Showing posts with label Nihon Falcom. Show all posts

AO EVOLUTION

By | Published 23 May 2014

The Legend of Heroes Ao No Kiseki Evolution Beta
Just completed the trial of Ao no Kiseki Evolution this week and I guess I can give a few insights for those of you who are interested in buying the PSVITA remake.

I kind of miss this art style

The trial runs all the way to just before where the opening movie starts so basically the entire prologue, as usual with all the other Falcom game betas, although I should make it clear that Zero and Ao Evolution's are both developed and produced by Chara-ani and Kadokawa so technically, they are not Falcom productions.

I guess two of the most important selling points of this 'evolution' remake line are higher resolution and full voice casting. Personally I'm not typically keen on resolution and stuff, which I believe is something I share with many Falcom fans, but it is quite refreshing to be able to replay the game on PSVITA's HD-ish screen (I really suck with technical stuff so apologies if it's not HD, but you get what I mean)

And the voice, I guess it can be the most controversial part of this remake. Reason? Kakki changed the voice in the most obvious way and since it's quite consistent throughout the whole prologue I guess it's intentional, I'm not sure whose but there's one thing I'm sure of, Lloyd sounds like a completely different person.

I don't personally dislike Kakki's feminine voice (actually I think it's quite cute) but to change the protagonist's voice in a remake that sells on full-voice, I think it's just amongst the most stupid things I've ever come across. I still can't say that I've quite gotten used to the new voice after the whole prologue but we should see. If the main reason you'd want to buy the remake is Lloyd I'd suggest you to rethink before you click 'order'.

For other characters, most of them are quite consistent with previous productions, Arios sounds less musky, which I'm really gutted about, considering how much I love Morikawa's musky masculine voice (Rai in Lamento, hallelujah)

Re-defined clips
Dudley's name got cut
Also a few details that they could've improved but I'm not sure if they've got time to do so before the release, I guess I'd rather them to focus on debugging at this stage now (those who bought Zero Evolution should definitely understand where I'm coming from). I guess the screen ratio of PSVITA and PSP is slightly different so like Dudley's name got cut off from the edge.
In-game trophies, apparently the trial's trophies don't translate to PSN system
Game clear
And something for those who have Japanese PSN accounts, there will be a small item pack in the actual game for those who've cleared the beta, but you need to keep the beta program and the game data till then. Well, I guess by items it means a couple of potions.

I've impluse ordered the Chara-ani ultimate pack with 2 copies of the game and all the tokuten but I started to regret it straight after I've paid everything. Reason being that I only wanted that pack for the five figures because I thought they were authentic nendoroid but now I look at the sample picture again they look actually kind of dodgy. Maybe I'll sell the other tokutens together with the second game copy.

Has anyone ordered the Ao Evolution yet? Or is everybody else just waiting for Sen II?

To see my review on Sen no Kiseki click here

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The Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki (Trails in the Flash) 英雄伝説　閃の軌跡

By | Published 20 October 2013

Original Title: 英雄伝説　閃の軌跡
Finally finished the game last night, shame that no one around me plays the game except my Japanese lecturer. So here I am (I really just need a place to rave about this)

Before I start, for international readers residing outside Japan, if you're looking for a place to purchase this game, you can either do it through Nihon Falcom's official mail order service (instructions for international orders), or go to either Amazon.co.jp (or check your local Amazon, I know the US store does stock a few Japan Import ones), PlayAsia, CDjapan or Yesasia. I preordered through Falcom's mail service and they gave me a random 1000 yen discount :) (maybe because I shopped there too much lol)

Trails in the FLASH

System:

Apparently the loading problem was quite controversial in Japan, which was directly reflected in its user ratings on Amazon JP and various other game sites. Personally I didn't find that much of a problem at all, probably only once in the final chapter. But that's probably because of my horrendously short attention span so I always have to do something else even when I was playing this game. The loading time actually gave me a chance to glimpse either my twitter feed or random news sites. (like I honestly could not believe that everyone was ranting about this on the web)

There are several major changes to the system. Full on 3D, Orbment system and Link (like an upgrade of the kizuna system in Zero/Ao), that's all I can think of now.

The 3D ain't as bad as I thought it would be to be honest, thought you need to know that I don't really care that much about game visual, I don't think any kiseki fans do. The removal of the 2D anime portrait/profile is a bit of a shame but the 3D ones look quite fine to me. It is true that it does stink if you compare it with most of the games that we see in game stores nowadays but oh well, what can you expect from a teeny company's full 3D debut? Plus I have to praise the plateau scenes in Chapter 3, absolute thumbs up! 
I spent at least 3 hours just running around here. Stunning plateau + jdk's awesome soundtrack+ horse riding (that doesn't harm real horses)  + our nomad character Gaius, how perfect is that!
Orbment system is greatly simplified. It's much clearer to make up Arts (アーツ, magic spell in the Kiseki games) now because they are stuck to individual quartz. However it makes the gameplay harder as you now have to pick between Arts quartz and quartz that increase your character power (str etc). Whilst it doesn't really matter for melee characters since they don't normally need to cast spells anyway it does weaken mages quite a lot. I gameover-ed a few times during my first playthrough but I'm not complaining (oddly enough I quite like gameovers in boss fights, feels more realistic? lol). I do miss spending hours before strong Arts finally appeared in the current Arts list thought, hope it'll come back one day in future installments.

Link system does make the battle more interesting but together with the orbment change i feel like the mages are too depressed in this Kiseki (Zero-arts is a nice new AT award but how often does it happen right there on our mage characters?). So much so that my mages are pretty much plain healers. But I guess this melee-mage broken balance somehow suits Erebonian, with its whole heavy industry and military thingy. (it does actually feel like Russia, or Soviet rather, with a tint of the US, though I'm guessing Calvard would be more US like, the president, multicultural and Republic thing. Or you can say Germany/France). 

Music:

You just can not fault jdk. I don't know what else to say really, the final boss track is AH-MAI-ZINN and I'm loving the ending theme (it did surprise me at first but now after listening to it a few more times I can see the reason they put it there). Falcomclassics on Youtube has uploaded many of the sound tracks but there could be spoilers in the titles or background images, or in the comments so think twice before you search. 

The opening is quite nice, musically I prefer it to the ones of Ao/Zero's. Kotekana's vocal suits this type better. 

Story:

Spoiler Warning (of the entire Kiseki series) and some screencaps. Continue for more raves.

Finally DOGS in Kiseki! Thought the entire team were cat people :b (Zeit is a wolf!)


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