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Post by dareka on Nov 11, 2020 1:03:05 GMT -6
Please accept my apologies for harsh criticism, before. You are actually doing your best to deliver. Can't wait for the rest of the content to come! Personally, I've never doubted the team's drive and integrity - the problem's been PR and Quality Assurance. Clearly, they're working on both (and I'm rooting for them). Not sure if they'll be able to clean up the glitchy-ness of the game in general, but if they've learned from this experience, it definitely bodes well for the sequel.
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Post by dareka on Jul 17, 2020 22:59:38 GMT -6
I'm barely halfway through Episode 2, but I've been surprised how fresh the second play-through feels. The branching paths make the levels feel completely new, and having/not having certain characters at certain points in the game really does make you think outside the box and discover new strategies. Changes in boss mechanics can really throw you for a loop in the best way possible. I'm beginning to think I'll agree with purifyweirdshard 100% by the time I'm done. Anyway, I really do think this series has room to grow as a modern-day "Classicvania" with 16/32 bit graphics, parallel with RotN as a "Metroidvania." A very exciting prospect!
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Post by dareka on Jul 14, 2020 19:18:45 GMT -6
And, not surprisingly, there are other bugs with this new mode, even some new bug(s) for existing mode. Sighhhh... And until 505 manages to consistently put out updates without adding bugs, I don't think we can say that the franchise is "doing well," no matter how well the games are selling.
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Post by dareka on Jul 14, 2020 14:04:11 GMT -6
RichterB I completely understand when you say that Castlevania 3 felt more “substantial” than Curse of the Moon. I haven’t played it in literally decades, but clearing it was an extremely rewarding experience for me back in the day. I think that part of it has to do with the branching map, but I think the main difference is how each game has you deal with challenge. CotM wants you to overcome each and every instance of challenge by choosing the character that makes it less challenging. The game incentivizes you to keep all your characters alive so that you’re always at the optimal state to deal with any challenge, i.e., in the state where you’re free to choose the easiest solution. The characters in CotM are your tools, and using them effectively means bringing the difficulty down. Castlevania 3, on the other hand, the additional characters are not a means to bring down the difficulty; rather, they simply each represent a different playstyle, because you can only have one of them with you, and each’s advantage has a disadvantage as a counterweight. By choosing either Grant, Sypha or Alucard, you’re not choosing to make the game easier per se, you’re choosing which gameplay elements will be less challenging, and at the same time which elements will be more challenging. So they bring variety without a reduction in challenge. It could be argued, therefore, that, despite the two titles’ superficial similarities (like Alfred being based on Sypha, and Gebel being basically Alucard), their gameplay is fundamentally different. There’s one more difference that I feel needs to be addressed. While I can’t say for sure without comparing them screen for screen, CotM seems to have a more “modern” design in that the levels and boss fights are longer but require much less precision to clear. Oldervanias (and older games in general) tended to be shorter and less complicated, but less forgiving. “Classic” games tend to follow this formula: short and simple but “tough,” or long and complicated but “easy.” When the Demon/Dark Souls franchise bucked this trend (being both long and unforgiving), it effectively created a new genre, with games sharing the same design philosophy being referred to as “souls-like,” just as games with randomly generated dungeons with level resets are “rogue-like.” Anyway, I’m still playing through CotM2 but it does feel much more “substantial” than the original so far, in a good way. The characters each play much differently than in the original, and the challenge has increased quite a bit. They're excellent all around, basically, and CotM's sequel even moreso than the first, I think. It also seems to be coming to a point where it knows and is embracing that it's not "just Castlevania by another name", and that's likely for the best. As an artist or developer, you want your thing to have its own identity, not having its destiny rooted in imitation. It can and does still walk a line though where it does both homage and move forward just enough - and I expect Iga's future games to do that even more so. I agree. CotM was something of a modern homage to CV3, while CotM2 knows it's its own thing.
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Post by dareka on Jul 13, 2020 3:04:43 GMT -6
Also, if we measure things in "nostalgic punch" like the Venture Beat review talks about, that's a depressing metric that doesn't necessarily mean anything anyway. Referring to their closing statement here: What I find funny is the notion that this is simply a "classic" Castlevania. The original CotM was clearly inspired by Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse, but that game was something of an outlier, in that it allowed you swap between two characters. It was only two, though, not four. No other 2D Castlevania - linear or otherwise - had this feature until Dawn of Sorrow, which upped the ante to three characters. But unlike the Castlevania games that allowed character swapping, Curse of the Moon and its sequel in particular are completely designed around this feature. Thus, it's not just a throwback; it's an evolution. I don't remember playing an old-school Castlevania where you had to navigate a level by swapping between 7 different characters, giving you an incentive to think about when you should use each. I don't know if it's ever been done before, but I've definitely never seen it done in Castlevania; and God, even though the graphics "look" retro, there's no way we would have seen anything like them on the NES/famicom. They may well "feel" nostalgic, but these are brand new games, pure and simple.
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Post by dareka on Jul 12, 2020 23:04:10 GMT -6
I'm still on the first episode, so I haven't made up my mind yet, but I've been surprised by how different each character plays so far. It's one thing to see it and another to actually experience it. By the way, any inkling of how it's performing sales-wise, so far, purifyweirdshard ?
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Post by dareka on Jul 6, 2020 13:51:24 GMT -6
Curry said Dominique's name comes from the Three Sisters of Nelson. I'm unfamiliar with the work, but I'll be interested in finding out more. I see I am called for! ------------------------ Fan (@oppai67653263) ドミニクさんプレイアブルキャラになってただただ嬉しい でももっと望むなら3Dのほうでも使いたかった(=゚ω゚)ノ I'm sooo happy Dominique will be playable. The only thing that would have made me happier is to play as her in 3D, too. Curry the Kid (@curryhermit) ドミニクは私も思い入れがあるので、いつかROTNでもプレイアブルにしたいですね。名付け親ですし。 因みに名前の由来はネルソン三姉妹から。 I myself am quite fond of Dominique, so I'd like to maker her playable in ROTN too someday. I mean, I named her and all. By the way, her name comes from the three Nelson sisters. ------------------------ I did not know of any Nelson sisters, so I looked it up! It's the main heroine from COBRA: Not hard to see the resemblance. Of particular interest is her story: From the Japanese Wikipedia:
The youngest of the late Nelson Royal’s three daughters (in the movie version, the second; in the TV version, the eldest). She meets COBRA looking for Nelson’s hidden treasure. In her first appearance she’s ostensibly a member of Snow Gorilla, an organization subordinate to the pirate guild that killed Jane and Catherine.* However, in reality she’s an undercover Space Patrol officer (referred this first time as Lt. Nelson, which is corrected in later installments**), and will fight alongside COBRA on multiple occasions. She is faithful to her job as a Captain in the Space Patrol,*** but has no qualms about enjoying her time off, sometimes going on vacation/holiday with COBRA. Eventually she is killed by Salamander and his underlings, with COBRA finding only the skin fragment from her back with her tattoo as proof. Upon seeing it, COBRA mourns her deeply, shedding tears for the first time in the series. When he defeats Dober, COBRA swears revenge against Salamander, crying “I shall not rest until I’ve found you, and used these very hands to crush you to pieces!” Afterwards, a Space Patrol officer identical to her named “Secret Sanders” appears, but the reasons for their resemblance and the two's relationship remain a mystery. Additionally, while she’s considered to be “dead” in the series, her dead body is never seen save for the skin with her tattoo, nor is her actual death in any way shown, so that fans may take the interpretation that she is still alive. The TV series took this one step further, where she is shown to be the founder for the Church of Millar, her memories having been altered. In the movie, she has wavy long hair, giving her an appearance that is distinct from the TV series and original manga. *Jane and Catherine are her sisters. Jane is said to be based on Jane Fonda. ** Nelson is her father's first name. Her actual last name is Royal. *** Her rank in the Space Patrol varies. She’s alternatively referred to as Sub-Lieutenant, Lieutenant and Captain. This is "Secret Sanders" Funny that Curry the Kid should mention a character that's supposed to be dead but is not as the inspiration for Dominique... maybe the third playable character will be "Sister Sanders."
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Post by dareka on Jul 4, 2020 14:24:49 GMT -6
Now if only their quality control was as good as their marketing they'd be one hell of a company. Amen to that!
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2020 20:08:28 GMT -6
Question , at the risk of stating the obvious and coming off as an obnoxious armchair publisher, you guys have got to get your sh!t together in terms of quality assurance and project management. A game that routinely gets its updates staggered across platforms, while at the same time launching with easily detectable, game freezing bugs on fixed hardware like the PS4 will eventually turn off part of the fan base, no matter how good it is. It's definitely turning me off at this point. It's obvious that a lot of the problems are rooted in some bad software implementation that occurred at the beginning of the game's development cycle (which you guys had no control over), but any halfway decent QA should still be able to detect all of these bugs before an update launches, at the very least where consoles are concerned. What's particularly frustrating to me is seeing that you guys keep making the same mistakes over and over. You plan and test to completion before you announce. That way you don't have to go back on your announcements. That way you don't have release an update on one platform but not the other. That way you won't have end-users literally debugging your release. And if there's no one in the company that knows how to test software, or if there are not enough testers to get the results you need, you hire them. I'm hoping you guys are taking this as seriously as I would if I were in your place. Because I love this franchise, and you guys have done amazing work in so many regards...that it would be a real shame if you were to lose your momentum on account of... "Hey there's a new update for bloodstained, have you played it?" "Nah, it's not worth the risk of corrupting my save file." "C'mon, try it!" "OK, wait... it's not on my platform yet." ... (several months later)... "Is it out now?" "Yeah, but it crashes more often, so I don't play it at all anymore." And if you think paid DLC is controversial now, wait until it crashes your game.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2020 15:10:39 GMT -6
I can't remember where I read this, but it said the levels will be broken up into "chapters." That reminds me of Ninja Gaiden on the NES. From my current understanding, there will be cut-scenes between at least some of the stages, and each playthrough is considered an "episode." The content of the cut-scenes changes each "episode" (i.e., playthrough). That's my current understanding, and why it says on the official website that, at first, only the first "episode" is available to play.
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Post by dareka on Jun 30, 2020 14:59:20 GMT -6
I absolutely loved the first game, and a co-op mode is a fantastic idea, but man, I am so devastated by it being local co-op only. I don't know if the developers noticed but there's kind of a worldwide pandemic going on right now. I can't exactly drive over to a friend's house and start playing a game with them just because. I'd honestly rather them have made it solo only than be constantly teased with a mode I won't be able to even consider trying out for up to a year (or longer). Something tells me that if enough people complain about it online they'll add it at a later date. They may very well indeed, but, personally, I wouldn't bet on it. I think they're more likely to add it in the eventual sequel, if at all. With their very noticeable exceptions (see FFXIV post Yoshi-P) Japanese developers are, for the most part, not very knowledgeable about online-play in general (see FFXIV pre Yoshi-P). Some of them will use the excuse that you have to "design around lag and we don't have time to do that" (see Trials of Mana), but, at the end of the day, they probably just don't have anyone on the team who can reliably implement online play and - since it's not that big in Japan - perceive no incentive to implementing it, specially since they themselves probably wouldn't use the mode. Things are slowly changing, of course, but just as with everything else, it'll be a decade or so before the "old guard" gets with the program. I obviously hope I'm wrong, though.
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Post by dareka on Jun 28, 2020 0:45:14 GMT -6
Damn, this was a long interview, but it's really quite interesting. Original article: game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/interview/1261747.htmlFeel free to repost - just give credit. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A sequel taking place directly after the original, made possible by the latter’s success
I was very surprised by the game’s sudden announcement on June 24th, so I’d like to begin by asking how Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 came into being. IGA: The original Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Curse of the Moon from here on out) was developed as a spin-off title by Inti Creates, from an idea to develop an 8 bit style game that emerged during the Kickstarter. Well, since Ritual of the Night was delayed, the spin-off, Curse of the Moon, ended up coming out first. We were surprised by how enthusiastically the fans received it, and so we felt we just had to make a sequel, and that’s how things got started. So within the series it’s a sequel to Curse of the Moon, which is a spin-off of Ritual of the Night. IGA: Yes. It shares some of the characters with Ritual of the Night, but think of it as the sequel to a game that takes place in a different setting. Is it related to the original [Curse of the Moon] story-wise? IGA: As far as the story, it takes place right where the last one left off. Right after Zangetsu, the main character, defeats the last boss, Dominique appears and tells him about a “Demon Tower” that’s suddenly appeared, and so both of them head off to investigate. So you’re saying that, while Curse of the Moon had multiple story lines depending on how you played, this one picks up after the regular ending. Miyazawa (director): Right. It picks up from the ending where you defeated the boss together with your comrades. The game system from the previous game is basically intact – are there any upgrades to it you can tell us about? Aizu (producer): Without the original we wouldn’t have a sequel, so obviously there’s a new story line, new stages and new bosses; but that still wouldn’t be enough, so we’ve added a slew of new features. Miyazawa: Since the basics of playing as Zangetsu haven’t changed, you may not notice anything new in the first stage; but from the second stage onward you’ll be joined by other characters, and all of these levels are designed to make the most of what makes each of your teammates unique. Like for instance Dominique, who joins you at the second stage, and has abilities such as Vertical Strike and Hoping Strike, the former letting you attack enemies above, and the latter allowing you to advance while attacking the enemies below… Miyazawa: As far as the new characters, I wanted them to be as appealing as the original’s, so we packed them with new features, the result being that there’s lots of new things you can do. Aizu: You could say we’ve assembled an array of very unique characters. On top of that, you join up with Miriam, Gebel and Alfred, for a total of 7 characters you can switch between as you play, there’s just a lot more options in terms of gameplay. Since we’ve got more characters we wanted to encourage repeat playthroughs, so we really made IGA work. IGA: This time, the story changes a bit with repeated playthroughs, so I think there’s a even more of an incentive for replay than the original. There was a lot of story. When they asked me to supervise it they said it would be “about the same” as in the original, but when I got it was actually so much that I worried I wouldn’t be able to meet the deadline. (Smile) Aizu: The story takes place in “episodes,” and each time you play through the game the episodes change. Another new feature is 2 player co-op. It’s local multiplayer, and while nowadays the hardware allows for online play, I thought it would be worthwhile. It turned out surprisingly fun. Miyazawa: In co-op mode you can interact with the the other player character in many different ways, such as jumping on top of each other, allowing you to reach places you wouldn’t normally be able to. Like, you’ll be playing the game and in some spots you’ll go “I can’t get there right now, but I’ll be able to later”, but with co-op you’ll be able to go right away. We’re not gating progress in any special way, so depending on how you play you might be able to open up additional paths from the start.Aizu: In some of the boss battles there’s situations where you have to wait for the right timing in order to attack, but two players you can just get on top of the other and with both of you jumping, you can reach the boss and keep hitting it, killing it right away.How does character selection work in co-op mode?Miyazawa: Zangetsu’s the only character two people can play at once, and when you do so one of them is blue. The rest of the cast can’t be chosen simultaneously. Aizu: Miyazawa is not the kind of man who holds back when he makes games (smiles), so he asked IGA to come up with a backstory to this blue Zangetsu, but…IGA: I refused (smile). Aizu: “Zangetsu’s a lone wolf, so there’s no second Zangetsu”, he said (smile). Since he’s got no backstory, we gave him a dark, shadow-like color palette, so that he wouldn’t stand out. Is there any place you need co-op to reach?Miyazawa: No, there’s no such place. What happens is that you can earlier to places you would normally need your comrades to reach. Aizu: Another great thing about co-op is that if one player gets too far ahead, the character that was left behind will automatically move where the other is. So for instance, if one of the characters reaches higher ground by jumping on top of the other, the one left below will automatically follow, so it’s really effective for taking shortcuts. There’s also a button you can press to teleport to where your partner is, so you can use it situations like, for instance, when you make a bad jump, to avoid falling into a pit. It’s not a rescue feature per se, but it allows you to enjoy the game even when there’s a skill level gap between the two players.IGA: It’s one of the benefits of having linear stages. In an exploration based game, you run the risk of ruining the story by sequence skipping.So there’s no situation where you’ll encounter a bug or something because you took a path you weren’t supposed to? Miyazawa: We’ve made sure you can take any path you want once you’ve gathered all of your comrades. If you stray from the intended path, sometimes you’ll discover some unique gameplay elements. So the path you take doesn’t affect the story, right? Aizu: The story develops in segments between stages, and the branching occurs depending on whether or not you’ve met certain conditions when you clear a stage, so nothing that happens in the stage itself affects the story. In the original, Zangetsu could earn new skills by killing his comrades. Is this feature still in place? Miyazawa: No, not this time. It’s a continuation of the previous story line, so Zangetsu’s matured a bit (laugh). (laughs) Well yeah, it does pickup at the end of the story where you didn’t kill your comrades, after all.Aizu: That’s it – that’s probably the best interpretation (smiles). New characters with new skills, as well as powered-up returning characters Could you tell us about the distinctive traits of the three new characters?Miyazawa: This Dominique is from a different dimension than the one in “Ritual of the Night,” so her weapon and outfit are new. She’s the one who tells Zangetsu about the demonic tower that’s just appeared, so you see her from the very start of the game. As far as her abilities, first of all her jumps are high. Her spear weapon is quite versatile as well, allowing her to attack enemies above and below. Her greatest asset, though, are her resurrection and recovery skills. They’re sub-weapons, spitting out HP recovery items for herself and her comrades, letting you bring them back to life, so she’s quite dependable. She’s the character you’d least want to die first, I think. You’re saying you need to think twice before using her? Aizu: Well, that’s one way of doing things, but there are plenty of spots where her high jumps and attack options come in handy. Miyazawa: One skill you use when you’ve got 7 characters, “Resurrection Anthem,” is ridiculously strong. It revives all your comrades and restores them to full health. Dominique herself has pretty low HP, so it’ll often happen that she’s dead when you most want to use that skill. Aizu: And by the way, another reason her character design changed from Ritual of the Night has to do with the game’s visuals. If you translate her black-based outfit from Ritual of the Night into pixel art, she’ll end up melting into the background, making her hard to see, so I shamelessly got them to change her palette to brighter colors. Next is Robert... Aizawa: I wanted the new characters to be distinctly different from the original four, while at the same time being just as useful, so I thought what the hell, let’s do this, and made him a projectile based gunman. Since the game takes place at the end of the XVIII century, his weapon’s a musket, and the story’s that he’s a former military officer. I knew a projectile based character would be overpowered for this type of action game, so I gave him low HP, which is kind of odd for someone who was in the military, so the idea is that he’s “weaker” because he doesn’t have any special powers like the rest of the cast. IGA: He’s weak against demons, so to speak. Miyazawa: As far as his personality goes, we wrote him so that he comes off as kind of a jerk at first, but then opens up as the story progresses, so that you’ll be fond of him by the end. Aizu: He’s a very well rounded character: good with sub-weapons, does lots of damage, has very long reach. He’s the kind of character you’ll want to use to just plow through the game, but he’s got low HP, so if you start getting carried away you’re sure to die, so be careful (smile). It’s rare to be able to attack all the way across the screen in this type of game. Aizu: He uses a musket, though, so you can’t fire continuously. So those enemies that gang up on you are tough to deal with, since you’ll take damage if they get too close. Miyazawa: He’s particularly bad against enemies that come at you moving in a wave pattern. Aizu: Also, he can jump off walls, so he’s also useful for reaching high places in a different way than Dominique does. And last, we have Hachi… Aizu: His sprite may not look the part, but he’s actually a Corgi. His story’s that Zangetsu saved his life a while back, so he ended up following him, keen to show his gratitude. At that point he was caught by an evil alchemist, who turned him into the living core of a magicked armor. There’s a cut scene between stages where the characters are talking around a campfire, and there you can see Hachi without his armor, running around playfully, so I’m sure everyone will fall for his charm. He can just take off the armor? Miyazawa: There’s no scene in the game that shows him taking it off, but imagine he can take if off with no problem whatsoever (smile). Aizu: During gameplay he can do things like hover and smash spikes, which gives him a great advantage in terms of mobility. Also, for his sub-weapon he becomes invincible. He’s pretty strong overall, so I wanted to nerf him to better balance the game, but everyone else at the company wouldn’t have any of it (laughs). Miyazawa: Yeah, some people were saying “we can’t beat the game without Hachi!” (laughs). I tried playing through the game with each character without switching, and Hachi was strong enough that I didn’t really miss the others.Have there been any changes to the returning characters from the original? Aizu: They've all been buffed overall.Miyazawa: Alfred in particular was really buffed.Aizu: He was an offense-type character in the original as well, but since we now have Robert, he just came off weak in comparison, so we increased his damage output a bit.Miyazawa: Way more than “a bit,” I’d say (smiles). He’s pretty strong. What I’m going to talk about now is a bit in depth. In the original there was a really strong technique where you’d freeze the enemies and then hit them with the ax. It was so strong, in fact, that his Voltaic Ray spell, supposedly the strongest, paled in comparison. So we’ve really buffed Voltaic Ray this time. Provided you charge it enough, you can quickly dispatch enemies with it.Aizu: I won’t say which one, but there’s a certain boss you can kill instantly with it if it’s fully charged (smile). Miyazawa: Also, Soul Vision, which creates a doppelgänger, was deliberately designed to be weak in the previous game, and it’s also been significantly improved and is very useful now as a sub-weapon. Wasn’t it really tough to get the level design right in a game with so many characters? Miyazawa: It was incredibly tough. It’s what we struggled with the most during development. Just like the original’s Nightmare Mode, there are paths you can take once you’re in a new episode, and this time we’ve designed them so that characters that didn’t get a chance to shine do so. In the original it just like OK, there’s a new path, but this time there are rewards and such that’ll make want to go off the beaten path; though, of course, it’s true that some people might not ever go through those sections with the characters we have mind…So there’s loads of replay value. Miyazawa: There are lots of little things to discover, like going through a section with a character that you normally wouldn’t, and finding out that it was actually the biggest shortcut and such, so player’s should try lots of different things. The game has both “casual” and “veteran” modes. What’s the difference between them? Miyazawa: It’s pretty much the same as in the original: there’s no limit to the number of lives, there’s no knock-back when get hit, etcetera. Also, this time around in casual mode, when you leave a room through the stairs and then come back in, all the item lamps are replenished. And in veteran mode, it’s not just the lamps: the enemies respawn as well, so it’s a bit more challenging. Aizu: This sort of feature reflects some of the feedback we got indirectly by looking at what people were streaming and sharing on social media and such.Is there anything else for which you used this type of feedback as reference? Miyazawa: For instance, we saw situations where people would be left with a single character who happened to be the worst for that particular section, so they would kill themselves. The game’s actually designed so that its possible clear all of it with any single character, but for those who just want a do-over, we implemented a full party suicide command (smiles). You can change the difficulty whenever you want, but the ending won’t change depending on the difficulty, right? Aizu: Right, the difficulty has nothing to do with it. It’s like we design the game based on veteran difficulty, but we realize that there are plenty of players for whom this old-school gameplay may be a bit too difficult, so we also provide a casual mode. When you say that “the difficulty has nothing to do with it,” do you mean that the ending does change according to other conditions? Aizu: Yes. I can’t go into details, but there’s definitely some of that. Who was responsible for the sound this time around? Aizu: This time it was basically all done by the company’s sound staff. Last time we also used Michiru Yamane’s “Ritual of the Night” track, but this time it’s all being done internally. Was there anything in particular you wanted to achieve with the music? Aizu: I heard they created a ton of tracks. I heard rumors that the number of tracks discarded was probably greater than the number of tracks that made it into the game. Creating graphics that would look good against today’s games, while keeping an 8 bit aestheticJust like last time, you guys really captured the feel of 8 bit games with the sprites and background art. What’s your secret? Aizu: We’re in fact very careful with our graphics. For example, on the old hardware you couldn’t actually do a fade-in or fade-out effect, so you would change the character and background palettes to produce a similar effect. What’s more, you had to chose from the 8 bit system’s limited color palette, so we take care to replicate things like that. The color combinations are also taken from 8 bit systems. We’re being careful to follow the restriction of using “just 4 colors including transparency for each 8 x 8 sprite,” in order to be faithful to the coloring you’d find in character sprites from those days. However, as far as the background’s concerned, due to palette limitations the old 8 bit systems had to use background colors from an area adjacent to the colors used for the characters, so you’d have fewer colors; we decided to ignore this limitation, so there’s actually more colors. What did you think when you first saw these graphics, Igarashi-san? IGA: That [Inti Creates] lived up to their reputation. We remember those games through the lens of nostalgia, but they wouldn’t hold up today, so you can tell that they’re showing the graphics that you remember, but if you back and compare them they’re much more sophisticated. Aizu: The amount of stuff going on is actually at the level you’d find in the later 16 bit systems (smiles). We’re way over the amount of sprites you could show, and VRAM capacity of the actual 8 bit systems.Miyazawa: Within the dev team we actually created some guidelines for replicating the feel of 8 bit graphics in terms of “we can go this far in this regard, but no more,” and made sure to stick to them. Aizu: Yeah, that’s what you say now, but I remember struggling to reign a certain creative director who was all like “make it flashier!” “the flashier the better!” (laughs) (laughs) By the way, is there a chance we’ll see a further sequel to Curse of the Moon? Aizu: Ritual of the Night recently became a million-seller, but unbeknownst to many, Curse of the Moon has also sold-through more than half a million units. This allowed us to make the sequel, so whatever happens in the future depends on how well received it is; but if it sells anything like the first one, I think I’ll be giving Igarashi-san a call once more. Miyazawa: But whenever we make a game we put everything into it, so the truth is we can’t even imagine a sequel. I don’t think we can add any more characters (smiles). In terms of what you could do with a sequel, going from 8 bits to 16 bits would seem to be a natural progression for the series in my view … (smiles/laughs) Aizu: I see what you did there (laughs). So heading into your July 10th launch, who are you hoping will buy the game, and how do you hope they’ll enjoy it? IGA: It’s a game chock-full of features from “the good ol’ days,” so of course we’d love for the people who grew up with them to enjoy it, but to tell you the truth, in my mind games haven’t really changed that much since then. We’re in an age where the improvement of the graphics and visceral flare has far outstripped that of everything else, so I’d like younger players to try it and be able to say “yeah, this is what games are all about.” Miyazawa: Whenever I make a game and not just for this one, my goal is to make something that may be “enjoyed by everyone, regardless of how good you are at games,” so my design baseline is that my father, who doesn’t play videogames, can clear it. This game is no different: we’ve added a lot of features to make it enjoyable for people who don’t normally play games, so I’m hoping players will coax their friends into playing it. Aizu: We’re also again supporting multiple platforms, so users have choices. I hope everyone will pick it up and enjoy it on the hardware that best suits them. The Nintendo Switch version supports preloading, so be sure to make use of it!Thanks for your time.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Post by dareka on Jun 27, 2020 23:30:18 GMT -6
I just found out a cake I gave Inti Creates in 2016 actually made it to them/they ate it Talking to them in a Discord and someone shared this video of it: Low quality pic - and you can see the start of the thread for a pic with them/me together lol ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh all these years I was worried they had to throw it away. Bad feels for years. Maybe IGA feeling awkward when you told him how crushed you were over Dominique was some form of karma for your worries about the cake?
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Post by dareka on Jun 27, 2020 18:15:54 GMT -6
I like him as a character, but I don't like him enough to actually play as him. There were people who really liked Dominique and where really put-off by the fact that she ended up being the "main" antagonist I was kinda bummed myself, even though I like Zangetsu quite a bit. I'm still holding out for some inter-dimensional demonic nonsense to bring her back as one of the good guys in one of the sequels, with the character design from CotM2. As far as what happened with the Zangetsu reveal trailer, I don't think it was meant to in anyway mislead about the content of the game. That said, one has to realize that we're no longer in an age where this sort of bare-bones implementation flies, especially if it's even remotely hyped and you end up waiting almost a year for it (regardless of the reasons for the delay). It doesn't have to have gear and gated progression like with Miriam, but even a superficial story line and some form of rudimentary quest system (for unlocking skills, defeating the bosses in a certain order and such) would have gone a long way. The thing is that games are about presenting the player with a challenge and offering rewards for overcoming those challenges. If you don't set anything like this up and just say " here's the castle, you can go anywhere, go beat some bosses", players will go " uhm, OK?" and only the hardcore will bother with it. Again, I'm not saying 505 or ArtPlay did anything wrong - just that players expect more nowadays. I mean, when a game tells you that there are several playable characters, you assume that you can enjoy an equally satisfying experience with all of them, right? I know this has not been the way IGA's games worked in the past, but gaming's come a long way in the last 25 years, and I can't blame people for assuming the game would meet the standards of today in this regard.
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Post by dareka on Jun 27, 2020 1:51:55 GMT -6
Up to you - what I gathered from Google translation is pretty close to what you got there, and just taking what I know and fitting it into context. It's quite a bit, and yeah I thought the Roguelike bit was interesting. Well, a new interview on Curse of the Moon 2 just came out, so I think I'll do that one first: game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/interview/1261747.htmlInteresting tidbits: 1. It picks up at the " regular" ending of the first game. 2. Using two players allows you to reach places you normally wouldn't be able to reach without different characters. 3. There are story changes in each subsequent playthrough. 4. They're still going with the "alternate dimension" explanation for the story, so this is in fact a different, presumably(?) good Dominique 5. The original Curse of the Moon far exceeded their expectations and has sold more than 500k units. 6. If the Curse of the Moon 2 sells as well as the first one, yes, there probably will be a third installment. 7. There is a campfire scene between stages where you'll see Hachi without his Mech. 8. All the returning characters have been powered-up, especially Alfred 9. Hachi is the most OP character in the game. Aizu-san wanted him nerfed, but the staff protested saying " we won't be able to clear the game without Hachi!"
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Post by dareka on Jun 27, 2020 0:13:47 GMT -6
This was the most interesting part for me:
――では、 “ローグライクモード”の代わりとして、5月から6月にかけてアップデートで追加された“ランダマイザー”はどういった経緯だったのですか?
五十嵐:いまのシステムだとランダムのマップ配置換えはかなりきびしくて、これを作るためには根本から作り直さないとダメということが判明したんです。そこでもともと考えていた、“ランダマイザー”に変更させていただきました。日本ではそこまでメジャーではないですが、海外だとけっこうメジャーなんです。これであれば対応可能ということで、申し訳ないですが、変更させていただきました。ただ、(“ローグライクモード”に関しては)あきらめきれない部分ではあるので、いまも研究だけは進めています。今回は苦渋の判断でこういう形になりました。
So, how did the randomizer mode that was added in the May to June updates materialize as a replacement to the "rogue-like" mode?
IGA: It became clear that our current game engine would have to be redone from scratch in order to cope with random room placement, so we opted to do the "randomizer" - which is the feature I'd originally thought of 1 - instead. [Randomizers] are not well-known in Japan, but they are very well-known overseas2. This made me think it could somehow serve as a replacement; so, with a heavy heart, we made the change. That said (as far as the "rogue-like" mode is concerned), it's a feature I just can't bring myself to give up on, so we're still doing researching on it3. [Changing it to a randomizer] was a very bitter pill to swallow.
1. Not 100% sure, but this seems to imply that the randomizer is the idea he'd originally pitched as a strech goal. 2. This was mistranslated on the Twitter thread as "this wasn't a big deal in Japan but caused some fuss in America." He's saying that randomizers aren't popular in Japan but they are over here. He's not referring to any fuss. 3. Does not imply that they're doing it for Ritual of the Night, but it's a strong hint that we might see the feature in a future installment in the series.
... damn ... should I do the whole interview?
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Post by dareka on Jun 26, 2020 22:01:46 GMT -6
Excellent post! I was just wondering about this the other day. I guess the only question I have is, how do all the setbacks in terms of reworking the Switch game and subsequent delays on the DLC affect finances? Like, are they draining more money than they're taking in at this late a stage? ...Still waiting on that Classic Mode announcement for DLC. As long as that one gets fulfilled, I'll be happy. PS: Look at my "64" boys! Together they make the top three of Castlevania sales at 400k! Let's go! They're a drain in as much as fixing the game post launch on the Switch might not significantly increase the player base, but it's more than offset by the game's overall sales. It would be a just small group of programmers and artists that worked on it. 505 got a great deal: the game cost more money to make than they hoped, but it's still a lot less than financing the entire game themselves and it's sold over a million copies, and like purifyweirdshard said: it'll likely sell quite a bit more by the end of it's virtual shelf life. Honestly, those numbers mean the game was a hit with people in general, and not just with the 60,000+ backers the project had. It means that there's a real market for these games, even with younger gamers who may not have experienced the originals, and despite there being many other Metroid-style games. My take-away is that while it may not be the size of the AAA game market, there's a very healthy demand for this kind of "old-fashioned" game, and it's looking stable, profitable, and lower-risk.
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Post by dareka on Jun 26, 2020 21:38:05 GMT -6
Nintendo just posted a store page for Bloodstained: CotM 2 which reveals a July 10th release date, a $14.99 price tag, and confirms 2 player local Co-Op as well as the (apparent) return of Alfred, Gebel, & Miriam as playable characters. If you're interested you can see the page/listing hereNice find! And very welcome news. Thanks!
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Post by dareka on Jun 24, 2020 2:22:12 GMT -6
Awesome news! Was hoping this would happen but wasn't expecting it this soon. 2P looks like fun and is it just me or is one of the new characters based on Robbie Belgrade? I knew he looked familiar! Duh, Robert. Maybe they're setting the character up for the sequel, where he'll be voiced by The Man Himself. Maybe the character moonlights as a librarian?
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Post by dareka on Jun 24, 2020 2:19:08 GMT -6
look at the "1P" at the top of the screen below the character portraits. Is this a hint at multiplayer? Also i would like to know if Limited Run Games will release a Limited Edition again, so i don't buy it twice. It sure looks like it, I was looking at the screenshots on the official website after you mentioned it and noticed that right under the 1P you mentioned that it says 2P Push Start I saw the Japanese trailer, and actually where it says in English " will you face the threat alone, or with comrades by your side," the Japanese version says something like " alone or in cooperation"... and the term they use for cooperation is the one they always use for "cooperative play," so, yeah... with the screen saying 2p press start, that's the logical conclusion.
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