We talked about Persona 5 and our opinion on the game. There are spoilers of course.
Category: anime
Digimon Survive takes the Franchise into a New Direction
If you grew up in the 90’s or early 2000, you probably argued with your friends whether Pokemon or Digimon was better. Both are Japanese video game franchises focused on working with animals to fight other players. They were released around similar times in the United State. They also both ended with -mon so it was easy for people to argue which was better. Internationally, Pokemon has beaten Digimon in popularity and the number of games released. Digimon games’ genres have greatly changed over the year and don’t have a definitive genre, unlike Pokemon. Bandai Namco’s newest Digimon game, Digimon Survive, will be a Survival Strategy RPG. Perhaps the change will bring in more fans.
Digimon has always had the advantage of a darker story than Pokemon. It looks like Digimon Survive is taking the darkness and ramping it to 100%. The gameplay is split into two parts.
One will focus on traditional SRPG by moving your Digimon Units around the map and attacking other Digimon. Each unit has Energy Points and managing it is important. Energy Points can help you evolve or use different attacks. The battlefield is a mix of 3D areas with semi-2D Digimon sprites.
The second part is the interaction with other characters. You play as Takuma Momotsuka, an 8th-grade student who gets lost in another world. With his partner Agumon, they work together to help him find a way back home. There are other human characters and depending on how you talk to them, it will change the story, cause evolution, or death for some characters.
There are multiple endings, paths, and evolutions based on how the story changes.
The art looks beautiful and the concept is definitely an interesting take on the series. There aren’t too many trailers on the gameplay so it will be interesting to see how the game develops. The idea of the game isn’t enough for me to instabuy but depending on reviews, I may change my mind.
Digmon Survives releases sometime in 2019 for all regions and for the Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Sources:
Bandai Namco
Square-Enix opens Luminous Productions and their future
Square-Enix recently announced they will be announcing a new studio called Luminous Productions. The head is Hajime Tabata, the director of Final Fantasy XV. Most of the team are from the Final Fantasy XV developers. Their vision: “Luminous Productions was established with the purpose of developing new AAA titles and bringing innovative game and other entertainment content to a global audience.” Besides Final Fantasy XV, Tabata has also worked on many of the Final Fantasy VII spin-offs including Crisis Core and Final Fantasy Type-0.
While FF XV has received a mixed reception from hardcore JRPG and Final Fantasy fans, the game’s sales were critical to saving the series and Tabata’s goal to continuously improve the game is admirable.
Square-Enix is no longer a gaming juggernaut since early 2000’s. They have had less success in game releases as the gaming industry grew. In the mid 2000’s, there were less unique IP titles from SE and more focus on Final Fantasy spin-offs. None of them sold well except for Bravely Default. When Yosuke Matsuda took over SE, he noticed the decline in overall quality and had Square refocus their efforts on diversifying their portfolio. They developed three new studios, Square-Enix Collective, Tokyo RPG Factory, Studio Isoltila. Each have different focuses such as helping develop new indie games or old franchises of SE, create new classic style JRPG’s and Studio Isolita has the director of the Tales RPG series leading the development of a new game. Matsuda has also allowed studios to work on new projects such as the upcoming Avengers game by the Tomb Raider team and sold the Hitman studio after he believed SE wasn’t the right publisher.
While SE has been slow on development and game released, under Matsuda, they have achieved a profit of 257 billion yen last year. Luminous Productions plans to work on a new IP outside of the Final Fantasy series. With Tabata running his own studio, perhaps we will see a big new series.
Sources
The Verge – FFXV saves FF series from ending
My Favorite Game of 2017
There isn’t a lot of news so I’ll just talk about my favorite game of 2017. I also didn’t play too many games because I was working. The cons of being an adult. I only finished two games: Persona 5 from Atlus and Super Mario Odyssey from Nintendo.
My favorite game of 2017 was Persona 5. I clocked in 111 hours into the game and maxed all the Social Links in the game after beating Persona 3 and 4. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Story: 8/10
I prefer this story over the previous series. It did a good job combining character growth with the overarching story. Ryuji, Morgana, Ann, Yusuke, Makoto, Haru, and Futaba’s personalities changes throughout the story but also contributed to solving the main plot of corrupt adults taking advantage of people. I also thought the theme was great because the villains don’t actually affect real people in supernatural ways like in P3 or P4. If the Phantom Thieves never existed, nobody was going to die or the world wasn’t ending. It was more of a story about good people going out of their way to make the world better. Usually, people are scared or complacent in trying to help the world and would rather watch events unfold on their own similar to the overall theme of Persona 5. Shido is definitely not as good as a villain as Adachi and the final boss being a God again is now predictable. Also Akechi being the betrayer was too obvious which has always been an issue with the series with obvious villain types. The reveal of Igor and the Twins was surprising to me.
Gameplay: 10/10
There is something so satisfying about ripping off a Shadow’s mask. The user interface of Persona 5 is probably the best in any video game. Style and art blend seamlessly with the gameplay. Although the battles are turn-base, the addition to the baton system and negotiation makes battles feel more dynamic. I wanted different outcomes for each fight, whether it was items, money, or a new Persona. The dungeons and boss fights were fun with more problem solving rather than brute force or attrition. Whether it wad dumping paint on the boss or cutting the veins of the Holy Grail, it was a lot funner than only buffing your characters, debuffing the enemy, and attacking. The Social Links giving you abilities encouraged you to obtain all of them. My personal favorite besides the main cast was the Sun, the politician, and the Star, the shogi player.
Music: 10/10
Shogi Meguro, the music composer for Persona, continues to release amazing soundtracks. Etika’s reaction to the soundtrack is me throughout the entire game. The mix of acid jazz and lyrics was amazing. As usual, the music fit the theme and environment
Opinion:
I love this game. I love the color pallets, the story, the designs, and the social link. My only complain is that there’s nothing after Christmas in the game. Also there is no point in leaving Tokyo. Best game of 2017 for me but I didn’t finish Breath of the Wild or Nier: Automata.
The Gaming News Corner 