dancingstar93

@Dalamar Possibly means it's the first mobile game in the Like a Dragon franchise ("Dragon Among Men" here represents 人中之龍, a Chinese paraphrase of Ryu ga Gotoku which has been used for previous releases of the games in that language) that's been made under licence rather than internally developed. You're quoting a machine translation from Chinese, remember.

@Burntbreadman That seems a really weird way to parse it since that expression, at least in the translation by Gematsu and its paraphrase above, seems to be pretty clearly referring to what Kaneko is working on after leaving Atlus.

@Littlejack "Middle Earth Enterprises" (formerly Tolkein Enterprises) is a holding company for the adaptation rights to The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit, which Embracer Group bought from the Saul Zaentz corporation in one of its recent acquisition sprees, so yes.

@Bunchesopuppies I don't believe we ever got the fighting game or dating sim with Nep characters that one of the original series creators once talked about wanting to make. But I haven't actually played any of the game since 4 Goddesses Online so I might well have missed them.

Still waiting for my copy to arrive

Wow, the Kunio-kun collection is discounted for the first time in . . . well, since I've had it wishlisted, anyway. Might finally picked that up... being kinda interested, but not to the point of being ready to pay £30 for a bunch of emulated Famicom games.

Sigh.... bit of a clickbaity headline: "Changes the ending" is hyperbole for "one line of dialogue in the English loc script got tweaked to be a more direct translation." It being changed this close to the release of rebirth suggests there's a callback to it that would be missed or make less sense with the original localised version.

hmm, might finally get this then, particularly if someone in the UK has the physical edition for sale; was paying attention to it on and off for years while it was being developed on PC but never actually bought it for one reason or another.

@LifeGirl There is a cardinal number between 13 and 15, FYI.

@NEStalgia Yakuza on PS2 had an English dub. It's . . . not great, most likely due to poor or non-existent voice direction.

@Drago201 Swings & roundabouts, Nintendo / Xbox / PC players had to wait over 3 weeks for confirmation that this collection was coming to anything other than PS5.

Btw, PS store page has been updated & lists price for digital edition as 50 not 60 UK pounds.

@Petto MGS1 on PS3 was basically the original disc images running under an emulation layer (even to the point you had to go into a system menu to switch discs or switch controller ports); the fact this is cross-platform (which we didn't know for sure before today) at least indicates it's not using a proprietary emulator (like, say, Castlevania Requiem does) but yeah, likely to be a pretty basic port.

@WhensDinner GZ+PP and Survive are playable on current-gen anyway & regularly come up in sales. Guns of the Patriots did reportedly have a working build on Xbox 360 but got canned because it would have needed 5 or 6 DVDs (per Time Extension a few days ago, citing an interview with the game's assistant producer).

The presence of Snake's Revenge certainly indicates these collections aren't going to be constrained by anyone's notion of series "canon," anyway.

@MayaMousavi another choral version of "Final Fantasy" is always welcome (last attempt was for the bridge scene in Stranger of Paradise).

Previous Nioh series DLC chapters had side missions with characters from other Team Ninja games showing up as bosses, so something like that is also a possible.

@Exerion76 Metal Gear movie is currently in development hell and Kojima doesn't have any control over that IP.

@MattBoothDev Day 1 patch is 300 meg. I'm not sure if the person you're replying to is somehow getting this game mixed up with another forthcoming high-profile title & insinuating it isn't getting a physical release at all, or what.

@djlard this isn't the 5th gen any more where entire games being 700 meg or less was normal, 300 meg is only "huge as hell" if you're still on dial-up.

@Nepp67 This one is in a kind of weird situation like that: far as I can tell from various interviews, the English localisation team heavily worked over the raw translation from the original JP script, and then the EN script was pretty much back-translated into Japanese, or at least the original script heavily revised based on the EN version, and the English voicework was used as the basis for character animations, lip-syncing etc.

While I can't stand most English JRPG voicetracks, this one, like FF XII, evidently had a competent voice director who repeatedly reminded the cast that they weren't dubbing a shounen anime.

This looks very pretty but I'm going to wait to find out what kind of game it actually is before getting hyped.

Played through the whole thing & then pre-ordered the full game. This, in contrast to FF XV, is action combat done well (as expected given who worked on it). Also a decent EN voice track, evidently the voice director made it quite clear to the cast they weren't dubbing a shounen anime.

@jollyjoe0 AFAIK the devs have been pretty much open about that, one straight up said they made the team watch the whole of the GoT TV show.

@Andy22385 The localised version of 7 didn't have the number either, & AFAIK that sold well enough.

@Clemerek yeah that's what I thought initially, but the RGG Studio twitter just confirmed this is the game previously announced as Ryu ga Gotoku: Like a Dragon 8 (or however you want to read the title logo) & the Japanese RGG Youtube channel posted the same trailer with the RgG8 title logo.

@Athrum Given that the localised version of Ryu ga Gotoku 7 didn't have the number in its title, and 0-6 were localised under a different name, releasing it as Like a Dragon 8 would be liable to confuse people.

Kinda weird that this is the first one since 3 that won't have a subtitle in the Japanese release (Yokoyama confirmed in an interview last year that it would be simply "Ryu ga Gotoku 8" with no subtitle, because reasons) whereas out of 4-7 and Zero, only 6 had the subtitle in the localised release.

<nitpick>That header pic isn't from the PS1 original, the field models only got mouths with the PC port.

@Uromastryx In the JP version of the trailer he explicitly mentions her name at that point. Also in the announcement trailer from last year, we hear Tifa asking Cloud, apparently in connection with the Nibelheim flashback "What are you implying? That I died? That I'm some kind of imposter?"

Played it up to the second boss (guy with horse mask wielding a totally-not Saw Cleaver on a bridge); it's competent enough, but not in "pre-order the steelbook" territory for me.

I was getting strong Blooodborne vibes from the whole thing, but then again Bloodborne is the only Soulslike I've played (not counting Nioh or Stranger of Paradise) so I'm prolly not the best person to judge.

@Darude84 Remake project has a third game planned. Crisis Core is a prequel to the OG FF VII but spoilers a fairly major third-act reveal so shouldn't be played first. Ditto Before Crisis (tho' the only way to play that at the moment is a bad RPGmaker "remake").

@Fizza where did you get "Yuffie dies" from that trailer? Sephiroth appears to be insinuating that the real Tifa died at Nibelheim and that the "Tifa" travelling with the others is a puppet formed from Cloud's memories & Jenova cells (<spoiler for something on disc 2 of OG FF VII redacted>)

@knowles2 Didn't SE try that once? IIRC it didn't go well.

@Uromastryx the former of those was pretty much what I went, I just didn't give details because I don't know how to tag spoilers on this site.

And now dev comment #4 is up, confirming there'll be a recap movie or somesuch for "players who did not get a chance to play the first game."

@Uromastryx Obvious breakpoint would be after Whirlwind Maze, which would also give a story excuse to reset everyone's gear. Of course this is assuming that the rest of the remake project retains the general story structure of the original which is by no means certain.

And now an even vaguer "Developer comment number 3" is up, this time about the story.

@Cloud39472 Hey, Dissidia Opera Omnia is turn-based & still being updated, and there's a chance Ever Crisis (apparently ATB-style despite the flashy Remake-style graphics for battles) will actually launch and have its service last longer than First Soldier did . . .

@Rgeneb1 It's vague, sure, but wouldn't, for instance, apply to FF X or XIII & remember how much flack the latter game got on that count.

@KidRyan . . . except the person you're replying to was referring to a particular character / boss in FF XIV and his theme
song & the official roman-script name of that character is "Good King Moggle Mog"

EDIT: nvm, I see they replied already.

FF XVI, probably (not pre-ordering it 'til after I've played the demo). No interest in fighting games and only ever played the first Diablo.

@Skeletor85 Legacy Collection basically had HD Collection as Disc 1, Guns of the Patriots as Disc 2 and a download code for MGS + VR Missions.

Depending on how badly Konami decide to cheap out on this project they may pad out one or another of the volumes with things like the NES port of Metal Gear, Snakes Revenge, Ghost Babel &c. running under emulation layers. The current advert already mentions "regional versions of the titles" being "available as additional downloads."

@Arisen The Tolkien estate doesn't own the film / TV / videogame / merchandising rights to The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit ever since Ron Tolkien sold them off to United Artists in the late '60s to pay off his back taxes. What they do own is all rights to everything in the Tolkien legendarium that isn't in those two books (e.g. pretty much everything First Age and earlier) & unlike the various corps that have been trading the LoTR / Hobbit rights among themselves, have been extremely reluctant to license them to, well, anyone.

@Heavy_Artilery I seriously hope that was sarcasm. Not sure I'm in the mood for another Nier Replicant / FF Type-0 deal on that score.

@KaijuKaiser heh I've not seen fighting games called "beat 'em ups" since the 1980s.

@Michael2008ish Some of the IX characters are voiced (well, barks / battle shouts rather than full dialogue) in Dissidia Omnia Opera, tho' this being a gacha-based mobage with a paper-thin story I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to play it. Vivi & Eiko appear & are voiced in World of Final Fantasy (the "guests" in WoFF are alternate-universe versions with different tho' analogous backstories but the same general personality).

@Kanji-Tatsumi FF XII is one of the very few JRPGs that I don't reflexively set to JP voice at the first opportunity. Not super-fond of Vaan & Penelo's voicework on either track, tho'. X, I eventually grew to tolerate the EN dub (since my Japanese sucks, the alternative was using a mod which leaves subtitle & animation timings out of sync with the voice track). I initially though Yuna's part sounded phoned-in but it later becomes clear why she's talking that way.

@themightyant Clive is hardly the first FF playable character, or even main character, who had a fairly common English given name: we've had Maria, Guy, Leon, Richard, Cecil, Rosa, Edward, Tina, Edgar, Vincent, Claire* & probably some more I don't remember.

• (some of those may have been victims of localisation changes for one reason or another; e.g. Claire was originally Éclair which to English speakers suggests a variety of sweet pastry)

This had better be good. Sony getting complacent does none of us any favours.

LOTRO is still a thing tho' not under its original publisher / dev, I've not really been following it for many years (quit shortly after Isengard launch). I have various memories of that game, including one side quest in Eregion that literally had you picking up the Fellowship of the Ring's litter. Also trying to level up a Hobbit character as far as possible without leaving the Shire (mainly through farming and cooking). I also use it as a good example of video-game scaling syndrome: compare the distance from the Buckleberry Ferry to Brandywine Bridge in the game (less than a minute at normal run speed IIRC) with how far it's described as being in the book.

@CutchuSlow A good guideline would be, if it's not specifically stated to be PS exclusive, assume it isn't.

@trev666 Pretty much, yeah. In-universe order is MGS 3, Peace Walker, MGS 5 (Ground Zeroes / Phantom Pain), Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 4. AFAIK Portable Ops (between 3 and Peace Walker) & Revengeance (after 4) are considered non-canon.

@CutchuSlow No. PC & XBox Series too AFAIK.

That kind of action combat might work in an online game if you're in a relatively small country with decent internet infrastructure, like, well, South Korea . . . not so much if you've got people from all over Europe or the Americas playing on a single datacentre for their continent. Never mind the question of how the hell will the "time manipulation" gameplay element play out in a multiplayer game.

@Judal27 I kinda miss the simple box designs from the PS2 era that were just the title logo on a white background (e.g. the PAL releases of X, X-2 & XII). The steelbook of Zodiac Age had some nice cover & interior art tho'.

The version of the story I generally read was that changes were not a result of direct fan feedback but executive meddling, as regards imposing a shounen MC, and in respect of the dissonant nature of the story, due to the lead writer being replaced partway through development.

I also suspect the game ran into delays and the ending was rushed in order to get it released while the PS2 was still relevant; I found the final dungeon (whose basic concept btw appears to have been recycled from one in Final Fantasy II) struck me as brief and disappointing compared to the two main story dungeons immediately preceding (Giruvegan / Great Crystal and Pharos).