Level 5 did make Dragon Quest 9 and Ni no Kuni. If that was their one “trick,” the show was worth the cost of the ticket imo.
Squeenix is mostly a publisher now and makes none of its own games outside main series Final Fantasies, which have blown at least since XIII. Their sucktitude was a collaborative effort between many smaller studios across the board. And probably a lot of bad luck. I don’t imagine very many programmers, artists, writers, project leaders and so on wake up, have their morning coffee, and brainstorm new ways to fuck gamers harder than ever today. Not that Squeenix is guiltless. They exiled their top-end talent, outsourced their creativity, and pillaged value from their former great reputation until it was gone.
They’re not worth totally writing off though. A publisher can still release fantastic games in spite of themselves. DQ9 is amazing imo, and Bravely Default is out soon. They probably CAN still turn it around for themselves, but they’d need to go back to Square one (GET IT!?!?! Squ-I’ll shut up) and earn everyone’s loyalty again, the right way. I wouldn’t suggest it’s likely though.
The thing about Level 5 is that they can make great games, if they’re not left to their own devices. Dragon Quests VIII and IX are an excellent and a solid game respectfully but when you look at stuff like Dark Cloud 2, Rogue Galaxy, White Knight Chronicles 1 & 2, and Ni no Kuni, you see games that look like they’ll be fun games on the surface but are a mess game design and writing wise (Dark Cloud 2: Monica is almost point for point strictly inferior to Max’s Robot Steve, not to mention the pants on head retarded time travel plot or the fact that the game is a glorified dungeon crawler, WKC: has an amazingly in depth character creator to make your very own cutscene scarecrow while the rest of the party is led by captain moron and the idiot brigade, Ni no Kuni: more than willing to bust your chops for not spending hours hunting down those very rare creatures to fulfill some sidequest or to compensate for your party’s moronic AI, and Rogue Galaxy: I don’t even know where to start with this one).
Man, Rouge Galaxy is one of the few games that I’ve ever simply dropped mid-way. I got through the fifth or so massive-ass area filled with jack fucking shit, realized I still did not give a damn about absolutely anything that was going on and just went “Nope, fuck you, I’m done.”
Anyhow, there’s been a small but steady crop of new studios made of old and new faces lately that are crawling off of Squeenix tumescent rotting carcass. Bravely Default itself is from Silicon, which is a somewhat new studio.
And in any case, there’s still some semi-big-names around. Monolith cashed in fairly nicely with Xenoblade and are working on a sorta-maybe-sequel. Atlus seems to keep on trucking even through several financial crises mostly (thanks to P4 being a massive cashcow) and they’ve been putting out some pretty good titles on the side fairly consistently. Intelligent Systems also did pretty well recently with Fire Emblem: Eugenics. And then you have some interesting trends of Japanese devs finally deciding to work with western developers to make stuff like Strike Suit Zero, Mighty No. 9 and whatever Project Phoenix will end up being.
Monolith had a hand in Skyward Sword, so yeah, they know what they’re doing.
P4 was good but I haven’t been able to complete it again after the first time. The gameplay is almost pure exp grind, and once you know the story (which was middling tbh) it’s just an unbearable chore to play, although I like how Atlus styles their games in general.
Yeah, I thought the story was a downgrade from P3. Most of the gameplay and systems were improved, but they completely dropped the ball with the atmosphere and buildup for the finale, which just stood out all the more given how well that was done in P3.
I think a few gems of the past generation ended up hitting the PSP. Tactics Ogre’s remake completely revamped the combat system, retranslated the game, added new game plus, extra characters and orchestrated the entire soundtrack. It is amazing. The Ys games were also fantastic.
Level 5 is capable of magic. I just hope we got more NNK’s than WKC’s… I totally agree about Valkyria Chronicles. Fucking loss. You’ll feel better knowing they turned VC 2 into a young teen angst bullshit like its associated anime, so we didn’t miss much. VC3 was supposed to be much darker and more interesting though.
SE is definitely the biggest disappointment of the past generation. They really gutted most of their franchises. Had it not been for the complete lack of good rpg’s , xenosaga would’ve been in the bargain bin. The DS really is what saved us in terms of more old school, simpler gaming.
I haven’t really played many RPGs this cycle. I played Vesperia and the XIII 1 and 2 and I don’t really remember what else. I feel like I played JRPGs for like 10 years so I didn’t really think twice about giving some time to different developers. There were some great games this cycle, but I really don’t think I played more than those three JRPG wise.
In my opinion the PS3 ended up on top, only due to variety of exclusives and the PS+ program. As the cycle continued Microsoft got predictably more greedy while Sony actively pursued ways to be a better partner for the consumer. We see this with the next console cycle. My money is on the PS+ program making serious ground while Microsoft continues to nickel and dime us via ridiculous fee’s strapped to developers (then made up on us via micro transactions which is what I think happened with GTAonline, all the updates and the fees Microsoft imposes had to be paid for as I believe updates can cost some $200,000 a piece on XBL).
Anywho this is kind of a rant, as I find the evidence for Sony over Microsoft in this pretty overwhelming. That being said, I never had a PS3 and I’m not that broken up about it. A few of the exclusives looked great though, but in the end I think “exclusives” are a thing of the past.
The PS3 really blossomed late generation with indy games. Games like Flower, Journey, the Unfinished Swan, and Rain gave it a market 360 didn’t really tap into.
I agree with both. While the Wii had a strong dominance earlier on, it fizzled with an utter lack of content to take advantage of the novelty of its controls.
The 360 then looked quite interesting because it had a few interesting exclusives while at the same time, it took away Sony’s advantage by making everything multiplatform. The PS3 was just not cost effective to make or develop for. The PS3 however did bloom later in the generation thanks to PS+ and its indies and this allowed it to differentiate itself the 360. PS+ really changed the game when it comes to their respective gaming networks. XBL had become a stale breeding grounds for vicious foul mouthed pre-teens and PS+ gave us free games we actually wanted to play on multiple platforms. MS’ answer was to give away much older games that had by this time already been owned and played by everyone.
If PS+ continues this trend AND gives us a functional gaikai in 2014 (however unlikely because of the shittiness of broadband internet in NA), it will really change the face of gaming.
I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to watching season 2 of that show or not. It’s such a terrible show, but its like watching a trainwreck in slow motion, you just can’t look away. I probably will just to see if every so called expert lose in the very field they’re supposedly experts in again.
Though I will probably always love the line the “video game “expert”” gave in the post game commentary on the video game history quiz near the end of the first season. “Ralph Baer? Who the hell is that? Why don’t they ask questions on stuff that matters like the release date for Halo 4?” :booster:
The only jrpgs I played last gen were on the DS, but apart from that it has mostly been crpgs. It would help if the few games I find appealing started getting released on steam like a lot of Squeenix fare.