Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

shivan128

shivan128

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Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread!  Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here.  Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc.  Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.

I've wikified the thread to make it more friendly and open to others that can actively update with important information. You can find the wiki post directly below this one.

NOTE:  Please, leave the censorship discussion away from this thread.  It's common for japanese games to have questionable content outside of the country.  We want to keep discussions to the game itself and not about cultural/societal tolerance.

A message from Thorbahn:

Our CAG Japanese Niche Games Thread also has a community on PS4, where you can interact and game with other members of the thread.

Our moderators are: Draekon, Las_Hole, and Waffleswanton

You can basically friend any of our members, or any moderator, and you will be able to request to join the community under "Communities friends are in" tab, and a mod will approve your request.

You can also leave your PSN ID in the thread, saying you want to join, and we can invite you directly as well.

As always, have fun and enjoy your stay!

 
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Nope, didn't use a guide for any of my 1st or some of the 2nd play through of Persona games.  I really don't like using guides on 1st play through since it sorta kills the immersion when you have to look off screen and look up stuff.  I just want to enjoy the story on the 1st go.

 
Check out this lil muffin.  

IMG_3138_zpsmn03hb6t.png


I got six female Corrins.  Saved one just in case I want to inherit Hone Attack to someone.  Gonna build her up to +10 in no time if she keeps wasting my rolls.  It's almost like having a 5star.  Just missing 3 atk points from the weapon really.  Her promoted version only has 11 more skill points. 

Got to 4,436 arena score this week.  Still not a single successful defense.  Apparently I still don't have the right guys to get a proper defense.  I change it up all the time, there might be something up with the matchmaking.  No defenses four weeks straight.

 
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Amazon CS got back to me and are now claiming that the shipping address I put down is "not active". 
 
WHUT? I literally bought an item from Amazon last week with the "inactive" address. This is absolutely ridiculous. (excuses used so far: hazardous materials, unable to charge payment method, and now "inactive address")
 
EDIT: Apparently my address was "inactive" and I had to "update" to the same damn address I have always been using.
 
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Yeah, you're getting screwed with some bad excuses. My Amazon copy shipped out today via USPS and is set to arrive Tuesday. Usually it ships out Monday for me with games. They've also certainly been using USPS a lot more frequently lately. Should come in a box based on its size. I'd almost like to see Amazon attempt to fit it in some giant bubble mailer though.

As for the guide thing, I wouldn't use one for Persona 5 on the first playthrough. I consider everything such as social links part of the main game and not really part of some optional side event or hidden . In other games I pretty much never use them either except for the rare non-story side things, like a checklist of finding those stupid god damned books in Trails games. Second playthroughs and later however, I don't mind using a guide to optimize the run. Though with how things are releasing, I don't see a second playthrough of Persona 5 happening anytime soon and that's fine by me. Cosmic Star Heroine is next week and hopefully Trails in the Sky the 3rd soon after.

 
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Nothing371 said:
Check out this lil muffin.

IMG_3138_zpsmn03hb6t.png


I got six female Corrins. Saved one just in case I want to inherit Hone Attack to someone. Gonna build her up to +10 in no time if she keeps wasting my rolls. It's almost like having a 5star. Just missing 3 atk points from the weapon really. Her promoted version only has 11 more skill points.

Got to 4,436 arena score this week. Still not a single successful defense. Apparently I still don't have the right guys to get a proper defense. I change it up all the time, there might be something up with the matchmaking. No defenses four weeks straight.
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You gotta design a team to get 1 kill rather than a team that can win. A lot of people give up after 1 death since it ruins a streak.
 
lBleachl said:
I enjoyed it a lot. The game is repetitive at times, but the feeling of taking out the Titans as efficiently as possible as well as grouping up with 3 other people online bring up a whole new meaning to titan-killing machine.

I'm tempted to re-buy this game since Season 2 just started. The game being on sale might push me towards it.
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I just watch the first episode of the new season on Hulu and enjoyed seeing all the old characters again.

Then sad cause I watched the first season straight through in a weekend, and no I have to watch it week by week.

I have been interested in the game and nice to know it has multiplayer.

 
Anyone have the Take Your Heart Edition of Persona 5 that actually shipped from Best Buy? It's out tomorrow, but damn mine still says preparing since Thursday...
 
Mine hasn't shipped at all! Same thing happened with my Switch. Shipped late and I got it 2 days late... This one I will be pissed about... Been waiting forever and a day to play... 👎
 
DarthPwner said:
Anyone have the Take Your Heart Edition of Persona 5 that actually shipped from Best Buy? It's out tomorrow, but damn mine still says preparing since Thursday...
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I got notification from UPS that I have a package from BBY being delivered today. I don't recall having ordered anything else that would be coming in from them, so pretty sure getting mine early today. :D/

 
DarthPwner said:
Anyone have the Take Your Heart Edition of Persona 5 that actually shipped from Best Buy? It's out tomorrow, but damn mine still says preparing since Thursday...
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Mine shipped this morning. They always ship the day before. Usually things are sent from a warehouse 30min. away but sometimes it comes from a couple states away and still makes it here in one day.

 
DarthPwner said:
Anyone have the Take Your Heart Edition of Persona 5 that actually shipped from Best Buy? It's out tomorrow, but damn mine still says preparing since Thursday...
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Mine still says preparing since around Thursday as well. My stuff normally ships 1-2 days before release, but it would have already shipped in the morning if it was the day before usually. So I'm not sure what is going on with our orders.

 
It's a Xmas miracle! My P5 TYH edition arrived from Amazon...in a box...with air bags! It is in perfect condition. I wonder if that's cuz it shipped via USPS and not UPS?

I hope the best for all you other Amazon purchasers!

 
PSA to anyone wants 5* heroes in fire emblem heroes. The wyvern and Pegasus banners are fantastic banners to pull from. If you pull only greens or blues from the respective banners your chance at getting a 5* unit is 16% and 14% respectively instead of the 6% shown. This is due to the larger amount of 5* characters available compared to the total pool of characters of said color. Also the banners have great units too.
 
AMZ Weekly Lightning Deal: :pS4: Steins;Gate 0 $30

Gotta pick up my P5 TYH in store at Best Buy tmrw since that's the only stock they had... but I gotta wake up early and walk 20 minutes for it... Anyone else picking it up in person(a)?

 
BlackRockWaifu said:
AMZ Weekly Lightning Deal: :ps4: Steins;Gate 0 $30

Gotta pick up my P5 TYH in store at Best Buy tmrw since that's the only stock they had... but I gotta wake up early and walk 20 minutes for it... Anyone else picking it up in person(a)?
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Of course - can't wait on a package to get to my place, even if Best Buy generally gets it to me on release day! Going in the morning tomorrow, since Tuesday's are my least busy day (I purposely have my schedule that way haha)

 
 
BlackRockWaifu said:
Gotta pick up my P5 TYH in store at Best Buy tmrw since that's the only stock they had... but I gotta wake up early and walk 20 minutes for it... Anyone else picking it up in person(a)?
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Yup, got the email today so going to pick it up tmr. Also my Amazon order will be coming in tmr. Let see which one is in the better condition lol.

 
evilgordo said:
It's a Xmas miracle! My P5 TYH edition arrived from Amazon...in a box...with air bags! It is in perfect condition. I wonder if that's cuz it shipped via USPS and not UPS?

I hope the best for all you other Amazon purchasers!
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That's great! I just checked on mybestbuy and mine says shipped via FedEx with a tracking number, so here's hoping I get it tomorrow. I really want to play it! I just prefer UPS as intrastate shipments get here overnight. My Switch sat at a damn FedEx facility locally for 2 days before I got it. That innovation bullshit where they dump it on the USPS to deliver it...
 
Cloyd said:
I wonder if I should cancel my Play-Asia pre-order and spend the money on this one? Meh, I'll buy both.
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I thought Play-Asia doesn't let you cancel anything or else they ban you?

Ever since the giant debacle with the Blue Rider release, I have been getting bombed with e-mails from them to go back and pay for it again. I'm just ignoring the e-mails and It's pretty funny.

 
I just got the steelbook P5 from BestBuy myself. Mine was sent out Friday though. Can't wait to play and glad to see Senran Kagura Splash coming over so quickly. It looks like stupid fun.

 
Nothing371 said:
I thought Play-Asia doesn't let you cancel anything or else they ban you?

Ever since the giant debacle with the Blue Rider release, I have been getting bombed with e-mails from them to go back and pay for it again. I'm just ignoring the e-mails and It's pretty funny.
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LOL, I've been doing the same thing. I guess I should pay at some point, otherwise I'm sure to the loose the $5 I've already paid, but it's nice to sit back and watch them work.

 
My Persona 5 LE was also shipped this morning from BestBuy. Can't wait to play tomorrow evening :)

Also, glad to hear about Peach Beach Splash getting localized in the Summer. I have been enjoying the game so far. Haven't even started the story mode yet, I'm just doing the challenge missions so I can unlock the cool power-up cards (Love their art).

 
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I suppose I should get out my thoughts on Atelier Firis before I start Persona 5 tomorrow as I know it won't happen if I don't. I haven't touched the game in a couple weeks, so I won't be going into as much detail as I normally would for every part. Without further ado:

Atelier Firis is the first open world (kinda) Atelier game in the series. It's not true open world in the sense that it's one giant world and you can traverse it without any loading screens. Instead it houses extremely large areas that are connected to each other, that's closer to the style of the other Atelier games. Despite this, it's not a bad attempt at going more open world than the small linear hallways that we're used to from the series. The main issue that this game has with this switch is that they do not give you the ability to travel faster for a good portion of the game and then warping between areas campsites comes not long after that, depending on how you go about the game post-exam. Gating the faster travel behind the second part of the game was a very bad design choice.

The story is also one of the worse entries in the series. Not so much for the story itself, but for how broken up it is which causes some very bad pacing. You can go very long periods without advancing the story, which when you're advancing across a large map to a destination point for the first section of the game, it causes some disconnect as to what you're running around for. Even after the exam, while better, it still has pacing issues with the story and I felt very little reason to continue playing. There was very little attachment towards the remaining story and I felt there was no real goal for me to continue towards.

Characters are still decent, but they're mostly a step down from past entries. Like the story, there is a lot of pacing issues with characters stories advancing with your own. A couple characters I'd somewhat classify as fine, but the rest were just pretty bad at keeping my attention because I would rarely encounter events with them. Hell, some I haven't ever had an event with after I initially recruited them.

Now the gameplay I'll split into two sections with the first being battle. Unfortunately I can't really say too much on this because its been too long since I've played. It is very similar to Atelier Sophie in a lot of ways, however one thing that I do remember well is that you can no longer defend any ally who is being attacked to help distribute and mitigate damage received. Instead you are only able to defend Firis. The game doesn't end with Firis faceplants the ground, so I'm not really sure why they limited it to just her. It's not a huge deal, but an odd one.

The second bit of gameplay is alchemy. It still uses the grid system from Atelier Sophie. However instead of the grid being tied to couldrons like they were in Sophie, they are now instead tied to catalysts that you can select after selecting all of the recipe ingredients. Each catalyst you can use has different pros and cons that differ from item to item. I liked it more than Atelier Sophie and made me less distasteful against the grid system.

Despite this there are two things they added to alchemy that I absolutely abhor. The first one being that in order to get better bonuses when crafting an item, you have to keep re-crafting it until you hit gold familiarity with it. Logically it makes sense, but from a gameplay perspective, fuck you GUST. The second one is how you acquire recipes. In Atelier Sophie you had a book that showed you recipes you could unlock and it gave you requirements to unlock the next items within the book. It was annoying, but at least you knew what you needed to do. In Firis on the other hand, you have to gather items to kill enemies until it becomes an "idea". From there you can see what else you have to do to unlock it. You might not think this is bad and for the first half of the game it wasn't an issue. After the exam though, I about flipped my shit trying to figure out how to unlock items. I think it's a good system to use to compliment something like the recipe book from Sophie or recipe books you could buy. This is probably the number one reason I stopped playing even though I have the ability to finish one of the endings done already.

Finally I guess I should briefly touch on the time limit in the first section of the game. I did not find it even remotely close to an issue. You are supposed to get 3 recommendations and proceed to an exam within a year. I was able to get all 5 recommendations and still have around 180 days remaining to futz around doing whatever I wanted prior to the exam. I was able to explore everything possible during my first 185 days, including high level areas. The only places I was not able to explore were ones gated by item/event requirements that weren't possible until the second section of the game.

So in conclusion, while I liked the larger maps it still needs further improvement. Plus there are several design ideas such as learning recipes that I have to seriously question who at GUST thought this was a good idea. Despite this I did still get some enjoyment out of it, but it was nowhere near the level of past Atelier games. I'd only recommend it on the cheap or potentially some kind of rental.

EDIT: Also there will be no impressions/thoughts on Persona 5 from me. No point with this thread. I'll probably do Cosmic Star Heroine as that'll likely be next on my list after Persona 5 unless TitS the 3rd release before I can get to that.

 
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Draekon said:
Honestly I'd wait for impressions since it's Prima and they'll likely print enough copies to buy them for at least a little while after release. Also this isn't the Official Design Works either, which is something most people would find much more enticing than whatever that will turn out to be.
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Yeah, I was wondering why it was 432 pages instead of being around the 512 pages the Official Design Works was. Guess it's a completely different book. I'll just stick with the Japanese version of the Official Design Works then.

 
dsman3717 said:
Yeah, I was wondering why it was 432 pages instead of being around the 512 pages the Official Design Works was. Guess it's a completely different book. I'll just stick with the Japanese version of the Official Design Works then.
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We are talking about Prima here, they probably just missed a few (dozen) pages by accident.
 
Dead_Batteries said:
My Persona CE is at bestbuy but they wouldn't let me pick up...
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Ya, forgot when but happen to me once. I think a manager could probably override it but other then that the system won't let them scan it in. It will just pop up the release date on the screen.

 
Vinn said:
Ya, forgot when but happen to me once. I think a manager could probably override it but other then that the system won't let them scan it in. It will just pop up the release date on the screen.
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Its because stores can be significantly fined for releasing product prior to its street date. They don't mess around with that.

 
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