FMW

Okay guys, we've got problems. My city has problems. Big problems. All the grass is getting worn away. My perfect town is being marred by ugly brown patches. I know that running is generally not encouraged in these games because of turf damage, but somehow I've managed to do such damage by walking alone! How do I avoid doing this damage, and how do I heal the harm I've already done? I'm kind of afraid to play beyond my minimum 1 hour a day of checking fossils/weeding/watering flowers/searching for the money rock/talking to Mable/buying a fortune cookie/planting my two new flowers for the day/buying something from nook/sending unwanted clothes and furniture away as gifts in letters/doing whatever errands my animal neighbors assign. That occupies about an hour in my mornings every morning. It's the best hour of my morning.

Hey, Final Fantasy 7 is on Steam! I could play it now if I felt like I guess. Nothing about it inspires me to think that it's a JRPG I would like in particular but it's kind of a classic. Maybe if it goes on sale I could grab it and try it out just for the sake of trying it? Will depend on how steep the sale cut is.

The outlining on the 3DS version looks nice! My only concern about that version is that there's one button too few. My preference has always been to use a dedicated grab button instead of shield + A, but the 3DS lacks a Z equivalent. I think I would probably pay extra for a home console version anyway though. Smash Bros is social, and that suits a TV screen.

Hooray! Today my town permit came in and I began my first public works project. Resetti center it shall be. I didn't have an option for Brewster's cafe... I hope I stumble across the trigger for that by the time I've wrapped the Resetti center up. My public works priorities remain unchanged. I also got access to the tropical island today! Haven't been yet, but I hope to get an influx of new bugs and fish for Blathers. Will probably need to visit once in the day and once in the evening to try and track down different specimens. Oh yeah, and Crazy Redd showed up today! I understand that the odds of getting a non forged piece of art from him are kind of a crap shoot, but right now I have zero art so I gambled on it anyway. Today was also the first day that gyroids started coming out of the earth. So today was a good day. A busy day. I reckon I'm ready to multiplayer this joint now. I've got a pretty great town flag that I'm proud of. I would also like to go and steal WaS' custom suit he designed and was bragging about. None of my attempts at clothing design have gone well so far. I understand it's possible to share a lot of the design stuff via QR code. Do you guys know how to do that?

Oh yes, I entirely agree with you. Square Enix would do horrible horrible things to Atlus' RPG franchises. Indeed, the two approaches to JRPG design are nearly antithetical. They're just the only publisher I can think of who would maybe decide that Trauma Center is an IP worth investing another big game into. I mean, Square Enix are making another DRAKENGAURD game for god's sake.

You people are moving through this game so quickly! You've gotta take your time, people. This is a game to savor, not devour. There's a reason the full array of town functions doesn't even open until you're about two weeks in. They're trying to teach you to just play a bit each day, teasing you onward with just one more exciting thing that's gonna happen tomorrow. At the rate of progress I'm reading about here, you'll have little reason to still be playing the game come holiday events.

Maybe we could be optimistic? Maybe somebody will buy Atlus and review all their IP and say "This Persona and SMT and Etrian Odyssey stuff that's your bread and butter is good but... I just feel like there should be more TRAUMA CENTER in there. Could you guys put a team together for that?" It would take a phenomenally stupid buyer to make that call, since Trauma Team proved that even if a game in this franchise is profoundly excellent, the market just isn't there... but such buyers do exist. COME ON SQUARE ENIX! YOU KNOW YOU WANT THEM!

Atlus/Index doesn't have anything to do with the 'Souls' franchise anymore. Atlus handled international distribution of Demon's Souls. That's it. The developer (From Software) is totally independent and both Dark Souls and Dark Souls II are published domestically and internationally by Namco Bandai. The property is simply not for sale in any of these hypothetical transactions, Index has nothing to do with it. SMT encompasses an awful lot of product. Yeah you have SMT 1-4, but where do all the other sub-franchises land if there's a Persona/SMT split? What happens to Devil Survivor, Devil Summoner, the SMT MMO, etc? Are those all separate sales? In Japan Persona is sold without the SMT title attached, but all these others are. Does that make them part of the SMT pickup? If the IP are sold to separate bidders, does that mean that those buyers would need to put together entirely separate transactions to try and secure any of the in development assets or human talent associated? Or would IP be sold off as a bundle package along with the titles partially completed within them and the studios developing them? Another detail maybe worth noting: Nintendo are helping out with international distribution of SMT IV, and are doing the Korean localization themselves. Between that, the large number of platform exclusives and the SMT X Fire Emblem co-development project, those two company's seem like they're in it deep right now.

I feel like I can't get a house expansion until the city has either a Resetti center or a Brewster's cafe. Those need to be priorities. Oh yeah, and also a bridge... but that one I'll just need to wait on.

Well do you have any gyroids? I don't care if you're going for real life or not, without gyroids your house is nothing. Less than a house.

@Malicious H - FF XII I think is already the deepest FF storytelling has ever been. You've got political intrigue, a massive list of characters (and more importantly characters who exist for reasons other than to serve/obstruct the party), and a refusal to pidgeonhole most characters into good/evil roles. It's not song of ice and fire... but I can't think of many games that approach their fantasy storytelling with such a vastly realized story that hinges on the military and political balances between powerful men and nations. (any? Maybe just The Witcher? And even then, that would make FF XII video game's best original take at least) @Mister Jack - he shouldn't be there. He wasn't there originally. Originally FF XII was a three man party all game (Basch, Ash, Vossler). Then Square Enix brass looked at it and said "ehh... that's not terribly marketable. Can you give us a leading couple?" So then the director drew up Balthier and Fran, the pair that would accompany and add worldly concern to the party that was previously all royal/noble/concerned with honor. Then Square Enix brass said "ehh... that's not terribly marketable. Can you give us a more teenage anime leading couple?". It was at this point that 1. Balthier's catchphrase "I'm the leading man" was added to the script. Because the director was PISSED OFF. 2. The director left the project. 3. Vossler was cut from the party and the story widely rewritten. The entire intro needed to be rebuilt from scratch. So that's why development took forever on this one. And it also explains why Vaan and Penelo are there without really having a point. The original story was written before they or Balthier/Fran even existed. That's why it all revolves around other characters, and even many of the guest characters (Larsa, Vossler, Reddas) seem like better protagonist material than what we ended up with. That's why the intro is so much weaker than much of the rest of the game - it was made after the director (Matsuno) bailed and it's job was to introduce and characterize these two pointless characters who existed solely to be teenage romantic leads. That's why their character arcs end so early in the game - the story as originally written takes over and replaces the new stuff. That's why Balthier/Fran are a good leading couple with chemistry, and Vaan/Penelo are not. One pair was made by the original director, one was made by the team he left behind.

Had you played previous installments, you would not be making that assumption

Hey, the new trailer for this game is out! It inspires... absolutely no confidence. It's hard to judge if both the writing and voice acting are terrible, or if the writing is just so terrible that even considerable voice talent is unable to redeem it. I kind of feel like it isn't fair ot condemn the voice actors as turning in poor work considering the lines they're working with here. Also, the game got delayed. Which is 100% expected of a product coming out of Square Enix Japan. They can't make coherent games, they can't make their incoherent games in a timely manner. The first trailer for this made me think "Okay, this could be sort of cool in a so-bad-it's-good overproduced clumsy open world sort of way." I've had fun with clumsy open worlds before because that's where the most fun in breaking an open world comes from, and the costumes looked like the best kind of ridiculous. But this new trailer brings about an entirely different reaction. My new reaction is "Oh god, they still don't realize that FF XIII is bad"

That is a DAMN good deal

I think my problem is mostly that new McCoy just feels like an imitation of old McCoy. Most of the other characters have something new going on. Uhura and Spock have a romance. Checkov is younger and more Russian. Sulu actually gets to be a character now as opposed to the faceless lever puller from before, even if he's not super colorful. I really like new Sulu. Scotty is Simon Pegg and he's great. He's better than old Scotty easily. Thin OR fat version. But McCoy? He hasn't been important to either of the movie plots and just kind of wanders in saying an old McCoy catchphrase. So he looks like old McCoy and he sounds like old McCoy... but he hasn't changed at all. He's not clever like Uhura, funny like Scotty and Spock, responsible like Sulu. He's just... same as always. It's a bummer.

I too just saw Star Trek: Into Darkness. I too think it's pretty fantastic. The casting for this rebooted enterprise crew is just great. I love Spock and Scotty and Sulu and Uhura. I'm okay with Chekov and Kirk. The only one that rubs me the wrong way is McCoy, but whiffing on 1 for 7 when recasting icons of this stature is an incredibly good ratio. Special shoutout to our new villain Benedict Cumberbatch - can he be our new action star please? He was so so cool. I nominate him to play Martian Manhunter in the inevitable Justice League film, but honestly I'd go to pretty much any action flick featuring him. Expendables 3? Sure, I'm in.

So I reckon was saw pretty much what we expected to see. Shooters, sports, multimedia functionality, and more extensive online functionality than the competition. I would say that anyone enthusiastic about the Xbox brand should have been satisfied with this. Microsoft is doing the same things they have always done, and doing them better than before. More people per multiplayer match, more forms of media getting run through the Xbox, continued first landing point for Call of Duty DLC. I mean, surely nobody was surprised by this presentation?

I don't follow. I mean, I'm sure you're right, but I don't understand. It seems to me that if this hypothetical of mine plays out and one or two game devices become largely Japanese game boxes, then that would encourage more localization on those platforms because whatever audience exists is going to be conveniently concentrated there. That's happened in the past hasn't it? The PSP kinda bombed outside Japan, so it's only software support for the second half of it's lifecycle was Japanese stuff. So the latter day PSP library has a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't expect to find on any other platform. From JRPGs like Legend of Heroes, to visual novel hybrids like Corpse Party, to straight up date sim visual novels like that super weird one Aksys picked up recently. Since that's all that was releasing for the system and there wasn't any big western developed competition, those games actually got localized. So I postulate that EA and presumably Activision bailing out on the Wii U, as well as Nintendo as a publisher going out of their way to lock in Japanese third party support, could lead to MORE stuff getting localized than would have otherwise. I mean, a lot of it will be particularly Japanese stuff that will only have a very limited appeal, but that was the same with the PSP.

It's maybe worth throwing in for comparison that the 3DS is also at this point a Japanese games box. And the list of development IP and talent working on that hardware is far more imposing than for the Wii U. And the 3DS is, I understand, doing pretty okay! I mean, it's always gonna look good next to the Vita, but even beyond beating the competition it's selling quite well. They're expecting to move 15-16 million units this year. So the 3DS is almost a test case arguing that Japanese software can indeed carry a relatively successful console.

Okay, here's a question: Does the Wii U need to be a viable platform for western third parties? Because Nintendo is working overtime to secure third party ports, exclusives, HD remakes... from Japanese development studios. That's the path forward I see - at this point I don't think the Wii U will become a viable platform for the graphical heft and online intensive designs of the next generation of software from the biggest budget western studios. But Japanese games, by and large, haven't pushed online design or fancy graphics the same way. They also don't do shooters so much. So I can see the Wii U being a successful system for the traditional Japanese game designs. The list of studios and IP Nintendo has secured in some form is larger than it seems. Yakuza and Sonic from SEGA. SMT from Atlus. Dragon Quest from Square Enix (and also Deus Ex from Square Enix which is really poorly conceived). Tekken and Dynasty Warriors from NamcoBandai (and presumably more after Smash Bros). Resident Evil from Capcom. Platinum Games' two games. They've got Silicon Software optimizing their engine for the hardware (Silicon's engine is used by From Software and Square Enix). Monster Hunter from Capcom. These don't seem like the games to turn a system's fate, and they aren't! Not outside Japan at least. But in Japan this is quite the murderer's row of IP and talent. So the path they seem to be following is to double down on partnerships and exclusives with Japanese developers and try to become THE machine in Japan. And then you take those games and expand out from there. Can this work? Could the Wii U find a place in the market as a Japanese games box? Without call of duty it'll never be the top console, but is this niche large enough to keep it afloat do you think? I mean, assuming they can even execute on this which is not a certain thing.

I have pre-ordered and paid off two JRPGs. Mario and Luigi Dream Team was the first. That decision was an easy one, for the previous Mario and Luigi game was easily the best so far. That series is running hot. The second pre-order is Shin Megami Tensei IV. Again, this is because I totally dug the previous entry in the franchise (SMT Strange Journey). SMT Strange Journey was maybe not as objectively good game as M&L 3, but it appealed to me subjectively very specifically with it's nihilistic tone and morality system that I actually didn't hate.

I am currently playing a very agreeable trio of games. Fire Emblem Awakening is my story game. Etrian Odyssey IV is my grinding game. Luigi's Mansion is my action game. I'm not yet even halfway done with ANY of these which is the most exciting thing in the world. For my tastes, these three games are perfect. Yes Luigi's Mansion is super easy as action games go, but I'm terrible at action games so it's just about right. Etrian Odyssey is a much harder game, but in a genre I'm much more comfortable in and happy to tackle unreasonable challenges from. And Fire Emblem works great as a story game because all the important story beats are character driven in the support conversations. I do feel some pressure to play more Etrian Odyssey right now though, because when Shin Megami Tensei IV comes out I'm going to want to rotate it in as my old school JRPG.

Today's Nintendo Direct was mostly stuff we already knew, and Nintendo locking down one more Japanese third party exclusive. Sonic isn't gonna excite a lot of internet enthusiasts, but at least it'll sell. It's the opposite of that Bayonetta 2 pickup. Makes you wonder what's even left in Japan for Nintendo to lay claim to. Castlevania? I can totally see them locking down Castlevania once the Lords of Shadow trilogy wraps up. And GOH!, it pains me deeply to admit this but... a return to Gamecube era Metroid isn't gonna save anything Metroid Prime never had the sales to back up it's quality

Like, everyone? You mean you don't?!?