Shikigami no Shiro: Nanayozuki Gensoukyoku impressions

postman · Post by **postman** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 4:41 pm

I only spent about 10 minutes on it so far, but I'm on the third "level" and have yet to see a shmup section. It's all stills with characters popping in and talking a lot, then a menu with several choices pops up once in a blue moon and if you choose correctly then one character will level up somehow. I hope I find a shmup section soon, I'm pretty sure this game has them............

postman · Post by **postman** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 2:51 pm

I finally reached a shooting section, and its just a quick boss fight, and the shot patterns are ripped directly from SNS 2! So they recycled the STG bits for this game........how disappointing.......

greg · Post by **greg** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 5:34 pm

What kind of game is this, then? I saw it at PlayAsia.com, but it didn't have any information on it. All I knew is that it wasn't called Shikigami no Shiro 3, so I had no idea what it is.

postman · Post by **postman** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 6:46 pm

This is certainly NOT SNS 3 - basically what the game does is all character interaction - and all the player can do is make a choice from serveral options when a menu pops up. It's heavily story based, since there is a ton of dialogue, but I wouldn't even call it an RPG - it's more like a gaming novel. There's an inventory screen, but I don't see how it changes anything in gameplay.

There are 3 STG scenes spliced in the game, but they are all boss battles, and 2 of the 3 are recycled from SNS 2. The final boss of the game is new. Also they added a companion attack, where you call in another SNS character to attack with you. The bomb attack is kept from the previous SNS games also. Before fighting a boss, you choose some dialogue options, and sometimes it makes either you or the boss stronger, but since I don't read Japanese I don't know what is going on.....

Pedro Lambrini · Post by **Pedro Lambrini** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 11:20 pm

So, it doesn't that great then. Oh well, I had hopes for this game but it sounds like a rubbishy budget title let alone a full price AAA title...

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 12:05 am

If anything with the shoddy Porting on the part of XS Games of the previous 2 titles, they might end up accidentally improving THIS title!

postman · Post by **postman** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:13 am

I highly doubt they are bringing this to any region outside of Japan.......American gamers won't go for this at all, since there is virtually no gameplay, and it's basically a visual novel........yes the graphics are nice (though mostly stills) and the entire game is voiced over, but most people outside of Japan don't know these characters or feel like reading that much.........

SNS 3 on the other hand I would wager they are porting over........since they did the first two, I would gather somebody would publish them in the US.

SAM · Post by **SAM** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 5:50 am

Actually this kinds of visual novel games are quite common in Japan (e.g. Sage's Sakura Wars) and they are quite fun if you can read Japanese. My sister like this kind of game very much. They usually got muti-endings and you would like to see what would happen if you did somthing different during the crouse. After you complete the game for once, and restart again, there is usually a fast forward function to skip the dialog you have read before.

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:54 pm

I want your sister!

Glad I didn't pre-order this game. It was actually in my P-A shopping cart for a while when I thought it was SNS3.

SAM · Post by **SAM** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 3:13 pm

Well, my sister don't know Japanese either.

She only play the translated version they release outside japanese.