Toreishi.net ~Now with more SNAP~

For anyone who pays attention to Japanese 18+ games (such as this one), it's always been "obvious" that Android would soon sport 18+ games. Of course, like some "obvious" things, it's one thing to make a prediction, yet another thing for it to become reality. Especially if you're looking for a serious attempt.

I only just found out about this, but VisualArt's set up an Android store [WARNING: 18+ content] late last year that opened earlier this year. Beyond their own products, they also have Android games ported from Windows from a couple of other notable manufacturers (130cm, riffraff, ZERO). Naturally, this approach of a third-party market isn't likely to get very far on iOS due to the requirement of jailbreaking on that operating system, something that's a bit hard to convince users to do.

It'll be interesting to see if this approach actually leads anywhere!

Hey, look, Baldr Sky Zero 2 [WARNING: 18+ content], which will at least address one of my complaints about the first game by having Meryl as a winnable character. Interesting that they decided to have Shizel as the other winnable character, though - I guess she was a lot more popular in Baldr Sky than I knew? Interesting how they're declaring that this will "complete" Baldr Sky Zero, though, something they didn't state in the runup to the previous game (unlike Dive1, which by the nature of the name, was clear about what was happening).

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I have a Kindle. In this case, it's a second generation Kindle Paperwhite, which I purchased so that I can access the Amazon.co.jp marketplace (my previous third-generation Kindle Keyboard was unable to do so).

I've been checking out several e-books that are available, and rather understandably, I've downloaded several samples. And... some of them really make me wonder what the hell the publishers are smoking. Cases in point:

• IS <Infinite Stratos> volume 1, where you get to read an amazing 12 sentences of the book to decide whether you want to purchase it.
• Which is an improvement over Strike the Blood volume 1, where you get to see the title pages for chapter 1, and that's it.
• Or Date A Live Touka Dead End, where you get to see the disclaimers for the book, and that's it.
• The same holds true of Bungaku shoujo, where you don't see anything from the first chapter.
• This isn't restricted to light novels, either. In Kami nomi zo shiru sekai volume 1, you get to see the "prologue" and the first chapter's title page, and that's it.
• Which is admittedly better than Mahou senki Lyrical Nanoha Force volume 1, where they cut you off before showing any story.

You'd think that publishers would realize that a sample should be, well, a real sample so that a customer would be able to make an informed decision, but... maybe not?

This isn't to say that all of them are bad. Several of them are quite good, such as the samples for Hidan no Aria volume 1 and Kikou shoujo wa kizutsukanai volume 1 on the light novel end of things, and Minami-ke volume 1 for manga.

Many people have noticed the difficulties of buying the media you care about in the country you care about when it comes to digital downloads of video and music. Some people have noticed the difficulties of buying the media you care about in the country you care about when it comes to digital downloads of video games. There has been remarkably little discussion about the issue when it comes to digital books, though, at least in part because of how little it's in your face.

Take, for example, the fantasy novel by David Eddings, Pawn of Prophecy, which starts off his series The Belgariad. Normally, if you go to Amazon.com from the US, you see no indication that an e-book version is even available. However, if you happen to come from a foreign IP... this is what you see instead:

	Hey, look! A Kindle version! ... What happens if I click on it?
	That looks like what I want! Time to buy! Sign in, and....
	Huh?
	Meanwhile, on Amazon.jp....
	Or Amazon.co.uk....
	...Or Amazon.de....

From what I can tell, this comes down to the idiotic policies of Random House, who own the copyrights in the US. They don't seem to have recognized that e-books are a great way to sell books from your back catalog, even for ones that have a fairly large following. What's even more ridiculous is that the international arm of the same publisher (Transworld Publishers) has already released electronics versions of the books!

Left hand, meet right hand. sigh

In the meantime, I'll go buy these from overseas. At least the Kindle is able to keep books from multiple accounts on a single Kindle simultaneously (unlike the mobile phone versions of the apps)....

About a week ago, I finished my first playthrough of Baldr Sky Zero (Sakura's, if you're curious). I've been thinking about it on and off as I started approaching the conclusion of the game, and these are a few of my musings. The short version is: not a horrible iteration, but it's nowhere to the level of Baldr Sky.

Story/Characterization

• imho, the main character's not very relatable. Compared to the two previous Baldr iterations (Force and Sky; Bullet is a remake so doesn't count for this), Edward [WARNING: 18+ content] is an extraordinarily self-confident person, to the point where I would call him smug.
• In a somewhat similar vein, I'm not particularly enamored of the main heroines, either. I'd argue that there's a problem when my favourite characters in the game are secondary characters [WARNING: 18+ content].
• And... the story? Giga/Team Baldrhead decided to do something that's effectively a 180° change from their previous games:

  This. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed. Team Baldrhead's done a pretty good job (well, at the very least prior to Material Brave) of having the different characters' storylines tie together in a relatively organic manner (yes, you can point to Sora's storyline in Dive2, but the way it tied together fit really well). As a matter of fact, the ending felt a lot like that from Material Brave, with Meryl substituting for Ena, essentially declaring that there will be a sequel by leaving things open-ended at the end. Bleh.

• And the vaunted connection with Baldr Sky? I have yet to see anything meaningful, although it may be in one of the other two storylines....

Gameplay

• Team Baldrhead tried to mix things up a bit with this iteration. I believe a previous version of the game system page noted that they were aiming to encourage players to use the long-distance weapons more, so they tried to balance the game in that direction.
• In a sense, they did. But by nerfing close-ranged combat.
  • None of the weapons provide armour any longer, meaning that if you're surrounded during close-ranged combat (which happens pretty often), you're going to be taking a beating.
  • Healing only occurs at the end of combat, with no per-kill healing (although there are options to increase end of combat healing). Given that close-ranged combat was traditionally about taking enemies out quickly and being willing to accept those hits to be able to land hits, it breaks that balance.
  • No Pile Driver? What the hell?! 😛
• Other miscellaneous combat thoughts:
  • Having different-sized usage limits for each weapon becomes an annoying exercise in juggling weapons. I've found that the most effective (??) way of handling this is by using a weapon until it needs to be reloaded, which means that there's very little cross-attack usage.
  • Weapons only reload when they're completely exhausted. So you'll be shooting weapons into nothing between fights, which just feels ridiculous.
  • Combat feels a bit slower, a bit more "floaty" than the previous games. There's something missing, but I have difficulty putting my finger on exactly what it is.
  • The weapon selection is somehow less "fun" than previous iterations, as a lot of the attacks with character have disappeared.

Artistic

• I suppose this is the price of going 3D, but it feels as though the simulacra have lost some detail - perhaps it's just the shading that's different? Simulacra variety also seems to have gone down, and map/tile variety has gone down even more than that. In general, the world feels much smaller than it did before.

Technical

• The game runs pretty well - I'm running it at 2560 x 1440, maxed settings except for SSAO (which drops the frame rate noticeably). Granted, this is with a Geforce GTX 770....

All in all, Baldr Sky Zero feels like a definite step back from Baldr Sky Dive 1/2/X, which is unfortunate. I'll be waiting for the expansion to Baldr Sky Zero, to see if they addressed some issues (like they (arguably) did between Material Brave and Material Brave Ignition).

I finished 閃の軌跡 a couple of days ago, after a little north of 75 hours on it. I've had a couple of days to digest it some more.

It's good, but it's not great, imho. They have a good base to build from, but I think their earlier iterations (空, 零) did a better job of introducing the universe. To break it down:

Story/Characterization

• Having all of the characters being of the same age (roughly) helps in a number of ways, in particular to address the relatively power level issue which often tends to be nonsensical in RPGs (cough シェラザード/アガット/ジン in 空 cough). Unfortunately, the catch is that instead, you get 9 characters to try to wrap your head around out of the gate, which is rough.
• Predictably, they don't do a good job of resolving the characters' backgrounds, which is far, since they've generally not addressed characters' issues in the first game. I don't think they've been quite this... obvious about putting big shining LOOK HERE lights above characters' heads before, though (namely エマ).
• And, well, the story? 零 was actually fairly gentle, as events are largely "resolved" (from the perspective of the player), although there are a number of unanswered questions. 空 punches you in the stomach with the epilogue events. I was expecting something around this level. 閃... takes it to a whole different level. They essentially give you the first section of the second game right up until the first major cliffhanger... and then end it right there. Ouch.
• Also: the tech at the end. Really? Yes, it's kind of cool. But it doesn't really fit.

Gameplay

• Gameplay is largely streamlined from previous iterations. Quests (main and side) are presented similarly to how they always have, so most of the fine tuning is in combat:
  • For quartz selection, you now have to mostly pick between stat boosts and spells, since spells are tied directly to quartz, rather than to the elemental level in your orbment. It's considerably limiting, but instead, it forces meaningful decisions, rather than allowing for almost every character to become a tankmage.
  • The burst gauge (from 碧) is effectively gone, but it was fairly clumsy.
  • The one piece that kind of remains from the burst gauge is a really nice addition: Zero Arts, where arts take 0 time and cost 0 MP. For a player who doesn't normally use arts (like me), they're a really nice incentive to use them.
  • Instead of the team rush AT bonus, they've converted that into the Tactical Link system, which I like, as it gives a lot more control to the player.
  • They've tweaked a number of the statuses: the notable ones are that unconscious characters are always hit with critical (and so the number of quartz/skills that grant have gone down considerably), petrified only grants a 30% of instant death when hit (instead of 100%), and instant death is now rare (not available via a regular quartz any longer).
• For sidegames, fishing is extremely simplified so that bait is no longer necessary and new fish are caught on the first attempt, and cooking has been simplified so that awesome and unexpected results have a very high percentage with certain characters, both of which are really nice (imho).

Artistic

• The primary character models are quite good, and the environments are decent. Using slightly larger enemy models for slightly tougher versions of those enemies is a nice touch, and one that's harder to do with 2D sprites.
• What doesn't fare as well are the secondary characters (who blur together even more than the 2D sprites). Animation could also be better - particularly jarring sections including floaty walking/running animation which doesn't connect properly with the ground and battle success animation where characters act unnaturally slowly on actions (like high fives).

Technical

• Going full 3D was rather inevitable given the platforms in question, but the drawback is sometimes painfully clear. When there's too much on the screen (such as many primary characters simultaneously), the framerate drops noticeably. In short, the graphics engine they're using isn't very good and/or isn't optimized well. There are times they've done some really nice effects, though, in particular the chapter 4 boss introduction. The real killer, though, is that load times compared to previous games has gone up quite a bit, which makes getting into/out of combat more painful than it should be, and some of the story sections drag because of the amount of time spent on Now Loading screens instead of seeing what happens next.

This might seem like quite the gripe list, but I'm still happy with what Falcom has done. It's taken things in a somewhat different direction, and I look forward to how they move the universe forward with the next game.

As if I weren't distracted enough already, there are a few more things I'm keeping an eye out for.

Distraction #3

I'm a Nihon Falcom fan, particularly of their 英雄伝説軌跡 (Legend of Heroes Kiseki) series. The newest installment in the series, 閃の軌跡 (Sen no Kiseki) is coming out at the end of the month (September 26th), and I'm picking up the PS3 copy.

For the most part, from a combat perspective, it looks like things haven't changed <em>too</em> much from the previous games (or at least from 碧), with the AT battle system, Craft/Attack/Arts/Move/Item options, and the Master Quartz system for customization.

But then there's this, which they've added this time around: 戦術リンク機能 (the Tactical Link System), allowing for a few more options during combat (even though they seem to be somewhat QTE-like in the timed button pressing, although at least it's only a single button... unlike elsewhere, where they do have full-blown QTEs). This is built on a relationship model, which looks to be considerably extended from what existed in 碧 (where it only affected which character's events/ending you would see and possibly what items you might get), since they've also added a counter to limit how many events you can get during each phase. Boo.

Nonetheless, I look forward to getting the game. Whether I wait for the strategy guide this time, who knows?

Distraction #4

I've also been keeping an eye on and off on Project Phoenix. The staff on it is fairly interesting, although I'm not 100% impressed by all of the work they've done as some of it's not really to my taste (even if it is a lot of AAA-level stuff).

That said, combat does have some promise. To a certain extent, it looks like an RTS derivative of the Langrisser/Growlanser (although Growlanser seems to have gone in the action RPG direction?), which could be very impressive. Other comparisons could include Studio e-go!'s キャッスルファンタジア〜エレンシア戦記〜 (Castle Fantasia History of Elencia) and トキノ戦華 (Tokino Senka) (warning: both 18+ games, although links are to Wikipedia), although both are squad-based tactical games, rather than real-time tactical RPGs). But, given that it's only just now finishing up its fundraising, I'll need to wait to see how it turns out.

That, and it's hilarious (at least to me) to see Donna Burke listed there. But that's just me!

My weekend hasn't really gone the way I expected a few days ago. There are a couple of reasons for that... distractions, you might call them.

Distraction #1

One of them is this:

A few friends were trying out the beta of the re-released Final Fantasy XIV and said it was pretty good. So, I decided to give it a shot last weekend (beta 3, open) and found that it actually was quite fun. I haven't spent any significant time playing an MMO since the now-defunct City of Heroes, although I tried out a couple along the way that didn't stick, but one of the attractions of Final Fantasy XIV (and XI, to be fair) is that you build up your one character, rather than creating numerous alts.

This is my main. Character name (Lapis Ritter) taken from two different characters from the same game. I leave it to as an exercise for the reader to determine which game. I will say that the (rough) look and the job are appropriate. As a separate aside, I find it entertaining that the Caucasian look for this character is a very Japanese-style Caucasian.

That said, the launch so far is demonstrating that Square Enix (Japan) doesn't know how to hire software engineers who understand the concept of managing load. For an MMO. When their approach for dealing with a heavy load is to reject players because the world queue is putting too much of a load on the server, there's something really, really wrong. It's really a pain in the ass to have to gamble to try to get into the queue to log onto a game.

Distraction #2

And this is the other [WARNING: 18+ content], a demo of which came out just this Friday:

The graphics are quite a bit different than the game it "succeeds" (even though it's a prequel), largely because they've elected to go full-3D this time around.
Mmm... combat. There are a few similarities to the previous game, but quite a lot of differences, too. One major item that you can see here are that the game takes advantage of its 3D nature to zoom in during close-range engagements. Another item, for people familiar with the predecessor, is that you only see six weapons, a major reduction from the twelve that were there before.

A couple of notes about combat:

• As noted above, you only equip six weapons (close/far), rather than the twelve weapons from before.
• On the other hand, you now equip three force crashes instead of one (upgraded to two).
• Each weapon has its own heat gauge, instead of a shared heat gauge. The bar below health is the "armour break" gauge instead.
• Ranged weapons have ammo restrictions. When a weapon runs out of ammo, you have to wait for it to reload before being able to use it again. Even though GIGA was aiming for encouraging long-range weapon use, this is a pretty big detractor.

The User Documentation page is now up, although it's restricted to users. Easy accessibility for current users is awaiting LDAP integration in Wagn, but that's supposedly coming Soon™.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to putter around learning better how some of these systems work. For example, hooking up a CentOS> system to a Windows Server system via Active Directory (using CentrifyExpress) has been fairly interesting, due to the downstream implications of not necessarily using local PAM authentication (since AD provides LDAP services, for example). Although I'm still having to get used to PuTTY using the Windows Kerberos ticket to do SSO onto my Linux system....

Miscellaneous notes so far:

• Having AD LDAP means that as long as I push users to have an AD account, my non-elevated web applications don't need to have local PAM access (which requires some form of elevation).
• Anything that does check PAM now needs to know to check AD as well (via pam_centrifydc.so).