Incomplete game series....

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Incomplete game series....

Postby Tweeg » Fri Feb 15, '13, 6:22 am

Just curious if it kills anyone elses motivation to play certain games upon learning that the sequels don't have a snow ball's chance in heck of ever getting an official non-Japanese (preferably English) release.

Was reviewing the situation of three recent game series tonight and must say it's a bit disheartening. I'll start off with one were all pretty familiar with and move on from there.

Phantasy Star Universe
A total of six episodes to this series exist. Of those we missed out on one of the most important of them all, the final episode!
Epsiode 1: PC, PS2, X360
Episode 2 (AotI): PC, PS2, X360 (paid DDL through XBL).
Episode 3: DDL, maybe?
- If we did get this, it was as DDL only.
Episode 4 (PSP): PSP - Technically a side story taking place between episodes 2 and 3, it is however a stand alone with cameo's from main story characters.
Episode 5 (PSP2): PSP - The beginning of the expanded PSU story.
Episode 6 (PSP2:I): PSP - Japanese exclusive final climactic episode of the PSU franchise. Due to worse than poor PSP game system sales and a ridiculous amount of liscensing from cameo stuff in-game not owned by Sega we're probably never going to see an official translation of PSP2: infinity get released here.

Valkyria Chronicles
There are three games in this series... we only got the first two.
Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) - First game in the series, obviously. Didn't sell well enough in Japan to warrant the series continuing on a console.
Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP) - Direct sequel to the first game. Tragically we got ripped off on this game as it itself is divided into two episodes, the second episode being a DDL PSN exclusive additional purchase. And it's no longer available to be had. Arrgh!
Valkyria Chronicles III: Unrecorded Chronicles (PSP) - Final, or at least most recent, game in the franchise. And once again, a direct sequel. No chance of a U.S. release with PSP essentialy having been dead for fully a year now.

Fate/
Painful to see an entire franchise being mishandled. Of all the games in the Fate franchise, only two have been released here, and of those only one was not a paid DDL.
Fate/Extra (PSP) - Thank you Aksys Games for localizng this.
Fate/Extra CCC (PSP) - A sequel of sorts to the first "Extra" game. Shockingly this game doesn't launch until next month in Japan. The down side to that being that as far as Sony is concerned the PSP is already dead in North America, all upcoming PSP games for us are being forced by Sony to be released exclusively as DDL though the PSN. Aksys has already discovered that DDL doesn't sell so well for them, so not much chance of them even trying to license this sequel.

Having now typed all this out, it seems rather apparent that the PSP is at the root of the problem. I hereby blame Sony for these greivences.

Anyways, really kills my motivation to play titles for these franchises knowing already that I can't see things through to the very end. I did already beat Fate/Extra before learning of the sequel being made, so at least that's not such a big deal for me as it could've been.

But PSU... now that's seriously depressing. And Valkyria Chronicles? So we can literally play halfway through the existing franchise and then there's nothing more for us to do but wish Sega had had the finished the job? Ridiculous. :worried:
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Re: Incomplete game series....

Postby Thoul » Fri Feb 15, '13, 9:42 am

Yeah, that really turns me off a series, unless the different installments are not mostly or entirely self contained. Shining Force III was a good example. Mind you, I didn't have a Saturn to play it on anyway, but learning that we were only going to get one part out of three completely killed my interest in playing even the first part. There's not much point to starting that story if I can never experience two thirds of it.

For PS Universe, it's not such a problem for me because I was never really able to get into the first game very well. It was far too slowly paced for an action rpg. Actually, that might have been more of a problem with my PC lacking power to run it well enough; I'm going to try it again one of these days, if I ever get around to it in my gaming backlog again. But I'll probably just stop at the first game and pretend the rest don't exist, since they are so very hard to access.

I also find that the PSP handheld itself is a problem with not being able to complete a game series, English or not. There were a lot of series that transitioned to it for exclusive new titles - PS Universe, Wild ARMs, and others. I've pretty much skipped Sony systems entirely for this last generation of systems, due to high costs or not enough value, so I missed out on all of those. I never had a sense that the PSP was very successful, so I was always sad to hear of another series moving to it. It meant I wasn't going to play that game and, when the PSP dropped the disc drive and went download only, those games wouldn't be available for picking up a few years down the line. The fall of the second hand gaming market is one of the big disadvantages of the digital age.
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Re: Incomplete game series....

Postby tilinelson2 » Fri Feb 15, '13, 7:16 pm

Really, the PSP is not the problem here. Blame it on Sega that did not allow other publishers to work on Valkyria Chronicles 3, Phantasy Star Portable 2: Infinity and the recent Shining games. Companies like XSEED really tried to get the rights, but Sega wouldn't allow them to work on their titles.

Besides, PSP is a worldwide success (almost 80m handheld sold) and certainly one of the best RPG platforms ever. That, and in Japan it is still the console that gets most games while in the west it still sells well on niche games (like Corpse Party) and is still getting physical releases (Class of Heroes 2 and two Aksys Visual novels).

The problem with some of those games is that they would never sell well in any system and bigger Japanese companies that are facing financial problems are getting rid of their subsidiaries and cutting localization projects that won't sell bazillions. Even the new darling of the US Nintendo-centric press, the 3DS, sees very few games released on the west. We won't see many games other than the AAA titles and the very cheap and obscure games coming from Japan for a while.
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Re: Incomplete game series....

Postby Snorb » Sat Feb 16, '13, 1:27 am

Well... let's see what I can think of... oh. A certain SRPG series that I love oh so much, for... some reason. Fire Emblem, in all its many many games.

Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Tsurugi [The Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light] - Released in 1990 for the Famicom, rereleased in 2009 for the Wii Virtual Console. Never released in the US.

Fire Emblem Gaiden - Released in 1992 for the Famicom, rereleased in 2009 for the Wii Virtual Console. Never released in the US, but this is a side story to the first game.

Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo [Mystery of the Emblem] - released in 1994 for the Super Famicom, rereleased in 2006 for the Wii Virtual Console. This game is a remake of the first Fire Emblem game, along with a sequel to it. Never released in the US.

Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu [Genealogy of the Holy War] - released in 1996 for the Super Famicom, rereleased in 2007 for the Wii Virtual Console. Not released in the US because there's no way in hell that Nintendo would ever be able to write around that element in the plot (the evil Cult of Loupoutosu needs Alvis and Deidre, half-siblings, to have a child to be the embodiment of their evil god. The cult succeeds.)

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 - released in 1999 (!) for the Super Famicom, rereleased in 2008 for the Wii Virtual Console. An interquel to Fire Emblem IV, and (again) not released in the US, mostly because the SNES died three years previously in the US. FE5 is known as the last Super Famicom game ever made.

Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi [The Sealed Sword] - released in 2002 for the Game Boy Advance. Not released in the US. (This is the one with Roy, in case you're wondering.)

Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken [The Burning Blade, released in the US as Fire Emblem] - released in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance, and the very first Fire Emblem game to have an official English version!

Fire Emblem: Seima no Kouseki [The Sacred Stones, released in the US as Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones] - released in 2004 (JP) and 2005 (US) for the Game Boy Advance, rereleased in 2011 for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console.

Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki [Trail of the Blue Flame, released in the US as Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance] - released in 2005 for the Nintendo GameCube. This was the first 3D Fire Emblem game.

Fire Emblem: Akatsuki no Megami [The Goddess of Dawn, released in the US as Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn] - released in 2007 for the Nintendo Wii.

Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Tsurugi [New Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light, released in the US as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon] - released in 2008 (JP) and 2009 (US) for the Nintendo DS. This is a remake of the first Fire Emblem game.

Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo: Hikari to Kage no Eiyuu [New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow] - Released in 2010 for the Nintendo DS. This is a remake of the third Fire Emblem game, is the first one that allows you to customize your own in-game character, and is the first game in the series to let you turn off unit permadeath. This was not released in the US because Shadow Dragon didn't sell so well.

Fire Emblem: Kakusei [Awakening, released in the US as Fire Emblem: Awakening] - Released in 2012 (JP) and 2013 (US) for the Nintendo 3DS.

And just to further the mind screw, the games are listed in release date order. The actual chronology of the games goes (more or less officially):

Genealogy of the Holy War's first half and second half are about fifteen years apart. Thracia 776 takes place about a year before Genealogy's second half. A few hundred (or a few thousand) years later, Shadow Dragon happens. Three years later, New Mystery of the Emblem happens. An unknown amount of time later, Path of Radiance happens, then Radiant Dawn happens a few years later. Ike (the Path of Radiance protagonist)'s descendant Paris is a recruitable character in Awakening, which is a thousand years after New Mystery of the Emblem. Your character in Awakening has a son named Mark, who is the tactician in Burning Blade. And Roy, the protagonist of Sealed Sword, is the son of Eliwood from Burning Blade.

Sorry for the wall of text and poor Fire Emblem chronology. XD
Last edited by Snorb on Sat Feb 16, '13, 1:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Incomplete game series....

Postby R-90-2 » Sat Mar 16, '13, 7:35 pm

Sakrura Wars. Number of games: 5.
Number of games localized: 1.
Number of games that would've been localized were it not for Bernie Stolar: 5.
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