You know, I bet people did complain about that, but this feels different. I think the rule is you can't make a spin off if the franchise is dead. Like if VC4 came out last year, then people would be find with a diversion.Kaimax said:
Valkyria Chronicles Spin-Off Will Expand Series by Ditching Its Best Parts
- Thread starter StewShearerOld
- Start date
More like seeing people "shit-on" The Bureau for not being a turn-based strategy. Which is something that actually happened. And the pressure for a new 'real' XCOM game resulted in the magnificent XCOM reboot (and the recently released sequel, I note that there hasn't exactly been a lot of news on a sequel for The Bureau).Kaimax said:
Comparing it to Mario is a poor example. There's a new 'traditional' Mario game every couple years at most. On every kind of Nintendo console. There is an absolute overwhelming wealth of side-scrolling platforming Mario games. It makes no sense to complain that Mario RPG isn't like other Mario games because there's plenty of traditional Mario games around and they keep regularly making new ones. The last Mario RPG game of any type, as far as I can tell, was Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, which came out last year; the same year that Super Mario Maker came out...which was a jumping side-scrolling platformer.
Valkyria Chronicles, in comparison, came out in 2008. Since then we haven't seen a single non-handheld sequel. Valkyria Chronicles II was released in 2010 and was on the PSP. Valkyria Chronicles III was released in 2011, was PSP only and was never released outside of Japan.
That was a little over five years ago now; even if we're generous and allow for the Japanese-only game to be counted. If we go to the other end of the spectrum and be harsh on the series its been approaching eight years since the last console-based Valkyria Chronicles, the one that started it all being the only game of that type. That's a long time. Suddenly there's news of a new Valkyria Chronicles game! For the PS4! How exciting! Except...its basically no longer Valkyria Chronicles. Its a generic JRPG spinoff of Valkyria Chronicles.
You're really surprised that some people are...well rather more than "a little" disappointed? It'd be like finding Half Life 3 was finally coming out, but its been turned into a side-scrolling beat-em-up featuring Gordon Freeman wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses. Or finding out that they were remaking Final Fantasy VII but screwing with the battle system to remove the whole 'traditional RPG' thing...oh wait...Square-Enix...that's really happening...
Super Mario gets a side scroller every other year, VC has had 2 games (in the west) in about a decade. Even if you were to make the argument that "it's just a spin off" that's no guarantee that the main franchise is gonna get a follow up, more likely the game fails which results in complete abandonment, e.g. Syndicate, or it does well resulting in a total shift to this new format, e.g. Fallout. Hell, I loved Fallout 3 but I still can't help but feel a little sad for all the poor sods that invested money into buying a product that eventually ditched them for more main stream appeal. This is only considering mechanics, the original game had a WW2 aesthetic, oh yeah, I could easily imagine Churchill fighting that mechanical death scorpion, with a freaking sword no less!Kaimax said:
I don't believe an audience should dictate an artists work but I bought both the original games, I BOUGHT THE SHODDING ART BOOKS (which set me back a pretty penny), even if this new game turns out fun it's not what I was hoping for.
If I wanted to play a Action JRPG I could play any of the Tales games, modern FF games, Kingdom Hearts, Ni No Kuni, The World Ends With You, Star Ocean, Dark Souls or Dragons Dogma.
What plays/feels like VC?
Sakura Wars.
*Nerd Glasses.* Um Actually the xcom reboot was in the works before they announced the Bureau. All the trashing of the Bureau did was help make that game worse as they shoed in more and more xcom like elements. The original concept looked better then what they released.Lightspeaker said:
But um I still want a real VC4 game, or maybe just a remake of 2 and 3.
Meh, whatever. I liked VC, but the last time I got my hands on a spin-off was when I played Metal Gear Rising, which is (at least in my book) one of the better hack'n' slash games of the last few years with one of the most interesting final bosses.
I remember people not being glad about MGR not being Stealth game with Snake. Hmm...
To counclude, while I would like another VC game as the original one, I will not dismiss this one just because of its gameplay.
I remember people not being glad about MGR not being Stealth game with Snake. Hmm...
To counclude, while I would like another VC game as the original one, I will not dismiss this one just because of its gameplay.
Fair point, but my point still stands. People were going bananas because there hadn't been an X-COM game of any kind since Enforcer in 2001, which was a third person shooter that wasn't particularly well received. There hadn't been a game with similar gameplay to the original X-COM since Apocalypse which was a 1997 game. And many people wouldn't even consider that, because it was still a bit of a departure from the 'defend the Earth' style represented by the first X-COM: Enemy Unknown and X-COM: Terror from the Deep with the global map and worldwide base building and all that jazz, the latter game of which was way, way back in 1995.nomotog said:
Then a new X-COM game was announced in 2010. Everyone rejoiced, it'd been a solid 13 or 15 years (depending on opinion on whether Apocalypse counts) since the last traditionally-styled XCOM strategy game. Then it turned out to be a shooter and everyone went "wait...what?", especially in light of how mediocre the last attempt at that had been (nine years previous) and given that part of that criticism was precisely because it wasn't a strategy game. Then the President of 2K explains that strategy was not 'contemporary', hence the change. And then everyone thought they'd completely lost their minds. With good reason.
Its worth noting that XCOM:Enemy Unknown was only announced in 2012.
At the risk of hammering away on the XCOM analogy: there's a bunch of stuff in XCOM2 that changed compared to the original. But the core of what people liked is still there; they've not gutted the basics in order to produce something that's so different as to be unrecognisable.scotth266 said:
On the flip side Egosoft did extremely well with a small but dedicated market and fanbase for the X series of games. X2 introduced a huge amount over the original, X3 went further again with further iterations of X3 adding more and more; but throughout the core concepts were all still there. Then they brought X:Rebirth out and it was absolutely savaged for completely changing the game on the most fundamental level to the point it was completely unrecognisable as an X game. (As well as being horrendously buggy and incredibly broken all round.)
There's a difference between making new and innovative stuff and taking a beloved but extremely negelected franchise and butchering it. If SEGA wants to make a new and innovative JRPG then fine; but they should make it a new property. Not dig up one that they've not produced a game for in half a decade and slap that over the top regardless of whether it is an appropriate franchise to use given what they're actually doing with the game system.
For further contrast: Persona 4 was released in 2008 and has had three spinoffs. Persona 5 was announced as being in development the same year the first spinoff of Persona 4 released, which was also the same year the Persona 4 Golden enhanced remake first came out. People didn't complain about these spinoffs, despite them being totally different in style to the core series (two are fighting games and one is a rhythm game), because the core series very clearly hadn't been abandoned. Unlike Valkyria Chronicles, which has been for five years now, they didn't even bring the last one out outside Japan.
And again: A few people have mentioned Metal Gear Rising. Again, its a terrible comparison. MGR was announced in 2009, just one year after MGS4 was released. It was released in 2013. Which was the year after MGS5 was announced. There's no comparison to be made here because the situations are so drastically different. There was no abandonment of the MGS series when they brought out their spinoff, it was just something extra.
If Valkyria Chronicles 4 had been announced last year for PS4 and was well into development by now then nobody would be complaining about an announced spinoff, however it looked. Instead people are going to be critical of this because the response is "Really? That's your next big plan for this tactical RPG series after five years or more of nothing new? A hack-and-slash JRPG? Where's the console sequel to the game that we all liked eight years ago that this franchise is based on?"
The "real game" need to announced/released first before a spinoff argument is honestly a childish excuse for getting angry about a spin-off.Lightspeaker said:
Remember when Atlus never released a Persona RPG game for the PS3, and only released Catherine? Well, almost nobody made a large fuss about it after actually playing Catherine. and as it was also an engine test, now the "Proper" Persona 5 is going to be the first Persona RPG game for the PS3.
Maybe this is going to be the same as Catherine, in a sense that they're testing whether this new kind of gameplay can work well or not, then if it actually sold enough, Maybe they'll start making a main VC game. Remember that the sales of VC 2 and VC 3 wasn't stellar.
So, if we really want to hate on this spin-off, I'll reserve that hate when I actually play the game, and will only hate it because it was not a good game, NOT because is was not a main VC game.
Kaimax said:
Okay so you're apparently not reading my posts because I directly addressed Persona in my posts. And you're also apparently totally failing to grasp the point. Okay, I'll try and make this shorter to make it easier for you.
Catherine wasn't a spinoff of Persona 4. Catherine was a new game. This is not a new game. Its a spinoff of Valkyria Chronicles. There's a difference. That's the whole point. Comparing Catherine to Persona is like comparing Alien: Isolation to the Total War series just because they're both developed by Creative Assembly.
"sales of VC 2 and VC 3 wasn't stellar"
VC2 was a PSP only game, a relatively small-scale handheld. VC3 literally wasn't released anywhere but Japan AND was PSP only. They're both sequels to a game that was already niche in the first place.
This is like saying that a niche game only available on the Virtual Boy sold poorly, its not a big surprise. Interestingly, Valkyria Chronicles on PC on Steam has sold surprisingly well for such a niche game. Which frankly should indicate there's a strong argument for bringing such a niche game back. But they're not, they're making a Dynasty Warriors/RPG mashup from the gameplay that's been seen thus far.