Ar tonelico II released in US.

[Cless]

Finally finished Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All. Thoughts:

Case 1: Decent for a tutorial case; longer and more interesting than the tutorial case for the first one

Case 2: I couldn't stand Ini Miney or Morgan Fey. Fairly good case overall. Very nice end, though.

Case 3: Mixed feelings. Terrible client. Kinda eh for awhile, but gets nice towards the end I guess. Sadly though, I felt this one was a bit predictable. Better than case 3 in the first game at least, which I still think became completely stupid after the motive was revealed.

Case 4: Hoooooly crap this was amazing. Does it really top case 4 of the first game? I can't say for certain, but it's at least in the same league. Nice ending. Phoenix has to lose his first case, but for good reason. Teaming up with Gumshoe and Edgeworth is just awesome.

I didn't like most of the new characters in this game. Ini Miney...so annoying! Morgan Fey...I think I dreaded most having to listen to her really, REALLY boring theme music. Franziska's antics were more annoying and less intimidating than her father's. However, I at least liked little Pearls, more than I expected at first glance. Something looked really freaky about Mia when channeled into her, though.

I'm still on break from my projects and I intend to complete one more game before I get back to them. As much as I'd like start on Phoenix Wright Trials and Tribulations, Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica just came out and I've really been looking forward to that one for awhile. Gonna start on it tomorrow.

[throughhim413]

If you don't mind my asking, what'd you think of the first Ar Tonelico?

[Cless]

It was extremely flawed in a lot of key ways. But somehow, it had a lot of charm and a very lovely soundtrack to me which made it a pleasant surprise in the end. I went into it thinking I wasn't going to like it all that much. It turned out to be one of my favorite games of 2007. Atelier Iris didn't really hold my attention for more than a few hours...

[Cless Aileron]

It reminds me that I kept the first Ar Tonelico on my rental list for a while but I am getting scared from trying it.

The dating sim aspect isn't exactly the part that's scaring me off...it's more of the innuendo-induced dialogue that could possibly feel highly embarrassing.  This video, for example... and people pointing the innuendo out.

I figure I should ask about your take on the dialogue.  Did you, or were you able to, read deeper into the dialogue to see any of its (supposed) double entendre and would you honestly consider it, in your opinion, embarrassing?  Maybe I just want to ask to see if these fans are just exaggerating (I would say something different but I'll just try to avoid making a dirty comment).

Anyway, I'm still playing Rock Band 2 (yes, I'm still not playing a real rhythm game [/sarcasm]) and still needing to play other stuff on me.

*Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (PS2).  Being side tracked by other games.
*Lego Indiana Jones (Xbox 360).  Also sidetracked and this is my rental game right now.
*Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360).  I've been having difficulty getting together with a friend for co-op to the point that I'm just putting the game in to train for multiplayer.  I'm about ready to just go solo, while keeping myself open to let anyone join in on the campaign.

[throughhim413]

Sounds like a reaction similar to mine. I found the game to be wholly average (excluding an excellent soundtrack), but there was something about it that I really got sucked into. I too ordered the second game hoping for some major improvements on the first game, so I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I wrote up a review of the game a while back because I couldn't get it out of my head. Might be interesting if someone is really bored or something.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

maybe it's just me, but the dialogue in that video is... brutally awkward? i don't just mean the context... i mean the translation/sentence composition.

[Cless]

It reminds me that I kept the first Ar Tonelico on my rental list for a while but I am getting scared from trying it.

The dating sim aspect isn't exactly the part that's scaring me off...it's more of the innuendo-induced dialogue that could possibly feel highly embarrassing.  This video, for example... and people pointing the innuendo out.

I figure I should ask about your take on the dialogue.  Did you, or were you able to, read deeper into the dialogue to see any of its (supposed) double entendre and would you honestly consider it, in your opinion, embarrassing?  Maybe I just want to ask to see if these fans are just exaggerating (I would say something different but I'll just try to avoid making a dirty comment).

The innuendo isn't that transparent, but I'll say one thing--I would not want to be caught dead playing it in front of other people. Fortunately, I could play it in private, so I had fun with it.

And yes, the script badly needed another editor to go over it. It felt like it was translated by an average fansubber and then edited by someone who didn't have the skills to transform it enough. I couldn't count the number of times where I said to myself "If I was doing this, I'd edit it THIS way" or "This is way too long and awkwardly phrased... You could cut half of this text out and not lose a thing, and make it much clearer." It was a bigger problem in the menus, however. It didn't manage to hamper my enjoyment too much, though.

But NISA's last really good localization was Phantom Brave's, which at this point seems like was outsourced to Atlus (I don't know this for certain, however). Disgaea 3's localization has had the most effort since that I've seen, but still doesn't quite seem up there with that or the original Disgaea's.

[Cless]

Quick impressions on AT2:

1) Soundtrack is as lovely as ever. I've already heard the OST (and the amazing hymmnos albums), but it's even better in context. So far I think it might even better than the original's. This and the original probably have my favorite soundtracks on the system.

2) Higher production values than the original overall. Still not really up there with 2D Tales game, however. One thing though is that the battle sprites are lower resolution and thus less detailed. They might be animated better as a result but I'm not positive.

3) Battle system seems a lot more interesting than the first game's. Has some semi-realtime elements and even borrows a little bit from Valkyrie Profile, which I like.

4) Difficulty settings. Although only Easy and Normal (maybe you can unlock a hard mode later?). The original game was SUPER easy. Maybe the easy setting is to make it more like the original. Normal seems like it might be a little harder than the original game's difficulty, but it's not shown itself to be crippling or frustrating. I'm not very far yet, though.

5) Though he looks like a woman, Croix seems like a better main character than Lyner.

6) Minor negative: Game engine still feels a bit...I dunno..."stiff"? Original game had this little problem, too. Not a dealbreaker, though!

7) Another little negative: writing quality still doesn't seem like par to me. Lines here and there come off a little funny, and some a little dry. It might be better than the original's overall, though.

Certainly has the potential be even better than the original. Most have said that it is.

[throughhim413]

How do the menus look? I remember the original having some menus that looked entirely unprofessional. I really hope they fixed that.

Are you playing with the English or Japanese voices? Either way, how are they? They would have a hard time NOT improving over the original, but I'm still curious.

[Cless]

The menus look pretty lolz to me. The game uses the same font as the original. Some text I can't imagine being readable on a flickery SDTV display:



I'm playing with English voices. I haven't heard too much VA yet, but they aren't destroying my ears. But then, I'm a tolerant guy. I played the original in English too, and while no measuring stick for quality, it had a weird charm and a bit of camp value to it that pushed me to leave them on.

It's said though that 10% of the voice acting was cut from the game for whatever reason (scheduling issues?). Incidentally, they apparently cut the 10% that wasn't dubbed from the Japanese track, too. It sounded like disc space when issues when I first heard about it, but both tracks only occupy about 600MB of space and there's still about 300 free...

[Rmarques]

Apparently, they also changed a few names for both characters and events/concepts. This was stuff that was said in the language made-up by the developers too.

[Cless]

The quality of the writing of this game's translation is really killing me. A lot of really awkward phrasings in conversations, and the Knight Mail's description doesn't make any sense at all. Otherwise, I really like the game so far.



I really wish they'd outsource their localizations to 8-4. There aren't enough Picard facepalms for what I've seen already.

[throughhim413]

Sounds like I should expect more of the same. Much though I'd like to see 8-4 in action more frequently, I'm not sure they have the staff to support more projects. Maybe I'm wrong about that though...

[Cless]

The VA seems to at least be a step up from the original's localization. I wouldn't place it among the best I've heard though, so far.

It's possible the writing may be slightly better during VAed scenes (can't say for certain, still not very far), as I remember Atlus mentioning in a blog feature saying they often had to have their editor go back and rewrite voiced lines in the middle of recording, as many of them didn't come off so well in vocal form.

Vesperia's rushed localization may be a testament to that. The voice acted dialogue in that game is pretty well-written, but the non-voiced stuff is often less polished, and more obscure non-voiced stuff may as come off as near engrish.

Thus far there have been more non-voiced story scenes than voiced ones, though.

EDIT: I just recorded this (I don't think it's spoilerific.). There's no sound (no voice anyway). http://www.tales-cless.org/at2AWKWARD.avi. Nearly the whole conversation reads awkwardly to me.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

one thing i don't get is... font choice. are they blind? that font looks like it's straight from the japanese version. i happen to like MS UI Gothic, but it definitely has a distinct feel of "otherness" to it.

ToV is an even worse offender, though. here, it looks like they didn't even think about it. in ToV, it looks like they spent time thinking about it, but they're all goddamn morons. seriously, wtf? font 1's spacing is horrific and font 2 is just retarded. thank god whoever suggested font 3 was sane. couldn't they have just copied abyss's font??

[throughhim413]

Watching that video makes me remember my ToP text translation - attempting to preserve Japanese punctuation, using downright bizarre phrases, and failing to capture the feeling of the scene by getting caught up in the words. I hope the voiced scenes read better, because playing a whole game with that sort of dialogue would be painful.