FALCOM Thread

[BulletMagnet]

Tokyo Xanadu's Japanese release date is September 30th - in the meantime, Ark of Napishtim is up for preorder on GOG for a couple bucks off.

[Formless God]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoEU1_SbB24&t=28s

why boner

[KAI]

Why Vita only

[gbaplayer]

Tokyo Xanadu's Japanese release date is September 30th - in the meantime, Ark of Napishtim is up for preorder on GOG for a couple bucks off.

Damn, i thought i could buy it during my stay in Japan this august...

[Pretas]

Why Vita only

Either Falcom cut a deal with Sony, or they've decided that the non-eroge, non-MMO Japanese PC gaming market isn't profitable enough anymore.

However, they did finally port Zero no Kiseki to PC in 2013, and the English localizations are still rolling in, so they haven't abandoned it yet.

[drauch]

Man, Tokyo Xanadu looks like a real turd. School girls fighting shit? How unique!

[Formless God]

muh aesthetics

lol'd
People only play Falcom action games for the gameplay. except Nayuta no Kiseki, that was a turd on all fronts

[Squire Grooktook]

muh aesthetics

lol'd
People only play Falcom action games for the gameplay. except Nayuta no Kiseki, that was a turd on all fronts

I'd disagree. Even for something like Ys which is often almost intentionally cliche, I find they have a definite charm beyond the gameplay.

[drauch]

I found Xanadu Next perfect on all fronts, especially in the aesthetic department. Simple, but fitting. The Ys games are a bit cutesy in the proportions, but it's still something you can take serious enough and it's not catering to teenagers/men that like teenagers. I dunno, just think Japan has enough higschool girls with swords killing shit.

[Formless God]

Eh aesthetic isn't a big deal for me but every time I look at nearly anything by Falcom and especially Ys I think "what a faggy looking game". But to each their own. I think Tokyo Xanadu is worth a look with how it's everything the last Ys needed to mechanically be.

[BulletMagnet]

I dunno, just think Japan has enough higschool girls with swords killing shit.

This is true, but they (and everyone else) also have enough warrior dudes killing stuff.

[mamboFoxtrot]

So obviously it's time to reach out to a new demographic!
Introducing Tokyo Xanadu 2: The girls are now College students!
(No, they haven't visibly aged)

Man, Tokyo Xanadu looks like a real turd. School girls fighting shit? How unique!

Not gonna lie: reading this comment before watching the video, I was expecting to see high school girls fighting actual shit monsters, which I guess would actually be kinda unique.

[BulletMagnet]

Not gonna lie: reading this comment before watching the video, I was expecting to see high school girls fighting actual shit monsters, which I guess would actually be kinda unique.

Probably not as unique as you'd hope, unfortunately.

[BulletMagnet]

Seems Adol and at least one other Falcom character will be making cameos in the next Taiko rhythm game.

On a side note, after playing a bit of Ark of Napishtim on PC (which comes with a nice hunk of artwork when purchased from GOG, not sure about the other stores), I find myself in the weird SotN-esque situation of somewhat missing the often-cheesy voicework from the PS2 localization, which sort of became part of the experience for me back then. Definitely not a deal-breaker, but it does sometimes surprise and/or frighten me how much tolerance, or perhaps affection, I have for this sort of silliness, heh.

[Squire Grooktook]

Cheese is love, cheese is life.

[ArmoredCore]

Ys 8 on ps4, drools

[Obscura]

Grabbed Gurumin last night on Steam. Fun little combat system; like "Devil May Dance Dance in Ys" or something.

Was surprised at how hard the first boss messed me up, in such a cutsey game. Maybe it's just because of my stubborn refusal to use any healing items or to reload my game to get around the "come back at half-health on game over" penalty, but my death count there was close to 30. I kinda hope the actual levels get a bit trickier; they're fun enough, but massive dissonance in difficulty between stages and bosses has always been a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and this game looks like it could have it in spades.

[blackoak]

Nice. Hope you can do more Falcomlations in the future.

hehe, the bump reminded--I did do another "Falcomlation" last week, in case anyone hasn't read it: Ys IV 1993 Developer Interview. Pretty substantial one too!

[Skykid]

Nice. Hope you can do more Falcomlations in the future.

hehe, the bump reminded--I did do another "Falcomlation" last week, in case anyone hasn't read it: Ys IV 1993 Developer Interview. Pretty substantial one too!

Fantastic. This one would have helped a little when I did my Ys Chronicles Retrospective - some very interesting info in there I would have unashamedly robbed.

For the record, I'd advise plonking "PC Engine" somewhere near the top to indicate format. Ys IV is particularly confusing because there are two of them - the other for SFC. And of course about a hundred remakes until Memories of Celceta finally called time at the bar.

If anyone is interested in a more recent Falcom interview, I did one with them last year where they shed some light on their Playstation allegiance and actually hinted at PS4 development before the announcement of Ys 8.

[ED-057]

How does Ark of Napishtim compare with Origins or Felghana? I thought Felghana was more interesting overall, since Origins was just, you know, one big dungeon. But Origins had better boss battles. The ones in Felghana were kind of BS, always with shit flying everywhere. Keep button-mashing and hope it dies before you do.

[The Coop]

How does Ark of Napishtim compare with Origins or Felghana? I thought Felghana was more interesting overall, since Origins was just, you know, one big dungeon. But Origins had better boss battles. The ones in Felghana were kind of BS, always with shit flying everywhere. Keep button-mashing and hope it dies before you do.

I liked Origins better myself. Its story kept me around to play through with all three characters.

As for "Ark," it's pretty good. Not as good as "Origins" and "Felghana," but good overall. The combat system works well (three swords to power up, various armor and items to find, etc.), the music doesn't use samples that are as nice as the other two games (the compositions are fine, it's the samples used in them are 2003 stuff, and a bit behind the times), and the dash jump is basically useless (you can still get to where the dash jump would have gotten you, but the jumps are tougher to make without it). But, there's plenty to explore, the controls are good, the dungeons are decent, and the boss battles fluctuate from easy, to hard (unless you grind of course). The game's a bit stingy with the hints over where to go next at times, but none of the areas are so huge that you spend hours upon hours hopelessly searching and talking to people. Plus, this version implemented a warp travel system, so getting from save point to save point is easy.

On a last note, there are some areas that seem like you can't harm the monsters until you're at either a certain level, or until you have a certain item. Both seemed to happen during my play through, so it could go either way.

[ED-057]

Thanks, Coop.

[Skykid]

How does Ark of Napishtim compare with Origins or Felghana? I thought Felghana was more interesting overall, since Origins was just, you know, one big dungeon. But Origins had better boss battles. The ones in Felghana were kind of BS, always with shit flying everywhere. Keep button-mashing and hope it dies before you do.

You asking about Felghana remake or original SFC Ys III?

Felghana as it appeared on PC/PSP is amazing through and through, pure arcade business. The boss fights are actually brilliant, not mashy at all. Your description sounds more like Memories of Celceta.

I played through on PSP and switched off English voice acting. Was superb.

[Mero]

On a side note, after playing a bit of Ark of Napishtim on PC (which comes with a nice hunk of artwork when purchased from GOG, not sure about the other stores), I find myself in the weird SotN-esque situation of somewhat missing the often-cheesy voicework from the PS2 localization, which sort of became part of the experience for me back then.

When I played the PS2 version I had the voices turned down to zero so I couldn't hear them. The only downside to this was at a few points in the game I would be playing in silence because I couldn't hear Ohla's song.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Napishtim's recent release also has Catastrophe Mode added which disables healing items similar to Oath/Felghana(they just heal you immediately on pickup instead). Whenever I get that version, I plan to do my first playthrough on Nightmare Catastrophe, and I've never even played Napishtim before, but I played Origin, Felghana, and Seven first playthroughs on Nightmare, so may as well continue that. I did use healing items in Seven though because those boss fights are way dragged out most of the time because I didn't want to spend lots of time on a boss just to lose.

Origin and Felghana both had some BS in some of its several of the boss fights.

How could you possibly defend stuff like Gyalva(Nightmare/Inferno) spike floors? If you're unlucky the entire middle part will be turned into spikes leaving you stuck in a very small area to dodge. Some of his attacks don't even seem to be dodgeable in such a small place, though you could time a boost properly to avoid the hit, but boost takes some time to charge again, so you're screwed if it uses the attacks again.


Then there's Istersiva which in the first phase can potentially summon adds quickly enough that you may not be able to deal with them quickly enough to avoid the laser attack. Then in the second phase, there's the charge attack. In the PSP version, they slowed down the charge attack a lot so that it's less up to luck whether you dodge it.


Death Faleon has that dashing attack, which also was slowed down a bit in the PSP version, but even that is still kind of a pain to deal with.

And there's the main boss at the end of castle where you pretty much have to deal with him teleporting constantly. You pretty much just have to jump and use the earth power for blocking and hope he doesn't teleport to a bad spot at the wrong time to avoid being hit.

Maybe the optional bosses? I'm obviously not going to go through Nightmare Boss Rushes to check the boss you get after that or constantly clear Inferno to check that boss's patterns. Well, I do have them unlocked on Time Attack on the PSP version(only need to do boss rush regardless of difficulty) and beat Inferno then you can just select them as Extra time attacks, but I don't know how exactly it compares to the PC versions of the boss outside of Black Pikkard having more attack patterns.

Origin has a few as well that seem kind of BS. Obviously this is going to ignore the ones that you weren't meant to win.


Khonsclard has the ridiculous healing thing for a lot of characters. Some characters are pretty much forced to take damage or go into the fight at lower health so that their boost charges fast enough to help kill the stuff quickly to minimize healing.

Hugo might have some issues on some bosses due to his slow movement speed. But his wind magic pretty much makes everything a joke anyway, so who cares if you get hit when it won't generally hurt you anyway.

Yunica's first rematch in the final area of the game is also pretty bad once the boss hits half health. If you thought dodging one of the boss was bad(it pretty much wasn't), wait until you have to deal with 3 of the boss at once(I have no idea how you're supposed to deal with this outside of spam fire skill and pray).


While not a boss, Hugo's Evil Ring part is pretty bad because you need to be at least level 29(maybe it was 30) to do more than 1 damage even after applying defense down.

There's probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Maybe there's some stuff on the true last boss, maybe not.



That's mainly in regards to trying to avoid being hit stuff though. If you're trying to speedrun the game or even just the bosses in Time Attack, then many of them can just ruin your attempt, whether it's using certain attacks or not doing their openings(Istersiva is also another great example here)

[BulletMagnet]

Via Siliconera, a new Tokyo Xanadu character and a new Sen no Kiseki entry.

[KAI]

Sen no Kiseki I & II confirmed by XSEED


Zero and Ao never

[KAI]

Finally some words about the future of the series

Trails in the Sky Second Chapter coming to PSP (PS Vita+Vita TV compatible) and PC this Summer

I want a real date


Meanwhile in Japan, Moe no Kiseki Evo.

[BulletMagnet]

At the moment Ark of Napishtim is 30% off at GOG.

[KAI]

Tokyo Xanadu CM