PSP general

bump

That first dissidia was great, aside from how faggy they made Bartz. The second sucked in comparison.

My friend wanted to sell me his for really cheap, but im poor and PSP library seems to be consisted only by weeb games.

Still thinking about buying it though.

which model? because I hope you realize that the PSP has been hacked wide the fuck open. You can pirate literally any PSP game and can emulate almost every game from the PSX back. You can also buy higher-capacity batteries for like two dollars apiece, can get a microSD to memory stick adapter to get hundreds of gigs worth of storage on there, like, c'mon man.

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Sting games like yggdra union, gungir and maybe knights in the nightmare.

Rivera is a casualized dating sim that only waifufags could like.

thanks for the recs, of them knights in the nightmare is the only one i've played so far, and it is indeed extremely difficult

I've heard in the past that Wild Arms XF is rather difficult, but it's not a traditional JRPG like the rest of it's series, being Tactical RPG instead; not sure if that's what you're exactly wanting. Admittedly though I still need to give it a go myself and can't speak for how it feels personally. Really should sometime though since I like the series so much.

that's weird, i was always under the assumption that wild arms was developed by square enix, and i refuse to play any shitty square games. i don't know why i thought that.
anyway thanks for bringing it up and making me google it to see it's not at all. i love wild west shit.
any turn based stuff is fine.

The only thing Wild Arms has EVER had to do with Square was Squaresoft handling the translation for WA3, giving the series a chance to have its first really good translation. The series itself is owned by Sony, and as far as development goes, it's always been handled by a company called Media.Vision, sometimes with another developer named Contrail (Legend of Legaia) helping as well.

Wild Arms isn't so much straight up wild west as much as "weird west" or whatever the term is, with a combination of western themes, sci-fi, and supernatural/fantasy elements in varying ratios. Wild Arms 3 for example is much more heavy on western elements, while Wild Arms 4 is a lot more sci-fi.

The main series games are fairly easy (though there is a fair bit of stuff like ammo and force management, as well as knowing how to get the most out of your items, particularly healing ones as they're berries and such and in some entries you can't buy them), but give them a go if you ever feel like it.

I suppose I ought to update the first one of these images now that WA3 has a PSN version as well.

Daily reminder that you're fucking stupid if you're not on 6.61 infinity.

Also first for patchwork heroes is a great game

Did the Vita even need to be made?
Wasn't the PSP still popular before it was released?

sell me on why i should use that new firmware
i don't give a shit

thanks for those images. sorta sucks about all those ps2 titles, i'm too retarded to mod my ps2 and won't be able to afford to buy any games for a while.

It's really not hard to get the mod going. If you want FMCB and a hdd, it's like $40 total to get the network adapter and a compatible hdd, and you can either buy a preformatted card or get someone to install on your card for the cost of shipping. It was incredibly worth it to me.

permanent CFW on the latest psp FW, it takes 10 minutes to set up, and no waiting for launchers, you get it right on boot.

Well, as far as the PS2 ones go, Wild Arms 3 was fairly cheap last time I really saw copies around; probably the best selling game in the series (in the west anyhow) and was one of the cheapest still worthwhile PS2 JRPGs in general (same price range as stuff like FFX, DQVIII, and Star Ocean TTEOT; roughly $8-15 used). Granted, I haven't seen it around for a while so maybe it's climbed some, but I got mine a few years back for about $10 and got a hell of a lot of enjoyment from it. WA4's also pretty cheap due to being the weakest game in the series (also has a few bugs in the localization, but it was XSEED's very first game they handled and it doesn't prevent playing the game from start to endboss). WA5's price fluctuates from what I've seen, especially if you want it with the collector box and artbook (I got mine for $35 new a while after picking up WA3, but I've seen it range from $30 to $60 or so). ACF was delayed so long out here that hype wore off and it sold rather poorly; doesn't help that Agetec didn't exactly do a stellar translation either (it's legible, but has some issues at times; pretty close in quality to the PS1 translation if you ask me, but even that one got some stuff correct the one for ACF didn't).

Been meaning to look into the IDE drive method myself. Do you need a free mc booted memory card for that, or are both their own things?

Does 6.61 Infinity override the prior CFW on it (I'm currently on 6.60 Pro-C fix3), or would I need to reset stuff?

All your stuff is still there. You just install it, and then you can configure it to load cfw and it'll be permanent pro-c. I use lme personally but it supports both.

So it basically replaces the need to keep the Fast Recovery by modifying the existing CFW to be permanent? Just wondering how exactly it works, and what might be redundant enough to not need on the memory stick anymore.

i have a psp-2000 and heard that infinity has a hard time with some models. has this been fixed?

I have to buy an used one becausea brand new PSP still costs 300-390 american dollarydoos where i live. I wanted to get a 3DS because i already had two PSPs but those cost a fucking arm man mang i tell you what.

Infinity makes a Hybrid OFW of 6.31 and 6.61. After you build and install that you can install PRO-C or LME again, and then launch them. After the install of pro-c/lme you can go into the config and set that as default then you can get rid of the infinity flasher, builder, lme/pro-c installer and fast recovery.

I've done infinity on a 2000 and 3000 and had no problems, I think you should be OK. Unless you have a 1000, it's worth doing, because I think the 1000 has more options.

from what i can tell, new in box psp's go for $300~ everywhere. the cheapest brand new psp i see is ironically the hannah montana SE, and not cheaper by much, either. PSP Go's seem to be a bit cheaper, too. i like psp go fine personally, i'd recommend getting that one if you insist on new.
the new in box market is highly corrupted and controlled by autistic people who don't play video games and buy this sort of stuff to resell it later like as if they're stocks. in the real world, a new psp would be $120.

I got a new one a year or two back at Target for $100; $120 is counting having to buy the memory stick as well. But I suppose that was them trying to clear out what little remained of their PSP stock.

no yeah, you see what i mean, that's a good, honest to god retail value for a new PSP.
you won't get that sort of price from a private online seller anymore, nah. all autists like i said that treat game stuff like stocks. there's dozens of forums with thousands of users who flip the fuck out when new in box stuff raises or drops in price, they refresh the pages on ebay all day long like as if it's wall street.

I have no idea if there's an updated chart of this but I'll post it anyway. I've been playing some Monster Hunter Freedom recently and have been enjoying it despite how different it is compared to 4U or 3U. I've also finished Valhalla Knights 1 and 2 on it and found them enjoyable despite how grindy it can be sometimes.

I've been working on putting together an update. Currently have the existing games and descriptions up there (might remove some like 3rd Birthday, depending on how anons feel about them remaining on there), but I'm pretty sure more can be added (I have a few already, but it's been hard to get people to write stuff for what's missing), and some of the existing descriptions could use more to them, since using a standard font size has freed up a lot more room.

Add ones that have completed fan translations like dangan ronpa and such.

I aim to, but I'd like people that have played them and like them enough to feel they should be up there to do at least a bit of a description on what makes them good.

Has anyone managed to get Ape Escape working on the PSP? My game crashes after it fails to detect a dual shock controller. I'm guessing I'll have to emulate this.

Just play fucking Ape Escape P instead.

I actually feel ready to cry.
I can't figure out what to replace it with.
Looked into getting a cellphone because everyone has one nowadays and I could use it to browse the internet and watch videos. Plus apparently they can even do DS emulation.
They're expensive as fuck, though.

Fuck, I'm actually so sad it's gone. I miss it.

I have an smartphone and it's not the fucking same no matter how expensive it can be. Don't go for it, get a 3DS or another PSP.

The thing is, I didn't even play PSP games on my PSP. It was basically just a portable emulator.

3DS was something I looked into, but then I'm stuck without an MP3 player.

How's the PSVita hacking scene? Could I get one of those and use it as a PSP-Mega or something?

You can't update your Vita if you want to run PSP backups or homebrew on it. There's no actual CFW or homebrew for the Vita itself as of now and the procedure may or may not require a PS3.

Can't I just get a gamepad or something for my phone?
They make those, don't they?

Why would you say a smartphone isn't as good?
If nothing else, it seems like it would be a better multimedia device since the PSP's multimedia functions were okay at best.

Try a different ps1 emulator version, there's a mod that lets you select different versions, they have diff compatibilities.

For music and shit is great and it's THE device for DS emulation, but it just doesn't feel the same way a PSP does, also the fact that controllers drain your battery and stuff like PSP and PSX emulation tend to overheat your phone.

Well these suck. I probably won't be using a controller for more than 2 or 3 hours on days I do use it, though.
How quickly would a PSX emulator overheat my phone? Would I be able to get an hour or two out of it on the bus?

Yeah you would be able to get that much out of it, (use ePSXe btw because FPSe is not that accurate) or even a little more if you have some sort of battery saving app like Greenify installed. Remember that PSP emulation isn't perfect and some games like Ridge Racer 2 or Jak & Daxter will have several framerate drops (as well as not running well at all at any resolution other than 1x) and stuff like P3P is unplayable due to crashes.

Thanks user! Using this to fill up the 23GBs I have left of my adapter.

My PSP was with me since the day I bought it on release day.
I've played pretty much every PSP game I cared to play.

It really was just an emulation machine and MP3 player for me when it decided to finally pass away.

definitely get rid of 3rd birthday. that game is fucking garbage.

Story wise i agree, but the gameplay was fun was it not?.

I haven't been able to play my PSP because it died quite a long while ago. I can't get it to charge up at all, and I can't tell if it is because of the battery, the charge cord, or something else entirely.

Is this a common problem? I'm not sure what to do at this point.

I bet you watch mr meaty too, faggot.

Go fucking buy an android based emulation station or a decent 8 core smartphone and enjoy psp games in 1440p 60fps with msaax2 and of course every other platform the psp can't emulate.

Hell, even dolphin got ported to fucking android, and my phone can almost fullspeed smash brother's melee.

Take a close look at your battery. Is it swollen and cracked like mine?

just get a decent phone, android is pretty much the emulator king for mobile gaming now, n64, gamecube/wii, ps1, nds, they have it all.

I seem to remember hearing this somewhere else, but can't put my finger on it

There is a reason why the ouya was dirt cheap and crap build quality, anyone who bought into it was retarded. I knew the ouya would be trash the moment its specs were announced, even my ancient dual core HTC One-X had a fucking faster processor, and that was a 2009 phone.

Nice meme response bub.

Who let the android shills on the loose?.

Easy now, HTC employee, we can both have our toys. I'll keep emulating PSX and older on my six year old, rock-solid emulation machine that I can order replacement parts for (for less than a couple bucks apiece usually), and you can enjoy your Google machine. We can both have fun

I'm honestly tired of doing this every single thread, every single one of you have clearly not experience with any modern tech and sit in your bedrooms listening to vaporwave.

The 90's are fucking over and it's 2016, the psp was great back in 2004 when it launched, but now you're just paying money for an inferior product.

Oh, and I'm not using HTC anymore, I have a Nexus 6p because I like my devices to be free software with stock roms and unlocked bootloader.

Android can have no shills fam, its a free and open sauce OS apart from some userspace drivers

I have a Note 4 nigger but i also like consoles.

then hook your phone up to your tv and grab a decent bluetooth controller like a dualshock 3 and play your fucking emulators on your phone like a console.

Godanm, this isn't 2011, this isn't 2007, and this sure as fuck isn't 2004.

Honest question: then why do you keep doing it? Are you the kind of poster who goes into a Dreamcast thread and posts "LOL GET WITH THE TIMES FAGGOTS IT'S CURRENT YEAR"?

just fuck off already

Any suggestions on phones I should be looking into?
I've been looking at the Redmi Note 3 because it looks like a good value but

Oh yeah, also
Like you fools said, this isn't 2005 anymore, Intel Atoms with Intel HD graphics and out-of-order processing are a thing now, complete with full compatibility with x86-64 programs and games and battery life/heat output comparable to ARM shit but significantly better performance per clock

I was just playing TF2 at 1920x1200 on my Atom Tablet for 4 hours straight and the battery is still at 30 percent, all completely fanless design, you ARM/Android plebs need to get with the times tbh

I have to say, I'm with phone guy. Newest emulators are better have more features. Emulator on the PSP just stopped at a certain point.

You can buy an android device that comes built in with a controller, order or a control or whatever. It's a better solution than a PSP for emulation. If the Vita were to get cracked, that might be a different story though.

Because people who fucking buy old tech like an n64 for the nostalgia factor even though we've have 99.99999% accurate n64 emulation for 6 years now makes NO fucking sense to me. I'm completely fucking triggered every godanm time. I mean fucking christ, back on cuckchan, we made a containment board called /vr/ just to get rid of you people, but you all fucking degenerates came here and shat all over my dreams when I finally thought I could have some peace from tech illiterates.

Yeah, the asus zenphone 2 is a great choice if you want a phone capable of using x86 architecture and running a complete os.

I will say however, that arm based emulators have come quite a long way since back in the day and that 8 core phones can be pretty decent, however you'll still have no compatibility with x86-64 based applications even if you dual boot into linux. They're working on a way to have virtualize the hardware using Qemu, but its still sluggish to do anything practical with.

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God, they just don't stop being retarded. They're literally RUINING this board.

Halfchan's /vr/ was actually a pretty decent board for a good while after its creation. Sadly, cancer is incurable and so here we are.

QEMU is pointless, x86-64 is an overall superior architecture in practically every single way, IBM PC standards, much higher performance, and now it kicks ass in ARMs domain of Tablets and Smartphones. ARM simply cannot scale up where x86-64 can scale down, mid range Atom processors compete with Tegra 4s which are meant to be ARMs high-end, hell, they compete with AMD A4s because AMD is such shit at scaling their own processors down, and that's just the Bay Trails series, we now have 14nm Cherry Trails with Gen 8 Intel HD graphics that have better performance than even that

if by a good while you mean like 2 months, then sure.

I never argued that, I'm just saying that ARM based processing isn't completely trash like it was back in the day, you should definitely always go for x86 if possible.

And I'm saying ARM is still trash tbh fam, the only reason ARM got ahead on portable computing was because Intel neglected their Atom line, literally all Intel had to do was give the Atom out-of-order execution and Intel HD GPUs and they suddenly run circles around ARM shit

nah

You're the reason why 8/v/ is going to shit
Please kill yourself

A surveillance device may permit the installation of FLOSS but that doesn't stop it from monitoring you.

Unless you're using replicant you're using proprietary software, Android isn't all open-source numnuts.

It really does suck that 8/vr/ never took off.

To counter this cancer I'll advocate more for what I was saying earlier.

Here's a package with all the prerequisites for Infinity+LME.

mega.nz/#!cosQCCKS!XeWIajmvMbAvDUJKN-6MGAJYr_0S8KxSBBOWM_87YEY

To install:
1. If you're not on 6.61, update. You can copy the 661.pbp from the /psp/GAME/MAKER folder to /PSP/GAME/UPDATE and rename it EBOOT.PBP if you're lazy (Note copy, you still need 661.PBP in for the build process).

2. now that you're on 6.61, open LME installer, then Launch LME through fast recovery.

3. Open the infinity builder and allow it to build the firmware.

4. After it's finished, plug your PSP into your computer and copy the DATA.MFC file from the /psp/GAME/MAKER folder to the /PSP/GAME/FLASHER folder.

5. Open the Infinity Installer, and allow it to do it's thing. Keep it plugged in for the process just in case, if your PSP turns off while it's installing it can brick (obviously).

6. Reboot your PSP, then check system settings, you should see an infinity symbol next to 6.61.

7. Run the Installer and launch LME again.

8. Open the Infinity Configurator, hit left, and then hit X over LME so that an asterisk appears. You now have Permanent LME CFW.

9. Delete the /PSP/GAME/MAKER, /PSP/GAME/FLASHER, /PSP/GAME/lme_installer, and /PSP/GAME/lme_launcher folders.

and to clarify this is for PSP's model 1000-3000, if you're using a PSP GO you need to find your proper 6.61 and 6.31 firmware eboots.

You're either a console peasant, a fucking nostalgia fag, or both. Off yourself.

Which once again why I've stated that I'm using the nexus 6p, just like I did in the last thread, fagnuts.

So what racing vidya are you playing? I'm having a blast with this one, it's Tokyo Xtreme Racer/Street Supremacy, it's rather obscure compared to othet TXR games due to how much journos shat on it. But make no mistake, it's actually a wonderful game.

Nexus 6P still has closed source software retard. If you aren't using replicant, you're not using real FOSS software. You're fucking stupid. Your baseband software is still closed-source.

Also great job buying a chink machine for $600, instead of getting a Nexus 5X.

Honestly I've been using a lot more of my 3DS, because the SNES emulation is really fucking good on it, but I'm still playing some Valkyria Chronicles 2 and Crash Team Racing.

Who let the normalfags come here?

HAHAHA

This fag can't even expand his storage without some net service or an unwieldy type-c adapter.

This looks excellent and is actually affordable.

For the most part, I just want to use this phone to listen to music, play a few emulators, and browse the internet.

Any other suggestions you have for me?
It's nice to actually have an idea of what I want to look at.

Not as far as I can tell. An issue like that would have been immediately obvious.

The problem is that it stopped charging, and there were no visual indicators as to why. I don't know if it was because the cord broke, or the battery was damaged somewhere internally, or from some other issue.

Please explain to me how the nexus 6p is closed source when its one of the very few options out there for android that comes with a completely stock rom and bootloader out of the box?

I don't even have to use some wonky exploit reliant kernal to have full access to the hardware, I can even do funky shit like change the radio frequency or refresh rate of the display, or hell even overclock the gpu.

Only real downside of the nexus series, is the lack of expandable storage yes. Google had to make budget cuts somewhere to price it more competitively compared to the other flagship devices which are absurdly expensive without a contract. I will however say that nexus series has other features including the stock rom that make it stand out, which is their specialized OTG port which allows for simutanious video/audio output, data transfer, and power.

It makes it the perfect phone for using as home console.

holy shit kiddo, you're so fucking stupid I can't put it into words.

>>>/reddit/
why the fuck would you come into a psp thread exclusively to shill your shitty rice rocket?

Baseband. Firmware. you dense motherfucker. You know the radio in your phone that's used to pick up cell signals? That's proprietary software. You can fuck with roms all you want but a rom is not the entirety of the phone.

Yeah like I said, the radio frequency. I can change it just fine, this was an issue for me with the nexus 5 because the radio frequency was completely locked down, and I travel internationally between germany and the us too often.

also

You should own a ds3 anyways since it's objectively the best controller period with the single exception of fight sticks.

Look, I understand pretending to be retarded to get me to keep replying, but we both know there are enough bad pc ports out there to warrant owning a decent controller even if you're pc exclusive.

also 99.99999% is correct, we still don't have flawless n64 emulation, just like we still don't have flawless snes emulation.

I saw the two PSP recommendation images were posted but I don't care

Just get a cheap Android smartphone. iPhones aren't worth the hype at all. I got one for Christmas from my parents and I use it because I'm not an ungrateful shit, but it's really not spectacular
Samsung phones work really well for a couple months to a year, then one day you'll notice it suddenly shits out. The Note 3 is pretty good
I'd recommend an LG phone. They're fairly cheap and quite durable

Anyways I love my PSP. I've been playing Disgaea, ZHP Unlosing Ranger, and MonHun 3rd a lot. I also emulated a bunch of older games. I actually beat Dragon Quest 1 on it

if you're wanting a tablet instead of phone, the new nvidia shield tablets are cheap and pretty high end too.

Thanks user, for reals

Something small enough to fit in a pocket would be preferable, just because I don't have a bag or anything I take with me when I go out.

Do they make decent tablets that can fit in a pocket?
I'm probably never gonna use a cellphone as an actual phone since I have no friends to text.

just because your ROMs are open source and you can change settings doesn't mean your entire phone is. You're still using proprietary drivers and firmwares, including for your baseband.

99.99999% is not correct, N64 emulation is so far from perfect because of how ass-backwards it is, this is also why we're on the 3rd revision everdrive, and there's no system-on-a-chip clone consoles. Byuu has made great strides for the SNES with his research into cycle-perfect emulation, and he's a huge reason why it is so good, but N64 is far, far, far from 99.99999% accurate.

I don't care if you want to use a phone for emulation, but don't claim your phone is all FOSS if it isn't. Just because you have a phone with an unlockable bootloader and custom roms doesn't mean it's all FOSS. Replicant's devs refused to build for the Nexus 7 and 4 because they have too many proprietary drivers.

I'm sorry to sperg out, though.

No problem. Infinity is fucking cool.

Nah they're huge.

Byuu is a hack, and I already told you I have a completely unlocked access to my kernal, absolutely nothing is locked down, I really don't know what you're not understanding about it.

Any chance anyone could re-upload to a different site? My ISP fucks with Mega so bad that even trying to connect to it via VPN doesn't work half the time.

If you don't mind the curved display and want something similar in specs to the nexus 6p the lg flex 2 is a pretty okay and cheap option, though the flex2 has a fucking huge downside of having a completely locked down OEM rom, and nobody has managed to figure out how to unlock the bootloader yet.

you have google services on your phone.

what makes you say that? He's responsible for a lot of advancement in the SNES front. I'm genuinely curious at this point.

I carry around a Nexus 7 but it's still too big for a pocket. The 5X is about the right size to me, it feels closer to a phone than a tablet like a 6" phone.

Because he shitposts on /furry/ all fucking day.

Wow way to derail the thread faggots

That doesn't nullify his contributions to SNES Emulation, that's just shit he does. I hate furfags too but at least he's being constructive.

Sorry, have some Mega Man Powered Up DLC to make up for it.

mega.nz/#!D4djgZYJ!qhoK0ZzJLuZc4INYfHfZLCt6BvVGg_a039w0nGbSXIE

I'll get the wipeout pulse ships and tracks up too, give me a few. Those are a pain in the ass to find.

you ever notice that every decent independent or freelib dev is usually a sexual deviant?

I usually don't look into dev's pastimes that much, unless they make a big deal out of it like the horsefucker that makes the DS3 drivers now that scarlet crush is gone.

Here's the Wipeout Pulse stuff:

mega.nz/#!BwdW1b6D!k4_eOXiU6jc_TrzrdMHDfpoa_M03Q4rOQoaxQjJ99Vg

for the wipeout stuff, put the folder in /psp/game, for the megaman powered up stuff put all the folders inside the first one in /psp/savedata.

Thanks user, i appreaciate this.

Please don't remind me, I still use scarlet crush's drivers just because of the principle.

no problem, I'll try and dump my Ape Quest DLC too if I can, I bought it because I couldn't find it

Consider Nvidia had to invest in serious R&D just to get a processor mildly better than what Intel has had since 2013 and they still don't have as good a chip fabrication process as Intel

Actually that is impressive, because while the intel atom series is infinitely better at pure processing power, which makes it great for running desktop games on the go, its rendering capabilities are really weak in comparison.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a cpu bottleneck, then a gpu bottleneck.

Tell me about the Carnage Hearts
How much of the customisation is based around the structure and loadout of the robot, and how much is based around programming said robot's orders?
How is compared to AC:Formula Front, for instance?

Didn't there used to be a pastebin guide for modding the ps2 back when ps2 threads were more frequent?
I need to get around to modding mine

If you have a fat ps2 you can just get a network adapter and rig up a hard drive. Otherwise you need to get free mcboot which I think you can do if you get agent under fire but I just loaded it off the hdd the first time. You can buy memory cards with it pre-installed too, last I checked they were only like 5 or 10 dollars.

That sounds pretty easy actually
I have a fat so I should be good to go

On-topic, are there any good psp emulators for arcade or shmups?
Or any good vertical shmups on the system?
I've mostly been relying on a genesis emulator for the arcade ports it got
Plus the shmups released for ps1

get

Not sure if they're vertical style (shoot'em ups aren't exactly stuff I can claim to be really knowledgable about), but as far as I know there's a number of collections/ports of classic ones. Some of them never got brought west, though I figure that, given the genre, that doesn't harm playability that much.

t>>9443275

yeah, 6 years, 99.99999% why?

we've had 93.84722% accurate SNES emulation for 11 years now, what's your deal?

Not even NES emulation is that accurate

are you stupid? 93 is not even close to accurate, do you have any idea how badly shit gets fucked with just 0.01% loss of accuracy? you can be 100% compatible with any commercially released game with only 87.332% Which is the most precise statistic I can come up with without rounding.

Your numbers are actually really good fam, but you're off by a huge margin on the SNES. The real known accuracy is actually 93.84677%

Uh no, sorry i guess.

Theoretical computer scientist here, thanks for correcting the poster on his numbers, I was actually about to post this myself

Oh? Not a problem fam, what university did you study in?

It does actually suck, user.
I arrived on 8/vr/ hoping for a nice community, and I just posted for days on a wasteland.

Can we revive it?

Honestly, while the idea of being able to make boards for just about anything is great, the only ones that seem to get a lot of attention are the more popular legacy boards (Holla Forums, Holla Forums, Holla Forums, /a/, etc) and ones for topics that halfchan didn't allow for (such as various gamergate boards in the past, as well as the smattering of furry related ones). /bane/ being a notable exception due to the amount of OC and discussion a meme that is outside the cycle generates (various plane crashes also throw fuel on their fire).

And as far as non-Holla Forums video game boards go, none of them get much activity, and if they have in the past, they've suffered from a downward spiral of some people leaving since they either don't feel there's enough people to talk to or don't like the moderation, which drives the amount of posts and posters down, which in turn drives more people to leave and head back to Holla Forums, creating a cycle. There's also the fact that some boards, /svidya/ at the very least, which did see a modicum of popularity, wound up being made into scapegoats for various issues and essentially had an example made of themselves.

The lack of people on places like /vr/ could also simply be that there's not nearly as big a posterbase here in general compared to halfchan, and (for those that do enable the "top 25 boards" to be in the topbar) boards that aren't among the most popular tend to stay off people's radar (some people have also opted to have their boards delisted as well); meanwhile with halfchan any and every board for public posting is (or was; I haven't been back there in over a year, maybe two years now) viewable in the bars and thus always visible as existing in some format.

The /vr/ here might also have the issue that if shit goes down on half/vr/ and they suddenly decide to migrate, I'd say chances are high that they wouldn't use the existing /vr/ here, and would just create their own instead since the rules on the one here aren't limiting discussion to games from before New Years Eve, 1999. That is, if the board owner of /vr/ here didn't just opt to bow to requests of a sudden influx of posters if it happened (not sure how probable that is though; the guy apparently feels the site's compromised and has encouraged people to move elsewhere, if I remember that sticky right).

But yeah, other videogame related boards here like /vr/, /jrpg/, /vg/, /svidya/, they're all pretty much dead. Real shame in the cases of /vr/ and /jrpg/ if you ask me; at least the former was somewhat active when I got here; /jrpg/ had been dead for months already.

No problem. Might be good to toss more than will fit on the card onto an external drive as well, in case the games stop being as readily accessible to download (should stuff like TPP go through). Especially ones that are digital only here to begin with (or never came west at all) and don't even have a UMD option in English if you so chose to (or were forced) to suddenly go that method. Then you can just copy stuff over as need be.

Around 5 different mech types, each type has around 4 variations.
There are around 10 weapon types, each have about 3 variations.
There are 10 armor types and 10 special equipment types.
You can customize how much armor load, ammo and fuel can you load on a mech plus how much you want to overload or tune down the engine.
7 cpu types.
There are weight limits and overheat mechanic.
Each stage has its own gravity and temperature.
That's about it for actual customizing.
Your strategy defines both equally the equipment set and the ai programming style, so you'll perform equally well with shitty ai and perfect loadout and perfect ai and shitty loadout at least against tutorial enemies.
The whole game is a tutorial for pvp. Game uses import/export feature pretty well and there are several robot team databases one is official satloke.jp or mediafire.com/download/ljt2civ0rkqysqr , link to another is somewhere on 2ch, they've had official threads about it and the db was in the op pasta.

That really tickles my 'tism, user
I will play it

Worth tossing up on ?

Question anons. Is it worth upgrading from a PSP-1003 to any 3000 series? Only ask since my screen is getting hard to see during day due to the fuckton of scratches is has.

I use a 3000 myself and haven't had any issues with it. Though to be fair, it's the only model I've had, so I can't personally compare it with the 1000 and 2000 models.

If you can find a 3000 at a relatively cheap price (factoring in the condition you'd be wanting it in), it might be worth it if your old one is that scratched up.

This happened to me as well. I tried everything; replaced cord, replaced battery, replaced the fucking charging port on the PSP. I gave up after the last one, I have no idea what else it could be but it seems pretty common. Were you on CFW? DID SONY DO THIS TO CFW FIRMWARES?!? YOU PRICKS

Yeah, I'll just stick to my PSP.

you are still seen as a loser with a psp so it really shouldn't matter to you

If I remember correctly, the faceplate of the PSP has a protector built into it, which that would actually be what you scratched. So if you don't mind getting your hands dirty and taking your psp apart you can get a new shell for your PSP for around $20 online, plus you can get all sorts of fancy colors.

Of course not, why else I would recommend it to a random stranger. Obviously so he would have a bad time.

Well, there's certainly some games I've enjoyed myself that are a bit too hit or miss for me for me to put on this stuff (the PS1 game Koudelka, for example), though I suppose perhaps a tag for that would resolve some of those issues.

I'll write something up with what I can take from the post higher up and post a sample. I do feel I should ask, is the game PSN only in the west though? Been meaning to keep tabs of which are and aren't to put that information on the tabs, for anyone that either still buys PSP games digitally (for use with a Vita or something), or just doesn't pirate them.

This seem like it works?

Looks a bit amateurish, but since you have no experience in the game its perfect I guess.
Also, its not a sequel per se, its the last and only game in the series that was translated and released in the west after the first one.

I'd say that some games are instant miss for some people, like generic jrpgs. Koudelka is a hidden gem(even though its a jrpg and contradicts my previous point).
My point is, its not clear if the game is good or not especially if its not popular. So, if someone gives the games name as a recommendation then it is worth a recommendation, no need to ask a question that was already answered by actions.
Also, a lil note, dont rely on IDs, the other one is still me.

If you want to reword it a bit or refine the description further, I'm open to it. Just need to make sure it fits within the space allotted.

Maybe change the term to "follow up" then, to show that there was still a prior game?

I'm kinda reluctant and lazy to do so since I'm assuming that since you were so easy as to jump on the ship(add it to the list) without trying then I guess its the same with some other games. So if I went for improving it I'd go for checking overall quality first and I'm not really bothered.
Plus it does a job of capturing someones attention - something I wouldn't be able to do without much work, so I guess it works.

You could also add my mediafire link for the whole satloke db and some useful tools. Though around june 29 you'd need to contact me since I will be making final edition, because services close on the 30th.

i dropped 7th dragon 2020 after the horror themed "dungeon".
such a shit game, i wish i had quit sooner. i really should've stopped playing after i saw you can retry any battle after being defeated rather than getting taken back to the main menu.

i don't remember the first 7th dragon being such a snorefest cakewalk. guess that's another RPG franchise taken away by casuals.

i'm literally disgusted that someone took the time to make an english patch for 7th dragon 2020 yet an actual good RPG like devil summoner has gone almost two decades without a translation

Anyone have DJMAX Portable? Can't find a link for it.

I just saw this in case anyone is planning on buying something anyway. I really wish summon night didn't have the voices removed. I want to buy it, but being made silent just seems like a big loss.

in other news, I finally found all these stupid underwater hiding spots in Eternia. If I played it when it was new I'd probably enjoy roaming around endlessly more, but when I'm trying to make progressand I need to wander around for an hour it gets really annoying.

Yeah, there's a lot of hidden stuff to find in Eternia, including whole dungeons (there's like five bonus ones).

I think the RPG shrine for the game likely lists co-ordinates for all the hidden stuff. Not sure if that page for it's got potential spoilers for anything, considering some you need the the submersibles to reach, while others you can't reach by foot or water.

I found the coordinates for the craymel cages on gamefaqs, but they seemed wrong and I couldn't figure out which ones I already had anyway, so I just found the rest on my own. The other coordinates seemed right and I used them to grab the hidden skills, but there was a bunch of other stuff too and I was so sick of it that I just left it all behind. It would be nice if you could move the camera without turning to see the walls better. The submarine music repeating over and over gets really sickening too.

I might be wrong, but part I think part of it is that both Inferia and Celestia have coordinates, so some that seem "wrong" you might just not be on the right world for.

But yeah, hearing repetitive music while doing something really repetitive doesn't help things. Also, if memory serves, it's really rare in the series to actually go underwater like that, at least outside of dungeons (of course, with the more recent entries where there is no true overworld, you can't do that anyhow).

I don't know. I only looked at this par and I thought it seemed pretty clear, but at the same time i don't think I found any of those items either. I didn't at last couple places I found anyway.
I just noticed my level is way lower than theirs too. Maybe that's why certain battles have been such a pain.

Maybe, but I don't remember having to grind much in Eternia, at least getting through the main plot. And some of the bonus bosses (like fucking Sekundes) are a pain in the ass regardless (though in case I mentioned, it's an intentional callback to a prior game and gives some direct perspective on the shit Edward's party had to deal with; this rendition of "Decisive" will come to haunt you by the time you're done with that fight).

Do you now have free access between Inferia and Celestia at this point? Just wanting to double check what you're trying to accomplish with the Hideouts.

I'm not sure if I haven't gotten that far or if I just don't remember this song since i haven't been using headphones lately.

I needed to find them, because I was at the part where I needed the cages for the bridge. i finally saved for today at the underwater sanctuary looking thing back on Inferia, where I'll be doing Reid's second trial. I liked the first trial so much I figured it would give me something to look forward to tomorrow. I hope it will be as good anyway. The whole eggbear thing was pretty cool.
Do you maybe know how much of the game is left? I'm was hoping that by the time I finish my PSP memory card will have came in the mail, since I can't even fit most games I've been meaning to play on this tiny ass card.
(I love how the two regions don't get along and one is called Celestia and one Inferia. You'd think that Inferians wouldn't like the choice of names very much.)

You haven't heard it yet in Eternia; the boss becomes available once you're at the end of the game. But for fans of Tales (who don't just play only the localized games) it's quite a familiar song. Same with "Ability Test" (which is embedded here), which if you ask me is one of the best renditions of "Take Up the Cross" the series has seen.

Yeah, the trials are neat. As a heads up for the third one though (I think), try to avoid combat when the character you're playing as is alone. Remember that there is a flee option.

I think at this point you'd be on Disc 3 on the PS1 version, so you're close to the end. Can't remember what level I was at that point though. Of course, there's also a number of bonus bosses that can be fought before the final boss, so if you want to fight them, be it additional loot or levels, it can extend your playtime as well.

In a way, it's a play on how Celestia is essentially in Inferia's sky, with "Inferia" meaning "low in position" with "Celestia" meaning "positioned in/relating to the sky." Also worth noting that Celestians do not call the planets by the same names as Inferians do (though considering how the Orz Earrings essentially translate Melnics directly to English/Japanese/Inferian, the Celestian terms would likely get replaced for the player's benefit). According to Aselia wiki (based on how Melnics actually translates, I imagine):
I've also seen a different interpretation the replaces Inferia with Infernal and thus relates both to a "Heaven" and "Hell" dynamic based on what those define as from Greek, though in light of the above I don't quite think that's what they were going for. Not like either planet is especially heavenly or hellish.

Wow, seriously?

Vic Ireland can go eat a fucking dick.

Have you checked emuparadise?

Yes. Only DJMAX Portable 3 is hosted. The first one is not.

I am convinced that Sting is filled with underappreciated genre-mixing geniuses. My first Sting game was Baroque for the Wii and that was part roguelike part firstperson hack & slash.

Then when a friend of mineparted with his PSPS and went to the vita he gave me a stack of games including FF 1 & 2, FF Tactics, Lumines, but most importantly Ygdra Union and Knights in the Nightmare.

Never knew that I wanted a card based Srpg and a Srpg mixed with a bullet hell. The games are rough but once you get in there they are pretty fun.

You've already solved the problem right there. Also drop the tech illiteracy bullshit. Even people who know how to optimize their devices for emulation can choose to just pony up for the real thing for whatever reason they choose.

I never realized it until recently, but Tales has some damn good music. That's one of the things that's been standing out in Zestiria too. I'll put on headphones specifically when I enter a new area, because I don't want to risk hearing a new song on my shitty PSP or Vita speakers.

I love that Tales does this too, but half of the time I can't even find the fucking hidden bosses. I couldn't believe all the shit I missed in Hearts R, because I thought I explored a lot. I'm not sure how well I'd even do against them in Eterina thought either. Whenever I just try fighting normal against a boss it seems like there's a 50/50 chance I die and it gets kind of annoying playing the other way where I tell each character what to do over and over.

Yeah, I don't think that's right either. I'm sure it does just have to do with their locations, but it's still funny the Inferian people have a stick up their ass and think better technology can't possibly exist, while it sounds like their calling themselves inferior. Both worlds have way too many shitty things about them to be considered heaven. I'm not even sure which one I'd rather live in.

Yeah, apparently the projected sales wouldn't afford them the original audio or a dub, so they just yanked the Japanese out of it and didn't replace it. (Somehow he had the money to pay for some horrible english cover of the opening song though.) He still had the nerve to charge like $32 for it and that was only after making everyone retweet his advertisements to lower it a few bucks. It was gonna be like $35 or $36. I just really hope SN6 gets the localization it deserves. That game looks really impressive for a Vita game. The big 3D castle with flags blowing in the background in the demo almost looks too good to even be a Vita game.

Depends on who you ask. I don't mind Sakuraba's work on the series much myself, but I know a lot of people dislike the music in more recent games (the OSTs for earlier ones up through Abyss people don't seem as prone to disliking). While the combat music can be pretty good, the regular themes for similar locations start to get a bit samey after a while, and considering how many entries in the series he's done, I think he might be low on ideas. They need to give a game or two to Go Shiina to compose solely for (like they did with Legendia) and let Sakuraba have a break to get new ideas.

Yeah, I'll admit some of them are annoying. Does help though if you tweak what your casters are doing by disabling/enabling various spells based on what a boss is weak to. Eternia doesn't have quite as many actual strategy settings as the later games, though some of them you have to go and find a hidden NPC to teach you before you can set them.

Celestia might have the more advanced tech, but they can be pretty busy infighting amongst themselves (as is seen with Shileska). Inferia has a tendency for the peoples there to get along better, but it's mainly due to rigid government and their religion, and disagreement with the king is met with death. Main reason why the government and church comes down hard on the party is due to viewing them as heretics.

It does seem like some of the songs do sound generic, but there's been quite a few I liked in Zestiria so far. Most of them have been tied to battles or events rather than towns though. I don't think I even remember a single town's music.

Yeah, that does help, but sometimes the cpu just makes weird decisions like trying to cast a spell when it's obvious that they're being targeted. I suppose that sometimes it is pretty impossible to run away though. I've been jumping and then using this one arte in the air that will get me on the other side of bosses, but I wouldn't expect the CPU to use some skill for a totally unintended purpose.

I found it kind of strange how naive Keele was, thinking that they'd have a fair trial and everything. It was pretty obvious they were fucked with all their "heretic" actions. I'm not sure I ever really did learn why everyone on Celestia had so many wars though, other than the Balir thing.

Can anyone around here recommend me a good battery?
When I dug up my PSP the battery had expanded and it seemed like it was on the verge of exploding. Since then I've been down to my local pawn shop where they order cheap ass batteries in, and in 3 weeks I've gone through 2 of them.

I know it's asking a lot, but if anyone knows of something that wouldn't take forever to ship to Canada that'd be great too. I fucking hate it here

Zestiria has the benefit that it had both Sakuraba and Shiina work on it, to my knowledge anyhow. Makes me wonder if Namco's started doing similar to what they've been doing with the character designs, where they've been having both Fujishima and Inomata working together on the same games.

Keele's not the most social of sorts, and while smart about science and magic I'd wager he doesn't pay as much attention to politics.

As for Celestia, they have a sense of "rule by strength" wherein whoever is king (or queen I suppose) can be challenged by anyone and have to defend their title. Oddly though, the king has no right to making laws or anything. I would guess that, with Balir having apparently not been seen in years (And most likely with Shizel having been acting in his stead and overstepping the bounds of what their king or queen is allowed to do), a certain amount of discontent is among the populace, resulting in Shileska being formed with the idea that Max, power hungry as he may be, would be a better king.

How the fuck did the Inferian navy catch us on their old ass ships? Maybe this little boy isn't a very good pirate captain after all.

Looking it up it seems like they did. Holy shit Sakuraba worked on a lot of stuff though. it looks like I've probably heard tons of his music and I'll be hearing plenty more. I hope he did a good job on Exist Archive. I was really looking forward to the new Star Ocean game too, but it sounded like it might not be that great after all. I'm sure I'll still play it after I play the first couple on PSP and it goes down in price though.

It's funny how not even his closest advisors seem to notice he's an idiot. I guess yelling "Yeah!" has the same effectiveness as the smile and nod thing.

Chat is a girl. Also, judging by what you said, if you're where I think you are now, have fun with the next boss. One of those advanced combat inputs I mentioned before will be handy.

Sakuraba is VERY prolific, for better or worse. if memory serves, he was originally with either WolfTeam or Telenet Japan, and when WolfTeam broke up over how Namco was treating Tales of Phantasia, rather than directly joining Namco or Tri-Ace he opted to go freelance, hence him working on a lot of games over the years without being tied specifically to one company. Tri-Ace and Namco certainly seem to like bringing him in for more games though.

Max has a few things going for him, namely his charisma. Also might help that while he aspires to be a dictator, I think his supporters can see that he would be incompetent at being evil and wind up being the benevolent sort.

How's PSP emulation on cellphones?

Bump so I can read this later.

Playing Zestiria is reminding me how much this game needs skits. I'm gonna have to look around and see if their translated anywhere that I can even watch a video or read them. A lot of them in Zestiria just make me smile and as much as I like Eternia's characters, I imagine they'd be pretty great.
That trial guiding Meredy was pretty intense. I'm guessing that's the one where I could've ran from the enemies? I totally forgot, since it seemed like I was supposed to fight them, but her mom really fucks things up, so it wasn't really a problem after the first two fights.

Ahh, damn, the bosses in this game are such a pain. This seems like a game that would benefit a lot from having two players.

I was just trying to be an ass, since she got us caught. It just found it kind of funny how everyone kept calling her a boy.

Considering Phantasia PS1 has skits, I assume Eternia had them as well in Japan. But yeah, since Symphonia they've done their best to keep them in the western versions (though I'm not sure Phantasia GBA had them, but you shouldn't play that version anyhow).

Actually forgot what order the trials were in. Last trial is the one, I think.

Yeah, the option for co-op does go a long way. Shame more JRPGs haven't been keen on it. Mainly just Tales (the console entries aside from Phantasia SFC and Legendia) older Mana games, and the Crystal Chronicles subseries of Final Fantasy that come to mind; think there's also a few stand-alone games that allow for it, like Eternal Sonata.

I'm gonna wait for the PSP version. I just hope I like it. Eternia is my first 2D Tales and I worry that the game will have more dated JRPG elements that can be hard to adjust to.

I think that was the last one, since I opened the dark matter area, but maybe when I play again they won't even let me in for some reason and I'll have to do another one or something.

I never even realized that had multiplayer. owning a Gamecube when they were new it was kind of disappointing that Crystal chronicles was just a weird spin off though. I wonder if Nintendo will ever get another full fledged Final Fantasy. It seems pretty doubtful, unless they expand Bravely Default and that counts.

Phantasia PS1's main issue, at least as far as players potentially being more used to the later games, is that the spells and summons still interrupt combat at that point in the series. It's not too annoying to get used to (and some people admit to preferring spells and summons handle that way, feeling it gives them more weight) considering melee still handles well enough (since you're most likely to be playing as Cress anyhow, as unlike later games, Phantasia doesn't have a lot of melee characters and it's still at that point where casters aren't all that fun to play) and shows a fluidity improvement compared to the SFC version. Bigger issue is that, as a default, you're stuck on Semi-auto control until you find a Technical Ring in the Mines of Morlia, which is a good 8-10 hours in. Not only does it keep the player from having full control until then (as well as causing an adjustment issue where you have to get accustomed to hours of semi-auto, and then the rest of the game on manual control), it also impairs the ability to do co-op, since having the ring is required for manual control. Part of why the Phantasian Productions patch comes with one hacked in from the start, so the player doesn't have to deal with that. Still, if you're fine with waiting a while for the NDX bundle to be translated, that's probably going to be the best way to experience the game at this point. I myself am waiting on it too (mostly because I got sick of the PS1 version freezing on me; I think I was using an outdated translation patch, but when it froze a good way into the final battle, I said "fuck it" and decided to wait it out).

Oh. Well, the one I was thinking of was the one where you're stuck playing as child-Keele. Those bees will fuck you up if you try to fight them from what I remember of it

Since it sounds like you're pretty close to the end, I'm going to give you some advice to make sure you understand how Reid's Aurora Artes work. In particular, Aurora Wave isn't readily practicable, but know how it activates is crucial for surviving the final boss.

Yeah, Crystal Chronicles GC has the issue of needing GBA systems and adaptors for the Gamecube rather than just using extra Gamecube controllers (which is thankfully how Tales of Symphonia handled its co-op.

I think Nintendo pissed Square off a bit too much (probably some other companies as well, looking at how stuff like Breath of Fire also jumped ship to the PS1) during fifth gen for them to get another main series Final Fantasy entry (at least as an initial release, considering Nintendo systems have still seen ports and remakes of earlier entries, as well as spinoffs like Revenant Wings). Bravely Default does seem to have been a bit of a replacement for them though. Too bad the localizers (or NoA themselves, depending on who's calling the shots) keep on botching those with censorship and content removal. At least with Tales, Namco acknowledges the games are aimed at teens who can deal with a bit of lewdness (even in Symphonia GC's western release, there were a number of scenes with lewd connotations, and I don't just mean the standard hotsprings scene).

What are some good hack n slash/beat em up games for the PSP? All I know of off the top of my head are Dantes Inferno and GoW.

I've heard good things about Kenka Bancho as far as beat 'em ups go.

tenchu is fucking badass.
i never like stealth games much because your character is usually heavily handicapped for no fucking reason. like in thief. here's a bow and arrow, but it's good for nothing but taking out lanterns. that's fucking stupid. i hate stealth games for lots of other reasons too. how about AI is just as handicapped as the player character? deaf and blind retards. whatever.
in tenchu at least a skilled player can wipe out every guard in two swift slashes each and out maneuver any spear charge if they so desire. you fuck shit up. you're not a worthless infant. ninja flips and sword dives that take off arms.

Geez, that long huh? NDX is that way too? At least semi auto can be fun in it's own way, but I normally only use it for a couple battles right at the start, while I figure out that the different artes do. Playing that long with it will probably seem really weird. It sucks you have to waste accessory slots for things that are pretty much required like that too.

That reminds me that I really need to switch to Farah. In Zestiria I'm constantly switching characters, but for some reason I've alomost exclusivly played as Reid in Eternia.

Yeah, i definitely did a lot of running with him, but it was wolves or dogs or something for me. don't think I saw any bees.

I am a little worried about that. It seems like I just push three buttons at the right time or something, but, it will be kind of weird, since I even only used the wall once.

Yeah, that kept me from buying it actually. I had people that I could play games with back then, but I didn't even have one GBA so 3 or 4 players was even further out of reach I wish I knew about Tales of Symphonia though. That would've been awesome.

Yeah, it's some bullshit. I still need to play those, but I'm not even sure which version to use. I'd like it fully uncensored and undubbed if there's voices, but I don't even know that the second game has an English version that isn't censored.

Nice, I'll be looking forward to that. I hope I like Symphonia. It seems really well loved, but I just used to think it looked a little more generic than the other Tales games. It may be wildly different from other JRPGs and I never paid enough attention. I don't think I've ever even seen footage, only the cover. I just used to mix it up with Skies or Arcadia for some reason. (Which is another game I'd like the chance to play.)

I wish Tenchu wasn't dead. I bought Shinobido 2 for Vita hoping it would help fill that hole, but I didn't even like it.

Checking Aselia wiki, they have the Technical Ring's tab grayed out on their "Accessories (Rings) PS1/iOS/Cross Edition" page, with the header saying that grayed out items are only in the PS1, phone, and FVE versions, so it sounds like it was completely removed for the Cross version. I expect they added manual control as a regular menu option instead since improving the flow of things is the draw for the Cross Edition.

My friend found her to be pretty fun to play as, fun you'll have to remember that she doesn't have the boosted defense of Reid's shield, and her range also isn't quite as big as his due to not having a sword. The way combos handle with her is also a bit different (while Reid's is "Normal String (ie X, X, Down+X) > Special Skill > Sacred Skill" hers is "Normal String (ie X, X, Down+X) > Forward Skill > Rising Skill > Air/Downward Skill > Power Skill").

Wall and Sword are easy enough. The former can be activated when Reid is at 15% health or lower, and can then be chained into Aurora Sword if you have enough TP. Wave though only works during the final fight, inverting Dark Aurora artes the boss does. Really a matter of timing. It's possible to survive Eternal Finality with some quick healing afterward, but Finality DeadEnd WILL wipe the party if it goes on too long without you inverting it. Also, I forget if it's pressing all three buttons and once or holding all three that activates Aurora Wave.

Symphonia is well liked between both being a pretty good Tales game (at least one that came west) with a lot of content and a, for the most part, likable party, as well as some amount of nostalgia due to it being the first Tales game many western fans played (since Nintendo actually bothered to market it to the point it was the best selling Tales game for a long time out here). I first played it maybe five or so years back and found it to be pretty damn enjoyable, though it is a bit unrefined looking back (though not all that hard to go back to in my experiences). In retrospect, in some ways the game feels like a mashup of elements of Phantasia and Eternia; combat plays like the latter (Even though Destiny 2 came out on the PS2 prior, I think Eternia was likely the most refined entry when development started on Symphonia, and with the goal being to try to make a Tales game with 3D graphics, I can see why they'd reuse the combat for the most part, albeit with the addition of the now mainstay stagger mechanic and entry exclusive Unison Attacks), and with the former, Symphonia is in the same universe/timeline, just set about four millennia earlier (and made in a way where you don't have to play Phantasia first to get it, but it has some nods here and there).

As for being generic, kind of yes and kind of no, really. Symphonia starts out with a seemingly mundane goal of escorting the Chosen around Sylvarant in order to undo the seals and restore the world (and liberating the human ranches on the side), but after a few hours starts to hint at something not being right, which just deepens as it continues before slamming the player about a third of the way through. It takes a few hours to get going, but I found it to be a lot of fun, and Sylvarant even has a degree of non-linearity to it, since once you reach Izoold you can either take a boat to Palmacoasta, or if you're feeling brave, take the long way around by land (through areas with a lot stronger enemies) and do some things early. The game also has a relationship value system (which wouldn't really be seen again until Xillia 2) and choices during skits can affect how a given character comes to view Lloyd. Also, some advice to watch out for Mimics when you play it. They're not as bad as the ones in Eternia (since the Symphonia ones don't have Distortion, thank goodness), but are really annoying to fight since they only stagger to elemental damage, and they're in there as early as the second dungeon.

You should, Skies of Arcadia is great. It's gotten rather expensive though if you want an actual copy though.

Nice, I figured that that might actually be changed. I hope it is.

Oh yeah, I wasn't thinking about that. I guess most bosses break his defense so I try jumping or moving to avoid attacks all together, but some things are kind of impossible to avoid, so I wonder how fast I'd die with her.

Whenever his health is that low I'm in such a pnic that i forget I even have that. I wonder if there would be enough time to use the skill and then an item before the enemy can respond. Getting my health back up is just seems a little more important.

Namco published it, but Nintendo helped market it? I'm glad Nintendo didn't hold the rights or something so the remasters or whatever actually had a chance. I wonder if the 3DS would've been able to run that. i don't really know how it compares to Abyss, but the gamecube could actually do some pretty impressive stuff. It sucks that Nintendo pretty much gave up on having good specs in their machines.

I don't think I know what that is. Zestiria has had some stuff i haven't seen before in it, but i don't think there's anything that really applies to relationships.

Yeah, I'd love to give it a try. I really don't get why it hasn't had a re-release. I think there's a second game too, so a bundle or something would be awesome. It looks like something that would probably still sell well.

Yeah, Eternia doesn't exactly have a stagger/anti-stagger system, so aside from amount of health and damage reduction, blocking only does so much. Better to avoid attacks, especially if you don't have a good way to get healed (such as a 1 vs 1 fight). As for Farah, she can still guard (every character has that ability), I just don't think she'd be as useful in trying to as Reid, who also has the benefit that blocking with him stops linear projectiles. Probably better at tanking damage than your casters though.

Usually a good idea to learn to get the most out of your critical health and then get healing afterward as far as Reid goes, as they can pack a wallop used right. Also, just checked Aselia Wiki in regards to Aurora Wave, it does list it as "hold" as far as activation, as opposed to just press.

Yeah, Namco took forever to actually bother with trying to effectively market the series here (even after Symphonia they seemed to think it could coast on Symphonia's popularity), and I guess NoA or whatever their predecessor at the time was decided to give the game a boost in marketing; they might have also handled translation; can't remember off the top of my head if it was an internal Namco team or possibly them. Was before 8-4 became the go-to for localizing the series though. Anyhow, whoever it was did a pretty good job, and even the English voices for the playable cast wound up pretty good, even dropping the money to get some fairly big name voices (though the minor villains could have still used some work). Either way, it sold really well here, enough to be the only game to get a Greatest Hits style rerelease here in the west. Of course, I suppose it might help that the Gamecube didn't have a lot amount of JRPG competition on it, compared to the PS2 being the JRPG king the way the PS1 was before it.

Well, it hasn't been used in many of the games at all; just Symphonia and Xillia 2. Basically every character in the Symphonia party, aside from Lloyd, has a relationship counter with him. Each character starts at a different level, generally depending on if they've known him prior to the game starting (Genis and Colette for example have pretty high starting ones being friends for years; actually says a lot about Genis since he's not real fond of humans), and depending on how you respond in certain skits where you're given a choice, you can influence the character's liking for Lloyd, culminating in one of them being his best friend/soulmate (depending on whether the character with the most is male or female) after a certain point. I can't remember if Unison Attacks factor in as well.

The Xillia 2 version's is a bit different in some ways. Ludger still has skits to go off of for building them (some of them pitting two of your party members against him and you having to side with one), but there's no soulmate situation in the end. The party members will occasionally give Ludger gifts for being there for them (Xillia 2 loves to make its characters suffer, though that's pretty much the premise behind it; how much will humans endure and sacrifice to prove their worth), and each party member has a dual mystic arte (a concept that debuted in Vesperia PS3 with the Bushin Soutenha arte) with Ludger when they reach a high enough affinity level, and the girls will also give him a variant of his clothes done in their colors. There's some hidden relationship values between him and his half-brother Julius, Elle, and his boss Bisley as well. You can also build relationship points through combat, being linked to that character and executing Link Artes with them, though it is certainly slower than the points gained through skits.

It did have a rerelease. What you might be thinking of as a possible sequel is really an extended port, Skies of Arcadia: Legends on the Gamecube, which features extra content and reduced loading, but since Sega didn't want to spring for a second disc, the audio quality for the music is a bit lower than the Dreamcast one. As for why it hasn't had one since then, even a digital rerelease, who can say. I don't think they shipped many copies west for either the Dreamcast or Gamecube, and with the game being a bit of a cult classic among JRPG and Sega fans, the price has gone up on both versions in recent years. I'd expect that perhaps they simply don't think there's enough demand to warrant it, but then again this is Sega. the company that wound up losing the code for Panzer Dragoon Saga. Maybe they don't have the game's data anymore?

Well you know right there is a port of it on PSP

What is CSO
Looking at the 2nd one

I assume it has to do with compression or something, but I can't say for sure off the top of my head.

I like how those city girls pick on Farah for her clothes. It was kind of funny. I think they say something to Reid too at some point.

I think it said something about the longer you block the easier it is to break, but I don't know if that means the longer you've blocked hits or the longer you've held the button. Regardless, it seems like bosses always make me fly across the fucking screen and I'll end up in really shitty places sometimes.

I figured it would. I just need to get used to it I guess. It's kind of ingrained to heal asap when my health is critical. Sometimes I would remember right after using an item.

It was pretty disappointing as far as JRPGs. On PS2 I would just buy random ones I saw cheap, but gamecube I don't even remember seeing any in stores. I wish I just ordered the few that it has online or something. I feel like I missed out.

I don't get it. He likes pancakes or crushed her with a boulder or something?

I wonder why that's only in certain games. I mean I get why they wouldn't let you make important decisions, because it would limit what they can do with the story, but even little things would be cool. I don't think I ever even knew that they let you make choices in skits.

I really need to play those. That sounds awesome. I love emotional toll type stuff.

Damn, I looked it up and you're right. My sequel was just a enhanced port. The cover art and title even looks different enough that I thought for sure that it was a sequel. At least I didn't buy both of them thinking I had two different games or something stupid. It says on Wikipedia that Legends was originally gonna come out on PS2 and Windows, but was cancelled too. That sucks.

I suppose, I really shouldn't put it past them. I still really can't believe they did that. I wish I would've bought that when I had a Sega Saturn. I'll probably never get to play it now.

Yeah, the script does make a point of having the NPCs rag on Reid for having shit taste in clothes.

You did, but if there wasn't much of interest to you besides that, I can see why you'd look elsewhere. I've been like that with the Xbox360 since there's not a huge amount of personal interest on it to me, at least as far as stuff that wasn't ported to the PS3 eventually or wasn't multiplat to begin with.

Anyhow, if you are looking into Gamecube JRPGs, it did see the following:
Also, depending on how you define JRPG (I personally just attribute any RPG developed by Japan to be that, but some feel it has to do with themes or style, so these might not exactly count), there's the Gamecube port of Evolution 1 and 2 (though as far as I know, they heavily abridged the first game on it), Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and Phantasy Star Online.

Some are still kind of cheap, but it might be better if you have a modded Wii and can just download them and play them that way.

Bit of a joke among western fans about his battle quip when casting Stalagmite.

I think with Symphonia they just wanted to try something neat. It's worth noting though that every entry in the series has a "genre theme" given to it in Japan, and with Xillia 2's being "Choices That Spin the Future RPG" having that sort of thing reappear makes sense. There's also some slight QTEs in various cutscenes utilizing the choice system. Not the "fail and you die" sort, but they do force the player to have to make some choices with maybe 5-10 seconds to actually decide, and the outcome tends to affect the affinity of the other character's involved.

The first one's more optimistic about stuff, but there is one part where shit goes really south, particularly for Jude. The second game is a lot heavier, ranging from being bittersweet to downright depressing (though not without its humor in the skits). Mostly due to giving both the party and player a chance to see how things might have gone differently for various characters, usually culminating in the false reality perhaps being a happier one for them, or having to re-experience pain they thought they'd put behind them.

bump

I'm considering buying 2 200GB microsd cards to stick in my CR-5400 Photofast adapter, someone talk me out of it so I don't end up spending more than I did on the PSP itself.

I got a micro SD adapter and have been using an old 8gb micro SD card I found since it was surprisingly an upgrade from my memory stick. Now, 128gb micros are stupid cheap. Can I use one in my adapter, or would it not work for some reason? I'm not Holla Forums at all so an answer would be much appreciated

I want to say I've heard of people doing that before, but I think it might have been via using a dual micro SD adaptor (or whatever they're called; they've got two micro SD slots) to effectively take two 64 GB micro cards and make a combined 128 GB one. Hopefully someone else might be able to give you some better advice on it (also potentially more up to date advice as well; checking google it seems like most results are a few years old at this point and could potentially not be the most accurate anymore.

Either way, there's likely to be some amount of slowdown on the XMB screen if you're going to have it that full (I have a 32 GB card and even that has a bit of lag to it), but it shouldn't effect playing actual games themselves.

Still no memory card. If this thing doesn't come soon I'm gonna have to contact the seller. It's probably been over a month now.

I actually had a gamecube, but I just must have never ran into it when I had money or something. I already liked JRPGs so I'm sure I would've liked to own it, but Paper Mario was the only one I ever had the chance to play on it. (Besides that Phantasy Star game, I guess, but that wasn't very much fun single player and was nothing like the original ones.)

I'm not sure if I ever heard of these games. It reminded me of that Kingdom Under Fire game though. Unless, they are related and that's why.

I think I did hear that. I can definitely feel the different themes, but I have no idea what they call them. (On a side note the animation in that Zestiria anime looks really fucking good. Even with the CGI stuff. I wish there was more episodes of the Eternia one. These games have some of the best characters and I feel cheated with no skits.)

I'd actually be interested in knowing if that works without any problems. I normally just stick to modest size cards for everything, but having that many games on my PSP at a time would be pretty cool (albeit unnecessary, but hey.)

Where were you shipping it in from? It should be taking this long unless you imported it from Japan or something. Did you get tracking with it?

Well, Paper Mario TTYD, FFCC, and Tales of Symphonia certainly seem to have been the best known on the system (as well as maybe Skies of Arcadia among Sega fans, though I'd think maybe they'd have kept their Dreamcast versions). None of the others had high enough sales a Player's Choice print or anything (unless you count Pokemon Colosseum and Gale of Darkness), though the west did see both the basic and Plus versions of PSO Episodes I and II. And yeah, PSO certainly isn't the same as original Phantasy Star games, and with it being an MMO of sorts and requiring either internet connection (and a subscription I suppose), or at least some friends to split screen with, I can see how it might be a bit boring to play single player.

There's no relation. Lost Kingdoms is a pair of real time combat JRPGs developed by From Software, utilizing cards to summon creatures to fight and heal.

It's a bit of a doozy, since even the side games get those genre names. For the main series though:
Somehow I don't think we're going to be going back to the simpler genre tags like Phantasia and Destiny had anytime soon.

That's Ufotable for you. They've handled some Tales stuff in the past (such as the OVA series for Symphonia), and ever since Xillia have apparently been the go-to to animate the scenes in main series Tales games. They do a really nice job (embed related; Xillia's opening, "Progress" Jude Variant).

I'm honestly a bit surprised Eternia got one and not Destiny, considering how popular Destiny is in Japan. Also that Zestiria's getting one, considering that Japan didn't seem to be too overly fond of it, particularly how the Japanese fanbase seemed to feel that there was a bait and switch in regards to who the lead female was (doesn't help that Baba is apparently MORE than a bit fond of Rose's seiyuu, though for all I know that could just be the fanbase overreacting).

You have to keep in mind that Tales of Destiny didn't do well in the west. Wouldn't shock me that Namco wanted to cut some corners at the time for the localizations, and maybe they thought westerners would feel skits were weird. I remember back when I was telling a friend about the games before I actually managed to get him to sit down and try them, he found the notion of skits to be an odd concept, apparently expecting actual theatre style plays or something judging from the name. He really likes them now, since they add a lot to the character development and interaction, while all being optional.

I actually just looked, since it wasn't in the mail today and I didn't realize it, but the estimated delivery date was only two days ago, I guess. It has it listed as coming from "China/Hong Kong/Taiwan", so I suppose there's no need to be worried yet after all. I'm not sure how I forgot all that. It should be here soon now I guess.

PSO seems like it could be fun with more people, but it's just really disappointing to me that the original games are dead. I'd love to see one done right today. I don't even remember which one I played, but I had one on some Sega collection disc for Dreamcast when I was a kid and I know I loved it. I should really try going through the whole series.

Oh okay, I had some Kingdom Under fire game for 360, but I only played it once and don't even know what the series is about. It was some Korean action rpg type thing, I think. I'm surprised I haven't heard about Kingdom Under Fire, since everyone seems to love From Software now though.

It doesn't we are. I kind of like the new "themes" though. Zestiria's seems to be a lot more straight forward than Eternia's. The older one's kind of seem like they can apply to most JRPGs.

I'm really gonna need to keep an eye on them. I've seen a couple episodes of Unlimited Blade Works, but besides that and Tales I haven't seen anything they've done. I was just really surprised how nice the trailer for Zetiria's anime looked. I was expecting it to look a lot more "budget" or something.

I think a lot of it is pretty stupid and a definite overreaction. Alicia's cool, but so is Rose and it makes sense story wise, so I'm not sure why it upset everyone. The game as a whole does have things that need improvement though. Mainly the camera. I'm guessing that's why you can fully control it in Beseria. It can be a real fucking mess in hallways and stuff in Zestiria. It should work well as an anime from what I've seen though. Maybe it's not only for fans, but people who want to experience it without playing the game? I think someone said that it's just the same story and stuff anyway.

I could see them worrying about people minding the fanservice type jokes and stuff they always seem to have, but as far as the format, they're optional anyway, so I don't see why that should dissuade them. At least your friend learned to appreciate them. I could watch skits forever. I love the things. They do cause me worry about missing them though.

I've actually never given Phantasy Star a go myself, though I've been meaning to. Tried asking in the thread that was up yesterday about what the best versions of each of the original four are (or maybe of I, II, and IV; fans seem to really dislike III), but got no response. Does seem like a shame that Sega would just opt to let would could have been their flagship JRPG series die off, at least as far as the original style ones go (considering the MMO ones are still going), but then again, Sega's not exactly been the brightest company around, and certainly aren't the only company that just let their major JRPG series drop off the face of development (that are still around anyhow; at least in the case of, say, Shadow Hearts, the developers themselves got dissolved and Aruze gives zero fucks about continuing the series since they love pachislot so much more).

You mean Lost Kingdoms, right? As far as From Software's popularity goes, I think it's mainly only caused increased demand and prices for the King's Field games and perhaps Shadow Tower PS1. Most of their other franchises (Echo Night, Otogi, Lost Kingdoms, Evergrace/Forever Kingdom, etc) don't seem to have been hit with it, though Lost Kingdoms II is certainly a bit more expensive than some of those and hard to find as well (not sure if it sold better or worse than the Otogi games, but the latter are still cheaper, at least where I live, despite selling maybe 40,000 or so copies).

Well, they weren't the only ones to sadly remove fanservice for the west back then. Looking at BoF IV, apparently most of what did get removed in the western release was fanservice, though apparently the bigger issue fans have with the censorship there wasn't even over that (though it's a bit strange; BoF III Capcom seemed fine with having Deis nude, even out here), but some plot relevant scene where a villian ISN'T killed in the western release.

it was more that the name confused him at first. And yeah, they're great to have in the series. A few of the games (like Graces) also use outright full body style for them (with occasional chibi cut-ins), rather than just facial portraits with occasional full body cuts when being overly dramatic.

I don't know, but I would guess that you couldn't go wrong with the original games. I don't think the ones scattered all over the place have anything improved about them. Maybe the Saturn collection, but I don't think that's in English. I had the GBA collection, but I found out after I bought it that the fucking thing didn't even have all the games, so I sold it.

Whoops, I'm just confusing myself now. Bith those games have pretty generic names. I actually do remember people using From Software's name to talk up Shadow Tower when it was added to PSN. Apparently, it "felt a lot like a Souls game" or something. People seem to say that about everything though, so hell if I know.

Damn, I bought that on PSN. I wish I knew I was buying a neutered version. I wonder if there's a Japanese version with subs or restored one or something.

I haven't played Graces yet, but Zestiria has full body type pictures instead of just faces too. I really don't mind it either way as long as they have the voices, unlike Abyss.

I've heard of the GBA collection before, but I've heard something about it being buggy, as well as it outright not having the fourth game.

Well, as far as I know, Shadow Tower (and Shadow Tower Abyss) are indeed rather similar to King's Field, and thus I would guess the Souls games are a successor to both (King's Field does seem to be the more well known of the two older series). SCEA actually wound up telling Agetec to cancel the localization of STA when they were close to completing the translation, claiming "there's no audience for those games in the west" (along with claiming the graphics were not up to par for SCEA standards for what should be here in the west). They then didn't bother to publish Demon's Souls here either, leaving Atlus to thankfully pick it up. Betting they now wish they hadn't let that idea bite them in the ass.

I don't think so. Probably not enough done wrong for people to feel much merit in a restoration patch (another issue I recall being that they removed reference to alcohol, leaving Scias with a seemingly non-drunkenness related stutter in the west), and BoF IV is usually up there with III as far as being a favorite of series fans as is. I'd also assume maybe it's a bit harder to do an outright restoration patch for games fifth gen and up, compared to, say, the NES or SNES. Though I will say that that hasn't stopped some people before if they know what they're doing. Like the guys working on the retranslation for AT2; it's mostly a full retranslation effort first and foremost, but they've also been reimplementing content the Japanese version didn't even officially see on the side, apparently.

Speaking of AT2, Beta 4 is apparently coming out this weekend. They managed to get the help of one of the hackers that's been working on the French translation for one of the Japan only PS2 Atelier games (and thus has experience working with Gust's code), and apparently have put together an update on some things they weren't sure were possible. Going to try to hit up the share thread once its out in the hops that someone can patch and upload it.
at2.metalbat.com/?p=537

Yeah, the history of skits has been a bit odd here in the west. Destiny and Eternia didn't have them, but Symphonia suddenly did and for the most part they stuck. The Gamecube version doesn't have voicing (and apparently people aren't skilled enough at working with the code to hack the Japanese audio into that version, though again, the party's voicing is pretty decent in English), though the PS3 one has native dual audio (not sure if the combat quips are subtitled though). Legendia came out here next and wound up having actually voiced skits, but then when Abyss came out, the skit voicing was gone again (apparently there was some dispute with the voice actors of Legendia over not being paid enough for stuff they felt was "extraneous" content, so Namco apparently told them to go fuck themselves, hence the character quests, which comprise about half the game, are for the most part unvoiced even in normal scenes). With Vesperia, they brought back the English voiced skits, and they've stuck ever since, at least as far as the console entries go.

I don't really mind how Symphonia and Abyss don't have them voiced in English since dialogue is pretty humorous as is, but I don't know. Maybe I ought to give Symphonia HD a go with the Japanese audio sometime (I only have the Gamecube version), as well as Abyss PS2 with the undub patch, and see how much it adds to those, considering I'm used to them being without the voicing in skits.

What game is that screenshot from? I'm guessing she's talking about magic or something.

A couple days ago I was actually just reading about how Working Designs wanted to release the Goemon / Mystical Ninja PS2 game and SCEA wouldn't let them, Apparently, they were trying pretty hard, but Sony wouldn't authorize it due to not having good enough graphics. The game doesn't even look that bad either.

Man, I really need to do something about not being able to play these. Hopefully, patched PS2 isos will work on a PS3 with CFW, Then if I just got one of those I kill two birds with one videogame console.

I probably wouldn't blame them. A lot of English voice actors seem like really whiney babies to me. It wouldn't surprise me if Japanese voice actors just fly through that stuff, since it's pretty much just a couple lines out of an audio drama.

Probably a lot, but if you're not used to the Japanese voices it might sound weird though too. I should check at some point if Zestiria has voices for the skits in English. I imagine it does, but the game asks you what language you want when you turn it on, so I haven't messed around due to not just being able to switch back and forth in the options. I'm just always interested to see if they skip lines in English too. That's one thing I'll give Xseed credit for, because I hate it when that happens.

Legendia. Norma's a bit of the "weird mage" type (in some ways she strikes me as a prototype for Pascal, except Pascals more nutty and far less greedy), and if memory serves, Senel was asking her what it's like to use Crystal Eres (yes, Legendia is so odd it won't even use the term "artes;" physical attackers are "Iron Erens" while casters are "Crystal Erens" and the artes themselves are called Eres). She understandably has a hard time describing it to someone that can't do it themselves, but still doesn't do anywhere near a good job.

If it was Bōken Jidai Katsugeki Goemon, I seem to recall hearing from moonspeaking importers that that one was subpar in general and thus no big loss, but I could be wrong. The one (as far as the more recent entries go) that I've heard is a real shame that we didn't get was the DS one, and to my knowledge there's no fan translation effort.

I'd like to think they do, but I'm not sure off the top of my head. Next time you see a PS3 thread, maybe ask if it's possible to play something fan translated like Shadow Tower Abyss, Dragon Quest VIII, or FFXII IZJS on a CFW one (namely think those would be good to ask about since it's more likely people have tried giving them a go that way than something like AT2, Ar Tonelico being really niche even for a JRPG series.

Yeah, there's definitely a debate to be had over whether voice actors are wanting too much for their work. I remember that petition or attempted strike or whatever a while back; thankfully one of my favorite English voice actors (Jamieson Price) stayed clear of it. I would wager that Japan's seiyuu culture is a bit different than American voice acting is though, though I can't say for sure.

As for Legendia, it's an odd case where the voice actors probably had a point. As far as "extraneous content" or whatever goes, skits are one thing. They are effectively hours of extra characterization and interaction, but compared to the overall scrips can be rather small (I think Absolute Zero said that the total amount of skit dialogue in Destiny DC is about 1/18th the size of the main plot and NPC text scripts). The big thing, however, are the character quests. Legendia's odd in that the main story takes up the first half of the game, and then the post game is comprised of character quests which effectively doubles the length of the game. That's potentially a lot of voicing to have to do. I'm not sure if Namco had originally made it clear that they were counting those as part of the deal they originally made or if some of the voices decided to try to milk it (since they're not technically "main content or combat", but here in the US, the character quests are mostly unvoiced. There's also the slight issue that the execution for the character quests, throwing them all in at the end isn't the best way to handle things anyhow. Xillia 2 is the only game to have brought them back, and they're executed much better (broken into little sections during the downtime between chapters), and they are ALL voiced in English too.

I don't mind Japanese dubs for stuff if the subtitling works well, but I do wager there's a bit of a difference going from someone like Scott Menville to Katsuyuki Konishi as Lloyd.

I'd be fairly certain at this point in the series localization it's fully dubbed as far as skits and main plot goes. Hell, the Xillia games even dubbed some of the minor side events. The "FVE" style seems to have spread even to the western releases.

Skipping lines? How so? Xillia 2 does something strange with Ludger in both the Japanese and English basic new game, where while he certainly has a voice in combat and some text dialogue in skits as choices, they treat him as a more or less silent protagonist, given his choices are meant to represent the player's choices, and anything complicated that can't be expressed that way is picked up on by Elle, who voices it instead. But he IS very expressive just through body language and facial expressions, and certainly not mute, and NG+ has an option to turn on regular voicing for the choices you make during skits and such. But pretty much every other major line or skit line in both games is fully voiced, and they even have pop in dialogue for various actions or places (such as Jude or Leia remarking on how nice a breeze is, or Alvin teasing Jude about the potential of a nearby ladder to give the boy an upskirt from Milla). Combined with the sheer amount of battle chatter too (plenty of banter between the characters and bosses, as well as linked party members), the games have a LOT of English voicing for JRPGs.

Checked those dubs.

Thing you gotta remember, though, is that SCEA has been trying to kill "subpar" games (in their words) since the PSX, starting with 2D titles.

You'll probably want to look into the moon-only Phantasy Star Collection for the PS2. It's mostly the Saturn release (with all of its extras), but with the games in both runes and English this time.

The GBA version was done by Digital Eclipse, who are pretty shit at the whole emulation thing.

Some still made it over (mades like Lunar 1 and 2, Suikoden I and II, and Tales of Destiny and Eternia all being sprited, and that's just some JRPGs; also other stuff like Castlevania SotN and Chronicles that came west too), but I suppose them wanting to show off that the PS1 could handle 3D was indeed something they wanted to push, seeing as the N64 could as well. I also seem to recall hearing Bernie Stolar used to work at Sony before getting picked up by Sega or something, and apparently he cause Sega some issues regarding localizing various games; did he try any of that shit with Sony when he was there? Also, as far as the PS2 went, any chance maybe SCEA pushed Namco to not bother with Tales of Destiny II, Rebirth, and Destiny Remake/DC out here, rather than Namco themselves making the choice based on subpar western sales on the 2D Tales games they did bring over on the PS1?

I do remember hearing about some other stuff, such as with the PSP, where they barred ports of PS1 games that didn't have enough new content to them as well, resulting in PAL areas getting the Tales of Eternia and Breath of Fire III ports while the west didn't (at least until earlier this year for BoF III PSP, which is now on the PSN).

Huh. Does it just reuse the existing English translations from the prior versions the west saw, or is it Engrish, or a full retranslation? And if it was in English on the PS2 in the form of ports of the Saturn versions, why didn't they bring them west like that?

IIRC, it's just the English translations that were released previously. Essentially, it was a bonus for the elevens.

The English versions added were new for the PS2 version of the Collection; the Saturn release didn't have them, though they DID include some sweet remixed tunes for the menus and shit. Sega probably just didn't bring the Collection over because apparently, most people in the West only give a shit about PSO and its spinoffs. This is Sega we're talking about, y'know.

Also, because three of the four games were included in the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive for yurpenis) Collection for the PS2 and PSP. The PS2 version had some emulation problems, which isn't surprising, since again, Digital Eclipse was handling the game. Can't tell you about the PSP release, though, since I just use PicoDrive for my Genesis needs on my PSP.

Funny thing: The collection was essentially rereleased as Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection / Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for the PS360, and has 14 new games added, one of them being the first Phantasy Star. Again, Digital Eclipse is at the helm, and aside from basically rehashing the SGC again down to the extras, I can't remember any problems with it.

Except for not including any of the Sega-published Treasure titles.

If you must, try getting one of these accessories that latch onto the phone and act as a controller. Playing emulated games with touchscreen controls is HELL. Even the DS games suck, if they don't use the touchscreen exclusively

I got my hands on a psp-1000, however, it has this weird problem where after a few minutes, none of the button will respond. Restarting the system keeps making the "freeze" happen faster and faster till it happens right on startup. I actually forgot about it for a few months and when I did open it again, the freeze did not happen instantly

During the few times the freeze doesn't happen fast enough, I managed to see that it's currently on 5.50 prome-4 but there's also a 6.60 fast recovery in the memory stick.

The buttons are working. I can access the recovery menu and maneuver around it. Furthermore, on startup, the VHS menu occasionally pops up and I can move around in that. Closing the VHS menu however leaves me with frozen buttons again the default background still moves though

I tried to update it to ofw 6.60 but I keep getting the 800xxxxxx something or other error.

Any idea how I can fix this?

Well yeah, I know Sega isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but they haven't seemed to mind tossing PS1-3 in with various collections that west had gotten before.

So they actually didn't botch that one?

Or Konami ones to my knowledge. Don't think Castlevania Bloodlines or Contra: Hard Corps have ever been given a rerelease.

Figures, that game always seems crazy. I really want to finally play it. I picked it up at a rummage sale for like $7, so at least I own it when the time comes. I'm kind of worried that if I really like it I'll want more though and I won't be able to find another game like it.

i don't know, I never even played any of them. i think it was one that was sort of like a cheap 3D Zelda game or something.

I'm gonna have to do that. It would increas it's usefulness quite a bit for me. I hope it doesn't vary form game to game or something.

I like the fact that Japanese VAs always seem to make time for things added to projects they've worked on. If there's a voiced character in a game, drama cd, anime, etc., odds are that it will be voiced by the same person. Here people can't even get the same VA for a character in one medium half of the time.

At least it seems that they're getting better with them then. That and the inclusion of dual audio makes me really happy. It just seems like a series that really deserves care to be put into it and I'd like them to keep improving with each game. So far with Zestiria it's the translation that's bugging me more than anything. A lot of things sound like something a dumb hipster would say and today I came across an dog item that said "such powerful. so woof." and bunch of other dumb shit. It just seemed really out of place and cringey.

I've just noticed in a lot of games that only what's considered the most important will be voiced, even though the Japanese version had the other parts voiced too. It's really not that noticeable, unless you're playing it in Japanese and then English shortly after (or maybe not shortly, but have a really good memory), but it still sucks.

Yeah, that was all so stupid to me. It seems like they pretty much decided that you shouldn't be able to play games a certain way just because they thought the new way was better.

Damn, I didn't know there was an english version. i wonder how much that costs nowadays.

Well, you'll most likely get your $7 worth from it. I think I got mine for about $12. But yeah, really a strange game that has remained main series, even with it not having a lot of fans.

It strikes me that they have more of a tendency to get attached to the character they voiced. And hell, occasionally you'll see an unvoiced game get an official drama CD or something with voice actors the developers decided fit the characters retroactively. That happened with Wild Arms 2 (the game itself is unvoiced even in Japan, but in the drama cd they got Takahiro Sakurai to voice Ashley).

Definitely a major issue to be had with Tales out here, in that Namco hasn't had the best track record of getting the English voices back to reprise their roles for stuff like cameo battles (for example, I think in Abyss, they have Reid voiced by Sam Riegel instead of Kevin Miller, who was likely already busy doing voicing for Sly Cooper). Occasionally it's not bad, since some characters never had their games come out here anyhow and as such never had an official English voice (such as Nanaly from Tales of Destiny 2), but still a fair bit annoying. Most notably with Tales of Symphonia 2, where a whopping TWO English voices returned and everyone else's was changed. Thankfully Namco took note of how annoyed western fans were over that, and with them announcing Tales of Xillia 2 was coming west just off preorder numbers for the first game alone, managed to get the entire English cast back for the sequel, which certainly helps with cohesiveness.

Holy shit that fight with Hyades took forever. I wonder if I was using the wrong weapon or something. It ended right when I was about to die and my characters went up levels like crazy. Status effects can really kill you in this game. In Zestiria the worst part seems to be that you can't use healing items when you have them.

Yeah, I've noticed that a lot of them will constantly post stuff about them or do little side things where they talk about how much they enjoyed playing them. I wish more games had the little commentary from them like Corpse Party does. That game and it's commentary made me extremely happy it didn't get localized with a forced dub or something. (Although, it might have been good for comedic purposes.)

That would be kind of neat to be able to put a voice to the face if she did a good job. I hate how we always miss out on all the drama CDs for everything. I mean some have fansubs, I guess, but it's pretty rare.

That's good at least. I really don't get how English voice actors always say their busy, yet Japanese voice actors normally seem even busier, but find the time. I just think that if it was really important to both parties they'd figure it out somehow.

GCN undub restores JP voices but not for the skits since there aren't as many tools for PPC debugging needed to hack back in the voice pointers for skits. Trying to restore the JP file that controls this part of the pointers turns almost every other text in Japanese, so it's not effective either.
Based Asmodean was able to get the pointers working on Abyss, and I'm eternally grateful to him for it. Just look at embed related, having skits like these unvoiced is cruel.

Surprisingly, Bamco finally got the hint with Chronicles and added dual audio. Yeah, it's 30fps, yadda yadda - but it's still good ol' Symphonia.
Also, a nice thing about Chronicles is that the voice change option is accessed through the settings menu at any time, unlike Zestiria which only lets you change on boot. Still good to have dual audio though.

While I haven't played Zestiria myself yet (and as such I'm not inclined to go digging through the end credits to find out who exactly did the translation at this point), I have heard that it has some issues. Namely the translators not getting things (How does "Final Player" make sense to a translator? Anyone can check Aselia wiki with the moonrunes for it and find that it translates to Final Prayer and see that it's been around since Loni used it in Destiny 2), and there being a certain amount of disconnect in the words chosen for terminology or something, as if either the translators split the work load but didn't create a translation "glossary" or whatever to keep the words used cohesive, or the editor (if that should have been their job to double check) was asleep at the wheel. Again, I haven't given it a go yet, but it strikes me as similar to something I heard about Suikoden II, where the spelling of one major character's name changes a lot throughout the English version of it.

The former Hearts DS fan-translator (who canned the project out of respect for Namco bringing Hearts R over, only to recoil in horror as he witnessed Namco letting 8-4 botch it) has done some personal analyses of the official translation work on Xillia, Xillia 2, Hearts R, and Zestiria. If that might be of interest to you to read through in the future, look up Kajitani-Eizen.

The Shiba nose or tail attachments? Those are in the Xillia games as well, as if memory serves (I can't check directly right now since my PS3 games are packed up and Aselia wiki is missing an attachment page for the Xillia games, it seems) also have the description give the doge meme a shoutout. Pretty sure the blame can be laid at 8-4 for that, and whatever teams they used for Xillia 2 and Zestiria either kept the descriptions similar for cohesion, or were too lazy to not go that route. Still, I do have to wonder, what exactly does the Japanese description for them come out to when translated? I remember fans bitching about some Atlus localized game a while back (Dragon's Crown, maybe?) that used "an arrow to the knee" in it, and wound up surprised that the Japanese script had the same thing and thus the localization was still accurate.

Oh, I thought you'd meant random lines just not having any voicing in the middle of dialogue (which i noticed occasionally in Vesperia 360's dub; honestly, compared to the PS3 version, the 360 is a high quality beta, and the dub and translation an example of a decent but likely rushed job, given the amount of typos, audio not matching the text, and occasional lines with no audio). Yeah, it's certainly something that's gone on in the past, and which some companies have been getting better about.

Reminder that the PS2 is region locked, and even with a full backwards compatible PS3, PS2 games are still region locked on that as well, as far as playing the games from their discs themselves.

Any PS2 iso works on a PS3 with CFW. Also undubs (undubs available for Xillias 1 and 2 as well), don't forget Vesperia's full translation!
I played P3 undub on my CFW'd console.

Yeah, Hyades is a pain. Especially since that fight has the boss behind the party and if you don't know how to invert the formation, it's an even bigger pain.

They have the burn status or whatever there too, the one that blocks healing? Think the first time the west saw that was in Graces f when it came over.

Tales is somewhat lucky. I'm not sure they're exactly Drama CDs, but stuff like Tales of Fandom Volume 1 and 2 have been fan translated as far as I'm aware (and feature Jade and Zelos as hosts/interviewers, or something).

Not sure how good that one there is. A lot of older strategy guides seem to get shit outright wrong, and if memory serves Symphonia's was rather bad. makes me think the one for Eternia (and Destiny, if it even got one out here) might be of similar "helpfulness" if not worse.

Good to know, thanks. Speaking of Abyss, would playing it off a PS2 drive or something (considering I'd likely have to play it digitally if I wanted to play it with the undub anyhow) reduce the loading? Honestly one of my main complaints with the English release was how much the overworld had issues with load times and camera lag that make it a pain to fight anything that's not in a town or dungeon (which becomes especially annoying in the "overworld dungeon" areas like that swamp; fucking Behemoth).

Out-of-order execution would have made it more expensive. They were trying to compete on price with mixed results, but Intel has enough money to just plow on until they succeed. Also ARM performance may not be as good but it's a lot better power-wise.

I think you got lost on your way to the Android thread bro.

PS2 CFW'd games on PS3 need to run from the internal drive, you can't run them from a disc so you should get benefits in load times, but I didn't get too far in the PS3 CFW'd version to confirm how overworld dungeons work.

Sorry, meant using an IDE drive in a fat PS2 to play it with the undub. My PS3 is unfortunately a model where the default firmware is beyond the requirements for putting CFW on there.

Always struck me as strange that Abyss had such noticeable loading times compared to Symphonia GC. Makes me wonder if maybe Symphonia being spread across two discs and only having one world loaded at a time might help with it, and if maybe Abyss loads not just The Outer Lands but also the Qliphoth every time it has to load the overworld.

Bah, no memory card today either. I wish I had another external drive to hoard PSP games in the meantime.

I never really understood why some are in the options, changeable at any time and others you need to restart the game even if it is in the options. i just figured it was due to the way it was coded or something, but then that seems backwards for Tales. Not that it really does matter, since I'm just happy to have it, but I'm more likely to see what the English sounds like if I don't have to reset the game.

That all is pretty interesting. I'll have to look at it once I finish the game. I'm just still a little scared of spoilers right now.

Oh, wow, I didn't know that. I guess it's possible that they were trying to find a similar meme as one that was in Japanese, but somehow I doubt it. 8-4 just seems to like memes more than a lot of companies. The arrow in the knee thing was Dungeon Travelers 2. Everyone thought Atlus did it, but Skyrim was pretty popular in Japan and apparently the localization was faithful enough that it turned into a meme for them too. I'm kind of glad to know doge wasn't added specifically for Zestiria though.

Aww fuck, I thought it was only PS1 that was region locked. I would've liked to own that. I wonder if anyone ever made a "is this region locked?" chart. It seems like people are always asking if things are and I can never remember what is and what isn't. I should probably just start writing it down for things from now on.

Nice thanks, I guess that's what I'll aim for for both things then. I definitely won't be forgetting about Vesperia though, since that's the main reason I want one.

Yeah, that fucker killed Meredy quite a few times being so close to her. It wouldn't have been as much of a problem if his one move didn't hit in front and behind him though either.

There's burn, but actually any status effect prevents you from healing. It can be a pain to have to use a pancea when you really want to use a peach gel.

I'll have to check that out once I can't be spoiled too. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure it's something I'd like.

I don't know. there's a review on amazon, but it almost seems like it's for the damn game more than the strategy guide.

Oh, I see. Well, it should definitely shorten load times a bit, since Abyss is very reliant on constant reads when in the world map (hence why you can clip through stuff if you open the lid on a slim model).

It mainly has to do with how the engine is prepared to deal with it. Symphonia never had dual audio before Chronicles, so it was something inserted manually, but for Zestiria the easiest way to do things was to have a common structure for both voice tracks and simply redirect the game to read from package A or package B depending on which track has been set.
This is also the main way to undub games - replace the original US files with JP files. But if there are packages involved it might require adjustments of pointers, and if the original JP had more files it gets even harder.

I don't mind Zestiria's method since I always pick JP anyway. One way to fuck up is the NISA way, however: You can only change Danganronpa voice tracks when restarting a whole chapter, and in case of DRAE, you can only switch your voice track once you beat the game and unlock chapter select, or restart a new game. (oh, and DRAE is a 1.8 GB separate DLC for the JP voices, fuck. At least it's free…)

That makes sense. Thanks for the lesson.
I actually played DRAE in English, because I didn't have the real internet at the time. I had to wait like two weeks to play Escha & Logy, because they did the same thing and trying to download it through my slow ass phone's internet. I really don't understand why that happened with either game. KT said it was due to the size, but it looked like both games should've fit just fine.

There are a few instances in Xillia 1 and 2 that for some people seemed at first to be 8-4 (and whoever did X2) fucking around, but an user who took a look at the Japanese for those sections found the translations for those sections fit rather well, if maybe being a bit of an extrapolation (though still giving the same effect).

Nope, PS3 and PSP were the first region free Sony game systems, and even with backwards compatibility, the older games still hold their former status. Still, it's likely how with the 3DS, the games specifically for that system are region locked, but original DS games retain their status of being region free played through the backwards compatibility.

If I remember, KT said something along the lines of Gust being unable to get the Japanese audio tracks onto the cart for the western release, or something (considering that, from what I've heard, KT sends Actill's script translation over to Gust so they can insert it properly and avoid bugging the shit out of the games like NISA used to in insertion.

Even though vita gamecards can be 8GB variants, devs do not normally release games above the 4GB range due to shitty proprietary Sony memory and muh digital releases.
It'd be neat if they could make the cart versions dual audio directly, but I guess Sony would count those as 'separate' versions from the digital ones on PSN.

Funnily enough they still fucked up Shallie's Growth menu, but it was thankfully fixed quickly, and with a very small KB-sized patch, even.
See that, NISA? That's how you do it.

Note most Android phones and tablets expect nivida and intel have crappy gpu drivers and crappy os updates and can't run all psp games like God of Wars, Sega Rally, and bunch of racing and tri ace games.

ARM cpus gain out of order processing with Cortex A9.
Intel Baytrail weakness is the gpu, and cherry trail fixed that

I don't get why NISA seems so hesitant to fix their shit when they fuck up, beyond either not wanting to admit they can do wrong, or to leave the games forever broken (which is what I speculate, given they don't seem to give a rat's ass how many potential customers they drive away with the shitty way they treat much of what they handle these days, it honestly makes me wonder if profit is even the real goal for them anymore). At least back in the PS2 era one could say maybe a full recall would have been more difficult and expensive to do, but tossing a bugfix patch on the PSN or something shouldn't be anywhere near as big an issue.

Also have to give Actill and TK credit in actually listening to fans, since if memory serves, the original NPC dialogue in Ar Nosurge PS3 was poorly translated compared to the main script, and they actually went back, retranslated it, and patched it.

Their excuse is that Sony charges for updates, I think. Dunno if they still do that, but it's their fucking job to test the game properly beforehand.
Another excuse I've seen is that boo hoo, their teams are now busy with so they can't fix shit. Add to that the fact that they rely on NIS to do the actual patch jobs since they can't program for shit. I think the fuckups are actually caused when NISA tries to hack things in, instead of using NIS to do the job for them as it would be unwieldy.

NISA apparently doesn't know the words 'testing' and 'updates'.

I still wonder if the massive amounts of slowdown in the PSP version of Mana Khemia were something NISA themselves caused in localization somehow, or if the Japanese PSP version was also subject to just as heavy loading when played on UMD. I mean, I know UMD games do tend to have at least some amount of it, but from what I've heard Mana Khemia Student Alliance was hit REALLY hard with it.

Good question for Japanese MK players. MK2 came out in Japan, however… So it must've sold nicely, I guess?
Many games have terrible loading issues when using UMDs, be it 2D or 3D.

Anons pls.

Is it the hold button? is that the glitch?

I've only ever had experience with a 3000, but more information might help. Have you had tis PSP for a while and the problem has only started recently, or has it always been like this as long as you've had it? Did it come with a memory stick with the CFW already on it, or did you put it on there yourself?

Well, I mean, of course Sega's Genesis collections aren't going to include Konami titles. Or any publisher's titles other than Sega's first party games, for that matter. Wish they could've include the Toejam & Earl games or the Thunder Force titles, though; would've been better than MOAR SANIC.

Hard to tell. With the SGC on the PS2, the problems were glaringly obvious–though the only one relevant to our conversation that I can bring up off the top of my head is audio problems with Phantasy Star IV. I wish I could tell you more, but I gave the SGC to my brother years ago, since he'd be able to appreciate the games more than I would. I only bought it so I could play Phantasy Star II and IV on days when I'm away from my computer, but with access to a PS2.

I ended up buying the UGC for the Circle because I didn't have the Intertubes at the time, and I needed something to hold my interest. Turns out, Shining Force I, II, and Shining in the Darkness do that better than Mass Effect and Portal.

it's my old roomate's psp. He bought it new about 2 years ago and the shop installed the CFW on to it. It worked fine for the first 6 months and then the problems started occurring. Returned to the store only to find out that it had closed down within the 6 months.

He managed to sent it to a few repair shops but they couldn't do anything.

I've been pestering him to get a 3ds to play monhun, but he's only willing to buy one if he can get the psp running again to give it to his sibling

I can still access the recovery menu. Tried disabling VHS to fix unresponsive buttons but no luck. Also, sliding the power button to hold will cause the vhs to pop out even when disabled. I've tried resetting flash 1 but still no input detected.

Volume buttons work, all other buttons work while in recovery menu.

Whoa what the hell is Ys vs Sora no Kiseki? A fighting game? I never even knew this existed. Whatever it is.

nicoblog.org/psp/ys-vs-sora-no-kiseki-alternative-saga-english-patched/

I never actually thought about it through backwards compatibility. That would be a nice work around if it worked. Man, I hate fucking region locks. I seem to even end up coming across games that are region locked for otherwise region free systems way more often than one would expect to.

Apparently, Sony can produce 8gb cards, but they just never have. Even their own games like Borderlands 2 had to be split up into DLC that you can't buy if the game is purchased used. I think there was actually some publisher sort of complaining about it.

Yeah, Falcom has done a LOT of games over the years. Unfortunately not all have been translated adequately (while I hear the Gagharv trilogy has it's own issues with less interesting gameplay on the PSP versions, Namco had absolutely zero respect for them in translating them, to the point they apparently come off as if they'd used Google Translate to do the job), if translated at all.

And yeah, I suppose it's worth clarifying on the PS3: The system as a default is region free. Sony left it up to the publishers for various games if they wanted to region lock their individual games, and thankfully very few have taken them up on that (stuff like P4A is region locked, but again, very small minority).

TL:DR
Narikiri Dungeon X kicks ass.

I've been scouring around and I'm finding tons of dead fan translations. At least that shouldn't be too bad being a fighting game, but VNs and stuff like that are pretty fucked without a complete translation.

apparently, 360 is the same way. It seems popular for fighting games too, because that one based on a VN for 360 is region locked. (I can't remember the name for some reason)

Oh yeah and that graph is fucking crazy.

Damn, that looks really nice! I don'
t think I ever saw it before.

Game has crazy good spritework.

Always heard good things about it myself. Waiting for Absolute Zero to finish with translating that bundle, so it'll probably be a few years before it's done. But it's something to look forward to (unless TPP does go through and kills all possibility of fan translation).

Yeah, and that's just Dragon Slayer. They have other games beyond those (and Ys, of course) too.

I see that. They look fucking awesome. I really didn't expect it to look that good.

Unfortunately, I still never played any. I noticed the more games there are in a series the more intimidated I am to start. Same with anime, actually. A lot of things are a bitch just to figure out where to start.

Namco still knows what they're when it comes to sprites (embed is support summons from Hearts DS, and at this point there shouldn't be any possible spoilers for Eternia from it for you; shame the DS fan translation got cancelled and Namco didn't bother to give the west the preorder minigame that utilized the all the sprites/animations) with the series. Though whether they'll be going back to making more 2D sprited games like they used to is another story. (though, I have to wonder if that Reve Unitia game sprited; being an tactical spinoff it makes me think it might be, or at least be 2D sprites on isometric 3D). Series seems to be sticking with 3D, for the time being anyhow.

Apparently the guys translating Digimon Adventure PSP posted an update last month.

Also, while not PSP related, apparently the Digimon World Re:digitize team has also picked up Digimon Story: Lost Evolution to fan translate.

>CAST can either be hulking pile of metal or sexy female android pic related

Why can't I be a slim edgelord android?

I finally beat Rem! I wasn't sure if I'd even be able to. I spilled water on my laptop like a retard, so I couldn't ask for help on here and watching some youtube video the uploader was 20 levels higher than me. I kept dying so fast that I didn't know if it would be possible without doing a bunch of extra stuff. That fucking floating ball she has is ridiculous. That thing could kill my characters in a matter of seconds if she moved it to the wrong place. Ah well, at least that's over with. (I did use the few elixirs I had that I was saving though. I hope I wasn't gonna need those later.)

The amount of cameos in that game is insane. I wish that version was included in R's release. At least I'd like to think that once some time passes that the fan translation will start back up. Hearts must have the goofiest looking character out of any Tales game.

???

Do you guys play PSO single player? It seems like it would be hard to get people together to play it in english and when I tried playing the one for gamecube single player it felt really barren.

I never new He-man was the reason they fucked with the name.

wild arms is pretty gross.
it's way too similar to shitty final fantasy. it's a cake walk, too, like final fantasy. i haven't died once.
i like westerns though… more than you can imagine.
i feel conflicted.

Here's one thing that bothers me with the PSP, I can't play a good genre. If I want to play the good games, they're all scattered between RPGs, TPSs, platformers, fighting, racing. It kinda bothers me to have to play a range of such different games. Some which I usually don't play like fighting or racing ones

I noticed the parts shop after I made my character, I fucked up.

No, that would probably be Legendia again (and oddly enough, the guy in orange here is a caster despite his looks and the bigass hammer), at least as far as main series Tales goes. But Hearts is a bit up there too (both in the fact that the outfits are a bit odd, as well as how Soma works), and Graces, while not exactly goofy, has some odd design choices at times too (with some characters like Cheria feeling a it overdesigned, and Asbel's disco-knight outfit takes getting used to; much more of a fan of Inomata's earlier work with Destiny and Eternia than with later games). At least that metal disc on the back of Malik's jacket has the excuse of being magnetized or something so he can use it to store his bladerang on it when not in use without needing an actual sheath, and he can also use it to fire the Malik Beam.

Yeah, Rem is a massive pain in the ass to fight. Especially that unkillable orb she comes with. The Ray spell makes up for it though; love the Eternia incarnation of that spell.

Yeah, I'd heard something like that before, but I feel it was probably more of a mix of Eternia being trademarked in the US at the time as well as Namco wanting to give some further brand recognition. While in Japan at that point that's gotten three tales games (Phantasia SFC, Destiny, and Phantasia PS1), the west had only gotten Destiny, so it strikes me they might have also changed the name here to provide further relation to people looking to buy it/ Not that it helped much if so; both Destiny and Eternia sold like shit here in the US and are now some of the more expensive JRPGs on the system, up there with stuff like Valkyrie Profile, both Persona games, and (in Eternia's case as it's the more expensive, at least where I live), Suikoden II.

Which one are you playing? I told you the main series (traditional) ones are typically pretty easy, whereas XF is supposedly difficult (though admittedly I still need to give that one a go). They're good if you want some nice comfy RPGs with a western theme, but I suppose if you're looking for difficulty, you might want to look elsewhere than the main series.

You do realize you can buy handheld consoles with android right?

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. Some of those characters on the cover look way to goofy for my tastes. I hope the main character at least has a good personality.

That fucking thing kept blocking me like crazy. If it didn't do such high damage it wouldn't be so bad either, but my computer controlled characters kept ending up way too close to it. I found that it was best to pace myself and just spam nurse and the one darkness spell Keele has, while trying to keep her away from them with Reid. I might have gotten lucky to beat it on my fourth try though too, because the first three didn't go nearly as well. I used so many items too that it was hardly a proper win.

Normally, giving a standalone game a number is a pretty bad idea though. Especially, with something story driven like a JRPG. People are gonna assume that it's a direct sequel to the previous game and be way less likely to buy it if they haven't played the first one.

Senel's a bit of a jerk and rather overprotective of his little sister Shirley, but considering the backstory of both of them having been chased across the mainland the last few years he's just tired of people dicking around with him, so it's understandable (and his protectiveness warranted). He's pretty hotheaded and antisocial (toward everyone but Shirley), but eventually warms up to the rest of the party.

When I first played, I don't think I even had Shadow beaten at that point, so I didn't have anything to hit her weakness with. The other issue is that you get Shadow, Rem, Maxwell, and Sekundes so late in the game that it takes a bit of work to level them up, whereas with the other ones, you're generally working on them as you get them. In all though, Rem's just a tough boss. Though I suppose that should be expected of a Unifying Greater Craymel, or whatever the term the game uses for her and Shadow are.

A good point, but look at Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. While I suppose in the case of the latter there's a few trilogies of games that are related, they're still for the most part stand-alone, but still have a numbered naming convention. It also might be worth keeping in mind that, with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest being some of the (if not THE) most popular JRPGs in Japan and the west (more so Final Fantasy as far as out here goes), various publishers, both eastern and western, have tried to make or bring stuff over in the hopes that it would be able to compete and sell at level with the big name ones, only to wind up disappointed when they don't. Stuff like changing names to try to bait better sales isn't anything new either; Square used to to it themselves for Seiken Densetsu and SaGa when they got western releases (prior to Secret of Mana and SaGa Frontier anyhow) even though the games aren't even Final Fantasy related. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if Namco was considering opting to have the entire Tales series be called "Tales of Destiny" out here, with the ones we'd wind up getting being numbered. And considering poor sales of Destiny and Eternia out here, it makes me think that, had Nintendo not stepped up and offered to help Namco out with getting Symphonia to sell well out here, we might not have gotten Symphonia, let alone any of the later games.

I mean, there's still the issue of Master of the Universe having copyright on "Eternia" at the time (which didn't stop the word being used in game to refer to their binary planet system), but the fact that Namco didn't just opt to call the game "Tales of Eternity" for the western release makes me think brand recognition also played a bigger role. Thankfully they've learned since then though.

There's quite a bunch of good racing vidya on the PSP, these are the ones i play the most
And you also have all the PSX ones, as for fighting there's also quite a bunch.

Some systems excel with particular genres, while others tend to be nice all-arounders. Usually the systems that prove really popular seem to be the ones that wind up with a nice spread of something for everyone (though occasionally they might be lacking in a genre or two, such as how Microsoft systems generally are lacking in JRPGs, barring the early attempts with the 360). The DS was also similar like that, having a bit of something for everyone.

That would make sense. It's just that when I get bored of a game and want to switch it up I either go fast MonHun or slow Valkyria gameplay and it somehow just doesn't feel right

I bounce between MonHun 3rd, Gods Eater Burst 2 hype, and Fairy Tail 2. It's MonHun except with unlimited fanservice

Sometimes I go for GEB as well, had no clue 2 was coming out, thanks user. Also just the intro of the game is more interesting than the entire anime. I'm trying to take down Freedom Unite before moving onto 3rd, mostly because I never got to play much of it before. Is it worth it to keep going or should I just hop on to 3rd?

Is FT2 any good? I might give it a shot, also anything else your recommend?

Is this Demo?

If you're talking the webm, I have no clue who they are.

Disgaea series is always good, KH Birth By Sleep, if you're into rhythm games and cute girls K-On! has a game that was never translated, but a couple people have posted the full translation on numerous sites
The Dragon Ball Z fighting games are fairly simple but pretty fun. Gladiator Begins is ridiculously fun if you cheese it. If you play serious it's alright, but I generally go for a full shield build. Shields on my hands, my head, my legs, everything
Kenka Bancho Badass Rumble is fun as fuck
Adventures to Go is like Disgaea except a bit simpler. Of course Ys, Persona, and MGS Peace Walker are great choices too

I've heard Disgaea needs serious grinding. KH I have it on me but haven't gotten around to play it. For rhythm I've been going through Patapon, currently on 2.
I had one DBZ game some time ago, but which one is best?

I am going through Persona 3 and Peace Walker but have been having some trouble adjusting to PW's gameplay, for some reason I just can't get used to it

Shin Budokai: Another Road the second one is much better
Disgaea's main story doesn't require grinding if you're smart, but to even think about any of the extras you'll need to grind and grind and grind until you can't grind anymore. Then grind some more

Well, are the extras worth it? That's the one DBZ I had, the first one actually, had no idea, again, there was a second one.

Also, I have been craving a good platformer, anything you got?

They're the post-story content, so it's really up to you if you want to kill bigger and badder demons or just go for the story
Also there are quite a few endings. Don't get a single team kill for the love of god. DO NOT throw a Prinny
I don't like platformers honestly so I couldn't tell you

Alright, I see there are a lot of games in the franchise, where should I start?

What does throwing a Prinny mean?

Play them in order, obviously
You can throw your teammates. It's essential in the later levels. Prinnies explode when thrown

So it's essential but I shouldn't do it? Alright, I'll get right on it, thanks user.

It's that simple

It's a really bland 3D tactical mobile game, the only thing good about it is the crossover fanservice.

So I followed this

guide, but fucked up by setting setting it to Infinity *Pro instead of Infinity *(L)ME and now it won't boot. Any way to fix this?

So i was looking at handheld prices on my local game shop earlier and i found some fairly priced 2nd hand PSP 3000, PSP Go and PS Vita.

I know how good the 3000 is for emulation and CFW but i never ever touched a Go or a Vita, so i'd like to hear some opinions from anons on those handhelds before making a purchase.

Have some elins for your trouble.

I have the 3000. It's pretty solid. Get this if you have any UMDs you wanna play. Otherwise, get the Go. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it has some onboard storage, as well as memory cards?
I have a Vita as well. So far, no piracy. Not even PSP emulation. There are definitely some worthwhile games for it and we need more people in the Vita thread, but if you want to play through the PSP's expansive history, I'd go for a Go first, then a Vita later
Is that third pic Fatalpulse?

Never cared about UMD's.

Yeah, the PSP Go has 16gb internal memory+slot for memory stick micro.

Damn, i thought you could at least emulate PSP and PSX stuff through Vita.

No idea.

It's a real shame about the Vita, i really like the OLED screen+dual sticks but i don't feel like droppin' $60 for a game if i can't pirate it first.

Really depends on what you want out of it. The PSP is pretty nice if handheld emulation and piracy is what you want and, aside from the price of the system itself (along with a memory stick and connector cable to attach it to your PC; a PS3 controller cable works just fine for that), is nice for those without a lot of money. Meanwhile, the Vita still sees new game releases (whether or not they're of interest to you though is something to consider as the system does best with fans of niche games), and as far as money goes is a fair bit more of an investment, especially in terms of memory stick price-to-storage-space.

You might want to double check whether or not that 16 GB internal storage actually stacks with the memory stick before picking anything up. Just saying, since the 200 model Vitas have 1 GB internal memory, but putting in a memory card overrides it and, after allowing the user to transfer data from the internal memory to the card, is unusable while the card it inserted.

Most of the games I'm interested in for the Vita I just get physical from Amazon for an average of $15. Saves space on my memory card. Super important since mine only had a 4gb with it. I can store SK:EV and some small PSN games

Of all the fucking things to break.

use tape or just buy a new plate for it

Are OLED Vitas even readily available anymore?

Get piece of wood, obtain tape and figure it out you hooligan.

Has anyone played 7th Dragon 2020? I'm just wondering how good it is.

>The other issue is that you get Shadow, Rem, Maxwell, and Sekundes so late in the game
I thought having Shadow was normal at that part. I missed the other two somehow. I think there was some area on inferia that was blocked in by mountains, but I don't know if that's related or where the hell they are. I'm guessing I'm at the end as I infiltrated the dark matter, but there was some mini boss thing that really fucked me up last time I played. It just kept spamming some stupid move that I couldn't even stop. It lets it off in a couple seconds and you need to hit it a lot in hopes of stopping it. Hopefully missing those two doesn't mean I'm gonna be fucked now. I might be able to exit here to find them, but unless I'm missing something significant with the story, I'd probably rather just keep moving along, so I can get back to Tales of the Abyss.

I don't even know what they were doing with those series though either. Jumping around skipping numbers that they didn't want to localize, changing the name of Dragon Quest to Dragon Warrior and then back to Dragon Quest. I wonder if any of that stuff even sold one extra copy. I'm still haunted by Final Fantasy III name bullshit when I try looking stuff up for VI.

Yeah, I guess it does seem doubtful that it was the copyright alone, but to be fair He-man would've drifted into more irrelevance by then and I don't even think Mattel is the powerhouse they once were (although when companies are losing money sometimes they seem even more likely to sue over stupid shit).

Maxwell is in the basement of the church at Mt. Farlos, while Sekundes is in Vatenkeist and thankfully is willing to join you without a fight, but if you go back to the room he was in, you can pick a fight with him and get your ass beat.

There's also the Destiny summon, but that's not an elemental spirit you have to find/fight; it just calls in some familiar (to series fans anyhow) faces to beat the shit of enemies, and were apparently so strong that the summon has (if I remember correctly) a 30 ingame minute cooldown between uses.

As far as I'm aware, Dragon Quest at least had the excuse that "Dragon Quest" was already the name of a copyrighted tabletop game here in the west back then so if they wanted to bring them west, they couldn't do so under the original Japanese name (hence "Dragon Warrior"), and it at least wasn't until after IV NES they started skipping bringing entries west, and even then, when they eventually started bringing them west again, they didn't change the numbering the way Final Fantasy did.

Forgot my embed.

Thanks, I might have to leave and grab those two, since they sound easy enough. (Shadow was a real bitch, but I might have been underleveled.) Odds are I'll run out of items before getting to the end anyway and I hate running out of oragne gels and holy bottles.

Oh, okay, it didn't really make sense to me why they'd just change it from one generic sounding name to another. I think the first one on NES was all I ever played, but I remember liking whichever one it was. I really need to give that series a shot sometime.

Getting to them, sure. Beating them? Good luck. It's certainly possible, but it is not going to be pretty.

I generally hear pretty good things about III, IV, and V. Still a series I need to give more time to myself. Incidentally, the DS versions of the Zenthia trilogy were made with finally giving the US V and VI directly in mind, but of course they got shat up in the name of culturization. Accenting has a time and a place (take Yeagar in ToV for instance; in the Japanese version, he outright throws Engrish around, and to simulate the "foreign" effect, the team gave him a German accent and at times vocabulary in the western releases), but text only games are not the place. IV DS is also missing the party chat in the west, because apparently the localization team would have rather waste time and money on localization induced accents than translate the game with all it's contents properly.

Oh damn, I thought the one just joined you without a fight?

Damn, the party chat like sayings at the end of battles or something like Tales where there's a lot of character building? I know there's some remake for 3DS coming out, so I wonder how that will turn out. I'm always scared now because of Bravely Default. I hope Nintendo has nothing to do with the contents. It sucks that Vita only has spinoffs and not a full title too.

Boy Rassius sure is pretty. For some reason I pictured him a little more serious and manly. You never do find out what it was with his mother either huh?

One does. I suppose I meant if you wanted to fight him to get the Derris Emblem (call out to Phantasia just like the boss himself is), which allows you to do something really cool with the other one's summon. I have no fucking clue how anyone found out about the extensions short of a guidebook or Namco's paid tip line, but it's there and if you can pull it off, it's neat, and some of the later games like Rebirth and Graces f brought it back as well (Graces in particular seems rather fond of Destiny, Eternia, and Destiny 2, with Sophie borrowing Farah's Deadly Force -> Fire Dragon Rampage and Loni's Critical Blade, Richard borrowing Rutee's Bloody/Vertex Rose, and Malik borrowing Loni's 震天裂空斬光旋風滅砕神罰割殺撃).

Party talking to the protagonist about current events, locations, etc. Counts as characterization and world building, and is optional the way skits are.

I seem to recall hearing people saying they were already confirmed to be accenting VII 3DS' shit up, most likely for consistency's sake at this point. I mean, there's something to be said for consistency, but only when what's being kept consistent worked well to begin with (stuff like how Tales games these days have standardized arte names out here, which makes it all the more off-feeling when you see Light Spear suddenly be renamed to Tornado Drive). And fans have made it pretty clear how annoyed they are about the accents (especially for those players where English isn't their primary language anyhow), yet Square keeps on doing it, when they opt to bring the games over anyhow. Leads to speculation that they don't want Enix's old series to be able to compete well out here with Square's flagship Final Fantasy.

Well, that is fan art. Honestly, he's always reminded me a bit of a Jojo character. Maybe the hate and long hair, I don't know. As for his mother, Aselia wiki says she committed suicide after being a frequent target of the Queen's anger. The commoners speculated that the queen was directly responsible, but no one could ever do anything about it since the empire's laws counted that line of thought as sedition.

Aselia wiki actually has a surprisingly big page on him. Read at your own caution. I'd like to think there's no spoilers for you at this point about him, but you never know.
aselia.wikia.com/wiki/Rassius_Luine

oh god what the fuck happened to ras's face

yes

I had been trying to get a drawfag back in the day on halfchan to do a Jojo style image of him. The original guy was doing well but suddenly disappeared; some other guy took up the request and that was the result.

Shame that the other guy just disappeared though; he'd been doing a full body image with posing and everything before that.

I miss things like that in games. I don't really know of any newer games where there's stuff like crouch fro 5 seconds in a certain spot and you'll find a hidden room. I remember reading about some hidden side thing in FFIX that people in the west didn't even know about until kind of recently.

I'm not sure I'd have the patience at this point. I'm thinking that I should probably give Tales a break after I finish the ones I'm working on. I just feel like I'm starting to burn myself out on it since I've been playing them so much lately and whenever I start a new one I want it to feel fresh again. (Although, I think it's mainly Zesteria doing it to me. They really need to fix that camera. It drives me fucking crazy sometimes.)

I hope if that's in the new one it's included. I love that type of stuff. It might not be as good as Tales skits though too, as far I as know.

It sounds pretty stupid. I hate how so many English dubs turn everything into some cheesy, kids show, sounding thing. I was playing Devil Survivor on my 3DS recently and it's really weird dealing with all this dark stuff, but sounding like it was made for 8 year olds. Stella Glow's characters sound pretty cheesy in English too. It sucks because I love that game and want to own it, but then I'd be stuck with the forced dub.

I can see the similarities, but in general it seems like those types of characters are way more prevalent in anime and Japanese games. If he was made in the west they'd probably make him gay or something and that would be his reason for not hooking up with the princess. I remember some of the stuff in the wiki, but others I have no idea where they're getting it from. It wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of it was skits we missed out on though. I don't think he was in the anime at all or if he was it was nothing significant so I don't remember.

Fixed it! Found an infinity 6.61 recovery on some frog's website. Added an english guide and uploaded the files to vola.

volafile.io/get/_59eP0iTw67BHQ/infinity 6.61 recovery.zip

I miss things like that in games. I don't really know of any newer games where there's stuff like crouch fro 5 seconds in a certain spot and you'll find a hidden room. I remember reading about some hidden side thing in FFIX that people in the west didn't even know about until kind of recently.
I miss it too, but mainly when it's optional bonus stuff. Having required stuff locked behind something asinine is frustrating (unless it's a puzzle game, in which case the point is outright to make you think outside of the box). And that's provided the translation doesn't get in the way (about the only flaw I noticed with the Phantasia PS1 patch I was using, aside from freezing, was that a puzzle in Morlia Mines didn't seem to have the translation done right with the fact it was a puzzle kept in mind; I think Absolute Zero fixed both issues in a later patch release).

That extension is ridiculous, effectively being a summon followed by eight more spells. One of which, Prismic Stars, has an incarnation in Symphonia (Prism Stars) and is a really useful Compound Unison Arte. But yeah, it might be good to take a breather between the games (admittedly it's not an issue I've had, and in the case of Xillia, not only do you need two playthroughs to see the whole game as Jude and Milla both have specific, exclusive scenes and bosses, but there's also Xillia 2 as a followup.

I've heard the camera for Zestiria's annoying, but considering that that game has battles on the field itself (to my knowledge anyhow) like Xenoblade, it makes me think the Tales team has't exactly had much experience with that. Hopefully Berseria either fixes it, or goes back to the separate battle screens.

Ever since the fans bitched about them being absent from DQ IV DS, they've been in for at least V and VI DS. Think IX might have had them as well. But they've stuck since then (as have the accents sadly).

I don't mind dubs myself much, provided there's some effort made (ToE dub? Sure, I'm cool with that, though it could sound better. Chaos Wars? Fuck no). But competent voicing goes a long way (as does not forcing an actor to do a voice they've been pigeonholed into yet again; while I certainly enjoy Jamieson Price's voice for characters, hearing him voice a less angry character for once with Malik was nice, and it seemed like he got to have a lot of fun with it since his character enjoys messing with the heads of the rest of the party in skits and such), and for anime styled games like Tales, including the Japanese dub can help give fans options, especially if the English voices aren't quite on the mark.

Given he's supposed to be undercover early on, his odd attire makes some amount of sense (as opposed to running around in knight armor constantly), though how well he blends in with the crowds he's trying to apparently overhear information from might be up to question. Still, he's nowhere near as flamboyant as a few other characters in the series (no way in hell is Cumore straight with the shit he wears), and at least with most Japanese games/anime you could say they simply play it for humor rather than inclusion or SJW bullshit (such as TTGL's Leeron, or the Magimel brothers in the Shadow Hearts series).

I'm left to assume they were from skits during the times where he is in the party, or come from side materials, considering he's in ND2 and 3 (which aren't exactly canon games).

Also, going to be without internet connection for the next 24 hours or so so I'm not going to be able to bump the thread to reply if you've got a question or something. Should be back on Saturday afternoon or evening, but if not, I'll be around in a future Vita or PSP thread if this dies.

I can't recall if PSP battery covers are a separate part from the main shell (like, say, a GBA battery cover) or something, but if so you could maybe find a spare one at a used game store. Or as someone else suggested, maybe try tape.

It really depends what it is to me. Having something big like a side character or summon would kind of bother me, since it feels like that's something you should be able to get through skill, but easter eggs or just little fun stuff makes the game feel way more alive to me. I like seeing all the strange hidden stuff that's in games and it just seems that all the best stuff is from years ago. It's weird how prevalent cheat codes were too, but now it's super rare for a game to have them. I guess easy modes, save points, and DLC did away with a lot of it, but they could still do little shit like GTA does (or used to, maybe, since I barely played the recent ones, so I'm not too sure).

Apparently, Beseria will let you control the camera in battle, which should hopefully alleviate a lot of the problems. In Zestiria there's times when you can't see anything and have to move your character hoping the camera gets out of the wall or whatever blocking your view. It's the worst in narrow areas like hallways. Outside it's usually not too bad thankfully.

That reminds how stupid it is that Persona 5 probably isn't including dual audio. The game obviously has the budget to manage it and they should have enough room, so it just feels like it's being left out to save money. I just always bought the excuse that it was because of space for things like PSP games. It really makes me appreciate what Namco and Square are doing, since their both big enough to not include it the way Atlus seems to be.

I think his clothes kind of have a high class, pretty boy thing going. I'm not sure what you'd call it. He kind of reminds me of a bard or something at first. I had no idea he'd end up being so badass.
I've definitely noticed Japan doesn't only glorify gay people like it's some new cool thing like they do here though. I'm a little worried that western publishers are just gonna start removing gay jokes and stuff during localization (and probably make some straight character gay just for the hell of it).

Can someone tell me why most of the downloads on emuparadise are rar files containing split rar files?

Emuparadise mostly distributes scene releases, IIRC. Usually, it's whatever Caravan released, often in the form of split rars.

Back to having a regular internet connection, though I expect my ID might have changed.

Yeah, I expect a lot of shit like, say, the alternate colors or big head mode in something like the PS1 Spyro games (which were all ingame as "cheats" even though only the max lives and unlock all worlds ones actually changed gameplay) would all be sold as cosmetic DLC these days instead of just something included for fun if the player could figure out the inputs. And looking at Tales, it's really sad the state of ingame costumes these days. Eternia initially fiddled with it with the Cold Weather outfits (though the player has no control of using them whenever), Symphonia properly introduced it with each character having about three different ones, and both Abyss and Vesperia expanded a lot on the idea. They made for a nice reward (or incentive?) to do optional challenges, see through sidequests, etc. And now they're pretty much relegated to DLC, aside from a few per game.

If memory serves, Atlus tends to prefer dub only, with the occasional exception, like the new version of Odin Sphere (if the original didn't have it, which admittedly I'm not certain on since I haven't given it a go; also haven't been able to play my copy of Leifthrasir yet since my entertainment system and chairs are still being moved). I suppose with a fair amount of their games, it isn't a huge deal, but it strikes me that for Persona, a (sub)series set directly in Japan, including the Japanese language track would go a LONG ways for atmosphere. Meanwhile Tales, while anime styled, is still generally fantasy world rather than modern/semirealistic (the only entries that really feel all that modern are Abyss and sections of the Xillia games).

At least to my knowledge with XSEED, Falcom just doesn't let them use the Japanese audio for the games they handle, like LoH, or something along those lines. Not sure if Atlus has given a direct excuse.

It's better that way.

He does have a certain refinement to him, if that's the right word. But yeah, he pretty much hides his power level by wearing his odd garb (and as far as the series goes, he is still the only character to ever use Dragon Flash, and that's not even a Hi-Ougi/Mystic Arte/Blast Caliber if memory serves). Speaking of bards, Tales has its own in ToD's Johnny Shiden (originally localized as Karyl Shiden, for whatever reason). Not entirely sure how he handles in the PS1 original, but in the remake DC he's more than capable of dishing out debuffs as well as damage (and Layer Sphere is a ridiculously cool hi-ougi).

In the old days of localization they'd have just cut that shit. For example, in Wild Arms 2, upon the realization that Caina is apparently infatuated with his boss (who is in turn in love with a woman who hates him), the localization team switched his gender part ay through to being a girl (and while not to excuse it, his character is pretty damn androgynous in appearance anyhow). On the other hand, WA2 has not just cut-to-black sex scenes left in in the US release, but also fade to black cripple incest, both of which surprise me that it slipped past the ESRB with just a T rating.

I suppose it also depends on the localizer/translator on how they handle which ones are in there, and whether they care to leave it faithful to the original script or not. As mentioned, the Magimel Brothers' entire shtick is pretty much them being blatant fruit flies to a disgusting degree, and even in the English release Yuri has no qualms in pointing out just how sickening and degenerate he finds both of them (and only tolerates them since they provide 90% of the shopping for the party in Covenant, to the point them showing up in places they should otherwise have no business being in is a running gag Yuri is quick to point out). The games play it for humor instead of inclusion, and keep it (both the brothers and Yuri/Johnny's reactions to them in dialogue choice text for choosing to peruse their wares) intact for localization, and leave both brothers as one long, drawn out, and hilarious joke at the sheer fact they exist in a game (let alone ones that got rated T in the US). Helps that all three Shadow Hearts games had the same lead translator (and one who actually fucking loved the games upon just reading the scripts; cutting that aspect of the games would also like force a complete change for how Gepetto gets new abilities for his puppet, because pic related) and neither Midway nor XSEED cared enough to want to cut that stuff out. I suppose would could perhaps say that sixth gen in general was a bit different though. If those games came out in [CURRENT YEAR] they'd likely either have a whole lot butchered in the localizations, change Yuri's character around, or the people involved would face a media shitstorm over their protagonists not being accepting of that sort of stuff, ignoring what time period the games even take place in (I could see some "why 16 year old Johnny not wanting to get in a relationship with two grown ass men is a problem" type articles if FtNW came out these days; thankfully I doubt the current crop of shitty journos would even consider playing them, between the games being older but not that well known, as well as having an existing reputation for being really fucking weird).

This is going to be a long fucking week.

I feel you, ordered a 1004 and it will takenst least a week to arrive.

The costume thing is getting really annoying. It feels like damn near every game I buy I'm stuck with one or two costumes, but there's tons for sale. I understand it for licensed things like how Zestiria has Evangelion costumes and since things like that don't really happen without money I don't mind it, but regular things they could've just put in the game to make it better. It seems like such a waste to make a huge game and skimp on things like that. It just comes off as greedy.

That really does bother me. When you're used to hearing Japanese all the time it just seems stranger to have something so profoundly Japanese missing it. It seems like they think the honorifics and stuff make up for it and it might for people who aren't constantly hearing Japanese, but when you do it just comes off kind of strange.

That's what they've said in the past, but it seems like their might be hope for the future based on this interview. It kind of seems like people like Xseed and Atlus are proud of their dubs and think so highly of them that it worries me they don't understand that there's people who want to hear the original too regardless of how good of a job they've done and take it as an insult. Hopefully, that's just me worrying though.

They changed his name from Johnny to Karyl? That sounds like some Shing Kor shit. That's a weird spelling too and now Tales has at least two "Karol's".

Oh wow, I guess it's still nothing that couldn't make it into a PG-13 movie, but that does surprise me they wouldn't cut it if they were already giving characters sex changes. (That reminds me, I think the Birdo thing from Mario Bros. was a tranny in Japan, but changed here.)

I'm sure there would be complaints. Shit, even Xseed got all that crap for having the word trap in their Akiba's Trip game. It seems like everyone has some persecution complex and with us or against us attitude these days.
I'm surprised there's even comics about Shadow Hearts. I didn't know it was that popular. I suppose I haven't looked at much stuff since I still need to play it, but I though Penny Arcade was usually about more mainstream type stuff.

Yeah, I've been waiting for a memory card for a long time. I really need to quit ordering things with slow ass shipping from Hong Kong. One time it took so long to get a DS charger that I didn't even need it anymore by the time it arrived and it took me over a month to get my last play-asia order.

Yeah, Destiny was a bit odd with character names at times (I can't forget if they left Stahn as is or changed it to Stan), but I'm a bit lenient on that since it was the first game in the series to be brought west anyhow. Johnny got changed to Karyl , and Mighty Kongman became Bruiser Kang in the English version, and I'm not really clear on the reasoning. I assume that the DC fan translation will use the original names for all the characters. I suppose that while right now it seems odd since they have an actual character named Karol, Destiny came out here (I want to say) a decade before Vesperia was ever released.

At least in Eternia, changing Fog to Max makes a fair amount of since, given that Fog isn't an actual person's name, and Tales seems to like using using western names in Japan anyhow (barring Japanese inspired characters like Suzu and Sheena, who remain named as such in the English localizations and fan translations; Hearts is also a bit odd like that, though that uses a rock/mineral naming scheme for all the major characters in Japan if memory serves).

I figure that there's times the ESRB is just plain asleep at the wheel, or the preview things they're given don't actually cover how far a game goes. And with those scenes, while the former is maybe a bit over halfway through or so, the latter is right before the end of Disc 2, so it would require pretty much beating the game to see. And they just fade to black before anything outright happens, but there's text on the screen (such as "I had never felt closer to my brother than I did on that day.) that pretty much says what's happening if you're old enough to notice. And the translation quality itself being wonky might also play into it. Surprises me a bit that WA2 hasn't seen a retranslation or at least a fan created edit for text flow to make it better (As far as I know, the main script is accurate, just not worded the best); not sure what could be done to fix Liz' dialogue though, as he uses some Japanese specific double speak that I'm not sure would translate well into English (the translators apparently didn't get it either, and while they translated it accurately for what he says at face value, it makes zero sense since the secondary meanings aren't caught).

Out of all four games, the only one that got a lot of mainstream recognition was Covenant, likely because IGN actually named it RPG of the year for 2004 (I'm honestly pretty surprised by that; not that it isn't a fantastic game, but just that they'd. The series on the whole is still really niche for a JRPG, and I assume either the PA guys heard of it, or one dabbled in it a bit, found their first stud card (which like all items in the games have both an image and flavor text for) and what they were for, and went "what the fuck." Though to be fair, they're not ragging on the mechanic or series or devs for having it, just finding it bizarre enough to make a comic about. Though these aren't exactly the sort of games to play with company or family in the same room anyhow, let alone when you pick up Mr. Matador or some other shit.

You ought to work on downloading stuff to put on it in the meantime, provided you have space on your drive for storage until then.

What the fuck?

Not even "legit" download systems like the PSN get their genre tags for games right at times.
The game's a turn-based JRPG just like its predecessor.

You kids have it easy. For some reason, getting anything shipped to Canada takes a fucking age and a half. I've been waiting over a month for a fucking battery to come in. I don't even have a god damn guarantee that it will work since the last 2 I got fucked up on me.

Did PSP have any good E3 moments? I don't really remember any myself, but it had to be better than how SCEA treats the Vita right?

Maybe they were gonna start a weather naming scheme like Final Fantasy before the west rained on their parade. A Fog and Lightning crossover doujin just sounds better than Max and Lighting.

I don't know movies kind of have the same weird ratings where some things push the rating. I think it just stands out to us more since publishers use the ESRB as an excuse all the time, When it's not the publishers it seems like it's the fans, with people trying to say Nintendo wanted a lower rating for SMTxFE when it makes no fucking sense. I'm sure there are times when they totally miss stuff though.

Damn, I wonder what else was out that year and who was working there that picked it. It normally does seem like the JRPG players at shit publications still have better taste than their co-workers. Based on my experience reading garbage like Game Informer anyway.

Not likely. Only shared naming schemes are between Reid, Farah, and Keele, and is in regards to the last names being those of researchers and scientists. Usually Tales just has western sounding names from the start, at times with the names having a meaning relevant to the characters (Yuri Lowell for example can have a few meanings that can be read into it; Yuri being a common name in Russia, perhaps fitting with his lower class background, while Lowell in French means "little wolf," which the game toys with in arte names like Lone Wolf Charge, Wolf Strike, and Savage Wolf Fury).

The weird thing is regards to the Shadow Hearts series is that in PAL countries, all of them but FtNW are M15+ rated (which I assume to be the equivalent of ESRB's M rating, or at least somewhere between T and M), while in NA, it's just Koudelka and SH1 that are rated M, and Covenant and FtNW are rated T. Admittedly FtNW is much lighter in tone, (though there's still stuff like Gerard and his biker butt buddy trying to coerce Johnny into a relationship with them and Shanoa's Spirit Fusions having a transformation sequence with her stripping down to her bra and panties), but the only real difference between Covenant and SH1 is that it doesn't have blood and gore, but still has bizarre shit all over that should have warranted an M rating like it did in PAL areas.

Checking 2004 western release dates on Wikipedia, not a whole lot, actually. Found the follow there, but I'm not sure if IGN would class stuff like MMOs and tactical games differently from RPGs.
Strikes me that the only really big name games that it would be competing with (which isn't to speak ill of the quality of the other games at all; more going off of popular series/publishers people would be drawn to) would have been FFXI and Star Ocean (admittedly I'm not clear on how well known Atlus and NISA were at the time).

IGN is the same group that gave SH1 a 5/10 score. Admittedly not sure who did that review (nor do I really care to give them page hits to find out), but according to wikipedia, one Jeremy Dunham at IGN gave Covenant a 9.1, calling it a "perfect sequel" which "deserves to be in every role-playing fan's personal library."

Anyhow, thread's at bump limit and at page 13 now, so I guess I'll see you some other PSP/Vita/JRPG thread.