Summon Night Thread

These games are so good. They're some of the only JRPGs I've ever played where both the gameplay and the story are really goodif not terribly deep. How are the Jap-only games and do any of them have fan translations? Also, who's your favorite guardian beast?

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gbatemp.net/threads/summon-night-swordcraft-story-beginnings-stone.389972/
web.archive.org/web/20120708070217/http://www.r4sdhc.com:80/down.asp
twitter.com/AnonBabble

I remember those. I played them to pretend I had friends.

I wish they were more Swordcraft Story games, they were fun. I really liked the weapons/crafting and battles.

Summon Night mainline is in the tactics genre I believe.

Summon night swordcraft story 2 is likely tied for my favorite GBA game of all time (the other is the sidescrolling dragon ball beat em up). I wish there was either another one or that there were more options and more content.

If you want similar combat, the older 2D Tales games might suffice. Although there's still some differences (namely a focus on using artes often and having multiple party members in combat).

I've heard decent things about the Summon Night games on Sony's systems in the past (people didn't seem that fond of the DS remakes in comparison), but none of Summon Night 1-4 have fan-translations, and are tactical JRPGs instead of real-time combat ones (Swordcraft Story NOT being the main series). The only games currently in English are Swordcraft Story 1 and 2 (spinoffs), Twin Age (another, different spinoff), and Summon Night 5 (Gaijinworks doing abysmal rewrite-tier English Scripts), with 6 coming out here later. Swordcraft Story 3 has had a fan-translation in the works for a while. It's not done yet, but has an ongoing 40 page GBATemp thread you can follow.

Yuri is always best

The DS has many of this nice simple, jrpg

Lately games try to be really complex or too 2deep4U but there will be always stuff to play

Nobody actually uses the male main character, do they?

Yeah, I know Nostalgia wasn't the best game around, but it actually worked fairly well as a throwback to simpler times, being about a boy looking for his missing dad, putting together a crew of friends he'd made, saving a girl, and exploring the world in his dad's old airship.

Also:

...

Always wanted to play the Japanese ones. Learning Japanese now, so I should be able to do it at some point.

I do. Played with all the protagonists, in fact. And every guardian beast. I am not autistic.

I've played all of those. The 2D ones are the only Tales games that can keep my attention for some reason.

Thanks, I'll check these out. Hopefully 5 isn't too awful. As long as there are no memes or politics it should be at least bearable.

Oh look, another weeb mad his precious gook games aren't getting a 1:1 translation that's as dry and soulless as the Japanese language.

fuck off, vic

There's a difference between literal translation and accurate translation. Some liberties may be taken in regards to keeping the spirit of jokes or figures of speech intact, but a game (or anime) should not see the story and character personalities rewritten to suit the desires of the translator and/or editor (I suspect it's more likely the latter in most cases, but who knows) on the English team. In particular, Gaijinworks, and their predecessor Working Designs, tend to not care that much for proper accuracy, and instead have done whatever they feel like, both to the scripts and at times to gameplay.

Twin Age is a bit odd. Compared to the 2D sidescrolling combat of Swordcraft Story, it's top-down, on-the-field combat, and battle execution is handled rather differently as well. From the description on Wikipedia:
Naturally, this sort of game winds up rather hit-or-miss with fans here who were used to SCS duo prior and are still annoyed at SCS3 not being in English. There's still weapon making and nighttime chats between the player and an ally of their choosing, but one shouldn't expect SCS going into it. I'm not necessarily recommending or not recommending it (I mainly mentioned it in the earlier post simply because it's one of the handful of games we officially got), but do be aware of what you're getting into, and don't be expecting Swordcraft Story from it.

I played as a dude in SN2 because I self insert in video games.
His super form is fucking badass.

I am actually pretty surprised that these got localized because flighplan was ignored for about a decade. They make great games and honestly as Disgaea clones their core games are better than Disgaea. Also I hate NIS, not just NISA.

I'm one of the people who actually bought the game, but like most WD games it's chalk full of references, not so much the politics though, and most of the references are more subtle compared to shit like actually mentioning the salvation army by name in a fucking medieval fantasy game, but it's shit like a enemy character throwing a chris hansen reference when they use the loli character to lure them out.

Inb4 autistic screeching

I do

Poison Pink/Eternal Poison was pretty fun, though I have no idea why Atlus translated that of all the Flight-Plan titles on the PS2. Also the Shining Force Feather artbook was translated for some reason.

The series predates Disgaea by quite a bit. The reasons they never got translated is actually pretty obvious.

The first two games were released pretty damn late in the PS1's life. The first released 2 months before the PS2 came out and the second was released after the PS2 as a PS1 game. Summon Night 3 would have been a good candidate for release but it most likely would have run into problems with the massive requirements for dubbing it.

The other reason the series was likely never translated is the games were noted for being fully voiced. Remember that, up till the end of the PS3 era, SCEA had an irrational hatred for games with Japanese voice acting and required everything be dubbed (this is why so many PS1 games had awful English VA: They were only dubbed because Sony demanded they do).

As far as I know the primary flaw of the DS remake is the lack of VA to fit on the

You know that simply just removing the VA was a thing for plenty of games right? Like Summon Nights 5, where anything that wasn't a grunt was cut because they couldn't afford the dub or even subs past a shitty anime op.

Atlus makes some odd decisions at times as to what they're willing to pick up to bring over. Tsugunai for instance, which didn't do too well in Japan and was promptly given middling "professional" reviews when they brought it over; given how infrequently I see it, I doubt it sold well here either, but prices are still kept reasonable as there's not much demand for (also a similar, if an even cheaper case in my experiences, with Metal Saga). Not that I find Tsugunai a bad game myself, just that I'm not sure what drove Atlus to be interested in bringing it over.

I think the point he's making was that the original PS1 games had voicing in Japan, while the DS remakes removed it, not that they were given the once-standard "remove/replace voicing and lyrics for western release" treatment.

Might as well append that as "opted not to utilize voicing", as "removed" probably isn't the best word, really.

I think Atlus either just does what it wants(they've done far more baffling games than that), needed a game to publish around ps2's launch, and that was available, or wanted some brownie points with Sony japan.

So if I want to get into this, how and where should I start? Can they be pirated and do any of them have fan translations or fan unfucking-the-official-translations (since apparently some got handled poorly).

Better learn Nipponese!

Learning jap trash since most of the games are untranslated and will likely stay that way. Honestly it's not worth it, just play the swordcraft story games and ignore everything else.

Absolutely.

Nope, the third swordcraft story is getting one, but the translator let the community edit the game, so who knows how that's gonna turn out.

Nope. None of the games WD translated thus far have gotten fan translations, and it's no different here.

I only played the game through till about the giant mech battle that happens in the 2nd game. I only got to play with Dinah but that was after save state and loading to check out the other choices.

I really enjoyed what I played and I thought the crafting system was kind of neat.

They're certainly prone to taking risks at times, and from a consumer point of view, I don't have fault with them taking that upon themselves to bring something over other companies might not see a point in, thus giving us more to play here (though, that's assuming the game is actually good to begin with). However, there's also the issue where a given game doesn't make enough of a profit to keep that interest from them up, be it on its own terms, or compared to prior entries, which has sadly caused us to miss stuff like Endless Frontier: Exceed, Luminous Arc 3: Eyes, and any of the Metal Max series after Metal Saga (which has been four games since then, not including mobileshit).

At least in regard to Swordcraft Story, I think with SCS3, it was more that the DS was already out for a year (and would have been out even longer after turn-around time for translation) by that point than outright disinterest, so it likely got left by the wayside like some other Japanese late-GBA games, with Twin Age being the next spinoff title released in Japan anyhow. Didn't stop them from dropping the series (using "series" loosely as, again, they were only interested in spinoffs) after that point though.

I played it a very long time ago and vaguely remember that you get to choose who do you hang out with in-between episodes.
Please tell me you can actually romance girls in there.

Dinah is cute.

One thing I find particularly cool is that Edgar looks like color swapped Dante in combat.
His eyes are different color from the artwork too for some reason.

What good games can I practice my kana efficiency Holla Forums?

Pose Dinah strikes after forging is extra cute.

Gooklearn club is two threads down buddy.

I only played Swordcraft Story 2 ages ago and i remember there was a shitton of backtracking. Otherwise a good game

been meaning to ask you, did you get a flashcard for your ds lite?

Yeah it gets pretty annoying right off the bat.
I know that game tries to teach how to craft and use shit, but come the fuck on.

The third game is finally getting an english patch? I've been waiting a decade for this shit, i honestly never thought it would happen.

This was a really good spinoff series, wonder why they stopped making them after the GBA.

Can I play these on my PSP?

Probably, PSP GBA emulator is pretty good.

Are they doing full translation or just menus?

This shit is just not fun. I like the combat system but holy fuck, game just wastes my time. I have a strong feeling it's not a real JRPG, but some kinda dungeon crawler and I'll never leave this fucking village.
Is summon night 1 the same?

Aim is full translation, but as has already been mentioned, it's not finished yet (progress has been off and on with people coming and going over the years), and editing is sourced out to the community.

Link if you want to keep tabs on the effort (note that the most recent page is 40):
gbatemp.net/threads/summon-night-swordcraft-story-beginnings-stone.389972/

Could ask the same of why Namco abandoned the Radiant Mythology and Narikiri Dungeon subseries in regard to Tales. Though, I suspect that the former more-or-less got usurped by the heavy push of crossover games onto mobile as the platform of choice for them instead of continuing on to the Vita.

Yeah, I got one r4i Renovation a while back at a second hand store, but only recently found the right files for the MicroSD to get it set up (for whatever reason the r4 type sites that usually include such download links have zilch for the Renovation).

They abandoned it? Could've sworn the 3ds got a few of them, not that we were going to see them either way.

Yes, but it's worth it.
I played until late game without skipping any battles
I didn't know you could run from them

No, the 3DS hasn't seen much Tales (compared to the DS getting three, two of which got remade for the Vita). It has a port of Abyss, which is at least the first time PAL has officially gotten the game (I'd still prefer the PS2 version for co-op), and a port (I think) of a previously mobile tactical JRPG called Tales of the World: Reve Unitia (formerly "Tactics Union"), which has remained Japan only. Narikiri Dungeon has been abandoned as of NDX on the PSP (which I've heard was a VERY good remake of ND1 from the GBC; seems a bit strange that they would drop it after such a game). Tales of Link seems like a spiritual successor to RM, at least going off of some character designs/roles (Sara and Lippy seem to be filling a "Kanonno" and "Mormo/Paneer/Rocksprings" sort of role; can't say for certain as even though Link has apparently been released in the west, I'm not one to play phoneshit). I remember back when information was first starting to get hinted at (probably over three years ago at this point; game released in Japan in late 2014) some anons were expecting RM4 for the Vita from what they saw, only to be disappointed at it not only not being a new Radiant Mythology, but a mobile title as well.

The PSP in general had a ton of Tales on it, although no original main series entries (unlike the DS).
The 3DS and Vita are noticeably lacking in comparison to the focus Namco gave the PSP with the series (locally for them, anyhow; the west only saw two entries come over, and only one if you live in NA).

Polite sage for off-topic.

gl with the card, I'm gonna pull the trigger on an r4i gold 3ds rts from nds-card.com

Been testing it with various games. Some work just fine, but with others, like Okamiden, AP measures seem to be in place preventing much progress (will ask in the next DS thread I see how/if I can get around them). Also can't get Blaze Black 2 to load, while BB1 works, and for some reason there's no audio outside of cutscenes in Blood of Bahamut (though that could be an issue with the patch itself, and bears more research). Might want to get something that's not a renovation though for your own card, namely because I've had a hard time finding information and files on that make compared to other ones. There should be some tables around that list off various flash cart models, what their system compatibility is, and what functionality they have.

I'll let you know how this one works, it was recommended on gbaTemp. The stickied table was outdated, but the thread is still active. Might be worth making a thread there about your Renovation. Had to search for Blaze Black. Makes sense, you had mentioned playing pokemon before bed. Want me to test Blood of Bahamut in an emu tomorrow or on my card in a couple weeks?

Sure, I'd appreciate it if you could test out Blood of Bahamut to see if the audio issue is still present via both means if possible. Was a very strange experience starting up the game, only for the actual stages to have no audio whatsoever, even as you're fighting against a giant colossus trying to squash you under it's fist and dodge massive boulders it's hurling at you (which by all means should be pretty noisy if you ask me). I'm pretty sure I have the latest version of the patch as well (v1.07); maybe my flashcart's just fucky, but maybe its the patch itself acting up. I'm not sure.

What's this about yuri?

The romance options are the same whether you choose to play as a boy or a girl.

So devs being lazy? I want ti date cute shotas as a grill.

Compiled Desmume on Linux. I'm playing the Blood of Bahamut tutorial fight where you have to climb on the Gigant's hand and hit the blue core thing. Sound is working. Will try to post video later.

This was using v1.07 that I found pre-patched on Chaika's share thread.

Thanks. I'll have to look into it more later. Maybe it's just not friendly with flash carts, or at least my particular one.

Did some digging on gbatemp and found web.archive.org/web/20120708070217/http://www.r4sdhc.com:80/down.asp

Huh, didn't know that might have put out a potentially new version of the kernel. I'm not sure off the top of my head which version the download I got off youtube for my 2.20T is, but considering that the video with the link was posted two years ago and the latest listed version on that page is from 2012, I assume it's the latest. Still, doesn't hurt to double check, and on a related note, as I'm using a Lite, I don't have to worry about running a firmware update. Additionally, given latest version release date listed there (January 4th, 2012), that might also explain why it won't load Blaze Black 2, as Pokemon B2W2 wouldn't be released until that June in Japan, and that October elsewhere. I'd wager that could also be a similar case for other late DS releases here (thankfully, most aside from Black 2, White 2, and Pokemon Conquest seem to just be licensed shit), that the kernel wasn't made with playing them in mind.

Still not sure why it seems so hard to find anything that isn't a youtube video, or archived link, as to this make of card. I'd have at least thought the main r4 site would retain information about it for posterity, but considering the R4SDHC site has since died, maybe they weren't affiliated anyhow? Not sure on the history of flash carts.

Male protag and ExeLD from the second game have bro tier chemistry, tbh. I wouldn't trade it up for Pratty, even though she's cute, or the other summons.

R4 got cloned by all sorts of companies, many of whom are dead now. So the pokemon B2W2 ROM itself has anti-piracy measures that block your card?