What Video Games Are You Playing Right Now?

[CorgiKing]

DA2 isn't as bad as most people sought it out to be. It's not a very good game but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I still say give it a try and make your own conclusions about the game.

As for me I'm currently stuck in between Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2. 

With SW: OG Moondwellers still coming back in once in awhile (on my third play through).

 

 

[Suzu Fanatic]

Trying to go through Xanadu Next, but just not really feeling it~

[Fred the Barber]

It's a dreary, rainy day, and my usual Destiny-playing buddy won't be online for a couple weeks, and I found myself looking at a couple different games:

1. Earlier, I played some more Tales of Edn— I mean, Tales of Zestiria. I've decided I really enjoy it. The plot is a little on the thin side, but the characters are lovable and masterfully written (and the translation is godly, I seriously can't get over it), and the gameplay is entertaining. That's more than most games deliver.
2. I was looking at my Steam library and found that I own Recettear, but still have never played it. I'm going to try to remedy that today.

[Turnip Sensei]

Had some free time in a while and went and got myself Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, since thanks to vita being portable I at least have some chances to play something.

And it's pretty damn good, which is to be expected from a Vanillaware game. Gameplay is fast and fluid, and even if it's bit on the simple side in terms of variety it plays so well that it doesn't even matter. (and keep in mind that I've only touched 1 out of the 5 characters, each with their own unique moves and abilities) Playing on hard makes it good and enjoyable ballet of death; you are strong and there's plenty of defensive tools available, but carelessness and mindless approach gets you killed fast. They've certainly fine tuned the difficulty since Dragon's Crown and Muramasa, as Odin Sphere is so far their most satisfying game, in terms of pure gameplay.

And as always, the game looks fantastic. The fantasy worlds the artist at Vanillaware make are unbelievable and the attention to detail in their hand drawn graphics are mind blowing. Too bad there's not as much food porn and not in as much detail like in the previous games, but other than it's one treat for the eyes.

The story is pretty fantastic as well, a Japanese take on Shakespearean play or European Opera. It's filled with classic tragedy and the characters talk like they are on stage, and I love it! The presentation and concept makes the story way better than it would be if it was portrayed "normally". It being a play means it can take some liberties, like you wouldn't expected people to talk the same way in a movie or a classical play, same goes for types of characters and concepts. And I don't know, maybe it's just me but I love people having dramatic monologues about their tragic love. Some parts reminded me of Sakurai's works and that's always a good thing. Can't wait to see what the other characters stories have in store for me and how they are going to intervene.

As bonus, it not that uncommon to have voice actors in similar roles in different games, but hearing pure and gallant Valkyrie (same seiyuu as Saber) refusing to became an arrogant king's (Gilgamesh) mistress is rather amusing.   

[Fred the Barber]

I started playing Recettear and promptly lost three hours of my life

This game is fun and addicting.

[Thunderbro]

1 hour ago, Fred the Barber said:

I started playing Recettear and promptly lost three hours of my life

This game is fun and addicting.

Capitalism Ho!

[Fred the Barber]

1 hour ago, Thunderbro said:

Capitalism Ho!

After getting sucked into the game for a few more hours, I came back to the forum literally just to say "Capitalism ho!" only to find that it had already been said for me. Merde. Someday, I hope to meet either whoever wrote this gem, or whoever translated it, and shake their hand.

[Kurisu-Chan]

1 hour ago, Fred the Barber said:

After getting sucked into the game for a few more hours, I came back to the forum literally just to say "Capitalism ho!" only to find that it had already been said for me. Merde. Someday, I hope to meet either whoever wrote this gem, or whoever translated it, and shake their hand.

The random french trigger me like hell. 

[Jun Inoue]

4 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

After getting sucked into the game for a few more hours, I came back to the forum literally just to say "Capitalism ho!" only to find that it had already been said for me. Merde. Someday, I hope to meet either whoever wrote this gem, or whoever translated it, and shake their hand.

The same people who translated Trails in the Sky SC (although they didn't finish the job, since tons of problems came up, hence why the localisation took about 5 years). Still, it's thanks to them that we have all the Legend of Heroes games in the West, as they pushed XSEED and Falcom for it.

[Fred the Barber]

7 hours ago, Kurisu-Chan said:

The random french trigger me like hell. 

You mean mine? I'm just quoting the game, which seems to be set in a fictional version of France, given that it's full of French names.

[Kurisu-Chan]

Nah, i mean the game, i played it a bit. 

[havoc]

15 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

After getting sucked into the game for a few more hours, I came back to the forum literally just to say "Capitalism ho!" only to find that it had already been said for me. Merde. Someday, I hope to meet either whoever wrote this gem, or whoever translated it, and shake their hand.

Have had it installed for about a year and still havent gotten around to playing it, hang your head in shame me.

[Fred the Barber]

13 hours ago, Jun Inoue said:

The same people who translated Trails in the Sky SC (although they didn't finish the job, since tons of problems came up, hence why the localisation took about 5 years). Still, it's thanks to them that we have all the Legend of Heroes games in the West, as they pushed XSEED and Falcom for it.

I had no idea. I remember reading the summary from the lead TL about TitS, and since you mentioned it, I did recognize the name when I saw it in the credits. That's rough. I wonder how many times more text (and meta-text, for that matter; lore and shit) there is in TitS than there is in Recettear. That's a rough way to learn your limits.

[Jun Inoue]

6 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

I had no idea. I remember reading the summary from the lead TL about TitS, and since you mentioned it, I did recognize the name when I saw it in the credits. That's rough. I wonder how many times more text (and meta-text, for that matter; lore and shit) there is in TitS than there is in Recettear. That's a rough way to learn your limits.

I'll directly quote an article on the problems that came up during the game's TL:
 

Quote

[...] She estimates that the script clocked in at 716,401 words, which is roughly the size of 10 novels. For context: the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is 455,125 words. Tolstoy’s War and Peace (New American Library Version) is 587,287.

 

[Flutterz]

46 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

TitS

heh

[Eclipsed]

wtffffffff SAO: Hollow Realization came out today, drop everything now, 

[Mr Poltroon]

Played and finished Hyperdimension Neptunia; Rebirth 1.

I'll play it once more in NG+, unlocking the other two CPU candidates on the way.
An enjoyable experience. Surprisingly so. Didn't even have to cheat. There's really not much else to say, characters are stereotypical except, more or less, Neptune. She's just stark raving mad. Sort of.

---DUB RANT---

I played with the English dub for the first half, and Japanese for the second.
The English dub effectively got the characters of Neptune, Compa, and IF, as well as Avenir's villains and Arfoire wasn't bad either. Vert was passable, but herein come the problems: Blanc and Noire definitely were not. Blanc's whole archetype was pretty much lost. She sounded like generic girl no 5674 -- Vert, generic girl no 5672, still worked because most of her character lied in what she said (gamer), not how she said it, unlike Blanc. And Noire was simply annoying. Unlike Compa and Neptune, who adapted into English, Noire just had a high pitched voice, and her retorts were bland -- meaning she sounded bad, and her main gimmick of retorting and complaining was pretty much lost.

Now to the good side. IF was pretty decisive and determined. Good retorts. Her dub did the job. Unfortunately for her, the Japanese version had Tohsaka's voice actress, which basically means it couldn't possibly be better.
Compa did a fairly good job. Her Japanese voice and personality is just one of those that'd be absolutely terrible to try and mimic in English, so they avoid it where possible. Some funny attack names like "Desu Desu Desu" are kept, but for the most part she does not have a high pitched voice, and actually goes quite low "I was so worried!" vs "I was so worried~~~~!". I can't really explain it well. A few subtle tonal changes means she doesn't sound like generic girl no 3257. A few bouts of uniqueness which differ from her original character, if you will.
Neptune just ditches the original. Whereas in Japanese her silliness is quite serious, she's "seriously" offended by other's jabs, and so on, her dub instead makes it feel like she's just taking things easy and making fun of everyone. Once again, I can't really convey it, just know that Neptune's dub was adapted, not translated, and I love it for it.
In conclusion, I liked the main three.

I also loved Ganache and the CEO. Ganache came across differently from his Japanese version, but it worked all the same. And his boss just had an awesome voice.

Strangely enough, both Uni and Nepgear were better dubbed than Noire. Uni's pretty much a copy, from what I've seen, so I wonder how that happened?

[Kurisu-Chan]

You can't dub my voice, that's all.

 

[EastCoastDrifter]

1 hour ago, Mr Poltroon said:

Played and finished Hyperdimension Neptunia; Rebirth 1.

I'll play it once more in NG+, unlocking the other two CPU candidates on the way.
An enjoyable experience. Surprisingly so. Didn't even have to cheat. There's really not much else to say, characters are stereotypical except, more or less, Neptune. She's just stark raving mad. Sort of.

---DUB RANT---

I played with the English dub for the first half, and Japanese for the second.
The English dub effectively got the characters of Neptune, Compa, and IF, as well as Avenir's villains and Arfoire wasn't bad either. Vert was passable, but herein come the problems: Blanc and Noire definitely were not. Blanc's whole archetype was pretty much lost. She sounded like generic girl no 5674 -- Vert, generic girl no 5672, still worked because most of her character lied in what she said (gamer), not how she said it, unlike Blanc. And Noire was simply annoying. Unlike Compa and Neptune, who adapted into English, Noire just had a high pitched voice, and her retorts were bland -- meaning she sounded bad, and her main gimmick of retorting and complaining was pretty much lost.

Now to the good side. IF was pretty decisive and determined. Good retorts. Her dub did the job. Unfortunately for her, the Japanese version had Tohsaka's voice actress, which basically means it couldn't possibly be better.
Compa did a fairly good job. Her Japanese voice and personality is just one of those that'd be absolutely terrible to try and mimic in English, so they avoid it where possible. Some funny attack names like "Desu Desu Desu" are kept, but for the most part she does not have a high pitched voice, and actually goes quite low "I was so worried!" vs "I was so worried~~~~!". I can't really explain it well. A few subtle tonal changes means she doesn't sound like generic girl no 3257. A few bouts of uniqueness which differ from her original character, if you will.
Neptune just ditches the original. Whereas in Japanese her silliness is quite serious, she's "seriously" offended by other's jabs, and so on, her dub instead makes it feel like she's just taking things easy and making fun of everyone. Once again, I can't really convey it, just know that Neptune's dub was adapted, not translated, and I love it for it.
In conclusion, I liked the main three.

I also loved Ganache and the CEO. Ganache came across differently from his Japanese version, but it worked all the same. And his boss just had an awesome voice.

Strangely enough, both Uni and Nepgear were better dubbed than Noire. Uni's pretty much a copy, from what I've seen, so I wonder how that happened?

Strangely enough, I never found the dub as a whole annoying, and I don't mind the English voices of Blanc, Vert, and Noire. I still enjoyed the game regardless, but maybe that's because I have a higher tolerance for English dubs provided that they stay above the cringe level. For me, the dub was passable, and there are some games I've played that ended off WAY worse with their English voice acting (cougharcrisefantasiacough).

[Eclipsed]

i played neptunia next to my sister one time, and she cringed at hearing all the combat cries in JP 

So i switched to EN and promptly told me to switch back x)

7 hours ago, Mr Poltroon said:

Played and finished Hyperdimension Neptunia; Rebirth 1.

You plannin' on playing all the games??

[Mr Poltroon]

2 minutes ago, Eclipsed said:

i played neptunia next to my sister one time, and she cringed at hearing all the combat cries in JP 

So i switched to EN and promptly told me to switch back x)

You plannin' on playing all the games??

Aye, I am.

[Eclipsed]

3 minutes ago, Mr Poltroon said:

Aye, I am.

You're a lighthearted oaf who dropped Swan Song b4 things got too dark, so I'll warn you now not to go for Conquest ending in Re;birth 2    >:3

 

Other than that, glhf, I still haven't finished Re;birth 3 so I may just start it up when you get to it

[EastCoastDrifter]

4 minutes ago, Eclipsed said:

You're a lighthearted oaf who dropped Swan Song b4 things got too dark, so I'll warn you now not to go for Conquest ending in Re;birth 2    >:3

 

Other than that, glhf, I still haven't finished Re;birth 3 so I may just start it up when you get to it

Speaking of Re;Birth2, I never got around to finishing it because for some odd reason, my game began to glitch out when I entered the Gamindustri Graveyard for the first time and it eventually crashed. It may be a problem with my physical Vita copy because my other Vita games still work fine, so I'll buy it digitally and hope it fixes the problem.

As for the conquest ending, I already know what happened because a Neptunia fan spoiled it to me when I asked an unrelated question.

[Fred the Barber]

I usually play even weeb games like Neptunia or the Atelier series with the English dub, but I seriously could not handle the voices in Neptunia. Then again, it turned out I just couldn't handle Neptunia - I barely played HDN;Rebirth for a few hours, months ago, and haven't ever gone back. I just didn't enjoy the gameplay very much.

[EastCoastDrifter]

5 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

I usually play even weeb games like Neptunia or the Atelier series with the English dub, but I seriously could not handle the voices in Neptunia. Then again, it turned out I just couldn't handle Neptunia - I barely played HDN;Rebirth for a few hours, months ago, and haven't ever gone back. I just didn't enjoy the gameplay very much.

One of the main issues with the Neptunia series is the repetitive nature of it. With the exception of the very first game, all of the main games will reuse the same dungeon layouts and music. And the dungeons themselves are very short with no puzzles to solve, all you have to do is run from point A to point B while level grinding (which you'll be doing a lot). As a Neptunia fan, I really wish Compile Heart can improve on this by actually introducing unique dungeons, each with their own music and gimmicks.