, like it does all NSFW images.

It's still there. If you click the link from here, it'll just give a 404.
But, if you copy the link, paste it to a new tab and then open it, it'll load.

Don't ask why ¯\_(ツ)_/¯...
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light turner



Joined: 13 Aug 2022
Posts: 194
PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2023 8:58 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
. The game's art style means that some characters look younger... but again, if the game isn't explicit, this shouldn't be an issue


It doesn't matter if it's actually explicit or not, some people get really bend out of shape when it comes to any kind of fanservice or titillation when it comes to characters under the age of 18. Which essentially means the majority of Japanese media, especially visual novels

I think it doesn't help stuff like Dungeon Travellers 2 is a lot more niche and easier to do this kind of stuff to than, say, Persona 5 Royal which is popular and mainstream so it would absolutely lose them money to block the game from Steam and get more backlash. But someone in charge over there doesn't see much profit loss if they don't release a dungeon crawler.

Then again Moero Chronicle is on Steam so who knows at this point. Not sure if that one is censored (got the Switch version myself) Yeah it's inconsistent. I kind of stopped bothering with Steam for these kinds of games.
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