Julius

My younger brother has been keeping up to date with the volume releases, and from what he's told me, the anime essentially makes some of those fights what they are. He still loves it, but can't wait to see how ufotable adapt it. So, once you get to the end of chapter 52 where the first season ends, might be worth checking out some of those Season 1 fights online easily some of the best fight animations, they knocked it out of the park, and you're missing out on some stellar music too!

Agreed, and it's such a shame. I think the next step the industry could greatly benefit from is us knowing more about what goes on behind the scenes, whether that be documentaries shining a light on development (like Raising Kratos which we got for God of War) and the history of the industry, and more transparency over budgets and unit sales. At the moment, what constitutes success to these companies is almost impossible to figure out, as evidenced by Jason Schreier's recent article on Sony Bend and how Metacritic is now seemingly a factor in what success looks like too. Managing expectations better knowing whether you're walking into something being primed as a blockbuster or a smaller release based on their budgets I feel would help, though on the other hand, I guess it could also just further the split between some in the gaming community. At the same time, though, knowing more names and faces to associate with games can only be a good thing in my opinion. Even as someone who has been following gaming news for a few years now, I feel like I know so little about the people behind the games and what they have to go through. Anyone with a shred of empathy should be able to understand to some extent Jason Schreier's work on investigating crunch, but at the same time, it's easier to attach emotions to people than it is simply an article on the matter. Kind of surprised he hasn't tried to put an investigative video together now that I think about it. Plus, it's genuinely interesting stuff!

A fictional film about people walking around playing Pokémon GO would actually be kind of hilarious. But I genuinely also think that a documentary about Pokémon GO's players, it's rise, reception, etc., would be a fascinating watch. It dominated the summer of 2016, and that was an Olympics / Euro's year! And speaking about documentaries, uhhhhhhhh...yeah, let's see some Nintendo documentaries. We saw that footage come out over the last few years of their offices, and I really enjoy going back to watch and read the Iwata Asks stuff, it's brilliant to get more insight into the industry, especially a company which we generally don't get that great a look into. While we still have living legends over there like Miyamoto, let's see some direct-to-streaming documentaries on individuals, put the spotlight on relatively (or completely) unknown stories, and give us a peek behind the curtain. I absolutely adored Disney's Imagineering documentaries, so something similar about the history of Nintendo seems like such an obvious choice.

Well this is...something. So what's going to have the worst stock situation, the console or the shoes?

The retractable lightsaber lives and it looks GLORIOUS. Also just finished the first episode of The Bad Batch. Holy smokes. Uh, yeah, the first episode is 70+ minutes long, and every single of them was great: the animation quality picks up exactly where the end of The Clone Wars Season 7 left off, which is to say it's great; the music has been excellent; they've done a great job of instantly selling me on these characters (much more so than in the adapted arc for Season 7 of The Clone Wars); and it hasn't spent any time sitting around wasting, it's just got on with it. Already so many familiar faces outside of the Bad Batch, too. Best premiere a Star Wars animated series has had by a looooooong shot. Guess I'll dive into a spoiler tag! Great first episode, very much looking forward to Friday for the next one! Haven't really been any announcements today, which is a bit strange as I feel like we do normally get a few things on May 4th, but there's been a rumour going around today that Lucasfilm Animation is looking to start putting out films, which I am all for after how their longer form episodes and arcs from the end of The Clone Wars and the start of The Bad Batch have turned out. Fingers crossed this means we'll be seeing some of the abandoned arcs from The Clone Wars - such as Cad Bane vs Boba, Crystal Crisis, Dark Disciple, and Son of Dathomir - adapted for Disney+.

Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier, and while I could see PlayStation and Xbox grinning and bearing some of it (though some of the internal PlayStation stuff floating around too likely does annoy them quite a bit), I could see Nintendo being absolutely miffed right now, because they clearly seriously hate leaks. Now they'll never hear the end of Samus not coming to Fortnite, which will probably make them clamp down harder and be less inclined to have a character turn up in Fortnite in the future. I honestly could see heads rolling at Epic after this, I wouldn't be surprised if the Big Three put a lot of pressure on the higher-ups at the top of Epic's hierarchy, Sweeney in particular. I have no idea if this was his stupid idea, but I could see them posing to move out of deals which haven't yet been acted on (such as potentially anything they would have in line for Unreal Engine 5) to get their way and get him out. On the other hand though, as someone interested in the industry, this has seriously been eye-opening. Can someone do this to Disney next please? Let's see the Mouse sweat

So let's see what we have here... 1. Cashing In - EA cashing in on the strength of the license with minimal effort. Remember the expansion pass? That was fun. 2. Jedi Falling Upwards - Respawn trying to show EA that you can actually still make a decent game with the license. 3. Cashing In II: The Reckoning - The Mouse Sees All - EA somehow almost losing the license and DICE cleaning their mess after having their reputation dragged through the mud. 4. LEGO Star Wars the Ultimate - I can't believe they didn't try to port this to modern consoles. I'd pick it up for PS3 if not for the Skywalker Saga coming at...some point. 5. Star Wars: Unhinged - played through this again last year and boy is it goofy fun, even if it has aged a little poorly. Some of those facial animations though...yikes. 6. The Last Great Battlefront Game - I've put thousands of hours into this and that's probably an understatement, I know each and every map like the back of my hand, Kamino and Coruscant especially. And those space battles and flying to capital ships to destroy it from the inside! I bought this when I was in Australia in 2007, still have that copy to this day, and played it up until I got a PS4 in 2015 for the new and improved Battlefront (I say, trying to smile through tears). So many great times with that game, I can't tell you how many times I completed the campaign or Galactic Conquest. Speaking of which, easily one of the best campaigns in a Star Wars game, even if it's pretty basic and objective driven when you break it down, getting to live in the armour of a 501st Legion trooper was something I wanted to do since I first saw Episode III. This will always be on my personal list of Top 10 video games. Also spawned what became my own personal Final Fantasy VII Remake having not really grown up on too many video games, Pandemic's Battlefront III: Remember when you could climb into vehicles? It's a shame we can't do that on modern technology, right guys? Frostbite is totally incapable of this, right? Right?! (Also ground-to-space battles is one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in a video game, even if it's just touched up visuals) 7. LEGO Star Wars: The Better Films - I remember reading about this six months, maybe a year, before release in a gaming magazine in a tiny corner shop next to my primary school. First time I ever memorised a video game's release date, man I loved that cantina and watching those cutscenes back. Remember when LEGO games didn't need to be voiced? 8. Star Wars BuT wItH bLoCkS - played this so much around friend's houses growing up, and even at my after school club. I had so much of this game memorised by the time I finally got my own hands on it, it spawned a series of LEGO games and I imagine still holds up to this day. 9. Precursor to Greatness - okay but seriously, the game is probably seriously overlooked, and that's because they decided to release a sequel with so much more content, faster loading times (at least from my experience), etc., just a year later. Still, some seriously cool maps such as Rhen Var and Bespin (which had ground-to-air battles!), and I remember it having Republic Commando-styled orders too. Great game but completely overshadowed by its successor. 10. Without a Shadow of a Doubt - the only game on this list I haven't played, and I'm pretty sure that's just because I wasn't around when it released H-o-T, I've actually never played KoToR, as it wasn't easily accessible (or at least, as far as I could tell as a young kid) and not available on platforms I owned (we had an old PC, and I didn't have an original Xbox), but I still know a surprising amount about the game from playthroughs I watched, scouring Wookieepedia for as much as I could get my hands on about the era, and all of the ToR stuff from the Galactic Timeline Records, which I've probably watched through tens of times: I've got a PC more than capable of running it now, but I'm not particularly keen on playing games on it (weirdly, guess that's just what happens when my only real gaming experiences growing up were on dedicated consoles), so will await the eventual port to PlayStation/Switch (right..?) and remake. Also never played the Rogue Squadron games for similar reasons, unfortunately. Got to imagine the reason that these games didn't crack the top 10 is simply that they weren't available on PlayStation 2, otherwise I'm sure their numbers would have been bumped up enough to make the list.

What timeline is this again? What a strange one. Conte going to Inter after his success there was one thing, but Mourinho going to Roma when he's an Inter legend and was adored by the fans, having won the treble with them? What a strange, strange world we live in. What's next for him after this, Sporting? Wish him all the best, I really want to see Mourinho get back up there amongst the best in the game, it's been over a decade since he last won the Champions League (that's nearly the case for Pep too, which is pretty insane!). Honestly, I'm more surprised that he wants to return to countries where he's already won, he "only" needs to win the league in France and Germany to become the first manager to win it in all of the five major European leagues (I think Ancelotti is on four after missing out on La Liga at Madrid).

Right?! I mean, how many Japanese people emigrated to the States, got brain damage and forgot Japanese, and then only learned English as their primary language in the 90's? Pretty niche audience for sure

Yeah, you know what I meant also I might need to bleach my ears now... I thought there might have been one just considering that there was one for Kirby that my brother enjoyed (to be fair it wouldn't surprise me if there was something out there for a lot of these), but this anime in particular looks like it was limited to OVA's, originally released in 1996 in Japan, and 1997 in the US - wasn't that a few years before the US even started getting Fire Emblem games? Compare that to today and it's a total no-brainer to make a modern Fire Emblem anime. Especially considering that everyone and their mother wants a political fantasy epic these days! I genuinely think it would be absolutely massive as an anime and could be the next step the series takes towards being part of the mainstream consciousness, a game following that (let alone one actually tied directly into it) would sell like crazy.

Agreed, though I think after the inevitable success of Rift Apart next month, I wouldn't be surprised if we see PlayStation ramp up production over at Insomniac with an employment drive. They're releasing games on a biennial basis currently, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if by the end of the generation PlayStation has positioned them to put a game out just about every year, cycling between Spider-Man, Ratchet & Clank, and then either bringing an old IP like Sunset Overdrive back or doing something completely new, especially if Xbox's purchases pay off and we see content coming out consistently for Game Pass. Just a thought, could absolutely go the other way too, because I think they've got a nice pattern to their releases now as it is. But with it getting increasingly competitive in the coming years now that Xbox don't hesitate on pulling the gun on acquisitions (for better or worse), I do think Insomniac are the prime candidate of their first party studios for rampant growth.

Immediate thought is that you could have all of these shows and films about individual IP's, and through Smash Bros. you already effectively have a tournament arc built in if you want to do any crazy crossover stuff to rake it in. From the little I've played of Earthbound, I feel like the Mother series could make for a great anime. Assuming they seriously don't want to release Mother 3 (and I mean, do we have any reason to not assume this?) it could at least give fans in the west an opportunity to enjoy that story, as I think it might be easier for them to censor/alter certain things in a show rather than the game. And I think that's a much easier sell than releasing a censored version of the game at this point, to be honest. Star Fox feels like it's begging to be a Saturday morning show to be honest, and so does Paper Mario. Zelda would need a voiced Link (which I genuinely think would be the greatest hurdle to us seeing anything come of it) but would be awesome in the style of the Castlevania anime, and you could just as well base it somewhat off the manga. In terms of films though, a live-action Kirby would be the stuff of actual nightmares (I imagine a Stitch situation but instead half the town goes missing and it turns out it was the little pink guy all along). EDIT: okay but a Fire Emblem anime would actually kill, get ufotable all up and in on that. It already basically has a rabid anime community following given how many fans idolise characters and the art style too, and it has the gacha game to boot. It actually makes so much sense that that's exactly why we'll never see it

PlayStation trademarked Sunset Overdrive just over a week ago. For anyone wondering what the deal is with ownership of the IP, as the first game was released on Xbox: Interested to see how they traverse this, I imagine any hopes of a port would probably mean giving in to some kind of Xbox demand, which I can't see PlayStation doing to be honest. So maybe a sequel of sorts?

In a crew interview with CNET, it has been revealed that The Bad Batch will be 16 episodes long. Recently it leaked that the first episode would effectively be a triple-hitter in its own right, coming in at some 70+ minutes, so if that's repeated for the finale, it's essentially a 20 episode show if compared to the runtime of previous Star Wars animated series, and that's without taking into account the lack of runtime constraints now that they're on Disney+ (typical episodes will likely be 25 - 30 minute long). Looking forward to it!

Unfortunately didn't get to put as much time Suikoden II today as I had originally wanted to, so I'm just creeping up on the 4 hour mark. It would be 5 hours, but to add to the series of unfortunate events, I went into my session today completely unaware about how the PS3's internal memory cards work for emulation of PS1 and PS2 titles, and as I found out an hour in at the first real opportunity to save my journey, I had filled up my existing one between Metal Gear Solid and Suikoden saves. To add insult to injury, you can assign memory card slots and rearrange them quite freely through holding down the PlayStation button, but for whatever reason you can't create a new one from there (I'm sure there's a technical reason I'm not fully aware of, but either way, it sucks when you can do so many other things with the internal memory cards from that position), meaning I had no choice but to quit out of the game to create a new one (meaning I took the opportunity to create a whole bunch of them). Anyways, as for the game itself? It's been nothing short of fantastic so far, holy cow! I have to start by mentioning the opening movie for the game, because calling it epic would be selling it short. It's a masterpiece in itself: Then I started the game after transferring over my Suikoden save data, which doesn't waste any time in getting going, as you are almost immediately pulled into the thick of it. Much of the game since then has been similar, there's no dilly-dallying at all (and there wasn't that much in the first game either) and it moves confidently and quickly from one plot point to the next, all the while not feeling rushed at all. It makes whirlwind moments like getting caught out in an ambush actually feel like a whirlwind, and its easy to get caught up in a moment. The key characters and story have been set up, I've seen some familiar faces from the first game (something which I've been vocal about loving in games before), and despite only being less than 4 hours in, it's completely gripped me. So much has happened in such a short space of time, yet every moment feels like it gets a chance to breathe, and it seriously reminds me of Chrono Trigger in this way. I'm very curious to see if this carries through to the end of the game, but if it does, it's going to take a lot going wrong elsewhere for me to not love this game. Because there is so much that I love about this game so far. Something which has actually had me audibly whisper "wow" to myself on numerous occasions is just how expressive and animated the characters are. Of the games I've played to this point I genuinely think this game blows many other pixel art games out of the water in this regard - and that's including games I love and hold in the highest regard when it comes to this, such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. And the Pokémon Ranger games, weirdly enough, deserves a mention too. For instance, they put in the work to have Riou lean down to grab a rope from the floor, at another point he's crouching over and cleaning the floor, another time a character ties a rope to a rail, a character trips and struggles to get up, there's a hug, and a dog dives onto someone before snuggling up to them. There's also the accuracy and effort of adding "shade" where necessary which goes far beyond what was in the first game, which was minimal at best, often giving rooms a bit of a flat feel in hindsight. It is genuinely some of the best pixel art animation I've seen in a video game from that era, and I doubt I'll shut up about it anytime soon, so rather than continue to list these instances, if you want to see what I mean, just watch the opening credits sequence, backed by a beautiful track called Reminiscence: And it should come as little surprise that with Miki Higashino returning after her work on the first game, which had a soundtrack I absolutely adored, that my love for the music in this series has only intensified. There's Enemy Attack which is as panic-filled and chaotic as you might expect, and the opening of which really reminds me of some Final Fantasy tracks before the crazy woodwind comes in over the top dizzyingly; Days Past, which is about as melancholic and wistful as it could possibly be; the ensemble version of Reminiscence, a slower and strained version which just gnaws away at you; and Beautiful Morning, which initially serves as Nanami's theme before being used elsewhere, which is just incredibly jolly. And speaking of Nanami, despite being so early on in the game, I already feel so attached to these characters, they're just that endearing, and I have to highlight Nanami for being the most animated and funny of the bunch; that track captures her vibe perfectly. As if I couldn't praise this game more than I already have, they seem to have fixed things which I thought got in the way of the first game knocking it out of the park, namely inventory management and NPC's tagging along. In the previous game, as I mentioned in my Gaming Diary entry back in January, each character had a limited number of slots which would quickly fill up with equipment, leaving only one or two slots open for carrying health items. This meant you would have to unload items and reorganise your inventory almost every opportunity you got to back at your headquarters, but in this game, there's a shared inventory you can access outside of battle, which can carry up to 30 items. This is in addition to the slots each party member has (3 for equipment, and a further 3 for whatever you like), so even though you would still only have 48 items to carry between them at any given time as you would in the first game, the organisation of these items is so much easier, and you still have a space to dump items into back at headquarters (though I've yet to give this a go myself, but it looks like there are more options included this time around too). As for NPC's tagging along, in the first game, you might find yourself trudging through a dungeon to save a character who would then have to join your party to make their way back with you, which meant you would have to alter your party formation. That isn't the case here, as they wisely added a 'Convoy' which any characters who are only there to tag along can be placed into, rather than taking up a valuable space in your party formation. My only genuine issue so far is a holdover from the first game where text speed can vary quite a bit, and so double-tapping X to get through the dialogue and view the next line, in instances where you have a choice of dialogue, can result in you accidentally selecting the first option without even realising. Heck, even found a bit of an exploit to sleep at Inns for free completely by mistake! It's rare that a game pulls me in and so plainly makes the case that it's something special this early on, and yet here I am wanting nothing but to book the rest of the week off and be completely consumed by this game. I'll have to see if it lives up to its early promise, as I know there's still plenty to go, but so far so great!

The one percent. 7.9% of players have earned this trophy.

Okay so for some reason the YouTube channel for The Game Awards is giving the live audio for the Epic Games vs. Apple courtroom case. Audio is muffled to all heck but this is hilarious

There was also the email exchange between Gio Corsi and Epic, where the latter basically (read: pretty directly) threatened PlayStation at the end of their email, that's worth mentioning. Didn't think there'd be too much interesting out of this case, but it's off to a start I really wasn't expecting. How long before we get to the desperate Stadia emails?

Discord to be integrated into the PlayStation experience as of next year. From Jim Ryan's post on the SIE blog: Interesting stuff considering all of the rumours not too long ago about Microsoft looking to purchase Discord. Look forward to seeing how this ends up being integrated, at its best I think it's a strong next step towards cross-platform play becoming the norm, as this will further help gaming communities to flourish.

imnotcryingyourcrying.gif Well, guess I'm not avoiding the cinemas this summer like I was planning to after all! Had me tearing up, boy have I missed the cinema (ahem, Lucasfilm, it's your turn to put something like this out tomorrow)

Some might say I'm a bit too young to be feeling this way, but I've been feeling this way too for much of the last five years, but the past couple of months in particular. I'm totally going to ramble and I know it, so get out while you can, seriously There's never been a concrete plan for my life direction, and so I'm not surprised I've ended up feeling this way. I cruised through the latter years of high school knowing I was all but guaranteed a place in the "best" local college, and the aim since I was young had nebulously been to attend a prestigious university, because that's just what you do when the world is telling you that you're smart and you're taking part in "Gifted & Talented" events which have you visiting said universities a few times a year. Looking back, it was so counterintuitive, and some of the other students in my year group attending these events have crashed out or had to retake years just as I have. I then got ill, likely due to lack of direction draining my resolve to aim forwards at college, and stress got the better of me. Having a clear direction was The one time I had a burning desire and aim for something was actually after failing out of AS levels, when I was being told I could stay at my college but had no business studying maths, and so I made the choice to leave for a "lesser" college to prove to myself that I could do whatever I put my mind to and get a good grade in maths, telling myself I'd go to university to study physics, which is a step further than I got with my life goals previously. I turned a U (yeah, from an A at GCSE, but my first college brushed that off and said it meant nothing, which I still find myself chuckling over sometimes) into an A by that Christmas, aced AS, but having taught myself how to study effectively but not having any other real reference points in my life, I completely burned myself out and missed much of my first attempt at A levels. I had some unconditional offers for universities and some interviews lined up, but knowing full well even at that point that my results wouldn't reflect what I was actually capable of (and my doctors being absolutely useless throughout), I pulled out of the application circuit. Since then, I guess things had started to improve. I was unemployed for a while before getting my current job at Big Bank™ two years ago now, I got lucky in that other people in my team were also brand new and I've made some great friends, I asked a girl out for the first time in my life (I really shouldn't have based on how quickly she moved on from her ex in hindsight, but live and learn I guess), things got awkward after it turned out she was already with someone else, things started to get better between us and me and my friends were doing well and then...the pandemic hit I should be grateful, and I guess I am. I moved out for the first time last year and though there are things about my current situation which are inhibiting to a degree (been growing apart from my sister for years, we've both been through stuff, I took the chance of us living together for her to get on her feet and took most of the financial responsibility and, well, we haven't grown much closer, sadly), my general mental health and relationship with my parents have improved quite a lot. I'm in one of the most secure teams in Big Bank™ in that the pandemic has made us one of the fastest growing departments and increased my level of seniority pretty rapidly as a result, I'm getting paid well, and my friends who went to university at the first opportunity and did a 3 year course came out last year to there being no jobs for them to do, so if I went to university at my first chance I'd likely be without a job, and if I did at my second chance I would've spent the third year being beaten down by the pandemic. And yet...I'm still unhappy with where I am. Personally the last month or two has actually been quite good, as I've taken up mediation and have started getting back into shape, but the question looming over my head of So, what am I doing? has become greater than it has been before with the increased mental clarity which comes from making myself healthier. Then there's work, where I've been moved temporarily (but I'll likely get the offer to move permanently) to an internal projects team, which has given me more exposure to higher-ups and by all means would be great for getting my name out there and moving up the chain. But I have zero interest in doing that. Even with my temporary role being a cakewalk when compared with my old role - only having to sit in on meetings, send a few emails a day, and complete a few forms vs going 100 mph through a spreadsheet, fixing other people's mistakes and the stress of calling customers - I look at the higher-ups in these meetings and realise how passionate they are about the mundane things our work involves, and I roll my eyes, knowing I really couldn't give a damn less about what I'm doing now. I then thought about the hypothetical scenario where I try my ass off for the next decade and a half and become CEO of Big Bank™ - would the pay at that point make me happy? Well, short answer: no. This isn't what I want, and I realised how little I cared about this job. You could give me the CEO's pay for what I do now and I'd still be just as unhappy and lost. I'd just be able to distract myself from that more. There was a time a year or so ago when I was flirting with the idea of putting the grind in to get through medical school, because if nothing else I care about other people, and love to help people, and could devote my life to nothing else but helping people; that I'd rather go back on the phone to help customers in a much more stressful role almost cruelly proves that to a degree I didn't realise before. I know that if I can stay healthy I have the mental capacity to see jt through, but seeing how healthcare staff have been treated over the course of the last year, knowing how gruelling that process can be, would I just find myself burning out again? Sometimes it feels like I'm split between Julius the Academic (aka who I was half a decade ago and have been told is the person I am my whole life) and Julius the Creative (the person I've grown into more over the last half a decade, but has always been there deep down). I love games, film, writing, and storytelling - could I not find something in there that could help people but also selfishly give myself some kind of satisfaction and purpose? But I type that and almost feel silly, which I'm ashamed to admit.

After playing the first entry in the Suikoden series earlier this year, I was surprised to find that the only thread on the forums for the series is from 2005, when the PSP ports of Suikoden and Suikoden II were announced. I'm starting up Suikoden II later today for the first time after finding myself increasingly pulled back towards playing a JRPG, and thought it would be nice to have a space to record my journey with the game as I like doing with other threads, before I eventually get around to a more thoughtful and concise update for the Gaming Diary thread, and would like to get others onboard too to join the discussion, so I'm thinking of updating this post with things like the recruitment guides I use, any tips or tricks I pick up along the way, and so on, for reference if anyone else dives into the series too. I'll update this later with the recruitment guide I used and my notes from my time with the first Suikoden, but for now, it's onto Suikoden II! Alright, without further ado, highlighting the games in the series, some of the names of key staff who worked on them, and I'll add helpful links or information as I make my way through the series for each entry that I can. I'll add the main titles for now and the spin-offs later, when I'll clean this post up a little more. For availability, I am mainly looking at this from an EU perspective, given that most on here are Europeans. Main series titles SUIKODEN Original release date: December 15th 1995 (JP), December 1996 (NA), April 1997 (EU) Developed by: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo Published by: Konami Director: Yoshitaka Murayama Producer: Kazumi Kitaue Designer: Junko Kawano Artist: Junko Kawano Composers: Miki Higashino, Tappy Iwase, Hiroshi Tamawari, Hirofumi Taniguchi, Mayuko Kageshita Most accessible on: PlayStation Network (PSP, PS3, PS Vita) Also available on: PlayStation (note: will cost a small fortune); was also released on the Sega Saturn and Microsoft Windows in Japan Suggested recruitment guide: this one from GameFAQS as it contains minimal story spoilers SUIKODEN II Original release date: December 17th 1998 (JP), August 31st 1999 (NA), July 28th (EU) Developed by: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo Published by: Konami Director: Yoshitaka Murayama Producer: Yoshitaka Murayama Designers: Fumi Ishikawa, Junko Kawano Artist: Fumi Ishikawa Writers: Yoshitaka Murayama, Junko Kawano Composers: Miki Higashino, Keiko Fukami Most accessible on: PlayStation Network (PSP, PS3, PS Vita) Also available on: PlayStation (note: will also cost a small fortune); was also released on Microsoft Windows in China Suggested recruitment guide: this one from Suikosource which I am testing currently in my playthrough; unfortunately I could not find one as concise, detailed, and as spoiler-free as the one from GameFAQS for the first game, and so this does contain some story spoilers SUIKODEN III Original release date: July 11th 2002 (JP), October 24th 2002 (NA), June 23rd 2015 (EU - PSN) Developed by: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo Published by: Konami Directors: Yoshitaka Murayama, Keiichi Isobe Producer: Noritada Matsukawa Artist: Fumi Ishikawa Composers: Michiru Yamane, Takashi Yoshida, Masahiko Kimura Most accessible on: PlayStation Network (PS3) Also available on: PlayStation 2 (JP and NA only) Suggested recruitment guide: this one from Suikosource, which I have yet to test myself SUIKODEN IV Original release date: August 19th 2004 (JP), January 11th 2004 (NA), February 25th 2005 (EU) Developed by: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo Published by: Konami Director: Masayuki Saruta Designer: Junko Kawano Artist: Junko Kawano Composers: Masahiko Kimura, Michiru Yamane, Norikazu Miura Most accessible on: PlayStation Network (PS3) Also available on: PlayStation 2 Suggested recruitment guide: this one from Suikosource, which I have yet to test myself SUIKODEN V Original release date: Developed by: Konami, Hudson Soft Published by: Konami Director: Takahiro Sakiyama Artist: Kaori Fujita, Kizaki Sub-zero, Mikisato, Riya Hozumi Writer: Kazuyoshi Tsugawa Composers: Yoshihiro Tsukahara, Takashi Watanabe, Kuniyuki Takahashi. Chiharu Mukaiyama Only available on: PlayStation 2 (unfortunately, for whatever reason, this never made its way to PSN) Suggested recruitment guide: this one from Suikosource, which I have yet to test myself

In recent weeks there were whispers of Kadokawa (the parent company of From Software) putting out an end of year report with high expectations under gaming for the fiscal year ending March 2022, leading some to believe that the game would be released within the next 12 months. Well, that now seems to have changed, as their end of year report has been published with substantially lower expected profits for FY2022 compared with FY2021 under gaming, even providing their reasoning for doing so: Unsurprisingly, the impacts of COVID and transitioning to working from home seems to have continued impacts on the game's development. Though it could still release within the next 12 months, that there's enough uncertainty that it's not being accounted for in their profits forecasts makes it very unlikely, so going off of this we're probably looking at April 2022 onwards for release. I've only been around here for the release of Sekiro from announcement to release, but I was under the impression that From had a surprisingly quick turnaround time for games based on how quickly that game went from being teased at The Game Awards to release, and looking at their earlier games, it looks like they came out at a decent clip. I know this is likely their most ambitious game given that it's open world, but it's crazy to think that it will have already been two years next month since it's official announcement at E3 2019, and there had been a lot of rumours and supposed leaks floating about before then too. I've got five other From Software games to keep me occupied until (and probably beyond) whenever this releases, so selfishly I'm in the camp of letting it cook as long as it needs, though I do imagine fans of From Software games would agree with that sentiment too. Genuine question having only played Demon's Souls: do any of the other From games have a map? Because this game being open world, it would pretty much have to have a map, right? Which is really weird to think about. Of course I can only speak to Demon's Souls, but I know what you mean about the light narrative direction, it's really clear just how much Ueda's works inspired Miyazaki. I'm imagining a largely Shadow of the Colossus-like open world which is virtually empty, save for skirmishes as you get closer to settlements, which would be more intricately designed in line with From's other games. I guess I'm kind of also imagining Hyrule Field from Ocarina of Time? Secrets in the open world of course (hidden dungeons, stuff behind waterfalls, caves, etc.), would be really interesting if there were a Nemesis-like system between settlements, and a massive, SotC-like boss in the open world would be cool too.

Finished this earlier today, probably got to sit on it a bit more before I hopefully update the Gaming Diary thread...but I really ended up liking it. It's very ambitious for a title from over a decade ago, and it shows a lot of the time. The frame rate, as I mentioned before, can be very poor on the hardware it was originally intended for; the AI is temperamental in more ways than I have fingers to count them on (it's a good thing Sakurai taught us how to count in binary with our fingers! ); and there are more bugs than I can throw rocks at. There was one in the penultimate scene to the "ending" where I followed two characters into a barn and one was frozen in place in-engine from my gameplay, standing next to the in-engine version for the cutscene. The camera panned through him at the end and I got a creepy look at the back of his eyeballs through his head, which was lovely. But take that away, and there's a strong Western story, a stellar cast (if a little exaggerated at times - though I guess that's the Rockstar touch), one or two excellent quests (and a stellar job of curating those quests, there are less than 20 in total but they feel purposeful), a whole lot of mission variety (some of which I've said before that I want to see in the Breath of the Wild sequel, in terms of structure and presentation), and a game I'm not surprised at all is as beloved as it is. It's rough around the edges, and perhaps would benefit from a remaster/remake in the Red Dead II engine, but I say that thinking that's the best way to make me like this game and appreciate it even more. It deserves to be brought to that standard. My favourite thing in the game is something I'll throw in a spoiler tag, but I wanted to push back and test something to see if Rockstar had thought of all the possibilities in a game which gives you a lot of control over your actions. And then I'll mention my favourite quest too. And while towards the end it certainly became very apparent what was going to happen, I sure as hell wasn't expecting... A great video game. Look forward to mulling it over in the coming days, and hopefully getting around to Red Dead Redemption II later in the year!