Community MetaSteam | August 2023 - IT'S MECHA TIME!

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NarohDethan

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Apr 6, 2019
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Partnership between Koei Tecmo/Gust and Akatsuki Games (Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle, Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe).
I haven't even started Marie yet ffs
 

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£18 for this?
Seems they want people start to pay the insane Games Workshop board game army figurines prices but for digital content.


EDIT:
these are the prices for SF6 x TMNT Collab:
15 eur each costume. So nearly 60 eur if you want them 4, and this only the turtles costumes.
 
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toxicitizen

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Oct 24, 2018
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EDIT:
these are the prices for SF6 x TMNT Collab:


15 eur each costume. So nearly 60 eur if you want them 4, and this only the turtles costumes.
Lmao jesus christ. I love SF6 and I don't mind the fighting pass stuff because I play like an hour or two every day, so I earn everything without any issues. But they're out of their goddamned minds with this one. Easy skip lol.
 

Censored

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NAJD KOF XV character is available.
Included in Character Pass

Still no Vice annoucement and no plans for her puzzles me (the same for Shiki Ryougi in Melty Blood: Type Lumina : P)
 

Sobatronix

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Mar 9, 2021
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It's been more than a day, and I still can't get over that meme announcement of RDR1. Jesus Christ, Rockstar, if you're into trolling so hard you might as well have released the game as a Stadia and Ouya exclusive.
 

「Echo」

Reaper on Station。
Nov 1, 2018
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Mt. Whatever
I was considering starting P5R for those moments when I don't quite feel like Yakuza'ing, but I don't feel like dealing with Morgana. My motivation quickly leaves me. :tired-face:

Yesterday i spent my entire evening being addicted to Pocket Car racing in Yakuza 0. :LOL:
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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Yikes. Looking more into it, it just gets worse. Look at all that gacha currency!



Also reminder, the last Atelier Gacha was shut down after 1-year. And this is considered a "mainline" title?

Farewell Atelier series.
I think I still have ~5 Atelier games unplayed, at my current pace that will last me over a decade. Still sad to see.
 

Alexandros

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Nov 4, 2018
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I think I have my AA jRPGs completely mixed up. Are Atelier, Tales of Arise, Ryza, Berzeria etc all part of the same series or different? I know nothing about the names I just mentioned, I've just seen them mentioned here. What are some of the bigger AA jRPG series these days?
 

ezodagrom

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Nov 2, 2018
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I think I have my AA jRPGs completely mixed up. Are Atelier, Tales of Arise, Ryza, Berzeria etc all part of the same series or different? I know nothing about the names I just mentioned, I've just seen them mentioned here. What are some of the bigger AA jRPG series these days?
Tales of series are from Bandai Namco.
Atelier series are from Gust/Koei Tecmo.
 
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Durante

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I think I have my AA jRPGs completely mixed up. Are Atelier, Tales of Arise, Ryza, Berzeria etc all part of the same series or different? I know nothing about the names I just mentioned, I've just seen them mentioned here. What are some of the bigger AA jRPG series these days?
There aren't that many long-running AA JRPG series.

  • "Tales of ...." from Bandai-Namco. The most recent entries are Tales of Arise and Tales of Berseria.
    These don't really have any story continuity at all (with a small number of exceptions).
    Action-based combat, traditional JRPG stories (i.e. you are more likely to fight a god than not).
  • "Atelier" developed by Gust, now (sadly) published by Koei-Tecmo. The most recent entries are Atelier Ryza 3 and Atelier Sophie 2.
    These usually have a trilogy set in the same universe and with some of the same characters, but no strong story continuity.
    Lots of gameplay focus on alchemy/crafting and gathering ingredients for it. More slice of life stories.
  • "Trails" developed by Falcom (who are still independent, yay). The most recent releases are Trails into Reverie and Trails to Azure (in terms of release order; in chronological order it would be Trails of Cold Steel 4).
    These are all set in the same universe, with related story threads, and usually 2-4 games per sub-story. The entries in the sub-stories are direct sequels and really depend on the prior games in the same sub-story.
    Stories have more of a political intrigue focus than the other games, and a lot more intricate world building (which, together with the slow pace, can also be off-putting to some).

To clarify: most recent entries refers to mainline entries released in English. Also, this is off the top of my head, so probably something is wrong :p
Also, I added Trails since I've seen the Tales/Trails confusion quite a few times with friends who aren't much into JRPGs.

Edit: I guess Persona is also a long-running AA JRPG series. But given that there's only a new one twice per decade at most and that they are all numbered it's probably easy enough to keep track of.
 
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Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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Not sure I will bite on the Baldur's Gate bundle at Humble. This is all well and good but it lacks Icewind Dale II and most of all I think I would like to replay those games as they were meant to be played, so scanlines. I suppose my only hope is DosBox SVN DAUM and buying the Gog versions.
Feels strange to avoid Steam.

Biggest issue is I have absolutely forgotten how to set up DAUM, zero memories :thinking-blob:
Oh, and obviously greedy pubs are greedy, so Icewind II is not on sale and Vampire is an eye watering 18 bucks.
 

rickyson33

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Apr 26, 2019
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I played a couple Atelier games and liked them but I just can't bring myself to play another since they stopped dubbing them
 

STHX

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2021
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I think I have my AA jRPGs completely mixed up. Are Atelier, Tales of Arise, Ryza, Berzeria etc all part of the same series or different? I know nothing about the names I just mentioned, I've just seen them mentioned here. What are some of the bigger AA jRPG series these days?
Oh? Talking about A/AA japanese role playing games? I assure you the hole goes much deeper than you think, covering many variations and genres
Since you specified "big" I'll add a minimun threshold of 2500 steam reviews for at least one game in the series. There isn't much to say about the ones already discussed by other members (Tales, Atelier, Trails, Persona all easily have one or more games with more than 2500 reviews) but I'll add some more


Ys is developed by Falcom (same as the Trails series) but unlike those they're purely action. The older games are more Zelda like (you control a single character, you explore dungeons, collect items and fight bosses), more recent ones are more party focused but the action spirit is still there. They all share the same protagonist (the silent adventurer Adol) outside of a single exception. Nice gameplay and great soundtrack. Exploring ancient ruins and beating sealed demons never gets old


A strategy rpg series developed by Nippon Ichi software. Fell a lot in popularity lately but still deserves a place here. The series uses elements like height, back attacks and varied jobs similar to FFT but with some addition (like being able to have units grab other units and throw them, or use them as improvised weapons). The series is also known for having a massive post game and very high levelling and stat caps which I'm not a big fan of but usually the main game is still pretty long


This is more of a catch all for Idea Factory rpgs in general. Their games fell even worse in popularity in the last years but they are still fondly remembered by fans. Probably among the lower end of the budget scale, most of their games reuse enemy models and dungeons as well as lacking any sort of "overworld/exploration" (everything is selected with menu, barely any npc interaction, "quests" are just fetch item or kill monster). Neptunia as a whole survives on characters and humor so your mileage may vary, but I do admit I think some of the standalone titles like Fairy Fencer F or Death End Request are really interesting and worth a try (at sale price)


Square isn't just FF and DQ. They actually have quite a lot of AA rpgs under their belt but only a handful are available on modern platforms, also the 2 Octopath Travelers are the only that pass the "more than 2500 reviews" test (sorry SaGa, Triangle Strategy, Bravely, Live-A-Live, TWEWY and Star Ocean : ( ). It's like peeking in an alternate universe where FF's gameplay remained turn based. Incredible soundtrack and unique graphical style (at the time of release at least). The game story is actually made of 8 separate stories each focusing on one of the 8 protagonists. The first game was infamous for how none of the 8 protagonists had any interaction with the others but this issue was fixed by the sequel which is honestly a really good game


yeah well there was no way I would skip this one. A series of japanese exclusive SRPGs, at least until this one came out everywhere on Steam. Unlike Disdaea above the series is closer to Fire Emblem in gameplay (linear story->battle->story progression, bigger but flatter maps, more deploy slots and enemies, limited use weapons although unlike FE they get recharged after each battle, secret units or stages etc.). The biggest crossover series ever (Guinness World Record confirmed). Kingdom Hearts wishes they could reach this height. A crossover between mecha anime like Mazinger or Gundam, the main difference between SRW and other big crossovers is the care the writers put in actually making sure the world and the characters fit in one big crossover story. Each game story is set in a world where all the partecipating series exist at the same time, creating an original story that mixes all characters, villains and plot points from the partecipating series while also adding original elements (like how some characters that die in the original stories survive, or how they actually come up with new story elements using unused designs). Shame about the difficulty being on the lower end especially if one has any SRPG experience. SRW is also one of the last bastion of 2D high resolution attack animations
 

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if any of you have sold your console accounts to be a PC only, what site have you used to sell it?
I see gamivo or eneba have one game accounts but I don't see personal accounts.
I want to sell some of my multiple game and regions xbox, nintendo and sony accounts but I'm looking for a trusted site.
I know there are some communities like this for Steam accounts wiht confy points, reviews etc... but I don't know if there's something alike for console accounts.
Any advice?
 

KingKrouch

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Dec 14, 2021
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I actually like (at least some) IF games, but I wouldn't call them AA or even A. There are so many aspects of them that really scream "shoestring budget".
Yeah, their games are usually pretty well thought out if you ignore the budgetary constraints and other issues, and when they aren't beholden to Neptunia spinoffs (or remaking Fairy Fencer F for the dozenth time), they shine. My main issues with their non-dungeon crawler output is how barren and samey their world/level design can be, combat needing more depth, and the erratic difficulty spikes. 40 hours is around the perfect length for a game for me, but in some scenarios, that honestly feels a bit short. They're partially the antithesis of what I've come to expect of modern JRPG design, and I support that, but there's definitely a lot of things with how their publisher specifically conducts business that really is turning it from a tough love situation to genuinely making it hard for me to want to support them further.

Whether that's:
* Never releasing content in the west (or on PC) that were introduced in the Japanese console versions as free updates. Death end re;Quest 2 did this, and the US Switch version only got the few pages of Rotten's diary and some logs relating to Lydia, but none of the announcer voices that got added, even if they could've done a check to see if Japanese voices were being used if they didn't want to dub this. What difference would it make when their English dubs usually only cover a quarter to half of the dialogue that the Japanese voice track has?

This isn't even mentioning how the Switch release of Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters is getting two additional characters and other content, while PC/PS4/PS5 is left to rot, or the Xbox version (that's coming out after the Switch release) isn't getting any of that content either.

Or the nearly 8 month period that it took for Neptunia Virtual Stars on PC to get the Kizuna Ai or Towa Kiseki DLC story mode content.

Or Neptunia ReVerse simply not coming to PC at all. Yes, I'm aware that the visual upgrades are hardly worth mentioning, and it's simply just an enhanced port of Rebirth 1, but CH was generally good with DLC updates when it came to Rebirth 1 on PC.

* Preorder bonuses or store specific content in Japan that isn't added to their North American releases at least, some of which you usually have to import from Yahoo Auctions to get. It's actually kind of crazy how End Quest (The preorder bonus RPG Maker game that revolves around Iris before the events of the first game) never was even included with the western release, so a chunk of the game's story was arbitrarily cut.

Some of the art for the other stuff in Japan (Such as a small sample of the tapestries that they have) got put up on the IFI Store as acrillic giclées that cost several hundred dollars to buy. One of the ones that were exclusively put up on the North American and European stores (Which means Japan isn't able to buy it, and from what I heard, the writer of the Mary Skelter games mentioned on Twitter that attempting to import the english version of MSF was a pain) was digitally signed by the character artist for the game in question (unlike the other ones), and it costs the same exact price. Buying the tapestry version of said acrillic giclée on their site, and then putting it in a poster frame is what I ended up doing. I will give them this, their collector's editions are really close to the kinds of bonuses that you'd expect from a Working Designs game (setting aside WD's controversial localization decisions).

* Their PC ports. Don't even get me started on this. I'm aware of their console versions already having optimization/performance issues, completely questionable framerate limits on PS5 (SvS and Refrain Chord's PS5 versions being locked at 30FPS when they run way better on an equivalent PC comes to mind), and the Switch versions being especially egregious (not even being able to lock at 30FPS, and often dipping to 10-15, despite the massive visual downgrades in some of them). Not to even mention the lack of any sort of input rebinding.

But in regards to how they've effectively shifted the goalpost from "baby steps" in regards to improving things and having things where they should be, to "this is just a straight port" is honestly insulting, and beta feedback honestly isn't really used outside of game breaking crashes or localization typos. And in regards to the Ghostlight ports, them settling for the Switch versions of the games (With tons of visual downgrades that completely ruin the tone) instead of the PS4 versions that are right there, alongside not adding enough QoL improvements or fixes to their janky ports is extremely disappointing. This doesn't help the fact that they keep the last beta build sitting in the vault for 3-4 months before actually releasing it on Steam, and as far as I can tell, nothing has changed in between that time. DERQ2 and Neptunia Virtual Stars at launch would make The Last of Us: Part 1 blush, I still somewhat have buyer's remorse for preordering DERQ2's PC collector's edition specifically for that reason.

* Questionable character name changes (A bunch of the characters in DERQ2 being named after Salem Witch Trial stuff, or the whole situation with Massacre Pink or Toh being renamed and effectively ruined one of the bigger twists in Mary Skelter Finale), some questionable dubbing decisions (including casting some VAs that aren't suited for certain characters at all), and backing down from their whole "We won't release something state-side if we have to edit things" spiel selectively when it's convenient makes it hard to trust their judgement. They've effectively outsourced some things to EastAsiaSoft, which only publishes their stuff on Nintendo Switch, the recent one being a port (with performance issues based on a port from Ghostlight). Mary Skelter Finale's translation was loaded with typos, inconsistencies (Changing Bread Portal in MS2 to Bread Crumbs in the UI, just to then refer to it as Bread Portal in the tutorial text) or other strange issues, and there were even loaded with typos and inconsistencies that didn't exist in the previous games with the Collector's Edition materials. This is all before even getting to Neptunia. The recent debacle around SvS and having language removed in a patch is funny to me considering they kept the same ESRB rating for DERQ 2 despite bringing back the old glitch models for the PC version. My personal opinion is that people give them way too much credit based on stuff that they'd normally stoke NISA or Nintendo Treehouse to the flames for doing.

Mary Skelter 2 and Death end re;Quest's localizations were fine (Although a bit dry, outside of a scenario with punched up dialogue in DERQ), and I didn't notice any typos, dialogue felt like it flew properly, and there was nothing like memes being added that made it jarring to read through. Straight to the point, no purple prose, no awkward character interpretations or outdated memes. 1-1 in regards to content. That's what I normally expect from them.

* The fact that they don't or rarely do any merch that isn't explicitly Neptunia related. This is self explanatory. Their Neptunia 10th anniversary shirt has really nice soft material and doesn't have vinyl that peels, definitely worth the $25. if they could do shirts (or even just restocking some of their old merch that I missed out on like keychains), I wouldn't have an issue.

More stuff like this please (Before anyone asks, yes, I have tried hunting this down through the usual sources with no avail).


The original Compile went bankrupt from attempting to move towards office software, and mostly being out of touch with what made their old games (Their shmups, Madou Monogatari, PuyoPuyo, etc) successful. I fear the same fate may happen with Compile Heart, not due to their own questionable changes, but due to the publisher that owns them making these decisions on their behalf. IdeaFactory in of itself was a successor to Data East. Niitani (the founder of the original Compile) left CH after thinking that it went corporate, and honestly after reading some of the things on jobtalk.jp, I actually feel like there's not much you can do at this point but to walk away. A lot of those sentiments regarding project management seems true. I think the golden years was around 2012-2020.
 

yuraya

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May 4, 2019
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Quick'n and dirty


It is kind of messed up how Larian delayed the Xbox version because Series S co-op issues or wtvr. They should have just scrapped the multiplayer for launch and added it later down the line. Sucks for those who play solo now have to wait. Especially for those Xbox owners who don't care for Starfield.

Also it is funny how the Steam Deck can play the game just fine but Series S is having issues. Console development must be such a headache for devs this gen.
 

fantomena

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Dec 17, 2018
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Also it is funny how the Steam Deck can play the game just fine but Series S is having issues. Console development must be such a headache for devs this gen.
I know the console certification process is a hellride for a lot of indie devs, based on comments from Dave Oshry.

There's a reason a lot of big indie successes, also those that sells really well on Steam, just never makes it to any console.
 
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NarohDethan

There was a fish in the percolator!
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Paul

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Has anyone here heard of or even tried "Robot Cache" ? I only learned about its existence just now.

Apparently it is the first PC digital game store where you can sell your games when done with them?
That alone seems interesting, I would love to be able to trim my steam library and get few eurobucks in the process.
 
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Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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Played 17 hours of BG3 and still feels like I'm in the earliest hours of it. Crazy huge game, even by Larian standards, honestly.

Also it is funny how the Steam Deck can play the game just fine but Series S is having issues. Console development must be such a headache for devs this gen.
Given how much of a bother it is to get even smooth 30 FPS on the Steam Deck, I kinda doubt it could do split screen co-op very well, to be fair here.
 

C-Dub

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Dec 23, 2018
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Has anyone here heard of or even tried "Robot Cache" ? I only learned about its existence just now.

Apparently it is the first PC digital game store where you can sell your games when done with them?
That alone seems interesting, I would love to be able to trim my steam library and get few eurobucks in the process.
Looks like cryptoshit to me.

I’m a fan of selling digital games in principle, but I’m also resigned to the fact that if we get it it’s gonna be a race to bottom. A game you spent £50 on is worth less than 1/100th of that in six months.

For that reason alone it’ll never happen. And anyway, unless such a thing is underpinned by legislation forcing all stores to do it, developers would stop releasing games on PC if we could resell them.

From my perspective as someone who buys new games only, sales and bundles have largely replaced trade-in or resale for me. In fact, I’m still spending less money on PC games than I was on console games. Obscene hardware prices tip it the other way in terms of total spend right now, but that’ll work itself out eventually.

And I made a choice to blow £1200 on a GPU - I didn’t need to do that and could’ve been playing great PC games for much less if I wanted to.
 

Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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Continuing Ratchet, still surprised at how good it looks and how well it runs on a potato. Might have started with some issues, but talk about an incredible port in so many other ways.
Plays great on mouse and keyboard too, I don't think I like to play action games anymore on a controller... thanks endless sticks drifting for giving me the last push? :blobnerd:

Also, to talk about JRPGs, there's Rhapsody 2&3 coming this month.
They're cute and nice little games.
Pretty short too, honestly I value that far more than anything nowadays.
 

NarohDethan

There was a fish in the percolator!
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I wanna get Atlas Rising but haven't even managed to play the games that I already own smfh
 
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