The Falcom Thread

[Nester the Lark]

Here's the full version of the Dualshockers interview with Kondo. He doesn't say anything more about the Switch then the snippet in the previous post, but it's a very detailed and interesting interview anyway.

Again, I think any chance of Falcom's games appearing on the Switch will have to come from third-party publishers, much in the same way that Mastiff was responsible for the 3DS port of Gurumin, and Xseed, Aksys and NIS America are having various other Falcom games ported to PC. There just needs to be some kind of interest or demand for it, or even just a company willing to take a chance.

[Nester the Lark]

I was just watching Xseed's Twitch stream in where they showed some gameplay of Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, and at the end, they made a surprise announcement: they're having Ys Seven ported to PC.

I'm not terribly surprised by this news, because Tom from Xseed very vaguely hinted at it in his interview at Digital Emelas, and I assumed this was what he was alluding to.

They didn't reveal too much about it other than that it's a fresh port, not based on the existing Chinese PC port. They're also doing some revisions to their older localization. No release window was given.*

But of course, I'm pretty excited for this!

* EDIT: I was wrong. It's due out this summer. Somehow I missed that.

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EDIT 2: On another note, here's a detailed report on one of the panels Toshihiro Kondo attended at Anime Expo.

[Nester the Lark]

And here is Xseed's teaser trailer for the PC version of Ys Seven:

[Nester the Lark]

I'm basically using this thread as my personal Falcom archive at this point.

Here's an interview with Toshihiro Kondo at the fan site Digital Emelas. It's a pretty general interview, but a good read.

And here's another interview with him at US Gamer. Kondo has answered a lot of the same questions in several interviews recently, but I think this one is fairly insightful.

Here are his specific comments on the Switch:

What are your thoughts on the Nintendo Switch?

TK: As a platform it's extremely Nintendo-like. As a game player myself I'm really excited for it and what it can do. At the moment we don't have anything in development or plans for development. That said, should someone on staff bring up an interesting idea or something, we'd be more than happy to entertain it and develop a game for Switch.

There's been speculation that the Switch will kind of replace the 3DS and the Vita in the Japanese market. Do you think that's possible?

TK: One particular characteristic of people who play a Vita is that they're really into really, really niche games. There's a certain genre of games in Japan called otome games which are games made for girls and right now they're heavily concentrated on the Vita. Should those games not go to Switch, then there's really no reason for their fans to purchase it. Therefore, it's up to the kind of lineup that will come out on the Switch to see who moves over there.

[nocturnal YL]

It's been more than a week since the last post! Yay! And yeah, I can see the personal archive thing; I too use my own forum (which currently consists of two people) as a place to dump ideas.

I'm not entirely positive about the Switch covering the 3DS and Vita markets. Some of the 3DS and Vita games are better off on the Switch, but the Switch is no complete replacement. Expect some of the 3DS games end up finding no suitable home and we lose entire categories of games because of that.

The otome-ge will probably end up on phones instead. Those seem to be the to-go platform for character collection games. Unless there are action-oriented otome-ge that require buttons that I don't know of.

[Nester the Lark]

I think the position of the Switch is still a little up in the air, but with the Vita on its deathbed, I think that's why some people are looking to the Switch as a replacement. Fans of the Vita are people who enjoy both niche games and the portability, so with the Switch not yet having established a firm identity, it's still possible those niche games could migrate to it and find an audience there.

Even then, it could still be a hard-sell simply because devoted Vita users would refuse to buy a Nintendo platform, or even just a not-Sony platform, regardless of the game library.

On a separate note, there were a couple of other things that stood out to me in the US Gamer interview. Kondo mentioned how some of their games sell better outside of Japan, and cited Ys: Memories of Celceta. That really surprised me. Also, he mentioned how he hopes Falcom may be able to go back to developing primarily for PC if Steam gets more popular in Japan.

Anyway, here's another interview with Kondo at the PlayStation Blog. Not much in it stood out to me, tho.

And here's a character trailer for Ys VIII, featuring Dana:

[Nester the Lark]

There's been a lot of Falcom news lately.

Mastiff is planning a crowdfunding campaign for a physical print run of the PC version of Gurumin. Physical copies for the 3DS version are planned to be a stretch goal.

[Nester the Lark]

Couple more trailers.

Here's another character trailer for Ys VIII:



And here's the launch trailer for the PC version of Trails of Cold Steel:

[Nester the Lark]

Here's a character trailer for the legendary Adol Christin:

[Nester the Lark]

Here's another interview with Toshihiro Kondo (part 1 of 2) from NISA Europe. It's interesting because it's less like a regular interview, and feels more casual like an Iwata Asks.

And here's another mini-trailer for Ys VIII:

[Nester the Lark]

I'm late posting this, but the Retronauts podcast did an episode on the Dragon Slayer series about a month ago. They only really cover it up to Sorcerian, and only briefly touch on Legend of Heroes and Lord Monarch, but it's still an interesting listen. Also, it was recorded as a live panel at a gaming expo, so the sound quality is iffy.

(Also, a slight - and very nerdy - correction: Jeremy Parish claims that none of the Dragon Slayer games that were released in the West carried the Dragon Slayer name, but the TurboGrafx-CD version of the first Legend of Heroes was, indeed, called "Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes.")

In other news, Xseed has slightly delayed the release of Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection from Summer to Fall (obviously, since Summer is now over), but their official website for it is now online, and it's quite lovely.

[Nester the Lark]

Interesting...

Fans of Xseed and NIS America tend to have a rivalry, so I knew there would be nit-picking, but there do seem to be some real issues here.

Not to mention the PC port that NISA announced was delayed a day before release due to technical issues, and as of now, there's still no new release date.

[Nester the Lark]

The website Hardcore Gaming 101 just put up an article on the original Zwei. They don't cover Zwei II yet, but I'm guessing they might be waiting for Xseed's English version to come out so they can compare it to the original release.

[Nester the Lark]

The Ys VIII localization drama continues.

NIS America has issued a formal apology for the quality of Ys VIII's localization, and say they will have a new translator and editor go over the entire game's text. New voice acting will also be recorded as necessary. The update will be provided in a free patch for the PS4 and Vita versions by the end of November, while the PC version (whenever that materializes) will have it from the outset.

Wow.

[Nester the Lark]

Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection is coming out October 31 for US$29.99.

Here's a new trailer:



Apparently, it will also include over 2,000 more voiced lines than the original Japanese version.