Results tagged “Resonance of Fate”

Because it's not like Sega went out of their way to tell you!

Oh sure, you could always venture to Sega of America's website and see that they have news bits about both games being released. But the real question here is: would you have known that by not going there? That's because the promotion for these games has been frighteningly minimal. Though it's not quite as bad as how Ubi treated both No More Heroes titles on Wii, they still could have done more for games their parent company funded and that could find audiences outside of Japan.

Resonance of Fate, it seems, is an RPG that's actually more in the vein of their own Valkyria Chronicles than Final Fantasy XIII. And it seems that Sega is marketing it just as wonderfully as that game, if not less. Do you believe they only released one trailer for this game? And it's just a teaser trailer that was originally released in Japanese, but now with English text for the international release. And this teaser is also from E3 2009, back in early June of last year. Apparently someone at Sega thought this was good enough. I'm afraid the video posted on the official Japanese Youtube page (as in the End of Eternity page, the Japanese name) showcasing the well-acted English dub doesn't count. Kudos on the nice localization, though.

At the very least, Infinite Space has had some promotion in the form of numerous anime shorts. Unfortunately, the dubbing in them is a far cry from what you'll find in the RoF clip above. It's also prevalent in the trailer as well, though I hear the game itself doesn't have nearly as much voice acting, in case you were worrying. This game also released last week, a mere two days after Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. Most of the promotion seems to be done by fan sites and blogs.

Apparently allocations for both games has been spartan as well, with people reporting that a lot of stores still don't have the game in a week later. They seem to be going for the "niche appeal, therefore niche marketing, therefore niche distribution" line of thinking, and while that's OK, I feel they could aspire for a bigger market. It's not like Sega is a small company, after all. I'm sure they were too busy not marketing Yakuza 3 in the process, which in a few cases actually received more marketing. Sometimes not for the better.

Despite being released only a week after FFXIII and two days before the new* Pokemon, I still think Sega could have found an audience for both Resonance of Fate and Infinite Space. They certainly wouldn't have sold as much as the two aforementioned games (that's crazy talk), but they could have had some appeal to a lot of RPG fans who are starving for a good console RPG this gen or just want something that will occupy them after their finished with the bigger titles. Especially in RoF given how there have been so few good console RPGs this generation. Hopefully they can rely on word of mouth now. If they can find a copy.

*"New" as in "remakes," of course.

P.S. I don't intend to make this PSA thing a habit, in case you were wondering. That would get pretty annoying. It already is, actually!

Publishers in the video game industry tend to make many mistakes, but in that particular way it's no different than a lot of other companies within their respective districts. But the mistakes some of them make, especially in the gaming industry, tend to be the most obvious ones; those made because of the management and marketing sectors being completely oblivious to occurrences they damn well shouldn't be oblivious to.

The Final Fantasy franchise is not the direct cause of anything implied above. If you read this blog regularly (or not), chances are you're aware that it's one of the biggest Japanese RPG franchises around. It would, therefore, logically follow that whenever a new game in the series releases, especially if its a mainline title, other companies that publish JRPGs should release them as far away as possible from whenever Square Enix decides to grace us with one. Yet every time one of them releases, there is almost always some company that's foolish enough to think they can go against it. And they always fail miserably, usually to the detriment of gamers as well as themselves.

One of the earliest, and most unfortunate, cases dates back to Final Fantasy VIII. Now, the game itself released at a fine time, in early-September of 1999. But it was a shame that Konami decided to release their main RPG at the time, Suikoden II, mere weeks after it. A game heralded as one of the best RPGs of all time was overshadowed by one of the biggest love-it-or-hate-it FF games in the series. I'm sure there are plenty of people who want a copy of the game now, or wish they owned two so the could sell one to pay off a Corvette.

And it's happened a lot more since then. Capcom decided to release Breath of Fire IV on the same day as Final Fantasy IX in November 2000, which caused people to miss a game that was somewhat of a foundation for a few ideas used in Final Fantasy X. The first Shadow Hearts title, whose tone feels very similar to that of the FF games, was overshadowed (pun not intended; no really!) by the then-impending release of FFX in December 2001. And finally, Final Fantasy XII also managed to claim a victim in Tales of the Abyss, which itself was sandwiched in between that and Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria.

With all of these unfortunate victims, companies have now learned to keep their RPGs away from a Final Fantasy game whenever it releases, right? Afraid not.

Sega seems to be a glutton for punishment these days. I've briefly discussed Yakuza 3's unfortunate release date before, but in case you missed it, it's March 9th. Right on the same day that Final Fantasy XIII releases. Yakuza 3 may not be an RPG, but it's going for some of the same audience that FFXIII is going for. And that's bad for Sega, but it's their fault.

But that's not all: Resonance of Fate, a new RPG developed by Tri-Ace and published by Sega, is going for much more of the FFXIII audience. I pointed out a week ago that Gamestop had the game listed as a March 9th release, which would have been utter silliness. I was also hoping that Amazon's May date was correct, as it would be far away from anything that could pose a threat. Gamespot noted that Sega of America has now officially announced a date for the game: March 16th. I don't know what's wrong with these people. Not only is it still competing with FFXIII, but it also has God of War 3 to contend with. Oh, and it's only a week after the aforementioned Yakuza 3. Have you ever seen a company so willing to compete with their own releases?

Admittedly, things are a bit different in Europe. Eurogamer reported earlier in the week that RoF is releasing there on March 26th. Much farther away from FFXIII, but that's honestly still too close.

The logical thought process for a company usually is (and should be) to keep it out of harms way if at all possible. Yet here we have plenty of them daring to brave the wolves' den with minimal chance of escaping unscathed. These are games that I'd like to see succeed, but Sega seems fully intent on sending them to death. Hopefully they're not cocky enough to think their name on the packaging will sell a game, which sales of MadWorld and Bayonetta should have proven.

I guess I've been on a Sega kick lately. Might as well keep it up for the time being, right? Sure.

Sega has an odd reputation of taking a bunch of already OK Japanese covers for Japanese games and changing them for American and European audiences. That's not entirely an indefensible practice, since some covers understandably have to be changed in order to appeal to specific audiences in the region they're trying to market them in. But with these comes a few cases where they went a little too far with making it something that would appeal to the casual observer. The result of them just looks like an act of laziness.

Like this one! Here we have the cover to Yakuza 3 for Playstation 3, which Sega is releasing in America and Europe right in the same week as Final Fantasy XIII comes out. The just want to make sure it's destined to be overlooked by people who would otherwise pick up the game but will undoubtedly be tied down by a 40-hour long RPG, one of the biggest this generation. Of course, then they'll complain about poor sales and refuse to localize Yakuza 4 because of it. It's a lose-lose situation for absolutely everyone involved.

It's a rather pessimistic look at the situation, sure, but it's not at all outside of the realm of possibility with how the situation will turn out. Oh, and just wait until more people find out that the game is in Japanese. Notice how the last two trailers carefully leave out that fact?

But uh,this is about the cover, isn't it? Yeah, it's pretty bad, though the background is pretty nice. A shame said background won't be were most people's eyes will go; they'll look at the awkwardly-placed face of Kazuma on the side first. I'm sure one of the main reasons for changing the cover was the cigarette in Kazuma's mouth, but I figured Sega had people on staff skilled enough at Photoshop to simply remove the cigarette from the mouth. Guess not! And this is what we get instead. It's OK, Europe's getting the same thing.

Fortunately, the next two efforts fare a little better. Next we have Infinite Space for Nintendo DS, a new space-opera RPG from Platinum Games (MadWorld, Bayonetta). It definitely looks intriguing, and if you haven't been following, Sega's also been dubbing the anime shorts (albeit with questionable, barely OK voice acting).

The cover they've done for International audiences is definitely a step down from the Japanese one, but it still doesn't look too bad. It would have looked much better if it wasn't for the characters in the way of the background. The game releases in America and Europe in spring 2010; possibly March if Nintendo's earlier schedule was correct.

Last we have the covers for Resonance of Fate, known as End of Eternity in Japan (which couldn't be used outside of that territory for good reason) for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. This is a Japanese RPG developed by tri-Ace (of the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile games) and published by Sega instead of Square Enix this time, since the latter felt it was too ambitious to take a gamble on. This is also the first tri-Ace game not published by Enix or Square Enix. It released last week in Japan.

The cover is, again, not quite as good as the Japanese version in terms of atmosphere, but like Infinite Space's, the result isn't too bad. Showing all three characters with guns sure is a good way to sell it to certain people, so I'm sure it will sell fine to the uninitiated. Well, I sure hope so, because after hearing that the game is good, I'd like tri-Ace to be rewarded for their success. The game releases in spring 2010, but some retailers have the game listed as releasing on...March 9th? But no, they wouldn't do that. They can't be that stupid.

Looking at a lineup like this, along with the recently released Bayonetta, makes me glad that Sega is finally out of the dreadful period they were in shortly after the Dreamcast was laid to rest. They're still not on the level they were during the Dreamcast's heyday, but it's still a hell of a lot better than too many Japanese companies are doing these days. They recently posted a profit as well, though it was mostly on the power of Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympics. I hope they can keep up that streak of quality with Sonic the Hedgehog 4.

Sega and Tri-Ace's collaborative RPG, End of Eternity (Resonance of Fate outside of Japan), is on the horizon now, though it's thankfully releasing far away from Final Fantasy XIII in Japan. A lot of RPG fans who found themselves burnt by Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean: The Last Hope are finding themselves intrigued by the concepts being realized in the game -- though time will tell if all of us are setting ourselves up for disappointment -- but there were a few details revealed that will appeal to fans of the genre as a whole; features that seriously should have been addressed years ago.

Not too long ago, a blog post went up on the game's Japanese webpage detailing how user-friendly the game would be for everyone. Way, way too many HD games suffer from the text being calibrated for HD sets the buyers of some games may not have, the result being some of the smallest, most unreadable fonts SDTV owners will ever see. Some RPGs also tend to suffer from this, which is pretty bad for a genre so reliant on text -- especially you Blue Dragon. EoE thankfully has developers actually being sensible enough to make sure all of the text is perfectly readable on an SD set. That's pretty great, now if only everyone working on HD games could think this way.

There's also another problem that haunts console RPG fans that EoE fixes: The inclusion of a Quick Save option. There's nothing like an RPG that has incredibly long stretches between specific, if not every, save point, the best example of which would be...well, most Tri-Ace games. Good to see they're finally addressing this problem! Seriously, every RPG in the history of everything should have this feature; it's something that doesn't need to be tied exclusively to portables, even if it is most beneficial there.

Though I'm sure some people will raise a fuss about it, I think having the ability to retry battles immediately is a pretty nice feature, as it will save everyone the time from making their way from a save point all the way back to the battle they lost in. It's bound to draw some criticism for being too much of a user friendly idea, but whatever. It's something very similar to what the Wild Arms games did.

Oh! And it'll also be one disc on both PS3 and 360. But it's unknown if they're going to go ahead with their earlier plan of not dubbing everything to keep the Japanese version on both discs, mainly the 360 DVD in this case. As a person who happens to like dubs -- though mainly when they're quality -- that's something I can't get behind. I doesn't make good sense in the grand scheme of things either, since most English-speaking players are likely to play the game in English. I hope they've reconsidered that.

With so much going into this, and for how good the game looks in its latest trailer, it's almost difficult to anticipate it because of Tri-Ace's track record so far this generation. But EoE looks like it could be the exception, coming with ideas too ambitious for Square Enix to touch it. And even if it's bad, I hope the genre and general video game flaws it intends to fix are recognized by a lot of other developers. It hits Japan on January 28th; far enough for FFXIII not to threaten it, but along with too many other games -- one of which is a port of a Tri-Ace title -- also dodging the lightning bullet.