I have always been a huge fan of SEGA. I had the Master System, Megadrive and Sega CD consoles and still play some old games such as Shining Force and Wonder Boy series. However…
…As soon as SEGA moved to the 32-bit platform, it began screwing up every franchise they had. Monster World IV was beutiful, but was a fiasco. Phantasy Star 4 threw the great RPG in the grave, Shining Force III Took to long to be released… New games weren’t that appealing, with the exception of the Panzer Dragon games.
To make things worse, they also released a bunch of dumb SONIC games, and turned Phantasy Star AND Shining Force (!!!) into Hack-and-Slash adventure games. I mean… What are they thinking?? Can’t they just keep Shining Force as GREAT strategy game??
Now whenever I hear SEGA is about to release a sequel to something, I am scared…
I think it’s only VERY recently that Sega has just been putting out a bunch of lame stuff. I think they were pretty damn good up through their period of making consoles; however, most of the stuff they’ve put out after the Dreamcast has been - in my opinion - pretty lame.
To be fair much of their Dreamcast stuff was amazingly high calibre- Jet Set Radio, Shenmue, Virtua Tennis, Crazy Taxi- even the quirkier stuff like ChuChu Rocket and Samba De Amigo. Since then… well… damn.
In related news, I am worried about Nights 2 but at the same time excited. This will absolutely make or break Sega in my eyes.
My problem with the Shining spin offs is not that they didn’t take advantage (or care) of the rpg elements, it’s that they didn’t succeed in the mindless fun department. I played Shining Soul up to the point that it became obvious that even with cheats (lv99) you could get a beating or two. IIRC Shining Soul 2 was better balanced and structured but still nothing to write home about. The GBA Shining Force remake was sweet though.
Sonics went downhill after the second one IMO (hush, Knuckles fans) Sega failed in the financial part of the game, it’s still easy to find people swearing by Saturn/Dreamcast games.
What I’M looking foward to is the remake of Phantasy Star 4 for import PS2. My roomate has the PS2 remake… hooooly crap, MAJOR facelift blast from the past.
Even though they’re making new “Shining”(Eh, they’re not real ones, but it’s better than nothing) games, Sega Europe haven’t bothered to release 'em over here in Europe. I blame Mainland Europe, myself.
They (assuming AM2 is still part of Sega) made Outrun2, and it was DAMN good. Now that thats done, they can go die for all i care. Die or continue to bleed out “Sonic the Hedgehog” games that appeal more to fans of anthropomorphic animals than of videogames.
I only ever liked the company for their arcade games, so i can only hope that anyone who had anything to do with Daytona/Rally/Outrun jumps off the sinking ship and forms their own company, kind of like Smilebit/Treasure.
Also, the only decent modern franchise they’ve managed to come up with, Jet Set Radio was actually done not by Sega, but by Smilebit, the same guys who did Panzer Dragoon Orta. So even though i’m a huge fan of JSR, i can’t even credit that to Sega.
Sega failed in the financial part of the game, it’s still easy to find people swearing by Saturn/Dreamcast games.