Resonance of Fate a.k.a. End OF Eternity (was: New Tri Ace RPG)

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by Sety

On the other Sega are on a roll lately concerning RPG's.

Can you elaborate on this? Ever since the Dreamcast was discontinued I've been finding it hard to know what they're up to. I only know that they released Valkyria Chronicles last year, which was awesome, from what I hear.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume had a horrendous soundtrack and messed up game balance with essentially only two difficulty modes. Boring walk in the park and I'LL KILL ALL YOUR FIRST BORN CHILDREN, no middle ground.

Alternate (re)view.

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by Benoit

Can you elaborate on this? Ever since the Dreamcast was discontinued I've been finding it hard to know what they're up to. I only know that they released Valkyria Chronicles last year, which was awesome, from what I hear.

Ryu ga Gotoku 3, which help PS3 dominating Japanese hardware game market for 2 weeks.

[Sety]

Originally Posted by Benoit

Can you elaborate on this? Ever since the Dreamcast was discontinued I've been finding it hard to know what they're up to. I only know that they released Valkyria Chronicles last year, which was awesome, from what I hear.

Can't blame you for not knowing, Sega have really abysmal advertising in general.

You already mentioned the big one, Valkyria Chronicles was pretty much considered the greatest game nobody played. Seriously although the critics and fans and gamers panned it as the best thing since sliced bread it did pretty abysmal sales wise. However nobody can deny it was one very well made game.

The other big one constantly forgotten one is the Sakura Taisen games which should go without needing mention.

7th Dragon was a very recent RPG released for the DS and very highly rated and a massive success.

Shihren the Wanderer although abit of a small series has been succesful enough to enjoy sequels for Wii and DS and is published by Sega.

Phantasy Star is another obvious one, online is still being played and they're making Phantasy Star Zero for DS.

Someone mentioned Yakuza/Ryu Ga Gotoku which is really more of a action/adventure game but its pretty much carried itself.

They also made a pretty decent RPG spinoff the Blazer Drive manga which I tried out a while ago.

[Von Himmel]

Indeed, Sega gives a good game while it lacks fan compared to another publisher/developers. While some of them are not good enough, they give a great memory in my minds. Like the Shining Series . . Eh, is it from SEGA ? o.O;

Tri-Ace and SEGA. I'm excited to see how this game will be when it comes out xD;

[rg4619]

Indeed, Sega gives a good game while it lacks fan compared to another publisher/developers.

Sega had tons of fans. They simply lost much good will over the years due to poor internal development (with only a few bright spots now and then).

While the company may be acquiring and publishing many decent games now (in the style of a large western publisher like THQ, Atari/Infogrames, UbiSoft, etc.), they have no hand in creating most of these products. That's precisely why they lack a strong fan following. The industry closely associates those games with the developers rather than the publisher.

[Duo Maxwell]

They should do properly marketing for such great game as Valkyrja Chronicle instead of their Sonic, which is a failure recently.

[Shinndou]

I think the only people who are glorifying SEGA right now are most likely Sony fanboys (out of convenience). Back when SEGA was a rival in the console/war they would barely show any appreciation, haha.
SEGA fans are not that happy for the current state of the company, especially after the news that Yu Suzuki has retired.

[Sety]

Originally Posted by Flyvedelta

Like the Shining Series . . Eh, is it from SEGA ? o.O;

Hah. I completely forgot about that, I should probably feel ashamed since I was playing Shining Force Feather a while ago.

But yeah Shining Force series and spinoffs are Sega published too.

SEGA fans are not that happy for the current state of the company, especially after the news that Yu Suzuki has retired.

What Sega fan would be happy? Yu Suzuki retiring, Sonic being failure after failure, lack of Shenmue 3, ignoring the titles that do well and pushing their weak titles. Hell they couldn't even be assed localizing Puyo Pop Fever DS and let Atlus do it for them.

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by Sety

Can't blame you for not knowing, Sega have really abysmal advertising in general.

Video game advertising in general is horrible in Belgium. I lost interest in buying magazines when the Dreamcast stopped getting games.

they're making Phantasy Star Zero for DS

Didn't know what people in general thought about this one. It's already out in Japan, and I'm anticipating its English language release.

Sonic being failure after failure

People overreact on this topic. Sonic Heroes was great fun, but apparently not for everyone. What people are thinking of is Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006. Sonic and the Secret Rings is decent, and Sonic Unleashed is a great game that they put good effort in.

But the team that made Sonic and the Secret Rings apparently didn't learn, and they made Sonic and the Black Knight, which doesn't sound too good from reading various reviews. The biggest problem is input lag for sword moves.

Meanwhile there have also been good Sonic games on the DS.

[Duo Maxwell]

In the meantime, a trailer has been released
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/48018.html

[Sety]

Originally Posted by Benoit

People overreact on this topic. Sonic Heroes was great fun, but apparently not for everyone. What people are thinking of is Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006. Sonic and the Secret Rings is decent, and Sonic Unleashed is a great game that they put good effort in.

But the team that made Sonic and the Secret Rings apparently didn't learn, and they made Sonic and the Black Knight, which doesn't sound too good from reading various reviews. The biggest problem is input lag for sword moves.

Meanwhile there have also been good Sonic games on the DS.

Oh yes I did like Sonic Heroes, when you ignored the Amy team and pretended they never existed it was a fine foray back into what Sonic is about. The sense of speed, I remember the canyon and train levels making it so worth playing.

The Wii version of Sonic Unleashed was apparently the good one from what I've heard, its the 360 and PS3 ones that people seemed to bitch more about for some odd reason. As for Secret Rings/Black Knight the issue is definitely with the developers, seems alot of people liked the whole storybook format they've been doing with that series and the only reason they made a sequel.

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by Sety

ignored the Amy team and pretended they never existed

What's wrong with them? You didn't like the characters?

The Wii version of Sonic Unleashed was apparently the good one from what I've heard, its the 360 and PS3 ones that people seemed to bitch more about for some odd reason.

There's also the PS2 version, which is similar to the Wii version. Dimps, a developer that Sega often contracts, helped with the day stages of the PS2 and Wii versions and also did some design work for those versions.

What's different in the 'HD versions':

• The stages are twice as long.
• The villages are actual places to walk around in instead of being visited through a point and click interface.
• You can buy food in the villages with rings to give them to Sonic or Chip for some EXP.
• In the night stages, when your health reaches 0, you start from a checkpoint instead of coming back to life on the spot, and have to do everything after the checkpoint again.

I haven't actually played the PS3 or XBox 360 version. This is from hearsay and reading some FAQs. So I may have forgotten something and/or gotten something wrong.

[Sety]

Originally Posted by Benoit

What's wrong with them? You didn't like the characters?

Pretty much, besides Amy the other two are just irritating and even then Amy can be rather grinding on your nerves. I also wasn't a big fan of the fourth team, they pretty much reminded me of every non-successful anthromorphic animal character ever made.

[Shadow Kira01]

It would be awesome if Sega decide to add the Legendary Guardian Ethan Waber as a cameo or possibly a hidden recruitable character. Then, wouldn't it be unfair that TriA don't get to add in a cameo? The Gods "TriA" always add Lenneth in most of their games as a cameo character. Lenneth and Ethan Waber as special unlockables sound great, especially that this is a RPG.

[5cm.per.second]

Lol I like how the topic rolled into Sega and "Yo.WTF.Sonic" discussion. I'd like a more masculine protagonist, but I like dystopian societies so I'll be looking out for this game.

[Marcus_rel]

I'm liking the darker feel of this game, I'm going to keep an eye on it. Plus I'm going to need something to fill the void until Final Fantasy Versus 13 comes out. However, the game looks like it could potentially stand on its own merits, only time will tell though.

[Westlo]

Looks like Tri-Ace might redeem themselves with this.

duckroll on Neogaf translated some words from the main programmer

http://blog.eoe.sega.jp/creator/entry_1337/

Some very cool information from the main programmer of the game. Here are some major selling points he shares with gamers which he feels will make the game more appealing for all audiences in terms of user-friendliness:

1) SDTV-friendly text.

He says the game has been designed in mind to allow everyone who is able to play the game to enjoy it to the fullest. As such the text in the game is scaled with the resolution in mind and even SDTV players will be able to read everything without feeling left out.

Of course at the same time all the animations and models are designed to take full advantage of HDTV display resolutions so those with better televisions will see more detail as the resolution allows.



2) High music production values.

He mentions that all of Tanaka's compositions are fully orchestrated and recorded in 5.1 in a concert hall. The tracks will be fully reproduced in 5.1 in the game itself for those with surround sound systems.

As for Sakuraba's compositions, they are recorded by a band, and is used in seamless and dynamic way for battles. As you do different actions and the tide of the battle shifts, etc, the tension of the music will change dynamically without pausing or stopping.



3) Fast load times.

The game is designed with both the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 in mind. While it supports installation on both systems, it is coded to be as fast as possible without an installation. This is to allow all gamers to have as good an experience as possible, even those playing on a 360 Arcade - without a HDD.



4) No disc swapping.

The game will ship on a single disc for both systems. It will not use multiple discs and hence there will be no disc swapping. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, he mentions they do not want the player to get the feeling that he's "already half way through the game" when a disc swap message shows up. The second reason reason is that it is bothersome for some users and they don't want anything that would take the player out of the game.

As for concerns that being on a single disc will mean less content in the overall game, he says that this is not an issue at all. Because of the costume systems in the game, it required that every single cutscene in the game be real time instead of pre-rendered. Because they are unable to cheat by using movie files, the game being completely real time made it possible to have enough space to pack more than enough content while staying on a single disc.



5) Battle retry option.

The game will feature a retry option when you fail in battles. At the Game Over screen, players can choose to retry which would put them back at the start of the battle. This is something which was implemented to allow them to make battles more challenging and surprising. By having a retry option, players who are destroyed in a battle will be encouraged to retry with different tactics and learn how to master the battles instead of being put off or frustrated.



6) Quick save anywhere.

The game will support Quick Save not only on the World Map, but in battles as well. The reason is that this is an essential function for anyone who does not have a ton of time for gaming, or has other commitments like work. Allowing the player to stop playing at any moment and to pick off where he left off will allow people from all walks of life and parts of society to be able to enjoy the game at their own pace.

Also duckroll said "The director of EoE/RoF is Takayuki Suguro. He previously worked at Squaresoft under Matsuno's team. He was a battle designer for both FFT and Vagrant Story. When he joined tri-Ace, his directorial debut was Valkyrie Profile 2, which also has a very similar style of combat."

This has definitely moved up the pecking order for me, man Q1 2010 is just stacked when it comes to top notch games.

[C.A.]

Great stuff, I'll be getting this. The interface and various systems definitely reminds me of Phantasy Star.

[MakubeX2]

My procurement of this title will depend on how good/bad FFXIII is.

[Statonxyb]

I wonder how robotic the characters are going to be in this title.

I really hope tri-Ace does something this. :\

I didn't find it as annoying in Infinite Undiscovery, but Star Ocean 4 made me skip scenes due to how bad the characters were.

To the actual game... the gameplay looks great, as it was in tri-Ace's previous two titles this generation and the customization looks amazing. I'm just hoping the localization goes well and the characters are less... robotic.