Nihon Falcom thread

Cold Steel did well, and they've gotten more efficient at translating Trails games. Since the rest of the series going forward really needs The 3rd - and, of course, Crossbell - to make sense they're diving into them headfirst. I'd wager from a translation standpoint it's also really important to get the older games done just to make sure there isn't any references that they might miss when translating newer ones… especially in a series so tightly connected as Kiseki.

The only real problem I foresee for the series' future is the lack of a truly viable version of Ao no Kiseki to translate. There is no Japanese PC version, and Falcom seems very… unkeen to make one. That affects Zero no Kiseki as well, since I doubt XSEED would want to get started on that one without any sort of idea about what to do with the other half of the story.

i'm sure not having carpe fulgur and their suicidal employee working on the translation for 3rd chapter will help the budget + speed of the translation.

Well, assuming that the PC version touch-up doesn't hit any snags.

Carpe Fulgur's not working on 3rd, or any XSEED project at the moment. Cold Steel II's translation just finished, so there's plenty of time for translating 3rd, the shortest game in the series.

Beard the Lion in His Den doesn't get enough airplay.

Is there something that would stop them from simply getting the licenses for the Chinese PC versions or whatever and using the japanese script? Or is it a hugely different text insertion or something technical?

The PSP remakes weren't that bad, aside from the translation. Lately, I've been thinking about finding copies of the three games' scripts and fixing all of the spelling and grammar errors myself. I know it's far less ideal than a proper re-translation, but it would at least be something to make the games more playable, and be something to hold people over until Falcom finally goes through with a remake.

Seriously, where can I find the dialog scripts for the games? I've been dissecting a UMD of White Witch and I can find the music and the artwork, but I can't find where the in-game text is stored, as I am kind of retarded when it comes to this Holla Forums stuff.

They don't speak Chinese or have a translator

Post >yfw XSEED brings Zero and Azure

It's going to fucking happen and you know it

Also shit Falcom should change:

More fucking merchandise. Is it that hard to release figures or even fucking gachapon? You could make tons of Gachapon series based on Falcom characters and IPs. Why, Falcom? It's easy as fuck. Don't underestimate your own popularity. Or just start with Trails first.

Also, hire more fucking people. 50 employees for everything you do is really, really good, but at this point you need more employees. I'm not saying your numbers should be 200, but games nowadays require more people, specially if you want to expand your business outside Japan.

I'm pretty excited to see how the PS4 version of Ys VIII will do on the West, since that's the reason for its existence.

Legend of Heroes's overworld vehicle theme got a jammin' piano arrangement back in the mid-'90s.

Joyoland's apparently going to focus on console localization now, or else they won't survive now that China's lifted their console import ban. I hear they've already begun hiring PS4 coders! So I'm not sure they'd care to cooperate with XSEED.

Only person I know who might already have extracted the scripts is kotora, the Chinese guy who runs the FalcomBOB site. He definitely found and cleaned up the in-game portraits and music for each release, so I'm sure he'd know how the find the scripts. I don't know if Bamco used a text compression routine that Falcvt can detect, sadly.

Kotobukiya just opened an office in Tachikawa, so here's hoping Falcom strikes a figurine deal. They once had a deal with Atelier Sai for cheap figures, not much better than gachapon, and the old Falcom store had Ys figurines. Falcom would obviously start with Kiseki and Toxanadu, then progress to earlier IPs. A series based on Kow Yoshikawa's models used for 1985's Xanadu would perk me up.

Falcom really needs to hire and keep more people. Investing in new, better programmers and designers really would help, plus someone who can replace Takeiri as head writer. Top people aren't gonna leave anytime soon, which is fine because Kusano, Ishikawa, and Kondo are good where they are. Sound Team jdk and the art team's doing fine, but I'd get better 3D modelers to more accurately replicate the promo/concept art made for each game.

>XSEED Games [email protected]/* */

Here we fucking go fucking again.

What the hell could it even be? The thrice over bit would make me think it's 3rd but they already announced that.

New Ys VIII commercial in the embed. Still framedrops during regular skills, but check out Master Expand Dong fighting the loli, and dat sci-fi dungeon area. There's also footage of the anime OP, but who cares.

Thrice over = the three games that they've released in English?

Personally my gut is telling me it's just Fate/Extella.

They really made Tokyo Xanadu feel like an anime, opening song plays like in every episode in the beginning.

Anyone here can't wait for these semen demons?

twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/738351623676694528
That was too good to be true

faxanadu best falcom
new faxanadu when

Faxanadu wasn't made by Falcom.

Plus Kaze no Densetsu and Xanadu Next are way better.

i haven't played them. legacy of the wizard was fucking awesome, though.
how many other games in the series follow that action-platformer-exploration-RPG aka metroidvania formula like faxanadu and legacy of the wizard?

At this point I just want to know what the hell it means.

Also, when I went back to the XSEED page I was confused when there wasn't another cryptic tweet after it. Did I just dream that happening?

Ok, here is it! This is what XSEED was teasing about before…

operationrainfall.com/2016/06/02/xseed-three-indie-games/

I'm sure no one expected this. I'm still like "the hell?"

I knew these were coming, but man I didn't expect that this was today's announcement. In retrospect, it does make sense…

I wonder when they're going to announce the "big" ones.

What? I thought Wayforward published Shantae themselves.

physical copies

Faxanadu and Legacy of the Wizard (Drasle Family) aren't in the same series, but there's other Dragon Slayer franchise games you might like. The original Xanadu predates Metroid but can be considered a prototype for that kind of game; try the MSX1 version for an easier first impression, or Revival Xanadu for best presentation. Sorcerian as a whole is about dungeon crawling and revisiting parts of levels, but it's scenario-based, meaning there's no interconnected world.

I think you'd like Xanadu Next the most: easier than many earlier Dragon Slayer adventures but polished, very replayable, and still a challenge. Think a mix of Falcom's own Brandish/Zwei!! games, Western overhead hack 'n' slash stuff like Nox (or a game Falcom produced called Rinne), and then Metroidvania.

All this sounds like the preamble to E3 announcements.

This is an E3 announcement. They've announced about half the stuff they're showing off on the show floor between the indies and Cold Steel II.

Not gonna lie I'm pretty disappointed. Shantae is a pretty mediocre series, and I have no idea what Exile's End is.
The Touhou game, if I recall correctly, is a pretty neat Ys clone, so at least that's cool. Although…
Are they serious? Not even Vita?

The game is originally a PC game. But no PC version for the West, just a console port.

Fuck.

About to beat Ares Mode in Brandish TDR. It's so much easier to see false doors in this game, I swear. The new music for Fortress has grown on me, and I love how many lobsters you get to slice.

Yeah, what gives. I'm hoping there isn't some outstanding legal/developer conflict involved.

So they just tweeted this. I think this is from the PS3 version, right?

Yes, the picture in the background gets pixelated, because the PS3 version is the PSP version emulated with the PC textures and new GUI textures. The background is a screenshot of the screen when the menu was opened, but since it's only emulation it uses the PSPs resolution for this.

...

"They" as in Falcom or XSEED? It'd be weird if XSEED suddenly released 3rd on PS3 after not releasing the other two.

That's super weird. Why wouldn't they base it off the PC version?

Because the PS3 already has the emulator included. They just had to replace the assets.
This feature is called PSP Remastered and is only available for developers in Japan, because it doesn't support trophies and Sony of America enforces them.

Is that why we XSEED never brought over the PS3 versions then?

Exactly.

I'm a big fan of getting trophies but it seems dumb that they have that policy. I wonder why it's not the same over in Japan.

Finished Ys Seven on Hard. This lost town at end-game is cool, though ultimately just a storage closet for loot.

Enjoy the ending!

Oh man, I forgot Ys 8 is coming out so soon in Japan. I'm kind of tempted to import but I know I'll have a better experience playing on PS4 with the better framerate when that comes out.

Dela Mode's done. I love how effortlessly Brandish: The Dark Revenant modernized the original game. These extra floors are fun as hell, a bit more repetitive and skill-based than Fortress and Cave maps, squeezing a lot of juice out of the engine. Dela's got stuff like breaking flying swords, using M. Poison against skeletons, shifting pillar mazes, managing teleporters and doors by putting items in chests…only things missing were hidden door puzzles and a new mini-boss. It's not exactly hard, but challenging in ways you wouldn't expect from Ares Mode. Please give it a shot once you've beaten The Dark Revenant.

I still need to figure out how to beat the final boss's second phase w/o items, so maybe I'll load up the save later. Definitely enjoyed this game a lot.

...

I think I've found where the text data to Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch is, but I don't know what any of this kind of text means. I assume it's some kind of scripting language? As I said, I'm retarded when it comes to Holla Forums stuff. I know what DAT. files are, but usually the letters are in English, or at least one consistent language, but I don't really know what this is. I tried pasting it into Google translate just to see what it was, and it said it was Icelandic. Then I just searched it in startpage and it acted like I was trying to look up porn or something.

Does anyone know what this means? Again, I know I'm being really retarded here.

is any of that hex referring to a relative offset from position in the dump?

The hell is wrong with him? That… face-head, Jesus.

Just wanted to point out that if someone wants to re-translate the PSP remake, there are two different versions. The first one has the same battle system than the original game; the second one uses the new turn based system.

Second line in this hint has me thinking Xanadu Next's gonna release soon. By proxy that could mean Tokyo Xanadu's revealing at E3, but I don't know enough about that game yet. Lotsa streets in Tachikawa with forks.

Hemuvel's gotten a little better lately, but lol

The "three different forks in the street" is probably the new Story of Seasons game which has three different towns to go to.
"Mystical beat" is most likely Akiba's Beat since Xseed already registered the name for it.
The dream stuff might be Trails 3rd (which I doubt) or Little King's Story.
With the emperor probably having something to do with Cold Steel 2.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+ announced for PS4.

This is why they didn't announce the game yet for the West? The game would make more sense for the PS4 here than for the Vita only.

#PS4 version of Tokyo Xanadu confirmed, titled Tokyo Xanadu eX+, out September. Has new charas, After & Side stories

Tokyo Xanadu eX+ full release date is 8 Sept #PS4
New modes added: Time Attack, Boss Rush
New difficulty added: Calamity
#TokyoXanadu

I'm glad to see Falcom is considering the western market more than before. I'm also glad I didn't import the Vita version yet cause I can get this version instead.

New Pokemons and a new Pokemon trainer announced for Ys VIII.

I'm sure our market will become more and more important with the time. At first they didn't think their games could become popular here, but they were completely wrong. it's only going to get better.

I hope this also means PC ports sooner or later.

Vita is region free you don't even need to import one its not full retard like the 3DS

The Ys VIII promotional movie is now subbed.

Here.
gematsu.com/2016/06/falcom-wants-release-ys-vi-ps4

I hope they only port it and that's it. I don't want to see remakes and remakes all the time about old Ys games. After V and maaaybe I & II, there's no need for more ys remakes. Just give us new adventures.

It might be just like the Ys Origin vita port, which I think fell off the earth, because I haven't heard anything about it since it was announced. The only old Ys game that needs is Ys V, like you said, and a remake of I & II is inevitable. If Falcom has to remake an old game, then it be better a Brandish game, because i need more Brandish after playing Dark Revenant.

Rad. Calamity mode sounds useful, and those extra modes are gonna provide some value. I know these likely won't make it into the Vita version (plus the new chapters), but XSEED should bring over both versions for their market.

Mr. Black Robe is back.

We need to improve our sales numbers to compete with Chinese Falcom revenue, but it's nice that senpai will notice us on occasion. Now to promote Xanadu Next.

Ys VI doesn't need a remake as much as I & II could, let alone V. It's just fine being the revival of Ys for the new millennium, unless Falcom thinks Seven holds that position now. Falcom should make a compilation of their mid-2000s Ys games for PS4 if they're wanting to introduce new fans to the classics.

Seriously, Brandish 2 a la TDR would be a feast.

Since when was this announced? I never heard of it until now.

Weird, I can't seem to find anything about it. I could have sworn that Falcom announced this on twitter though.

I think you misunderstood something or thought a rumor were true.

Some 2ch "insider" claimed that Falcom was going to remake Ys V for Vita and VI for PS4 or something like that. And they didn't.

If falcom didn't port Ys origin along the other Ys games for PSP, it's because they didn't want to.

There was a mobile port of Ys Origin years ago, too, which you might be thinking of.

Prelude to the Omen just for kicks.

I see. I remember hearing about it a year ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy.

Disgusting. Yeah, I know it's optional but still retarded.

It doesn't bother me too much, but it does prevent me from taking most cutscenes seriously. I guess it's alright if you're on a second playthrough or something.

Here, have a more serious screenshot with major Cold Steel II spoilers.

You know, I feel there's something off with this guy. His looks, his personality, his disappearance… He is actually one of the bad guys and involved in the accident, right?

You can't fool me anymore, Falcom, I know your ways.

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The Gog sales has started, if you are interested in getting any game or if you want to support further the games (specially Trails) buying a second copy, this is your chance.

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New deals on GOG, take your chance while you can!

What the hell? Watchmojo does "Top 10"s, right? What kind of top 10 from them would include the final boss theme from a game that's pretty much unknown in the west?

I already own them all on Steam so I hope they show up on GOG Connect. It'd be nice to put them all on a flash drive or something for safe keeping.

Well I'll be damned. It's only in the honorable mentions though. There's also an Ys (or as he says it, EESOO) song on this list so that's good to see.

I just beat Ys V. The possibility for this game to become one of the best in the series via remake is enormous. If there's any Ys game I feel won't have the party system, it's this one; at best Stoker could become your Alchemy sidekick like the Administrator from Nayuta no Kiseki. But you don't meet up with Stein until late near end-game, Massea doesn't have the motivation to follow Adol that Stoker has, and the Iburs don't strike me as quick to partner with a goody two-shoes like Adol. There's a lot of complexity Falcom left out of the game/s story and mechanics from the original draft (transcriptions here: www2.jan.ne.jp/~psyzans/Kura/Kuramenu.html) which the remake will no doubt restore, aside from Dogi settling down in Xandria with Effey because Felghana suggests he really likes Elena.

Until then, it's the worst Ys game developed by Falcom. I think it was rushed to completion because they did Legend of Xanadu II the same year (on a platform in its last throes). Expert sounds tediously more difficult to play through, but the original game's as easy as they come, more annoying than hard. Crafting in the party-system games could easily be turned into a new, superior form of Alchemy, because it's terrible as is, the basic fireball spell you learn early on being the most useful magic in the game. I love the music, but it definitely needs more rock-style arrangement to feel like Ys, not simply a Falcom game w/orchestral focus. Definitely play this if you want to decompress and try a mediocre but interesting Ys game.

He's (badly) pronouncing the Japanese romanization of Ys, which is still better than "wise". List also has Silver Will in the Honorable Mentions part, which means Sound Team jdk beats out Sakuraba by one track. Good job.

Hate how this board remembers embeds.

Will they make Terra likeable? Nah, impossible. But yeah, exactly what you said is what everyone thinks about Ys V. It's not that bad, the fact that a new version of Ys V has so much potential is its proof, but as an Ys game…

I wonder if modern Falcom can make Ys V great again. It doesn't look like they are up to the challenge right now.

All they have to do is channel elements of Nayuta into the remake and I'm set (not the story, though, I hear Nayuta's plot is disappointing). I like Terra in Ys VI; Laxia's probably gonna become the bigger tsundere, but Terra helped a lot in the latter part of Napishtim. Ultimately they won't do to Kefin what they did with Memories of Celceta, because that game was clearly a modern adaption of the previous Ys IV games, the original documents, plus the current Ys lore (e.x. places like Danaan, Romun not being a monolithic evil empire, &c.). Ys V simply wasn't finished the way it was meant to be. Kondo's more likely to have his team scrutinize the old concepts and redo the game Felghana-style. And since it'll be the first game after a set of threes (Seven, Celceta, Lacrimosa), there's historic precedent for the developers to change style (Napishtim, Oath, Origin) between trilogies.

Embed related, it's the Kefin Ruins music.

If we follow history, the next game should be Ys IX with a new gameplay style, and a lot of the changes made on VIII are hints. The second game on the trilogies are always new versions of a previous Ys game.

Back when Infinity Next was still a thing, it was using inline embeds within the body of the post. Some people actually sperged out about it for some reason even though it was probably the one good thing it did. I don't really see any why we can't just have both types of embeds, though.

The major changes in Ys VIII so far are platforming, the Break system (destroying an enemy's defense using their weak attribute, then having flexibility in damaging them), switching between two protagonists' stories, and mini-games/facilities imported from Sen no Kiseki II. I can see Break working for a new Ys V, and Xandria Port needs meat on its bones, but I'm not sure if giving Stoker, Stein, or the Iburs their own playable portion(s) would make sense for the Ys V remake. And who knows how much Ys IX's going to change and keep. Something more like Toxanadu or Zwei!! is likeliest to happen.

Well, fuck

What exactly is the break system? Isn't that like… when you fight a boss and it gets dizzy for a few seconds?

That's stun.

gematsu.com/2016/02/ys-viii-details-attack-attributes-break-system

Kinda sounds like "hit until it becomes easier".

Finished Ys II recently. I was disappointed that they didn't keep Ys I. It's been a while since I played I but I remember being pretty much forced to fight each boss at an appropriate level. I'm sure you could eke out some extra advantages for yourself but not really all that much. In Ys II it's pretty easy to significantly outlevel bosses, especially since there's an incentive to kill each monster 30 times or so for the Bestiary. That's how it is typically is for ARPGs though so I'm guessing you can do plenty of grinding in other Ys/Falcom games.

I was wondering what exactly Nightmare difficulty changes in Ys II Chronicles? Think I read in a guide that the monster stats don't change from difficulty to difficulty so I was wondering what changed at all. I was playing on Hard and the only boss that was all that difficult was Darm so I was thinking I'd go back through it. Didn't use healing items on any of the bosses either. Also wish the game let you know which mascots you're missing.

The Complete mode doesn't really seem to work properly, it isn't in 1920x1080 even though that's what I have it set to. The windowed mode isn't really creating a proper window, either, though that might not be any better in the Chronicles mode.

Well, I don't think it was something universally despised. Next was so bad so people weren't going to bother defending what little good did and were going to make everything about it out to be bad. I think we could still get better embeds if it wasn't related to something else that's awful.

Ideally the game would let you solo as one of the characters if there's a way to Break enemies immediately and then use the weapon you've got, or just give Adol all-type weapons to simplify things (one way to redeem Celceta's crafting system).

Ys II Chronicles+ on Nightmare gave me a lot of trouble when trying to bump enemies diagonally, way more than on Normal, so it starts to feel like Ys I. Darm and Zava are noticeably tougher, and Dalles finally challenged me enough to fit his role in the story. Shame to hear the Complete frame doesn't resize that high for you, having that extra viewing space makes both games a lot more fun.

I never even bothered to try and attack regular enemies diagonally, just lined up off center and rammed into them. I use a dpad and 8 way movement which I feel makes lining up off center easier. Not really any good for the bosses though.

Maybe I'll try to get the Complete frame working again. Is the game mode you choose when you start a new game something separate from the frame?

I'm never going to be able to stop playing JRPGs. Knowing Japanese complicates the matter because I'm not sure how the localizations are, if they'll be more fun in Nip or English.

Also, does anyone know what this +20090 XP is?

Don't worry, XSEED is the publisher. And there's one or two characters with better writing on the English scripts.

I don't know a thing about XSEED. I believe they're the ones who try very hard not to censor things, and simply don't release them if they'll have to edit things too much. They also have interesting localization blogs I've glanced at, those are pretty cool. They seem pretty competent.

Nevermind, I'm blind.

You're right, XSEED (mainly their Falcom specialist Tom) adamantly opposes censoring their products, unless the original developers cho(o)se to change things (like how Falcom censored an optional story part of Trails 3rd, but only on PSP because of CERO).

Actually, Tom said that if they released the 3rd on PSP (back when it could be possible), they would try to uncensor the console release.

Well that's good to know. One of the many reasons I started studying Japanese was because of censorship and generally bad localization (and no localizations). If they're as good as they seem, I'll probably just play Trails in English, I'm a little burned out on playing text heavy Japanese games in Japanese, I'm on like, my 20th one in two years.

What about the Ys game's localizations? Specifically the ones here gog.com/promo/20160609_summer_bundle_ys? I imagine the newer ones are fine, but I don't know about the older ones. Memories of Celceta caught my interest, and I thought I should investigate the earlier games first, since that's how I roll. Looks like that pack only contains five of the (7?) main games though, I'd have to get the others elsewhere.

There's an Ys guide at the top of the thread, the third OP's picture. Just follow the release order.

The old games have a good translation as well, and the western PC versions are improved over the original PC releases. Specially the Trails games, the best version is western PC release by far, there's no point on playing the Japanese versions right now. Pics related, western PC version vs PS3 port (which is emulating the PSP port with slightly improved assets).

That is quite the difference. Thanks for the info, I'll probably just grab the Ys games while I'm at it as well then.

Ys is probably the best choice to start playing Falcom games. Falcom is more about action RPGs than turn-.based, although nowadays they are Trails this and Trails that.

Also posting Ys trailers because selling the franchise to a newcomer is a good reason to rewatch them

youtube.com/watch?v=dCx9fK6Z-EE

youtube.com/watch?v=1CJh-RFq4gQ

youtube.com/watch?v=J-MDxwC6m5I

youtube.com/watch?v=YizVrUcObWA

youtube.com/watch?v=7Tw_O_fEFPk

The PS3 version is actually 1080p. The low resolution in the screenshot is, because the game use a frame buffer effect for the menu background, that can only use the original PSP resolution as long as the game is just emulated.
Still, the PS3 version has a worse fov and no dynamic shadows.

Does anyone know what all the differences are between the difficulties in Ys: Memories of Celceta? I kinda want to do Nightmare, but not if it's just going to be grindy as fuck. So far the only information I've found on this front is that you get less gold at higher difficulties.

Ys isn't grinding, unless you resort to grinding to beat bosses instead of gitting gud. Hell, I didn't even use the crafting system.

The early XSEED Ys translations are sourced from Deuce, and were edited by Tom @ XSEED. No one's recently done text comparisons between the Japanese originals and Deuce's scripts. Ys VI: Ark of Napishtim was translated from scratch by Varion, who also led translation for Trails of Cold Steel. I trust Varion's work more than Deuce's, but the earlier games' scripts are good at least.

It's more of a grind to obtain gear in Seven on Nightmare (even when ignoring crafting), and bosses get spongy too. Hard difficulty seems like the best option for Seven and, from what I've heard, Celceta.

Theme of Kefin sounds perfect in the orchestral arrange album.

1. Sanyuutei Enjo (media-savvy rakugo from the '80s, also wrote a PC-88 game called Zavas) doing a 1986 Falcom ad

Other images explain themselves.

o-oh thanks I guess

Holy shit this arrange is so fucking good.