Idea Factory International

[Nerroth]

Recently, Idea Factory (who publish a series of titles both under their own label and through their Compile Heart subsidiary) announced that they will be opening their own international section, based in California. For now, rather than work on localization efforts directly, they seem to be mainly set up to offer information on their various titles (be they still in Japan, or at som stage of localization to the West).

If you are interested, their site went live earlier today.

[ArchmageXin]

I brought all of Idea Factory's Android and Steam titles. All I can say with exception of Spectral Souls, all other titles are flawed or totally garbage.

[DragoonKain3]

Generation of Chaos (and its sequels) was ok for its time, but the PSP version ran REAL slow so they were only playable via CFW where you can install AND overclock. IIRC I had the same problem with Spectral Souls.

I think my favourite of theirs was Cross Edge, since I can run Misha with Lyner together with Yuuto and Miko (another childhood friend pair though York as localized named was lol) and still smash faces lol. And by that extension , Record of Agarest War 2 since they use pretty much the same system, but IMO it's still a mediocre game at best like all their other games.

Now I'm thinking, what the heck is opening a location gonna improve their sales if they're not tied to localizing anything? Though to be fair, I think they only really sold their games because NISA published them, so I guess it's a good thing they're not self-publishing.

That said, I hope Fairy Fencer F comes this way. It's prolly gonna be another medicore game at best (I heard it's just a reskinned Neptunia, a game I didnt like lol), but right now it's really frakking dry in terms of JRPGs.

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by DragoonKain3

Generation of Chaos (and its sequels) was ok for its time, but the PSP version ran REAL slow so they were only playable via CFW where you can install AND overclock.

Are you serious? I tried Generation of Chaos a couple days ago after buying it used to give it a try.

• The game is a usability nightmare with all of its menus that they don't provide a decent tutorial for (the manual (yes, I read it) is even worse).
• Your movement options are artificially limited while the enemy seems to be able to move as much as it likes.
• The battles are broken: just go to the other side of the screen to win.
• During my limited play time my skills didn't seem to do anything, and for an unknown reason I could never use my supers even though the super bar had been filled several times.

It's utter trash, and yet it still got sequels!

"ok for the time" is not a valid excuse, as this isn't some obscure NES game. Dragon Force came out 9 years earlier and did the gameplay formula far more justice.

[ArchmageXin]

Here are my problems with all the titles made by Idea Factory I played.

1) Generation of Chaos

A. You only had One Map for a $15 Game.
B. The larger of your army are, the less useful it is. Because the game only allow you to move 5 armies at once.
C. Storyline sucked/nonexistent beyond one of the factions.
D. Japanese Samuari > everything because they can double hit.
E. Magic Sucked. Spellcasters receive the usual hate by Idea Factory.
F. Money no longer matter after I say first 25% of the game if you max markets. Forting your base is also useless.

2) Spectral Souls
A. AGI is the king. Haz AGI, upgrade weapons, no other Stats matter unless you want play extended dungeons.
B. Simba keep getting free faction "boost" and it is almost impossible to win with true ending unless you do a very specific route.
C. Magic sucked. Spellcaster useless end game. (I usually just keep a healer around).
D. Lance sucked, no Archers. It is clearly Idea factory's hard on with swords.

3) Agearst, generation of War
Combine the worst of a eroge (girls has less personality than Card board hentai whores), and a Battle system that again reward melee over magic. Oh, They even took away the terrain too. Want fight in a city? 10X10 board. Castle? 10X10 Board, Jungle? 10X10 board....

4)Blazing Souls
Let me think...instead of letting the story progress, I have to guess where the next story point is. If I fail, I lose precious points that I need to grind 2-3 battles to get back.
Oh, and on battle boards, you have to be a box stacker and platform jumper just to reach the next battle...and every 100 step of so, we get another random battle.

Seriously. IDEA Factory need to shoot their devs. Over, and over again.

Please note I only played Title 3 and 4 maybe about 3 hours in.

[Thany]

I just hope that they stop letting NISA butchers their games and get new better publishers. That or self-publish.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by Thany

I just hope that they stop letting NISA butchers their games

What?

[ArchmageXin]

Originally Posted by Benoit

Are you serious? I tried Generation of Chaos a couple days ago after buying it used to give it a try.

• The game is a usability nightmare with all of its menus that they don't provide a decent tutorial for (the manual (yes, I read it) is even worse).
• Your movement options are artificially limited while the enemy seems to be able to move as much as it likes.
• The battles are broken: just go to the other side of the screen to win.
• During my limited play time my skills didn't seem to do anything, and for an unknown reason I could never use my supers even though the super bar had been filled several times.

It's utter trash, and yet it still got sequels!

"ok for the time" is not a valid excuse, as this isn't some obscure NES game. Dragon Force came out 9 years earlier and did the gameplay formula far more justice.

Just to point out, the enemy is actually limited to "5 moves" a round as well. It is just at the beginning you see like 10 different race moving 5X each so it look like their armies has unlimited moves. But once you floor like 5-6 armies the board become much more clearer.

I didn't have any problem with supers, other than the fact it is the usual "warriors better than mages" motif for Idea Factory. mages/casters rarely have an ult worth a damn, but some grunty viking or some metrosexual Japanese guy can do a flower dance and your entire army dies.

It still sucks for other reasons though.

[Thany]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

What?

See: Mugen Souls series. That and apparently their translation is terribly bad too apparently.

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by Thany

See: Mugen Souls series.

If this is about the censorship, that sucks, but that's hardly butchering.

That and apparently their translation is terribly bad too apparently.

[weasel words]
[citation needed]

[shmaster]

Originally Posted by ArchmageXin

I didn't have any problem with supers, other than the fact it is the usual "warriors better than mages" motif for Idea Factory.

Wait, wait, what?
Mages has always been useful in the Spectral series. For the starter, everytime Little Snow shows up, she either ranges from being really good to overpowered. By the time of Blazing Souls, she trumped Zelos as my MVP.
They aren't too shobby either in Agarest game; I even carefully breed my main as a mage.

[Thany]

Originally Posted by Benoit

If this is about the censorship, that sucks, but that's hardly butchering.

[weasel words]
[citation needed]

I personally still call it butchery. The funniest part is they apparently said they wouldn't censor anymore their games and they do it again. As for the bad translations, go look around, it's well known their translation is terrible especially since there are many people who complain about it.

[ArchmageXin]

Originally Posted by shmaster

Wait, wait, what?
Mages has always been useful in the Spectral series. For the starter, everytime Little Snow shows up, she either ranges from being really good to overpowered. By the time of Blazing Souls, she trumped Zelos as my MVP.
They aren't too shobby either in Agarest game; I even carefully breed my main as a mage.

(Please note I do not play the "extended" dungeons)

Re:spectral souls:

Not sure who little snow (are u referring to the white rabbit girl in the Rozen army?) is, but once you farm your weapons and max them out via Outworld gate, you will discover your melee will output absurd damage compared to magic. This is due to the fact of the HIT system. More combos= More damages, A mage girl's single nuke would hit 3K, but then using the same AP warrior boy will take 5 swings that will hit 1K+2K+4K+5K.

No matter how you invest, the mage will fall behind. Near end game I just pick one random mage girl as healer, and put in 4 melee and 1 Breaker.

If you invest in a dagger user, such as Himeka (Simba) Wind girl (Rozen), she can literally run around the map and attack/kill up to seven enemy units before the enemy take a single turn. There is no way a mage can come even close.

Also, Sword owned, spear sucked, gun sucked mostly because they have friendly fire, and there isn't a bow user in the entire game.

The same apply to the rest of the series as well, granted, it got nerfed in Agrest, but then they have the stupid arena system....

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by Thany

As for the bad translations, go look around, it's well known their translation is terrible especially since there are many people who complain about it.

You're still not being concrete. Also, it's not because many people say something that it's true.

[xizro345]

NISA's localizations are horrible, for sure. Case in point: Trick the Hard in Neptune Mk2. In the original game he was a guy who idolized little girls to the point of really having a warped personality. In NISA's version he became a straight up pedophile.
Other example include the changing of names for no reason (Pururut - Plutia in Neptune V) sometimes blatantly lying about the references those characters represent to justify their ideas.
You can also add recurring jokes that weren't present in the original game, such as the whole "Lonely Heart" nickname Noire gets in Neptune V which was totally non-existent in the Japanese version. And I could go on. And how can people forget (though now it's under Koei Tecmo's wing as far as franchises go) "Esty Dee" in the Atelier series?
Luckily Idea Factory seems a little more open on discussing the localization, even if it doesn't mean they'll ask for any changes in the process.

[Nerroth]

I didn't find a dedicated thread for this game, so decided to post the news here.

Sorcery Saga is up now on PSN in the US and Canada, listing for $34.99 (in either currency, I think).

The street date for the standard and limited editions of the physical release is supposed to be today, but seems to be slipping to next Tuesday. (At least this is the case here in Canada.)