Castlevania Miscellanies

[NYN]

On the other bloody stain: the two dudes picked by IGA for his project look rather effeminate. Not that I care much. This adherence to "old types" of content I find more offensive. Surprise me! Anything!

[Steven]

I will be taking a trip overseas for the first time in like a decade, mostly against my will, which means it's time to consider taking advantage of temporarily not having a Japanese IP address. How are those Lords of Shadow games? They are region locked on Steam and not available here, so I'm considering getting them while I can. The only 100% for sure absolutely have to get game is Sonic Racing Transformed, but these are things that I might get if they are decent enough and not too expensive. I am not enticed by everything becoming 50% more expensive due to the exchange rate overseas, but the Steam sale starts in a few hours and there is a possibility that thanks to that it might not be too painful.

[Austin]

Lords of Shadow is fine, but overstays its welcome and it becomes quite tedious. I never finished Part 2. The gothic castle sections seem solid, but are marred by mandatory real-world/modern-day stealth crap that seems totally unnecessary. Mirror of Fate HD is fun enough for a run or two. Not particularly amazing, but not bad either.

[Steven]

That doesn't sound very reassuring... sure enough, these are in the Steam sale and it looks like about $20 to get all three of them plus another $10 because of the exchange rate... hm. I'll consider it, but apparently you now need a payment method to verify your new address when you change your Steam region instead of just selecting the country from a list, so I probably won't be able to get anything anyway. They probably had too many people trying to get discounts by switching regions or using a VPN or something.

[SuperDeadite]

That doesn't sound very reassuring... sure enough, these are in the Steam sale and it looks like about $20 to get all three of them plus another $10 because of the exchange rate... hm. I'll consider it, but apparently you now need a payment method to verify your new address when you change your Steam region instead of just selecting the country from a list, so I probably won't be able to get anything anyway. They probably had too many people trying to get discounts by switching regions or using a VPN or something.

Last I checked if a friend from abroad gifts you a game on steam, it's yours no locks. This is how I got the proper uncensored version of RE7 here in Japan...

[FunktionJCB]

Last I checked if a friend from abroad gifts you a game on steam, it's yours no locks. This is how I got the proper uncensored version of RE7 here in Japan...

Many, if not most games, have gifting to other regions disabled, so sadly that's not possible with many titles.

The games are available on third party stores, officially, so that's likely the better option.

[Steven]

I checked out some of those third party key sellers and they are shady as hell. Not only do they look shady, but G2A apparently is known to sell stolen keys or something, and for even games that are not region locked half of the key selling websites say "does not activate in Japan" and the other half say "activates in Japan". They can't both be accurate, so...

[FunktionJCB]

I checked out some of those third party key sellers and they are shady as hell. Not only do they look shady, but G2A apparently is known to sell stolen keys or something, and for even games that are not region locked half of the key selling websites say "does not activate in Japan" and the other half say "activates in Japan". They can't both be accurate, so...

To be clear, Steven, when I say "third party sellers", I mean official retailers that sell keys, fully authorised by the publisher, and with keys sourced by the publisher.
The "store" (more like a marketplace) you listed (G2A) in not one of those sellers, and I would never use them.

Check this search engine: https://isthereanydeal.com/
All the stores listed there are official sellers, and you can safely buy from them.
No stolen keys, or shady stuff with any of them.

I usually use them to compare prices in the various official stores.

[Steven]

Oh.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Yeah, I knew that! I was just checking to see if you knew!

In all seriousness, still region locked, it seems. I hate that crap so much. Oh well. Not worth messing around with VPNs and stuff. I'd rather not risk it. Guess I'll continue to go without.

[FunktionJCB]

I checked SteamDB, a website that has info on various Steam packages/configurations/..., and if I'm seeing things correctly, I think they don't have a retail package that activates on Japan, so no key is likely to work for you, and it seems they disabled cross-region gifting as well, so asking another user to gift you a copy is unlikely to work either.

They really don't want people in Japan to play these games.

I mean, I kind of understand, considering how much I dislike them ( ), but it's just silly.

It seems you'll really need to jump through hoops to get these.

[Steven]

Yeah, and the weirdest part is that the publisher on Steam is Konmai, so they actively made the decision to not sell their own games in Japan. Sega does it too (Valkyria Chronicles 1, some Total War games, the recently delisted Dreamcast games, the now-delisted 2011 Sonic CD which I fortunately have, etc.), so it's not the first time I've seen it. Metal Gear Rising isn't available here either, but I do have that one. I could understand it (but not like it) if it was a different publisher and there were licensing problems, but there really is no reason for this that I can see when the IP owners are the publishers.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Okay, but Steam being real pain like that (as it's always seemed to me, ever since H-L2) - does any of it prevent any of software piracy on PC? I wouldn't know these days, hardly playing my towering backlog of games I paid good money for, let alone pirating stuff anymore.

[FunktionJCB]

Okay, but Steam being real pain like that (as it's always seemed to me, ever since H-L2) - does any of it prevent any of software piracy on PC? I wouldn't know these days, hardly playing my towering backlog of games I paid good money for, let alone pirating stuff anymore.

Steam/Valve basically lets things to publishers, who can manage this as they see fit, so the problem here seems to lie with Konami.

I own games, say, a couple of old Electronic Arts games, that were never released on Steam outside of the US, but since E.A. didn't actively disable cross-region gifting, I had a friend gift them to me, and they work fine.
Even Konami has a few games not listed in my region (like 2010's Rocket Knight), but a US key works fine for European users.

I know the idea with region locking and disabling cross-region gifting is usually to avoid users from higher income regions from getting games from lower income regions (where the games are cheaper), but in the case of these MercurySteam Castlevania titles, they really locked everything, and don't appear to have a Japanese package active.
Maybe there's some weird exclusivity contract for Japan, to lock these games for Sony platforms? Who am I kidding, they likely just messed up when they set up things, and completely forgot about it.