Tetracast 391: Send In The Clowns

Welcome back to another episode of the TetraCast. This is RPG Sites weekly podcast where we get the site staff together to talk about our favorite genre of video games. I'm your host. My name is Brian Vitale. Joining me, I've got Josh Torres. Howdy. Adam Vitale. Hello. James Galizio. Hey, folks. Oh, there he is. How's it going? and joining us for the first time on the podcast we have paul shkreli hey everyone

So Paul is a longtime contributor to RPG Site. He's done several reviews and some news and other features for us. This is your first time on the TetraCast. So welcome to the podcast, Paul. Thank you. Thank you very much. So for this week's podcast, our first game, our main topic for this week is going to be the recently released remastered collection of Lunar. Lunar Remastered Collection just released a day ago at the time of recording.

Paul wrote the review for us and has that up on the site, RPGsite.net. So we decided to give him a phone call, get him on the podcast to talk about Lunar this week. And then also, I do know that Chao will also be contributing heavily to this discussion because you have previously played Lunar. You've played the remaster. You put up some guide features for the remaster on the site.

So it'll be back and forth between you and Paul at the very least. Lunar is a blind spot for me because I do not really know much about it. I do not really know the premise. I do not really. All I know is that it's like, oh, it's one of those 90s.

RPGs, right? I think. I don't remember. Before we go on, has anyone else played the original Lunar Silver Star story? Or, I say original, I gotta be careful with my language here. Let me just jump in and also say, I have not played Lunar. I know there's like... a Sega CD version. I know there's like a PlayStation 1 version. I know there's like a PSP version for the first game. I played Grandia, which I understand is like the follow-up. So that's kind of like...

My when I get around to playing this remaster, that'll be like my point of context is like, okay, this is the precursor to Grandia from Game Arts. But no, I have not played these. This is also a blind spot for me. For me, personally. The PlayStation 1 version of one of them. I don't remember which. But my only really outstanding memory of these Lunar games is it has really sick anime-looking cutscenes on the PlayStation 1.

Sort of like a novel feature in the West at the time when they released. Ah, you guys are missing out. I treat these as the OG Trails games, okay? Okay, so what makes the Lunar game so very special is the story, really, because when the game first came out, there wasn't much RPGs like that, where the NPCs got lots of things interesting to talk about.

And I can even tell you, okay, does this sound familiar? Okay, some legendary hero brings a kid into the household, and then they grew up together, and they go on an adventure. Does this sound something familiar to you? They're saying Valcom ripped off Lunar. Probably did. Okay. We'll give the microphone over to Paul to start out, because Paul, like I teed up, you did write up the review for the Remastered Collection.

So just kind of tell us about your time with Lunar, either the original, the remastered, what you've played previously. I'll just kind of let you do whatever you feel is most, you know, at the top of your head about what you want to talk about.

Yeah, thanks so much. I love hearing Chao talk about it, too, because I feel like we are both the resident lunar gearheads. I never played the Sega CD versions initially. I played the PlayStation versions. And for me, it was like... uh i am like 12 13 years old i'm like a budding um i'm definitely into rpgs jrpgs and like just a little bit like maybe a toe into anime at the time so um as i start my sailor moon collection here in my basement um

The games were just great because they were just classic turn-based RPGs, especially the PlayStation 1 versions of these games. um just gorgeous cut scenes the box i've got two copies of lunar two and i've got one of the lunar one and just like the they were uh collector's editions back when collector's editions were just um Full of just amazing stuff. You have like a leather bound book with like a manual and a guide for the beginning portions.

uh soundtracks just i mean kit and caboodle and then the cut scenes like you had mentioned josh they were just so gorgeously detailed and animated um people and people really loved them and it's uh so i was so happy to hear about the the reboot the remasters coming because for years people have been like oh i want to play it i want to play it i'm not a huge fan of silver star harmony which is the playstation portable remake of

um lunar or silver star and silver star story complete um i just don't like the graphic changes the music changes things like that um i feel like the game is too slow in my opinion like if you ever play the psp version it's like okay these animations take forever

oh did you see like this animation shift and it just takes like 10 seconds and it just feels way too long right and i don't and i don't like the sprites or anything so i have that game but i'm just not a big fan of it so i'm a huge lunar silver star story complete and eternal blue complete

enthusiasts because you know it's really something to see that these games came out for the Sega CD and as soon as they were done issuing the second one they were like you know we got to go back and remake the first one. to take advantage of the new generation of consoles. And so to see what this team is able to do, and this is kind of what I allude to in my review.

It's so awesome to see because we don't need a remake. The team who made this game already remade it once and they did a really great job remaking it. And just this few tweaks that they give us, namely the high speed battle options. that's what that's what makes the game great and like yes i mean people will detract the first lunar because it's really like wash rinse and repeat for battles and strategy for boss fights

Yeah, there's only one strategy for Lunar 1. It's like, okay, buff and sword dance her way through. And, you know, Chow, it's funny because I was looking at Nash's spell list and it's like there's only three spells maybe of his that I've ever used in the game in any of my playthroughs. I'll tell you, if you've played the Sega CD version, Alex is not a sword god, okay? He's a magic god in the original Sega CD.

Like, okay, so if you ever played the Sega CD version, the story changes a lot. They basically rewrote half the story around, like, the midway. And I understand why they rewrote the story, because in the original game, basically, you go on an adventure with your friends, and Luna, you know, when you go into the boat to try to go to the big city, Luna basically just leaves you, and you never see her again in the Sega CD version, right?

And from the PlayStation version, they just rewrote the entire story for the next half. And I'm still kind of in debate. I don't know which version I prefer more. I actually, I think in my head, I think I prefer the Sega C version more because the story is a lot darker there. It's a sight. I really do like the Sega CD version too, but I only think that it's...

Great to go back and play it after you've already played the remake, right? That makes the PlayStation and other remastered versions because then you're able to really see the differences. I guess to clarify for our audience, before we go like that, before we go like race on, like can you clarify that the Lunar Remastered Collection, what is the version that people are playing in this Remastered Collection?

as we mentioned before there's so many versions so it could get pretty confusing if like if you're if you don't lay it out for people what they're doing So you've got the initial Sega CD versions of Lunar Silver Star and Lunar Eternal Blue that were then remade for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Sega Saturn versions only came out in Japan, I believe.

So then the PlayStation versions are Lunar Silver Star Story Complete and then Eternal Blue Complete. Those are the remakes that were released on PlayStation. When the remaster that you're picking up now for this generation of consoles...

will be a remastered version of the PlayStation remakes of Lunar 1 and 2 that will feature... A slightly modified version of the localization that is now infamous from Working Designs, who had included a lot of pop culture references, some euphemisms, things like that, that you obviously never find. I'm obviously missing some of them. I mean, the voice acting in the original is...

It's too nostalgic for me. I miss the original Galleon voice. I love him too much. It's just too good. They replaced him. They replaced the really... He's almost like... It's a Zhongli from Genshin Impact. A lot of new cast, if you play this, it's like the Genshin Impact cast, or the current popular anime. Voice actors, like the Persona Free Reload cast. kind of thing precisely so the and you know the original Sega CD and PlayStation 1 versions

I'm dating myself. I'm almost 40. But Ashley Parker Angel, who is a singer from O-Town, a very 1999-2000 manufactured boy band.

um he's the voice of alex which is like one of those things that's like just kind of it's funny to laugh at now um so yeah they replaced them but honestly i don't really have that much of um an affinity towards like the voice cast because when i when i heard this voice cast that they used for the remastered collection i mean they i think they did an excellent job so the remastered collection is new in both languages

yeah oh even the japanese language you don't know no no not the japanese one just just english oh okay And then for people listening at home, there's, you know, then there's one more. So after Lunar 1 and 2 remakes come out, there's a DS. sequel of sorts called Lunar Legend that we won't talk about. I'm sorry to cut you off, but nobody knows that there's a spin-off sequel called Lunar Magical School in Sega Saturn. Oh, I mean, I know that, man. I almost made a fan dub of the OVA in college.

um and so there's the there's lunar magic school which also had there's a And I think there's one more maybe for Magic School. There's a Sega Saturn remake. I would love for those to get localized. But then aside from this Lunar sequel for the DS, there's a remake of the first game. And so my... review alludes to this as well so lunar one has been remade from silver star silver star story complete then silver star harmony and then again this remaster is a version of the playstation edition

of the games which are my opinion definitive i think if you're looking for a definitive package of these games you've got it with this remaster mikhail mikhail mikhail disagree with me because the

iOS version has more options when it comes to graphics and difficulty, things like that. I just prefer playing it. I love the package. Lunar 2 has been... stuck to the playstation to one for 25 years so it's nice to get them off into local or modern consoles i think the mobile version is on android now too actually which is kind of

It came out. So it was on Lunar Touch, I think. Lunar Silver Story Touch, I think it's what it's called, is the iOS version. I think it's been on phones for like a decade. And then it just recently, actually, like I think last year, came out for Android too. And they updated it with all those extra features last year for iOS when they released it for Android. Then even just this last week, they released another updated version of it just with some bug tweaks.

It's just funny to see that they're really pouring the love into this mobile version. I think that the mobile version is being produced by some company called Samoga. which I don't know anything about them, and I don't think they've released anything else. It might just be, I don't know, some super fan who somehow got the rights to...

create an iOS version of the game. Like one or two. They did they. That's right. On Steam, actually. And they're remaking. They're remaking. Or maybe they've already redone it, but they were... Because the Vea mobile port is not great, right, when you look at it. And I think that they took it down and they're remaking it or they remade it. So I look forward to checking that out. Interesting. So, okay, a lot of the...

In the modern context, before this remaster came out, a lot of people knew Lunar in the modern context. These are fucking expensive. You're trying to get a physical copy of them. They are just like... ludicrously expensive if you're trying to get like an original ps1 copy and there's some and you know because it's so prohibitively expensive to a lot of people and that kind of it kind of is like the the castlevania rondo of blood situation

man this was just like some legendary game like what is the actual gameplay what is this game about so kind of for people who don't know Lunar at all like what is the general What's the gameplay of the game? How's the battle system? How's the world exploration? What can people expect if they just don't know anything about Lunar? Oh, just very classic turn-based role-playing games with there's no ATB.

I mean, you have to think these games initially came out in the early 90s. So to me, this is the quintessential 90s JRPG. Ride or Die. I guess for those reasons, that's why I'm always singing its praises. I wish someone would hire me to write a book about this series.

That's the best way to think about it. If you're thinking, I'm going to turn on my Super Nintendo and play a JRPG just with some great anime cutscenes, that would be it. I feel like, Chao, I would love to hear how you characterize it.

That's how I would see it, too. Imagine playing Final Fantasy 4 back in the day. It's still one of the most beloved Final Fantasy, but it's very functionally limited, right? It's like each character... only has like a few abilities and they have their class roles basically and that's basically the entire game going through that way right but it's like one of the most beloved final fantasy it doesn't have all the crazy features some like compared to some of the newer games right

So, at least that's how I see it. Are there classes in this game? No class, no class. But every character has their kind of role. Like, our main character is just good at everything. And then you have... like Aluna or Jessica, which is basically your healer, who's also good at physical attacks too, but they're not really specialized in physical attacks, but they're more of healing. And then you have Kyle, who joins you, who is a brute force attacker. And then you have Nash, who is your magician.

He's not even bad with a bow and arrow. You know what I mean? That's what I love about the game. Battles are so... The boss fights, you're repeating the same moves over and over. That's probably the biggest... qualm i have with the design but again it's 30 years old um it's a if you were to take a jrpg and turn it into like saturday morning cartoon comfort food this is this is luna the series

Yeah, I was looking up, I haven't played Lunar, like I said earlier, but I was looking up the Final Fantasy 4 comparison. So Final Fantasy 4 originally came out in 1991. Lunar originally came out just a year later. So that seems like an apt comparison just in terms of the time period.

when this game and to compare the two if you compare the original lunar with final fantasy 4 it's like i mean really it's like the sega cd it's like just like that power is really something to see how how they were able to make something so it really it makes sense when you think about working designs again please someone hearing this hire me to write a book about it working designs the way like it they were so ahead of the game and wanting to

to bring this over to the states because they really see that something special was here and they really got their hooks into it and i'm so grateful to them because if it weren't for them i would never have this game would not be a part of my personal history right um I'm the person who... I was going to say, I know there's lots of negative grievance over working designs over their localization changes and stuff.

And they've been stubborn about not giving out the original cast for Gung-Ho because the guy who owns the rights to it is very stubborn and wants to keep it. or wants a lot of money for it or something like this. It's like the Harmony Gold of video game localizations, right? Yeah. kind of painful to hear, but without them, these games would never be out there in the first place, so I can't really hate them too much. No, you can't.

It's like you remember it was 25 years ago. You saw that working designs logo on the outside of the box at a video game store. And it's like I would stop dead in my tracks to see what the hell that box was. um you know magic knight ray earth i mean even that game that was like a holy grail game of mine for so long

And it's just that you play that game and you read some of the lines in the localization and you're like, this is not the way these characters talk in the show. I think a rookie designed like four kids, you know? Yeah, exactly. Except, like, oddly horny. Oddly horny horny. Yeah. There's a very infamous scene. Like, there's lots of, like, infamous lines in these Lunar games. Like, my favorite one that's been cut out in the remaster is sending the clowns.

There's a point where one of the characters betray you, and he's like, and he laughs super hard, and he says, sit in the clouds, and it's gone. I am so sad about that life. Is there a Bill Clinton joke that was in Lunar 2 that I... No, the Bill Clinton joke is in the Sega CD version. Okay, alright. So you won't find the Bill Clinton joke.

But I also feel like this video started the Dragon Ball Z meme. Or the Dragon Ball Bridge meme. The one where the villain's name is like, yes! And your character is like, no! It's like, it felt like...

watching, I feel like they inspired some of these lines or something like that. It felt really meme. Yeah, in the remaster, is it still kind of this very loose translation like i heard it we've described it as basically the working but it's basically the working design translation but the stuff that i'm seeing like problematic in today's times are gone like there's like there's like a

bartender basically when you talk to him he's like it's like i i love the like the what is it the bill like this town's uh mayor here because that guy lets me be a drunk and a sexist like stuff like that are gone And then there will be Ruby saying the R word. There's stuff like that. Anything that's problematic, stuff like that is gone. But that line from the bartender, the bartender's line is in the iOS version.

and so that's why because initially i thought it was clean because i didn't see it in the remaster and i was like oh that must have been cleaned up and then as i peeled back i obviously found it he basically changed the line to like something like oh he's looking for a a good bartender or a good singer and that's kind of like in a new version but in the in the ios version or as paul says

he's looking forward i remember thinking that you know the the localization i thought was funny i'm 12 years old obviously playing it again playing that localization from the from the PlayStation version as an adult, like more recently, I found it to be kind of offensive, right? With some of the reasons that Child mentioned.

As much as I want to hate on the localization from working designs, it's like, hey, I owe them that. I owe them some sort of honor because they're the reason that I played so many of those games. And the cleanup that they've done now on this remaster, I feel like strikes a balance where it still has that youthful irreverence from the working designs localization without veering off into being offensive.

And so there are some lines where I remember reading them being like, this is kind of childish, but you know that. They're trying to preserve the games as is. I think you can see that with the details to the graphical style rather than just remake it for a fourth time. So for that, I give them a little bit of respect.

it sounds interesting like how like when you think about like 90s era early arts like localization and how it was like perceived upon right like a lot of people these days well a good chunk of people at least in the and the majority They want to be super faithful. you know they want to be as close to the japanese script as possible but then they have like a reverence for like you know watching the pokemon cartoon back in the day it's like

That was definitely not like a faithful, you know, localization. Yeah, Ash, that's my jelly felt donut. So, yeah. And so... I look at the working designs in that same lens of four kids, as I mentioned earlier. It was a time and place and era type of thing where the... The spirit of their localizations may not have been the most accurate to the original Japanese script, but it was very, as we've mentioned here, very Saturday cartoon.

like, you know, coded in the sense that like, you know, it's like when you're playing a working designs game, it is definitely like that slapstick comedy that, you know, around our age group worked for us because it was like we were playing a Saturday morning cartoon.

they should bring working designs back i think what we should do josh chow and i we should start working designs back up and the whole emphasis of the company would be we want to take bring us your games from overseas and we will give it the most 1999.

saturday morning cartoon translation possible including with spice girls and bill clinton references you got it look you guys uh announced the samurai pizza cat like game recently it's like has anyone actually watched that anime back in the day as kids I've seen a little bit of it, but I wasn't a huge Samurai Pink Cats person. But that's how I feel about working design. That entire English script is like a parody of...

Japanese one. But then, as you grew older, it's like, I want to find out how was the Japanese one. I hear it's more faithful. And you watch it, and it's boring, because it's so straight-laced, and you're like... It's like, now you're thinking about, it's like, maybe I do prefer the parody. That's interesting. One of the most interesting ideas I've heard recently comes from Alexander O. Smith when he did a podcast with the Resident Art YouTube channel. Lovely people there.

I'm really talking about the, you know, recently, like, you know, the localization of games and like the philosophy. And they went to, you know, got the interview, Alexander O. Smith about it, which is, you know, one of the most revered, highly respected. people in that space and one of the Most interesting ideas, see, that you pitched for, that's like, it's not feasible, like, the gaming issue would never do this, but, like, have...

multiple releases of a game in English, like how the Bible has it, where there's different translations and interpretations of the Bible. So you have the most straight, faithful, maybe dry lace.

translation local uh of a game at least that is own separate thing and maybe have like the the working designs esque version of uh of a game and release it as its own separate thing so people have like multiple versions of a game localization that they can choose from and like i'm like that's a really interesting and cool idea that would never happen it would not Makes sense for 98% of people. But I really like that idea because I really would love to see how that would...

Something similar to that, where I know that Sega, when it comes to the Like a Dragon game, sometimes, like, they'll have changes based off of whether you're playing in the dub or the sub. Yeah, they have the Satchel. Like a Dragon, yeah. And cutscenes and animation. They have this. Basically, if you watch the cutscenes in Japanese, they'll have the translation as the way it's dubbed in Japanese. But you switch to the English one, you basically get the working design tree.

and you get this like right away for like the intro because in the intro basically alex just kind of rants on about he wants to go on this adventure and the dialogue would just end right there in the japanese version right but In order to feel like the mouth movement in the working design, Null basically comes in and says, oh, oh, shoot, I forgot that we should go to Luna's rehearsal. And then it becomes a little longer, right?

but the translation subtitles with match whatever is going on the scene and then and okay this is not a huge spoiler but there's a boat song basically when luna goes Like on this boat, she'll start singing the song and in the English version, the lyrics is basically her don't know if she made the right choice or not. And then the Japanese version is more like she doesn't know if she loves Alex or not.

Oh, interesting. And then the subtitles would match whatever she's singing, right? Yeah, yeah. Chao, which game do you like better? I like Lunar Silver Star more than Eternal Blue. Eternal Blue is like a more epic game in every scale. It has better characters. It has everything. But the reason why I like Lunar... silver star more than internal blue is i feel the cast in internal blue has no chemistry and the cast in silver star has way too much

if you get what i'm saying oh yeah too much it's like i i like i like it better too i think um there's just um like the new even though i think that i like the gameplay of the second game better right because there's the i just yeah the first one is that's i feel like that same way about um gosh i just reviewed it last month

I feel like everyone likes the second game better, but it's like, you know, the first one, I played that one first, and even though I think the second game technically is better, I think the first one has my heart a little more. yeah like the second game is like way more epic in scale and like everything the music is like god tier it's like everything is like so good about it right but like even the character has like darker and richer like backstories but the first game

They just have so much chemistry. It's like you're going to movie theaters with your friends. and they all invite their lovers together and they're constantly bickering and then your friends are like bickering each other and then it just becomes like hilarious argument you're just kind of sitting there and like damn And that's what friends do, right? But the cast in 2 doesn't do that, right? That's why I like the first one more, right?

How are the two games connected? Are they completely different like Final Fantasy? Are they loosely connected? Are they straight sequels?

just direct sequels uh the second game takes place a thousand years later so we kind of see the effects were direct but extend okay like direct in a thousand years to me is like i can kind of see how that is okay yeah and to answer anything more anything like in further detail is probably a spoiler so it's like i would just yeah find out how they're connected and enjoy it but i kind of view them as like to be just like loosely connected

So let's talk about the state of the remastered collection. We've mentioned that there's a high-speed mode now. How's the general performance, what versions you guys played, and any more worthwhile improvements or enhancements?

that they added i think i played the playstation 4 version i think on the ps5 and it ran like a dream for both games um they have there's like one odd little like blurring filter that you can toggle off which i did toggle off And aside from when I first started it, I thought, okay, there isn't really a lot of improvements graphically, but then you realize that that's kind of what they're going for, right?

It was weird to me that they even included the classic mode because the remastered versions is still really faithful with background graphics, the sprites, everything like that. What was the classic mode? It's basically just using it like where it's like in the windowed mode where you're like using a quarter of your television screen. It's like a four by three.

I think the thing that kind of bugs me is the CRT filter. You have to turn Classic Mode to turn that on. And then a lot of people don't know how to use CRT filters because the best thing to use it is to scale your resolution to 720 and don't set it to 4K because that's... It's like that's when you get the perfect scaling because I see people complain on Reddit.

You're talking about me because I wouldn't have no idea how to do it. I just popped it into my PS5 and remastered mode and just marveled how it looked exactly. This is going to sound so strange. Ciao, you might agree with me. I want the font on the bottom of the screen in combat, which has the characters' names and their health. I want it to look like it did on the PlayStation version. And it does here, or at least enough.

to where um like the nostalgia receptors are firing off that i was like okay here i am i'm i'm sold and even like the the background um the environments The battle backgrounds, they look stretched out and they look a little pixelated. I prefer that because it's what was there in the first game rather than in other remasters where they swap it out with like some RPG maker looking stuff.

So to me, this was a very successful remaster. They could improve it by adding some of the options that are in the mobile versions onto the console versions. And that would be the way to make this the definitive package. um honestly it's like you have the they you could toggle between saturn and playstation difficulty um you could you can do three to up to three times speed in the towns and dungeons as well um

Right. And I write in my review that really the environments, the towns and dungeons are all small enough to where it's like you don't really need the three times speed. where it's like otherwise you're like zipping so fast you're like running into walls but some people might want it so if you wanted to make these small tweaks and there's a few other um additional like filter options things like that um

i don't know if there's a music option but like you could you could add those if you wanted to i just don't think that gung-ho is really here's my pun gung-ho on doing that because a it's developed by somebody else right that adam had alluded to and also you see that like some of the grandia one hack job port that has like those vaseline smear filter on the graphic

They haven't patched that in any of those versions that have come out. So I think we've got what we're getting. And I think that it's good enough for me. I'm happy to be able to play this sitting on my couch, staring at my TV like I did 25 years ago. Does it have that Vaseline-ish smear on this? No, no, it's not here. And that's why I gave it my review. Oh my gosh, I would have lambasted the thing. Because it really does look just like it did. Just with the marginal tweak.

It's not like a pixel remaster. They're not going by and updating it like Square Enix did, but it looks good. I think it looks really good for what it's supposed to be. Would you say that you think that it's... a little bit too high right now or do you think you know it's like it's it's it's uh it's is it fifty dollars you know what it's fifty dollars for two role-playing games that if you wanted to go buy the physical copy of you'd be spending 250.

um you know to get this big box so i i think that For me, it's hard to put a value on it. For me, yes. I spent 50 hours playing both of these games, right? So it's like... So to me, do you value entertainment at a dollar an hour? I value entertainment at higher than that, right? I think it's worth it. To get it physically, it's like $54.99. You can't even get it physically. Gunhold didn't open pre-orders, and then they realized there's just too much demand for this game, apparently.

Well, there were Switch copies available last night, I saw. So I don't know if that... maybe people are going for the plate and they said that they're going to issue some more if you i'm i'm probably going to get one because i want it to sit next to my two copies of lunar 2 um i think it's worth it i think it's um

i so i don't know i if you if it was like 70 i'd probably start like thinking about it but 50 bucks i mean wait till the price is a bit steep but i i'm willing to support it just because i love this series right That's my opinion. I think I saw your receipt.

It's one of those remasters that you thought would never come. This announcement was out of nowhere at that PlayStation State of Play or whatever it was. It's definitely one of those ones that's like, whoa, that thing actually did it. Especially showing up there, like in all places. and that's the same price as tweaked in one and two so it's like it's not like it's out of yeah right

It's not like it's completely out of line with a contemporary in that sense. That's two PlayStation 1 RPG dual packs priced at the same price. Remasters. I also do want to mention, this game does not autosave. I'm not sure it's been mentioned, but... If you ever die, you're gonna lose all those hours of progress you forgot to save. Or you're like an idiot like me, who chose to play through Lunar Internal Blue like five hours and did not save.

You can save anywhere, which I know that in Lunar 2 you weren't able to. But that was like working designs too, like infamously added a cost of saving in Lunar 2 because they wanted it to like, I don't know. They wisely got rid of it here. Okay, I actually read a handful of reviews for this game. I don't remember if this was from Paul's review or a different one, but I read that they actually did add or adjust item management.

Compared to the originals? They did. They did, yeah. Okay, you played Dragon Quest, right? Yeah, it was per person, right? Everyone has like six slots inventory. The main character has... Was it Ocarina in the original PlayStation version? Because you had to play it near the end in order to see the ending. If you don't play it, you just straight up die.

And that's like a working design change. I think they like to add things. They're like George Lucas with like the original Star Wars. They keep modifying thinking that they'll make the story better or something like that, right? But that's one of the complaints that people have with the PlayStation version is that Alex would lose one inventory slot because of the Ocarina because he can't beat the game without it.

Well, it'd be like you'd be in combat and it's like you'd be able to use the items that are in your slots, but nothing. But you know, your little dragon buddy would hold all your excess, but you'd have to get it from him outside of combat in order to use it.

so and now when you're in battle you're able to use like the everyone's using from the same bag um And it just makes it so much easier because you're not saying like, oh no, I have to restart this boss battle because I forgot to remove everything and keep all my slots stocked up with silver lights or something like that to restore magic. I was actually talking to someone at the Switch event that I went to earlier this month who was playing the Lunar Remaster for review.

If Gung-Ho can adjust the item management in a Lunar Remastered, Konami should have done it for Suikoden, but they didn't. Yeah, they just didn't want to. Yeah. That was definitely, like, I love Suikoden. i love suikoden but that was definitely the biggest missed opportunity there and like it's just kind of amusing in a way that like another remaster like not even a month later or a month later roughly he's like we did it

Did that update ever come out? They said they were going to update to make some of the management, not overhaul it, but at least if you're pulling it from storage, see if it was better than what you had equipped or something. I don't think that actually came out.

i don't know if they yeah i don't know if they just detailed it or yeah i don't know first weekend you mean i'm not sure yeah yeah so what about the uh i know you kind of talked about how the second game you didn't like the cast as much but like does the second game introduce like any new gameplay mechanics that the first game doesn't have or is it just kind of the two do the two games play similarly

what's funny is the second game initially added like the auto battle function um in the original sega cd version so that when they remade both games they added the auto battle function from lunar 2 until lunar one um so that that they kind of like But I think that's basically it for...

to answer your question uh two is a lot more difficult game in fact there's a huge difficulty spike if you played it as like me when i'm 12 years old i thought the second game was very hard i thought the first game was hard when i was 12 it's like you know that the jellyfish boss that you fight um on the ship in the very like opening hours that was like my very first rage quit as like a 12 year old and here i am sailing through it now as an adult you know like what the hell

No, I thought the second game was insane with difficulty. And the last boss in 2 was especially hard. You're literally like, this last boss will just come in and boom, you're dead. And you're like, what the fuck does I do?

like but um basically the second game they added a lot of gameplay mechanics so basically you can equip these quests and when you equip it you get like these extra abilities so your character may be locked onto these skills but with these quests they could use like certain skills like uh like the white dragon protection you equip a quest

How do you spell it? Crest? Crest. Oh yeah, sorry, you're quest and not crest. Okay, sorry. And then you could use like a skills assigned with what those crests are using, right? So that's like the biggest change in the second game, right?

but there's lots of mechanic changes that are that seems kind of minor but it kind of affect the battles overall like one of the bosses it's like they use this ability it changes the environment and then it constantly gives them a buff and then you could try to use certain abilities to dispel these things so there's certain things that changes like the battles a little bit

But it seems really minor, and you won't know this unless you play it very in-depth, right? At least that's what I would say about the second... i know this might seem obvious but i assume the recommendation is just to play both games in order

Yeah, and again, talking about Suikoden, there are some people that are saying, you know, Suikoden 2 is so much better than 1. 1's kind of like a proto game. You might as well just play 2, though I am very glad I did play 2. Those people are wrong. Those people are wrong, by the way. I'm with you. I'm with you.

Because if you play the second one, you can't go back and play the first one because you're going to be like, this isn't as exciting. So why don't you play the first one? It's like 17 hours. There's correct connections, like characters from the original showing up later and you're like, oh, what's he doing here? Or they will reveal a certain plot twist early and then you're like, oh, yeah, you should just play the...

in order. Even look at my guides, okay? The comments don't leave a single comment for Lunar 2, but there's like 10 comments on Lunar 1, because of course people can't play the first one first, right? Yeah, you should. Play first, come on.

That is a good shout out, Chow. Obviously, Paul wrote the review for us, but then you did kind of do some walkthroughs for Lunar 1 and 2. And I know when I get these games installed, I'm definitely going to be taking advantage of those. I took advantage of Adam's Suikoden guides. I want to take advantage of your Saga Guide versus Saga Frontier 2, that is.

And then also these two lunar remasters. So I'm excited to dive into this because it's kind of, I have a complaint. I have a complaint about these guides though. And it's that they're coming out after my review for the game is coming out. Like how am I able to use your review child? I already played it.

yeah yeah i want i i'm like looking at this guide yesterday i'm like damn i wish i had this when i was playing it instead i had to go get my my um lunar one guide that's like 27 years old and i'm going through it and the pages are falling out Okay, so I was kind of stupid. I always keep thinking like it's like the PlayStation version. So I keep thinking, did I miss out the pro mod? Okay, time to start a new game again.

it's like it's still not popping up again and then it's like oh wait they're using the japanese version i i am so stupid i lost like eight hours of progress These collectibles are in different spots because they're based on the original Japanese version.

in the pain in the ass to get them you literally like had to talk to like this one person like four times right at the beginning of the game and then you forgot to talk to them oh too bad you missed out the picture well the japanese is like i didn't even bother i was like nope if i want to see these pictures i will um look them up on the in the old guide because i i couldn't find a few of them and i was looking at the old guide to do it and so i finally just abandoned it for my playthrough

It's a really pain in the ass. That's why I included both instructions, because I kind of wrote it based on the PlayStation version initially, and then it's like, oh, then later I figure out the problem, and then I added, like, the... the remaster collection that's why there's those mistakes with like oh you did the playstation version it's like i know buddy it's like you hear that audience that's some true service from chow you guys owe him a debt of gratitude

So did you guys have any other final points of discussion regarding these remasters that we haven't quite touched on? We touched on the release. We touched on the different versions. Story, of course. Gameplay sounds like first game very straightforward, but in a very classic. It doesn't really look that good. We did talk about those at the very beginning. Go ahead. No, but I did mention some of the cutscenes don't look that good in this remaster.

one of my biggest gripes would be like the lunar 2 opening like it's like okay i know they probably just ai upscale everything right but one the scene is like completely pitch black you can't see what's in the screen and like then i went back is this my monitor because i just bought an oled recently it's like why is this part pitch black and then

I go back and watch the PlayStation version, and it's like, oh yeah, you can see his face. It's like, you can't see the face in that version. It's like, I don't know. Some of the upscales just didn't fully did it right, in my opinion. So at least that's one of my gripes. But one thing for sure is I do love the Lunar 2 opening. The music that goes along with it is great. Even though it's some naked girl walking in this crystal palace, right?

and also yeah that's that's peak right there that's the best thing ever my final thought is just play these games if you're um like an rpg jrpg um nerd like Why aren't you going to think about it? These are classic games. They're freely available to you now. Just check them out and see what all the hubbub is about. And let us know if you didn't like them.

So yep, we got Paul's Lunar Remastered Collection review up on the site, RPGsite.net. We didn't mention it, but Mikhail did do a comparison. I have not seen this myself yet, but it's the PC port versus Steam Deck and mobile. So you talked a little bit about the mobile differences in terms of features that weren't brought into the remaster. I guess, which one of those are you talking about?

It's just some quality of life, like about the three times speed I touched on a bit ago. So it's just some graphical filters, some options for the speed, and then... I don't think that there's a music option, but there's a wider breadth of graphical choices in the iOS option, oddly, than the remaster for Lunar One.

So it looks like me looking through Mikhail's feature, the one concern is that if you play not at 60 hertz, like you're playing on an OLED, Steam Deck OLED, that's at 90 hertz, there's some scrolling issues. But if you play it, if you lock the refresh rate to 60, it seems like... I'd say that's a common enough issue that if you're playing something on OLED and it's not something that you think can run at 60 FPS, I mean...

that you don't think can run at over 60 FPS, just like cap the refresh rate of the screen at 60 when you're playing a game that's going to run at 60. Because like the frame pacing is always going to be at least a little bit off. Because it's not going to be an even distribution. So like the only ever reason I would leave the screen at like 90 hertz is if you're going for like 45 FPS, because then that's like even.

Meanwhile, my eyes crossed listening to all of that. I read that in Mikhail's review and I was like, okay, for those who need to know, there you have it. And then, like I've mentioned, Chow does have a few guides for the walkthroughs as well as a few other different guides for the two games. And then we also have a launch trailer from Gung Ho. If you're still on the fence and you want to see another pretty trailer, there you go.

Honestly, call my cell phone if you don't want, if you're wondering why you should play this game and I will tell you. Just ring Paul up, you know his number, and just let him convince you about why you should be playing these games.

But no, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Paul. It's been really excellent to hear you talk about these games, your history with them, what they mean to you, your back and forth with Chao about your thoughts on these two games. Sounds like you're both kind of very well aligned in a lot of places about why these games are and continue to be special.

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to chat with everyone and hear Broin's voice after writing with everyone for so long. And I look forward to coming back again soon. Thanks again. No, thank you, Paul. Thank you, Paul. Nice talking to you. So Paul's going to head out.

Yeah, he's got kids that are going to wonder where he is if we keep him abducted for much longer than this. I hear them fighting upstairs, so if you keep me here for much longer, they're going to end up being guest stars. And I don't think you guys can afford their reunion rates. Oh, damn. All right. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. See you, Paul. So thank you again, Chow, for bouncing off with Paul about the Lunar Remastered Collection.

Before we go on to news, we have one other game we're going to talk about here. This is a game we talked about just a few weeks ago when we got its release window first confirmed. This is the Gundam G Generation Eternal mobile game. I don't remember the details. Josh, you'll have to tee me up on specifically what this is in terms of G-Generation. Yeah, so this is the newest entry in the G-Generation series, SD Gundam G-Generation Eternal. It's the first mobile entry.

uh in the series there's been handheld um titles and then obviously like psp I think there was one for DS. I don't remember. It's definitely for PSP for sure. Long running series. Been going on for quite some time. um this is an interesting one because the the most two recent ones were uh g generation genesis and g generation cross Both got English releases, but I believe only Crossroads got an official release in the West, while Genesis was one of those that got an English release.

uh release version but it wasn't if it wasn't released in the west it was like uh it meant for southeast asia uh but you can go digitally import it or physically import it wherever you could through other channels

on that. And this series is it's a strategy rpg series it's not too like it's it's pretty different from super robot wars which a lot of people are familiar with um but both shared that they're both strategy rpgs both have grids and moving against enemies on an overworld battle arena and having fancy animations when you select an attack and then it plays out an animation on the screen. But unlike Super Robot Wars, the G-Generation series is primarily only Gundam-focused. There's no other...

giant robot series that makes an appearance there. There's no Macross, no Gal Geiger, no Evangelion in it. It's strictly Gundam, and so... to fill out the roster uh their rosters a lot of the roster is um grunt units you see these like the zakus um the gyms um and other grunt suit many other grunt suits the the toruses from gundam wing uh etc

And they are very development-tree focused. Like I mentioned, I believe just the last podcast, or maybe the last time I mentioned G-Generation, it's very... leveling up grunt units and evolving them to more powerful units, much like Pokemon, where... yeah you start out with like a starter pokemon and you level them up to like a third level threshold like level 30 and then you have the option to evolve them if you want and much as

and that's degeneration the same way where like you know you um level a zaku up to let's say level 15 and then you can evolve that to stars red zaku you know so i'll have enhanced stats and more attacks, more capabilities, more options in battle, and so forth. And then you can go evolve that Red Zaku eventually to maybe Char's Gelgu. and so forth and you know you keep evolving that until you know you make some cool unit like shard like the shard sazabi or um the zeong from the original gundam

Did I hear you right? Did you call this Gundam Pokemon? Yeah, it's kind of like Gundam Pokemon, yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah, so... It's always weird when it comes to regeneration and the cadence that they released. Gundam is primarily devised of the universal century, which is the original Gundam, Zeta, Double Zeta, Crossbone... F91, like the classic timeline, and then there's the AU, the alternate universes of Gundam.

And that'll have G Gundam, Gundam 00, Gundam C, basically anything not UC. They all have their own different timelines that they work under. where like gundam scene is like the cosmic era gundam is like its own separate timeline and g gundam is its own separate timeline but they're all in that banner of it's non-UC therefore it's considered AU which is alternate universe

So that's kind of the main distinguishers of Gundam. So how G-Generation handles this is usually they'll have a version that's only UC era, like Genesis, that has this classic timeline and then you have like cross rays.

which has this alternate universe timeline where, you know, have a different Gundam series that are not UC compiled into one game. And then eventually... after they released like one entry for uc and one entry for au they'll combine them and like this big ass like mishmash g generation title where it has like a shitload of units from the uc timelines and a shitload of uh units from the au series all jam-packed together in like one mega game

So that's what people were waiting for, right? They're like, okay, they released the Genesis, which had the UC series, and they have CrossRays, and it has the AU series, and everyone's waiting for the big... fancy console pc entry that'll combine these two together and have like it's gonna be fucking awesome 10 000 hour game Because these games are quite long if you're trying to fully complete them. They have a shitload of-

in them. So... you know as everyone's waiting for the next generation entry uh they announce hey we're working on g generation eternal it's a mobile game coming to ios and android now now available free to play title and it is that like coveted series mishmash where they're gonna have a bunch of these series there at first and then they're gonna continually update it over time with even more um

uh that they've you know disclosed and like uh in promo material which is like a shitload of like you know it even has it'll even eventually contain like game only franchises like gundam extreme versus for example like those units from that series will eventually come to g generation eternal because they're a part of the series lineup uh in those trailers it's like fuck man there's like the mega g generation game that everyone wants but it's a mobile title so

It's one of those things that like, okay, me, I'm willing to give it a shot because I can handle it. I can do this. Let's see how it is. It's also pulling in my heartstrings already because one of the series that's making its series debut for the first time in the D-Generation series is I believe it's pronounced Ecole or Ecole du Seale. It's like a Gundam comic book, right?

Yeah, the manga. Yeah, it's a really, really awesome Gundam side series. But it's hardly ever... shown in any Gundam related property ever. I'm always interested to check this out now because it has that. Yeah, exactly. Because the main protagonist is awesome, Asuna. And she has one of the coolest units in the series with the le singed or signed. I'm not exactly sure. I'm not French. I'm sorry. I don't know how to pronounce these. But, um, so I'm like, fuck. Okay.

The game itself is really interesting where you can almost play this like a single player game almost free of the gacha. I'm not going to say you can do it completely, but... You know, when you first boot up the game and you go through the tutorials, they'll give you a bunch of free gems to roll at the front because it's really... at its pre-registration campaign plus like these landstone landmark like 1 million downloads here's another free 10 rule for you so

The game gives you just a bunch of gems at the time we're talking about when they barely come out. They gave you like 12,000 up front and it's 3,000 per roll. Um, plus there's other, like... things in the game that are outside of those free rolls. For example, outside of those free gems to roll with, you have this unlimited... re-roll banner, where you can keep on re-rolling the banner if you don't like the results, but it'll always have one UR, which is the step above SSR in this game, UR unit.

um so you can keep on re-rolling that same banner until you get the desired like ur unit that you want um and you have like a free like some free tickets that they give out as well so edit It's really, really easy to re-roll an account in this game. And for people who don't know, re-rolling basically is when you download a title that has a gacha banner system to it. If you don't like what you get...

you would basically make a new account whether the game allows you to just delete it or delete your data in the game or just delete the game upfront and re-download it. Just a mechanism in the game for you to delete your account and start a new account and then... try again and uh roll for the things that you want So in this game, they make it very easy, but after you do a tutorial of bugs with the first account that you make, you can go delete the data of that account.

And then when you start up the game again without having to do any new downloads, it gives you the option to skip to the tutorial so you can basically go try again and roll all the resources that they give you for free within like two to three minutes. And that's a pretty luxurious thing in the Gacha game space where not every developer makes it this easy or that fast to reroll their game.

um where you know some people want like that really powerful start and a lot of people are like i'll just go with what i got you know who cares while some people are like i really want something i want to get it or i really want like a powerful off the bat. So this game makes re-rolling very easy. It fired off Very bad neurons in my brain where, you know, I'm willing to go through it. And I did. That was great.

And, like, so I got, like, an Axia, a Sazabi, a Le Sing from the Echolid du Seel, and the warship from the Gundam 00. I forgot what it was called. The Ptolemy, I think. and the the game is really weird where it's like there's actually like a game that totally separates itself from its gacha systems in in here so it like the game is very

It's not an open-world game or anything. It's very stage-based, node-based. You know, you go into a stage and, like, the main story stages are, like, at first you go through the original... story of the first Gundam series. And the story sections are very, very basic where it's like screenshots of the anime with a synopsis over it. who fucking cares honestly it's like it's like it's like a very

abridged telling what happened version of the series in screenshots. It's like, remember Dragon Quest Die, that console game? It's like that. But you don't care at all. At least the gameplay is more fun than that game, but it was the most apt comparison that sprung into my mind. And you have two squads when you're going through these stages. One squad is a free squad where any unit that you have, you can deploy them with any pilot.

Freely, and like squads are made up of up to five units and five pilots and one warship. um so go ballistic with the like whatever you want that squad to be made up of whether you rolled for the gacha or you developed it from the dev tree in the game whatever you want you can stick them in as long as it uh adheres to terrain because there are some units that can't be deployed into space stages

There are some units that can't be deployed into amphibious stages or atmospheric stages because of the specs of that mobile suit, the cannon specs. There's some... Mobile suits like, let's say, the Freedom Gundam from Gundam C with the big-ass meteor packs that it gets at the end of the series. That's like space only. It can't be brought to land. It's too heavy. So you can't deploy it in those stages.

but it can be deployed to a space stage. So as long as it adheres to the terrain that it can be deployed on, go free in that squad. Then there's another second squad that you fill up, and it has to be... that are part of that series that you're playing through. So if you're going through the first Gundam storyline... There's one squad that can only be filled up with...

units from that original Gundam series. So there can only be Zakus, Gyms, the original Gundam, Gun Cannon, Gun Tank. You cannot have like... say the Strike Gundam or the Zeta Gundam or the Gundam Exia in that squad. because that squad can only be filled up with units from Mobile Suit Gundam, the original. If you want those other units, you have to put them in that free secondary. So it's kind of forcing you to also play tactically with one of the other squads. Sure, you may have gotten units.

that you rolled for that are part of the original Gundam series that we stuck in there. But then for other series storylines that you're going through Zeta Gundam, you cannot use it for that squad. It's like series restricted in that squad. so like let's say i didn't roll any any mobile suit from the original gundam it's like oh what am i gonna fill up this

What am I going to fill up the squad with? You get a few freebies when you start the series, like a few Zakus or Gyms, but then it's up to you to go through the development diagram for that series. and obtain resources uh in-game resources like like capital um and and you can capture units in battle there's a chance that you capture them when you defeat them instead of like

being scrapped, they join you as units that you can freely deploy and are part of your squad. So it's up to you to figure out if I don't have any units from the original... Gundam to go through that series development diagram and start using in-game resources to basically do what I described as like, hey, go level up this mobile suit, evolve into something more powerful, and then there might be branches on that development diagram that lead to different mobile suits.

then it's up to you to decide okay how do i want what what tree do i want to go down under because There might be a unit that you'd like more than the other, or because of terrain restraints, you might want to go for this mobile suit over the other because the other option doesn't allow you to deploy it on certain stages or certain terrain.

of a stage so there is actually like planning involved in the game that is totally separate from the gacha aspect of it which is cool and weird and also it also makes you wish that like man i wishes wasn't a mobile game um it's also like separated to the point that like let's say I developed a freedom Gundam through the dev tree. in the game. I can also roll a Freedom Gundam, like a UR Freedom Gundam. And there is an aspect in this game where if you obtain a duplicate of a unit...

You can go use that duplicate to feed it into a unit and it'll get like a 20% stat increase. And then the second dude might be a 30% stat increase. But you cannot do that in between units that you freely obtained and units that you rolled for. Those are hard separate. Let's say I got a... I rolled a Freedom Gundam and I developed a Freedom Gundam with Indian resources like that. These are two separate units. I cannot feed that Freedom Gundam that I developed into the one that I rolled.

And the thing that separates them, what makes them distinguishable as separate units, utility-wise... The one that I rolled for... It has some better stats, but also has access to an EX attack. that the freely developed one does not. So it has a fancy, awesome EX attack. It's kind of like Super Robot Wars Double D. You're rolling for an awesome attack. So in this case... You know, you rolled a unit that has access to exclusive attack.

free version that it does not that doesn't mean that like the free version is useless though because you might not want that out of the field to like soak damage or like be additional support uh and you can like it's more easily upgradeable stats-wise because you can make... dupes of that Freedom Gundam.

from the development tree and feed it into the ones into ones that you already develop so you can continually upgrade stats instead of like trying to roll for dupes i don't know if this makes sense or there's like ramblings of a madman i get it I like forgot for a second. I can tell you the comparison that I was making in my head, even if it's not quite exactly the same. It's a little less tactical. But the way you describe this to me.

i haven't played the most recent one but i'm thinking like the ps2 ps3 era of like the lego games Where if you're playing through Lego Star Wars or Lego Lord of the Rings or whatever, and you're playing like the story mode, then you can only use characters that were present at the time. And that's kind of how it was going to work too. And how those games work. not to get too much of a tangent, is that there's different classes of Legos.

star wars there's astromech droids there's bounty hunters there's jedi whatever but you can you only have r2 in the original trilogy because there isn't another one until you unlock free play then you can unlock and use whatever astromech droid you got and that's kind of like

oh you can only use gun tank or gun cannon in in the original gundam show unless you can fit it in this other and you're like custom warship then you can use it so If you're wondering if he's not like a madman here, I'm kind of like drawing like tethers like, ah, it's kind of like. It's kind of like using, I don't know, like Obi-Wan in the future trilogy of Star Wars and Lego Star Wars. Yeah, totally like that. And the way you describe about...

a free unit, and deploying deuce to get a very special attack. I'm just thinking, like, Fate Grand Order, Noble Phantasma getting upgraded. Kinda, yeah, kinda.

yeah so it's but like if you it is totally possible for you to just Roll the units that you get and not use any of them and just use the ones that you obtain either through in-game stages and just develop the shit out of them through development trees because you can make dupes as much as you want as long as you have the resources for it, whether it's like...

You know, the capital, like the materials, the medals that you get in stages. Like, you can freely just make squads of units that you only... that you did not roll for at all in this game. It is entirely possible and it is entirely possible to be successful with that. It just involves a lot of grinding of course, but it is totally possible for you to play this game.

totally separate from the gotcha aspect if you're willing to make that like commitment to it um which is i think is really fascinating and also also at the same time it's like i kind of wish it just wasn't a little gacha game in the first place but it but i think that giving you those tools and those avenues to like

do that is interesting uh because like getting the pilots to fill those out is like you kind of just get by pilots with in-game resources like in-game gold not none of the uh gacha currency like you there's like a pilot store in the game and that gradually fills up as you do more main stories. So let's say You completed this stage, like the beginning stages of Zeta. So you have like, you know, Roberto, civilian outfit Camille, and so forth available at the...

to buy with in-game gold for you to put them into mobile suits. And then later on, as you're going through Zeta, you'll get Quatre, you'll get Fa, you'll get... cats you'll get you'll get spacesuit camille uh in there as well and you can just buy them in in-game gold and put them on mobile suits of course there are

pilots that can be obtained for the gacha with their mobile suits like say like Gundam Exia if you get a UR Gundam Exia then you get Setsuna along with them and you know obviously they work well together but you can put that you have other mobile suits as well if you want to and obviously they have access to like maybe one or two more skills it makes them more valuable but that they're not but it's not necessarily like vital

for them to be on your team to achieve any sort of like success at all it's like hey you know they're they're good at certain stuff but that doesn't mean it's like a make it or break it uh type of deal And also, there are classes in this game. There's an attacker-type unit, there's a support-type unit, a defender-type unit. almost Holy Trinity, but defenders can actually

Some of them have healing abilities, but some of the warships have healing abilities. You also have energy to manage with your attacks, because all your attacks... um consume energy so some worships restore energy some um you know but but also you get a little bit of energy um back in between like rounds

And both supporters and defenders have other mechanics going for them, not just purely DPS. Attackers are excellent DPS. Supporters can do support attacks, meaning that if they're in range of a nearby unit attacking, they can join in on the attack. and increase your DPS in the single action. Defenders, if a nearby unit is attacked, they can tank the incoming attack for them. They have higher defense stats.

um and and there are like some stages in this game that's like they're pretty involved they're not just like miniature versions of like battles in home titles like some of the later stages in like say Gundam Seed for example there's quite a lot of units that you have to think about that like hey these are

really tough battles that i have to think about tactically i can't just turn on auto and turn off my brain i have to think about like hey all these grunt units have a lot of hp and they hit hard so Both of the squads that I deploy are... deployed in different parts of the map and have to think about what their team compositions are how do i keep them alive and how do i make them effective so they are able to rendezvous with each other and make a united push

uh towards the objective you know and and that that's kind of been like the the most interesting part of me it's like even though there's a mobile entry in the series i'm still thinking about like what i have to do in battle it's not like just like a stat check that i can just like easily go through it's like oh i have to really think about like how i'm gonna play this because let's say there's a boss unit on stage

that does a lot of damage there might be some turns that i just like i have to move my support defend or defender units up front and not attack so they can just like soak up damage on the next subsequent turn and have to make sure not to attack with certain characters because if they attack and they get counter-attacked they're gonna get a lot of damage and might possibly die.

so i have to actually like play somewhat defensively at times where it's not just like uh mindless you know turn on auto steamroll everything it's like no you have to like slow it down and think about like how you're maneuvering in battle so you're gonna you're able to be successful so it's entirely possible for you to beat high much higher difficulty stages that have like let's say a power rating recommendation of like a hundred thousand and like your power rating

on your squads is like overall like 75 000 it's a it's entirely possible to beat that stage but you just have to think about like what you're doing every turn to pull that off to me that's like okay they actually like There's actually an avenue to success here.

that like you you can't just like you know swipe your card for and like roll a thousand units it's like no you actually have to think about like your party uh makeup and strategy on this not like something that you know spend money and and win uh um automatically so i i there's gonna be a lot of like upcoming support for this game as they add more series over time right now they have you start out with original gundam after you're done with that you uh

Gundam Seed and Zeta Gundam, a new translation, which is the movie version, opens up. So it's kind of a distinct thing where the original TV Zeta Gundam series and Zeta Gundam, a new translation, are like two... They're two distinctly different things. In the sense that, like... Zeta Gundam A New Translation has a big change to the ending that the original Zeta Gundam does not. So I won't say what it is, but it's kind of interesting that they used a new translation over the original Zeta.

Then after that, you open up Double Zeta Gundam and Gundam Wing. And then from then on, it branches out into like... you can do g gundam of which from mercury or i think gundam x

And then so on. There's already a handful of series included in this game. There's a shitload of things to do. This game takes time to get through. But the series lineup at launch... um it's pretty cool and varied um and um they're gonna add like other things over time like i think the first like event is like gundam seed ashtray

you know cool uh i'm interested to see how the events work in this game um they also one of the pre-registration rewards that they give out for free is that new unit from g quacks the the new gundam series uh you get that as a free unit as well along with the Machu, the new protagonist. She's unvoiced at the moment. I wonder if they're going to add her voice in the game. Maybe just one of those late additions promo material that they'll go back and add her voice in.

and i think yeah i mean they also have like the the white gundam from quack that was part of the original UC alternate storyline that it's going for. They have that. I've only seen the first episode, so I remember the Black Gundam and the Red Gundam. That's all I got. And it's been too long since I've seen the original because it's supposed to be like an alternative ending to the original or whatever. Yeah, it's like an alternative. So like, I don't have...

Yeah, apparently I need to catch up. Yeah, you're fine. I mean, it'll make more sense when you see the second episode. It's like, okay, this is what they're going for. I'm going to remind myself of... It was Super Robot Wars that was going to do Witch from Mercury, but just the first season. This is saying it'll future support Witch from Mercury, specifically how, not detail.

So yeah, in this one, Witch from Mercury is already in the game, but I think it's probably Season 1 content in G-Generation Eternal. And I imagine later on they'll get to the later... storyline but i'm not exactly sure like um because i have yet to get there i still have to get through i barely finish

Seed and Zeta Gundam. I have to get through double Zeta and Wing. And then after I beat... uh those i have the branching path of whether i want to do g gundam or virtual mercury or gundam x so i think it's only season one this game but i'm not 100 sure i have to imagine it's only season one but i don't know how far they get into the story

in G-Generation Eternal. But you do have the Aerial Gundam with Saletta in the game as one of the UR units that you can aim for. And I haven't seen other units from the game. It's one of those, I think I would like this game more if it at least had a PC client version. I feel like that's been the case for every mobile game. But even then, I kind of wish this was a console, this mega game.

was a console version, but I get it why they went this route, because in interviews of this game, they really want this to be almost like the definitive Gundam encyclopedia. featuring just like everything Gundam in one... one package and that's financially feasible if they have a successful mobile game that continually gets revenue instead of like the one-time transaction with its play.

has limited scope this one is like at least they could continually update it over time if it continues to be successful which i get you know, it stings a little that this is the, this is going to be the game. Um, if it manages to have legs, that it'll be like the Gundam everything. From super popular series to very niche ones like The Seal. You know? Yeah, I mean... I'm a sucker for Gundam, man. I'll keep on playing it. I'll continue to hope for the best.

I'm cautious, but I think it's interesting the way that they went about doing it. It definitely feels like the G generation developers really try to find the balance. with this game. Whether it works out or not, I don't know, but I'm willing to be open-minded and give it a shot because I like the G-Generation series.

So were the G-Generation series previously not gacha games? Is this the first one of its type, or is it kind of a mixed bag? Yeah, there's a first mobile gacha game in the G-Generation series. Up until this, this has been home and handheld release. um okay yeah so it was kind of the first of its kind Was the Gacha series under a different title? I swear we talked about a Gacha series.

in this vein before, but maybe I'm mistaken. You might be thinking about, like, there's other Gundam gacha games that weren't G-Generation. gotcha probably and there doesn't like you know also srw has also had gotcha games like one was like cross omega which is out of service now uh quite a few years now and then then you have srwdd which is still running in japan Might have been SRW. Yeah, might have been. So, you know, keeping track of all this is a mess, but.

I don't know, man. I enjoy it. I actually do enjoy the parts of the game where I have to think about what I'm doing in the game. And it's cool when I get to think about what I'm doing in the game. I kind of wish this wasn't a mobile gacha game that I had to do this.

but i get it yeah so it's okay it's all right i i imagine it'll get more and more better and i don't know i i don't know i just i just think it's cool and also kind of weird and also kind of hopefully hopefully hopefully the gacha stuff doesn't really become that much of a pain point. At the moment, it's so out of the way, it doesn't feel like the main focus point of the game. The main focus point of the game is really these development trees and diagrams per steer.

and like that's cool that should continue to be the main focus and hopefully that gotcha stuff is just like more of a supplemental add-on rather than like be the focus just i i hope I've heard you talk about gotcha games and much more sour disposition than this here. So it seems like this is doing a lot of things pretty leniently in terms of...

fairness or how much or how much it expects you to, like you said, swipe versus auto battle only when your power levels certain a certain value or something like that. Yeah. And with that, I believe we'll go into one more article shout out and into some news. Not a lot of news this week. If there's a theme for this week, it's. like Japan only titles that are becoming available through different avenues to be played outside of Japan and outside of their original platforms. So we'll go into that.

One other thing that we do have up on the site is we did get pretty recently in this month the PC port for Phantom Brave The Lost Hero. Of course, this was released on consoles back in January and the PC port just came out a few weeks ago. uh mikhail did do another comparison between is the pc port actually out or no i don't is it out i thought Unfortunately, our little sidebar only shows the original thing. I think it comes out the 24th, which is the same day as the 100 line and Expedition 33.

That rings a bell. What we're ditching and what we're playing. Hell yeah. Dinosaur. We should ask our site admin to give us some platform pills to put on the sidebar so we could say the console versus PC release, because it only shows the original release, in this case console. But, okay, so ahead of the PC release, thank you for the clarification, Mikhail did put up a comparison for the existing console ports versus the PC version on Steam Deck and Rogue Ally.

In terms of news, a lot of stuff here that I do not feel like I have the authority to speak on very well. I'm going to start out with a classic Nihon Falcom RPG called Dinosaur. I believe we have talked about this, but I don't remember the context.

Chow, is this something that you've played in the past? I'm trying to remember how it got brought up on the podcast before. Because it's released on the Egg console, isn't it? That's today's news. I was trying to talk about it. I remember it being brought up.

I don't know if we ever talked about it, but I know several years back, the Geofront fan localization group started working on Dinosaur Resurrection. They're not done with it as of the moment. Oh, that's what it was. It was Dinosaur Resurrection. Yeah, they're still working on it. But there's a difference. It's not Dinosaur Resurrection. There's the original Dinosaur. So Dinosaur was released for the PC-88 in...

And now through the Egg Console, it is being available on Nintendo Switch. Now, Adam, remind me, what is the Egg Console? I know you've gone over this before, but I don't remember. Egg Console is an emulator from D4 Enterprise. for uh pc 88 i think a couple of different turbo graphics or whatever they're called games on And there's also Project Egg, which is an emulator on PC. Falcom has released several of their classic games.

this enterprise has released several falcom games on the platform that if you go to the e-shop right now in north america or wherever you can buy like The PC-88 version of Ys 1 and 2, of Xanadu, of Dragon Slayer, and now Dinosaur. The thing is, is that... While some of the packaging is in English, like the emulation and some of the menus and stuff, the games themselves are just as they are in Japanese. But you can buy them in dollars and play them, which is cool.

Yeah, it's good that they provide some legal way to get access to these games and give a little support for them. And just through the initiative, right? Even if they're not official UI, full English releases, just having access to them and being able to easily play them. without any setup or fuss is good. And they're relatively pretty affordable as well. They're not asking for a lot of money for these releases. And I'm watching the little trailer for this from D4 Enterprises.

And it's cool to see some of that classic. To me, I associate this art style with the East 1 and 2. Of course, I get confused on book versus complete versus collection. I don't quite have those all delineated clearly in my head. But this does kind of evoke that same imagery, that same era of Falcom game. Classic Falcom era. I think the first thing I heard about this game, it's called Dinosaur, and it has nothing to do with dinosaurs.

Yeah, I remember that from the other conversation. Yeah. And then when Kite wrote up this news post about the egg console emulation of dinosaur. It did also then release for the PC-98 instead of PC-88. And then Dinosaur Resurrection released on Windows 98. through Vista. And that's the remake of this game that Geofront is working on.

So yeah, like Josh said, just kind of cool. This is kind of just for the game's history and preservation's sake, just to have it available on... a modern uh setting yeah i'm a big fan of the egg console and the egg initiative pretty much i i really like what they're doing over there And then in a similar-ish vein for like a... niche limited availability title being made more available through emulation.

This is for more of those mid-2000s era feature phone games. We've talked about these in a few different contexts. There was the Persona 3 spinoff that was, I forget what console was made available on. but you can now play, at least in Japan. We talked about the Xenosaga Pied Piper feature phone game. For this one, G-Mode is bringing Shin Megami Tensei 20XX.

to Nintendo Switch and Steam, along with Tokyo Requiem. Of course, these are Japanese feature phone games. I do not have any, you know, per se, experience with these. But the... The Switch version of Sumagami Tensei 20XX will be available on April 24th, and then it'll also come to Steam on May 8th. The dates for Tokyo Requiem haven't been dated yet.

And then Kite did provide a few more information here. Some feature phone Armored Core games are similarly being made available. Armored Core Mobile Mission will be available on Steam on April 30th. And then... It's already available on Nintendo Switch, if I'm interpreting his news post correctly. And then Armored Core Mobile 2 is also being worked on in the same vein.

Yeah, it was a big week for just G-Mode announcements. We talked previously about G-Mode under the concept of Persona 3, I guess the first mission. That's the one I was thinking of, yeah. And so, as you mentioned, Gmode is an initiative, like the egg console, where you're preserving fairly old, in this case, flip phone games that were exclusive to Japan, and now Gmode.

has been partnering up with various publishers and developers in Japan to make these available on modern platforms that were just previously stuck on flip phones. when they were more prevalent at the time. So it's really cool that they announced both Armored Core entries and Shin Megami Tensei entries both on Switch and eventually Steam as well. Once again, another really, really cool preservation initiative that I'm a big fan of.

It's awesome that they're doing this, man. We take it for granted. i was googling around i was wondering like did g mode say they were going to do pied piper and apparently no but you can like two years ago there was a campaign to request that they work on it and that one i have direct experience with anyone who's played xeno saga 3 does because Do you know that a 3D disc assumes you know it?

yeah and it's just like what who are these characters what did was there a game i missed and answer it's like yeah you kind of did uh between those two man the mid-2000s is a weird time to be in like high school because

like you know uh before crisis uh you know pied piper all those all these like games where before the before the original iphone you would just be like well i guess you might be able to find like a bootleg 300p, someone who knows Japanese playing through it and translating on the fly. version of the cut scenes maybe you find like forum post synopses on these things

Yeah. Pre-Mikipedia days, yeah. You went to just whatever fucking Z-Boards or GeoCities or fuck. Anywhere on the internet at the time. Zanga. Yep. I mean, speaking Xenosaga, I specifically remember reading up on Pied Piper and The Missing Ear. Oh, I forgot about the missing year. Both of those things you pretty much need to know before Xenosec 3.

I could see actually trying to play that if it was supported in 3G mode, even language barrier and all, I would give it an attempt. Yeah, I think they're fairly playable.

so i don't know why i decided to open with those i just thought those were some pretty interesting news about some niche games with you know not not exactly being made to beat to you know shake the heavens or make a huge megaton announcement but more really in the sense of just really neat work being done by some smaller boutique, you know, groups in the sake of preservation and the sake of, you know, love for the, for the genre.

In terms of updates for existing games, we have a handful of ones here. Before we get to that, can I just do this announcement real quick? uh sure electronic arts and bit reactor announced So Star Wars Zero Company. was originally announced without a title about three years ago. Basically, EA said we have several Star Wars games in development, and one of them is from a new company, an independent developer called Bit Reactor.

who they kind of work very closely with Respawn, who obviously did the Jedi Survivor games and the Jedi Fallen Order, those two games. But... The company itself, Bitreactor, was founded by, oh, let me get his name. It has a lot of Firaxis veterans on the staff. And so those are the people behind like XCOM and maybe Marvel's Midnight Suns and things like that. It was founded by Greg.

Forch, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, who is the art director on the XCOM games. And so this is a tactical game. seemingly very much in the vein of XCOM. When this game was announced, and it kind of leaked ahead of time a little bit, It's one of those things that for our scope, like, is it more pure tactics or is it more tactical RPG? I don't know. Kind of straddles that line. I just kind of figured, eh, we cover these sorts of tactical kind of games. XCOM-ish.

I've covered games like Jagged Alliance, which is very tactical and only very likely RPG. I reviewed Marvel's Midnight Sun. Yes, you did Marvel's Midnight Sun. You liked it quite a lot. So I just figured, and we covered XCOM. I know Alex was here. He would sing his praises. So yeah, this is the big announcement of the weekend, I guess. This was actually from Star Wars Celebration in Japan.

Um, and there was a couple of other shows and things they announced too. I will say that season two is really, really good. Yeah. And when I saw the, I don't know, thumbnails are the right word. the logo for, oh, they're remaking Star Wars Starfighter. Oh, wait, no, never mind. Yeah, that's a new project, but has the same name as a PS2 title. Anyways, this is a tactical game. It is set in the, quote, Twilight of the Clone Wars, if you care.

I remember playing my PS2 copy of Star Wars Starfighter and being like, games couldn't look better than this. That's right. So yeah, before the trailer of this came out, the key art for this is really funny because it's definitely trying to invoke that. The classic timeline-era Star Wars feel. You just have this R2-D2-esque thing along with a squad, so you have a Boba Fett.

looking... You have your bounty hunter that's like sort of Han Solo-ish. I don't know the race of this thing. The person that's like... holding a lightsaber is like an alien race i'm not exactly sure which star wars alien races that is um but it's like it's very it's meant to evoke that classic era like hey if you were a fan of the original trilogy you know you'll probably like this the type of thing with the squadron artwork

uh on it and the and the the new trailer that came out of this just recently was like you know your typical cgi trailer to to set the mood and atmosphere but then like at the Last 30 seconds of the trailer, you do see a little bit of in-game gameplay. And as Adam mentioned, it's looking very much like an XCOM-ish.

take on the Star Wars series with a lot of maybe grid-based movement and taking cover and using abilities and working together as a squad to take out the opposition by positioning yourself. taking advantage of like, you know, the environment and positioning yourself tactical fully. against the opponents. I hope it's cool. I really hope it's cool. I'm very, very interested in it.

no and i think that's totally worth uh calling out adam so i think i think it was just announced like literally this morning or last night and it was japan time so in the middle of the night for us so i mean it was leaked ahead of time but the official announcement i mean A little bit of the info of the game from the press release. It's a campaign where players will go on tactical operations around the galaxy.

you'll have a base of operations and gather intelligence. So this is sounding a lot more in the XCOM direction rather than the Marvel Midnight Suns direction in that sense. And then they're saying that the main protagonist, Hawk, I guess their appearance and combat class can be fully customized while you're recruiting operatives that could be, you know... from a range of like barbers character classes and species and you can go um tweak their appearances and load out

their ability so i'm you know this might be really cool i really hope it's really cool And this is like the sort of, you know... It feels like it's a Star Wars game out of time, like from an era where you'd get Star Wars games in every genre, like every year, until there was that dark period where there were none, and then Respawn, to their credit, brought them back. But like with the Fallen Order, but very much in like that triple A big, you know.

open expanse sort of high high budget too big to fail sort of way though even though those games were especially the second one received very well very received highly as well yeah i'm super i'm excited for this too yeah but yeah as i mentioned big reactor there's a lot of expert access veterans on it so there's a lot of uh creative juices of the x-com lineage at play uh i can't wait to see more to hear more to learn more it's definitely one of those

projects just like was immediately on my radar and i was like okay there's something to this the more they say the more i'm like okay all right keep on going yeah uh 2026 right adam yeah all right in terms of game updates for release games here's a game that we've talked about it's strong post-launch support a few times uh lords of the fallen this is the 2023 version released late that year has been getting pretty decent uh post-launch support since its original launch

What we have here is the announcement of version 2.0. Of course, it's a big version number. Sounds like the main selling point for this big update for Lords of the Fallen is basically seamless co-op. So obviously Soulslike, depending on... It had seamless co-op before. It's just the progression was linked to whoever was the host. So you would always have you could play through the entire game. You just always had to have the same host when you did so.

Now it's making it so that the progression is saved between the host and the person that connected. It's just a minor thing. Seamless Co-op was the thing. That was literally the big thing that they were really pushing about the game from the word go. Gotcha. And I know like Elden Ring, not obviously a different developer, like seamless co-op is one of its most popular mods because not a lot of, not all these games. allow for that. It only allowed for very specific avenues of cooperative play.

And then in order to facilitate this, they're announcing a friend's pass. So basically, even if you don't know the game, you can be the co-op partner for the host who does own the game. from start to finish. So that's one of the big one of the big things here. There's also just general technical improvements. They made some differences to the character creator. Now, the way that they framed this is a bit silly. They said like...

This is a follow-up on one of the main guys at the, I think, publisher basically putting his foot in his mouth. So it wasn't an accident. It was very much intentional. Yeah. And that is so the developers, Hexworks, the publisher, CI Games. Yeah. And the CEO of CI Games is a little bit of a knob, unfortunately. But Publisher and then Hexworks did support the game. And what this is, is just updating the, I guess when the game launched, the male and female were listed as type A, type B.

Which is not uncommon. Phantasy Star did it. Dragon Quest did it. It wasn't something new. And apparently, I've read that some of the cosmetic options for the female body type were very limited. So even though when you read it in the press release, it sounds kind of very specific, it actually was kind of a welcome improvement in some people's eyes.

uh they've revamped the tutorial they've revamped the overhaul um i guess there's some movement changes here i've heard that like leaping into combat it like moves you forward quite a weird amount that finally got fixed It seems very specific, but I saw some people saying like, finally, I can't believe they fixed your, like how your character gets positioned when entering combat. I watched the video for this, which is fairly long, like five or six or seven minutes.

And one of the things, first of all, this video kind of made me want to play this game, to be honest. It's a good game. Like, unironically. But one of the things they talked about is actually, like, you stop more suddenly now.

Which makes it you just have a little bit more, I guess, like finesse and control over your movements and actions. And like if you stop suddenly and change directions or whatever in movement where I guess before is maybe just a little bit, just a little bit more slip sliding.

That, that's probably a good thing because there's definitely one specific section of the game where you're on a... some pretty narrow pathways over a cliff and it was kind of a little bit easy to uh while fighting enemies to accidentally knock yourself off they also talked about how like in when you're in combat they adjusted the lock on so you're less likely to lock on the wrong thing

Which is, you know, I'm not exactly sure what... As someone who's played Xenoblade Cross Definitive Edition, I feel that. I'm like, please target the Skell in front of me. Please, no, not him. Please, please target the right thing. So yes, any updates for games having a good working target? I'm not exactly sure what the problem was or necessarily what the solution was, but they were apparently aware that people were having issues with the lock on.

again like locking on to the wrong thing and so they addressed they tried to address it anyway I think it's funny that they have a dedicated jump button now. That was one of the big things. I was going to bring that up. In the end, maybe devs in the past were right to have dedicated jump buttons and try to phase that out over time. It was objectively wrong. Yeah, I'll say that, like, it's kind of awkward nowadays because of some of the statements from, again, that CI Games person.

I've been pretty steadfast in saying that I think that this game is probably one of the better Souls-likes that I've played, and I think it's genuinely a bit underrated, especially now that it's had continued improvements for the last year and a half.

yeah it's really astounding like they're they're steadfastness and could continue to support this game uh to the extent that they have and just and now just like what we're like almost like over a year and a half into it um since it's like first release and now they're adding a friend's pass along with it and doing all these sorts of changes. Just generally, you can feel that like when you give feedback to these developers, you know that they're listening and that feels good.

okay because you because you as a person who wants to have fun with this game you care about this game enough to give them feedback and at least you know that like someone's actually listening at the other end at least they're thinking maybe they'll change things maybe they won't but at the very least you know that like they're considering you know ways to make their product better But yeah, like I said, watching this trailer actually makes me want to play this game.

Another well-supported game ever since its launch, Baldur's Gate 3. So this is the... I feel like we've said this before, but this is what they're marketing as the final major pet. Baldur's Gate 3, Patch 8. And I believe we've talked about Patch 8 previously, like when it was first being detailed, what it would include, including a lot of the new subclasses.

so each main class has a new subclass like for instance fighter has the arcane archer paladin has oath of the crown druid has circle of stars etc etc and i don't have enough um dnd knowledge to really key in on any of those be like oh finally the hexblade like it sounds neat but i don't i don't have that but they but they're adding all of it um

As part of this update, they're making some additions to the modding kit. I guess patch, I believe it was patch 7, but the modding kit was relatively recently added for the full dev tools for mods.

They're bringing some quality of life updates to those. And then another big one is full crossplay. So crossplay between console, PC, even PC and Mac. So obviously Baldur's Gate 3, when it was first announced, was... announced at a stadium event, if everyone forgets, but specifically to help facilitate people going out, you know, forming their party and adventuring together.

still still holds through you know today when i'm trying to you know say that no matter what console you play on you can cross play um with other people from other consoles, with your own file to other consoles or PC or Mac. So obviously a well-supported game ever since it was fully announced, ever since it was in early access. So not really surprised to see it still continue to the final path.

Oh, photo mode is also new. I'm actually surprised it didn't already have that. I thought it already had it too, yeah. And then the most recently released of the games on this, we got some news still trickling in from the announcement of the Rido Remastered, The Mystery of the Solus Army, first showed up on the Switch event.

Do I have this right? It first showed up at the Switch again, and then it showed up again at the Switch 2 event, just saying, yes, it'll also release on Switch 2 when Switch 2 comes out. Yeah, I believe that's right. That sounds right, yeah. And so now we've already gotten some of the details. Like we already knew that it was greatly improving the demon roster. I guess the original game only had like 70 and now it's getting 50 more. I believe I have those numbers right.

I remember the original game was definitely pretty narrow, despite having some pretty unique ones. it says over 50 new demons bringing the total to over 120 so yeah about right including ones that appear originally in the sequel devonal summoner 2 uh versus king abaddon as well as they specifically call out shimmy gami tensei 5 vengeance so

more contemporary demons being kind of ported back into the remaster for rido and the uh mystery of the soulless army uh they talk about now these you'll have to just tell me adam or others if they are completely new features or if they're revamped from how the original game worked talks about uh Rido having summoner skills, combat skills versus sword skills, and how you have to gather materials to build different equipment that you would use in combat.

And then also about demon loyalty and how those can kind of give you titles where the longer you use a demon, the more loyal they are to you. which are the mox titles that allow i think some of the stuff was in the sequel in some form but not in the original yeah i have to i don't remember specifically exactly how the mechanics work but i i know some a lot of this stuff you know the sequel added a bunch and it sounds like it's sort of being kind of

Backport is not the right word. I know it would be bad for the marking in this game, but I kind of wish they just sound like, here's what we took for this sequel and put it into this game, goddammit. So at least refresh our memory that way for the old heads. Because I am also very pleased. I'm like, well, the sequel was so much better, but was this supposed to be the sequel? But definitely the battle camera and the way you move around 3D in the battles is definitely new to this game.

The pace of combat being way faster paced in this game, that's definitely something that's new to this game, for sure. um like like the dodge rolling and like um dedicated jump button to um evade attacks on some of the footage that's come out from the Japanese outlets when they were previewing this game. I'm like, oh yeah, that's due to this game. There's a lot of fun little touches as well.

There's definitely some... You can see the demons like Mermaid from SMT5 making it into this game. But the one that really... I think some people called that on social media too, but they added Belphegor.

into this game and people will know belthagor as the demon that sits on a toilet especially like if people played persona 5 person belthagor was one of the first major bosses but the the toilet in this game that it's sitting on is a period appropriate toilet it's not like a modern toilet it's like a wooden box that it's sitting on it's like okay all right atlas

That's pretty good, assholes. Normally he's just on a porcelain regular toilet, right? Yeah, exactly. That was pretty good. They also have Cybele, TurboGreddy, I forgot, Pavelsag, I think it was like the Scorpion-esque demon. Yeah. Some others. Just, you know, close to see. Like, filling out the roster for this game. Always good. A couple other smaller trailer updates for some upcoming games.

Here's one on any game we've covered a few different times over the last three years or so. Demon School. This game has unfortunately been in a little bit of a development. I don't want to say hell, it's a little bit... poetic but it was really supposed to release earlier in 2024 got pushed back it's now announced during uh the galaxy's gaming showcase that demon school is slated to launch this summer

Alongside this, they showed off. The game has been showed off in so many different contexts. But more look at the game's minigames. quickly thumbing through the trailer. It shows like a cooking minigame, like a karaoke slash dating minigame of some sorts. So really kind of shows that this game is going to be like a fully featured RPG with all the little like window dressings that, you know, these sorts of games have.

But this is the game that kind of has like the early Persona occult Shin Megami Tensei sort of vibe. i know there's a few other points of comparison that we made italian horror oh yeah italian horror so yeah the the i remember the like the delay that they got last year like the the developers were pretty much like at a fork in the road like they were at a state right they could technically release it but they weren't fully satisfied with like the

the scope of the game that they were supposed to release. It's not the full vision or the ideal vision of our game. So it's like, we could release this now. and like have it in people's hands already or we could continue to or just delay it a little bit more to really fully realize our vision for and so they chose that option and hopefully it works out you know i'm still very interested in it and i wish them the best of luck like that that is not an easy decision

especially if you're pushing it back for what almost a year at this point since it's like original you know when it was supposed to release at that state in time after already like some other delays in the past We got a new trailer for the upcoming Elden Ring Night Reign, another one of the playable classes. This one is the Raider.

which before we did the, I forget the name of the character, the Duchess, was it? The Black Knight was a very agile, evasive character. This is the opposite. This is basically a character that has... you know heavy armor enormous weapons has a lot of uh stagger resistance doesn't get hit stunned so basically just the big giant tanking brute doesn't have a lot of mobility but has a lot of a lot of fortitude a real class For real hardcore gamers.

I saw that Mikhail this week put up like three trailers in four days for the fantasy life, The Girl Who Steals Time.

coming out in late may so they had different trailers for uh basically just questing and job switching about mercenaries about being a minor so i'll be honest i did not watch all these trailers through front to back but they're really kind of speed running the marketing for for fantasy life yeah it makes sense all the different snippets of of gameplay for that game yeah i mean there's It's coming up just in a month's time, so that time to really boost the marketing on it.

you know it seems it seems cool i mean i'll definitely give it a shot and try it out and see I'm interested in it. I hope it's good. I hope they send review codes to people this time. I don't know. Who knows? The girl steals review codes. We have a handful of dates here covering like the mid spring to early summer.

uh this first one is actually of an about an information stream that's coming up we talked about the recently announced super robot wars why kind of brought it up in passing when talking about gundam degeneration There will be a series information stream on April 20th that will talk about Super Robot Wars Y, as well as Super Robot Wars DD, which is the ongoing mobile game. Yeah, this is what I've been waiting for. So usually, they'll have the occasional...

SRW streamed for DD announcements or whatever. I don't personally care because I don't play it.

um that's cool for people to do but this is the one i'm waiting for okay they have a new srw console game coming out this year they only showed a little bit of the series coming to it but i i assume just in a few hours early morning tomorrow at 3am they're going to unveil the rest of the series coming to SRWY and it'll to have all my hopes and dreams and wishes along with it, and I'm going to be a very happy person after the end of it.

so this is right now this is kind of like the most important gaming thing for me in the immediate future is for the series list to be fucking awesome and that'll love it The ones that I'm really, really gunning for and crossing my fingers for are like Granbem and Rinno Lagrange. I don't expect anyone to know that. It's okay for people who do. You're a real one. But we'll see. I'm ready to be surprised and entertained. I'm ready to play a new SRW again for the umpteenth time in my life.

It's been too much to count. I'm here for more. It looks like May 7th, Toho Spell Carnival, which released on Switch and PlayStation back in... 2024 will be coming to Steam on May 7th. In addition, there'll be a limited edition available on Idea Factory's International Store. This is a game that's already released on Steam. This is from East Asia Soft called Starlight Legacy. I guess it was released on Steam in February. It'll be releasing on Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox on May 28th.

steam version only has a very small number of reviews but they are positive We have an indie tactical RPG, Cyber Knights Flashpoint, releasing on June 2nd for Steam. Dune Awakening, this is like the MMO-ish, survival-ish open world game by Funcom, was originally supposed to release on May 20th. It was moved back a few weeks and will be now launching on June 10th.

Adam, is this the one that Junior was playing? Can I say that? I think we got beta access, but I think Scott was playing it. Oh, Scott. Okay. And it was a beta access. Just in time for after the Switch 2 comes out and after all the SGF stuff. happen oh my god the fact that switch shoes releasing i think literally the day before sgf starts is like come on I'm still trying to think of how I'm gonna navigate that.

oh yeah i guess i guess you should mention out of nowhere here um since as a follow-up nintendo did announce that they're they finally have a date of when they're going to start pre-orders in north america or the united states and canada And that's April 24th, right? About half the date, correct? April 24th. What I'm doing is I'm actually, since my local store is like a mom and pop, they can't guarantee they're going to get anything for launch and they're not going to take pre-orders.

online pre-orders because of bots and all that bullshit. So I'm actually going to be giving my money, or more specifically, my Xbox to GameStop to get a pre-order in. Yeah, there's a GameStop and a Best Buy near here. I might try to do the Best Buy one. Will you be able to pick it up before SGF starts out?

I think they're doing midnight releases. If they do midnight releases, then yeah. Yeah, that would be... yeah you're west coast so it would be 9 p.m so are you flying out like the morning of the i haven't got a ticket yet i haven't got a ticket yet partially because of the this but i'm probably gonna get a ticket sometime very very soon get an enhanced driver's license because they're doing all the real ID stuff.

starting beginning of may so you need to have like if you want to make it aimless to travel domestically flying uh enhanced driver's license is the way to go yeah other than that you get like way a lot more additional paper I haven't yeah I haven't bothered to do that just because I have a passport so I just yeah my passport yeah Yeah, I've had the real ID on my driver's license for I feel like years now.

But they kept delaying the requirements. The enhanced driver's license is slightly different from Real ID. It's a mess. But I do have a passport too. I have no idea what you guys are talking about since I don't live in the US. Don't come here. Please don't come here, Chow. We're Canadians. We're enemies now. Do not travel to the US, child. We love you. So yeah, I have to sort all that out before.

looking to a ticket but yeah we got one very soon and then have to think about how to do the switch to thing and i guess it depends on how the pre-order shit shakes out so i guess that was a good thought just to follow up like hey if you're listening and you're still wondering when's the pre-order date april 24th in north america i have the perfect excuse for alex It'll be like, hey, it's like, I need you to do these guides.

It's like, well, I didn't get a Switch 2. Sorry. No dice here. But yeah, I'm pretty excited. And I do think that genuinely if we're going for a Switch 2 since... GameStops are going to have their own allotment. If you can get to a GameStop like before, like an hour or so before open, like the day that pre-orders go live, you should be good, I think. Probably. Chad, did you see the Canadian prices for all the Switch 2 stuff?

Yeah, I saw it, but when they announced it, it was like... it seems like it was the same price as the american one and they took it down like a week later after they have like new tariff news and then now they're putting it back i i don't know it's so confusing this this entire thing's a fiasco yeah but it's uh The cat not good on this. really expensive shit on your end when it comes to switch to accessories and all that stuff. It's like 124 CAD for like a Joy-Con.

I think it's for both Joy-Cons, not just one. I know, but at least we could use the Switch. pro controller from the original system so i guess we can't wake up the system though and apparently the d-pad the switch to pro controller's d-pad is better how much better who knows that doesn't know you can't wake it up from with a with a switch one pro controller that that's annoying

They always got some incentive to force you to buy the next generation controllers. I'm debating getting a Switch 2 Pro controller. If it was just the same thing... than I wouldn't, even for the D-pad. But the fact that it does have the back buttons, I have an 8-bit 2, but I'll be honest, I don't like the 8-bit 2 Ultimate's D-pad very much. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, I haven't used one, but I generally hear people praise back buttons, even though I've never really used them. Yeah, they're great.

I actually really wish that my Xbox Elite controller wasn't basically breaking on itself because... I really, well, I'm going through like Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2 finally because I'm trading in that Xbox. And it's like, I should probably go through these like last minute before I get rid of this thing.

I mean, don't you just have to play Ninja Gaiden Black 2? I mean, technically you could get Black 1 on PC and all that other stuff, right? No, well, no, no, no, no. The collections on PC are based off the Sigma version. Black is based off the Sigma version still. It's not the original Black. I've heard people argue that it might be the best way to play that game, but there's still reasons to want to play the 360 original of Ninja Gaiden 2. Yeah.

the maps for ninja difficulty clear i guess i'm not doing that hell no i actually got like two-thirds of the way through ninja guy in black my first time playing through it and i got like Hard blocked by the one boss that apparently everyone that gets blocked in that game does because it traps you. It traps you.

You're probably thinking of the one I'm thinking of. It's like, man, this save point, it's so good that I was able to find the save point after this one-way passage. Uh-oh, I don't have healing items. Uh-oh. fun times god i love those those games they're just so good like i don't know i haven't seen games made like when enemies are this aggressive and every grunt feels like a menace Yeah, there were certainly games of that era. They were awesome, and I hope the new one's good too.

On the Japan side of things, East 10 Proud Nordics will be launching on the Switch 2 on July 31st. Go for it, James. So far, it looks like it's only a Switch 2 version. And unlike with the Trills in the Sky remake, this is like... Three months away and there's no other platforms announced. I think this might just only be Switch 2 for a bit. That's too exclusive, baby.

Also, the web commercial they released for it is 30 FPS, whereas the web commercial they released for the original East 10 was 60, which implies that this might be 30 FPS with no 60 FPS mode. That doesn't sound good. Oh, shit. Two more game dates here. I believe this one's pronounced Hike Northern Lights. H-Y-K-E. This is like a pixel-based JRPG. We'll be launching this summer for PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.

This is cool. I want to check this out. I was already pretty interested after its announcement, but it's like, you know, it seems like an action RPG where you switch between different witches in real time.

fire off different spells and there's like a whole camping element for cozy character interactions cooking and all that stuff it seems there's a very short part of the trailer where someone's wearing a pink bunny suit and punching enemies so hell yeah there we go that's big witch stuff right there

Marissa of Lyretop Mountain, this is a Toho Project game, I believe, will be launching on September 19th, and they've announced that they're adding a Switch version to the, I guess, previously announced Steam version of the game. It'll launch simultaneously on both platforms. And then like looking forward to next week, or I don't know how much we're looking forward to this, but.

and we have a tease from for you our favorite our favorite teasing company uh they're working on a new uh rpg like school setting rpg apparently from the monarch team from team noir the goats are back am i right I don't know. I treat Furio a little bit better than Bushiro, but I put them almost in the same tier. Yeah. That's a really funny statement. I treat Furio a little bit better than Bushiro, but they're in the same tier.

I love that. What are you hoping for, Chow, out of Team Noir? Something good? Is that too hard to ask? That seems like a tall order. I don't know. I have no idea what to expect. It's like a school-themed project, RPG, I guess. I'm looking at some of the key staff members that Kite pointed out here. I don't know. Gakuto Mikumu, who worked on Strike the Blood, MGS Portable Ops, and MG Survive. Okay, so I have a nice catchphrase. So it'll be senpai, I can take care of this.

Don't put strike-the-blood jokes in this podcast. That seems cursed. And, you know, Sukhasam's Moscow, the BGM composer, and then... Accompanying Ryotaro Ito was Mikumo, but Ito is also going to be the scenario writer on this, and Kazunari Suzuki as the scenario. So they're going to have a full reveal on April 24. I guess there's a teaser site that has Japanese phrases on it as the teaser. And there's been a few teaser images on their social media.

What if they surprise you that they're making a new Caligula effect? I mean, some people would be excited. Some people really like Caligula 2. I don't have any attachment to Caligula. I watched the anime adaptation of Caligula, and I was like, this is okay, I guess. But I tried playing Caligula 1, the remake, and I got really bored. So that ended my Caligula adventure when I gave it a shot. I was like, this game is boring.

so i don't know i don't know what to expect i mean i'm it's gonna be one of those things that's like the the the unveil of this game is gonna have like the staff and it's like this person worked on like the the game that you love 25 years ago. They're like, oh yeah, they're fucking back! And they're not back, and they give you shit like Ray Natos or something. They'll give you Monarch.

I forgot about Reign Autists. How long ago was that? Like two months? That was September last year. Oh, wait. Okay, so it was last year. Okay. Yeah, you get all these fake names, and it's like, why isn't this game game of the year? And you get this, so... So yeah, I guess stay tuned and I guess we'll talk about this next week when it gets revealed and then we'll be like, is it going to be good? Probably not, but we'll see. Monarch 2.

If it's Monarch 2, then... I mean, Monarch had a school element to it. I mean, it was school-themed Monarch. It just wasn't revealed as that. I forgot who revealed Monarch. i remember the monarch teaser was like that they had they kept on pushing the staff they worked on original megami tensei not shit megami tensei and then like the teaser was like you go um uh call called in to like a phone number and they gave you like really like ominous messages over the phone. And that was their teaser.

Right. Okay. This was at a time, well, during an era where we're like, okay, we'll give Furuyu a shot because they're bringing out these vets of really old Japanese games. Yeah, and the vets did not help. So it needs to be old. everybody else. We got Furyu'd, and then Furyu kept on doing Furyu's stuff. We're like, we can't keep falling for this.

So obviously next week, one of the games that we will be talking about is we have a few things releasing kind of on top of each other. We've of course got the Claire Obscure Expedition 33. We've got 100 line, I believe is next week. Yep. Wasn't there one other thing? I've got to get the Fatal Fury game. I'm sorry, guys. There's Claire Obscure, 100 Lion, and Phantom Brave on PC. Phantom Brave on PC, which...

Man, they chose the worst time. Anyone that would have been interested in Phantom Brave, it's probably just picking up 100 line. I feel bad for them. uh yeah i don't know i don't say um i i just heard that the concept versions of fandom brave lost hero didn't really work out Yasha loved to know the Demon Blade was going to release on the 24th, but it got pushed back.

I'm interested in checking out Clear Obscure. I want to pick that up. Yeah, I'm interested too. I hear nothing but good things about it. I'll wait for people because I didn't really like the demo. I need someone to really tell me that the demo wasn't really a great indicator. But someone's probably going to have to tell me it gets good 40 hours in or something. So obviously a lot of big games to talk about next week. So stay tuned for those.

Again, thank you to Paul, who had to leave early, and then Chow, of course, for covering the Lunar Remastered review and discussion here earlier in the podcast. Josh, for talking about Gene Generation Eternal, and then the rest for covering the rest of the news with me.

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And until you hear from us next time, stay safe, take care, and we'll talk to you all next week. Oh my God. Next podcast is going to be long as hell.