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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Hearing nothing. My wallet will be happy, but my collection won't.

It's going to be interesting to see what pops up. More than likely all the big hit games will be $50, at best, so unless you're going to play then now, they'll be cheaper next year by quite a bit, IMO.
 
My biggest one to watch is Cyber Monday at the Crunchyroll store.

"Black Friday up to 40% off sitewide" 11/27-12/1
"Cyber Monday Buy More, Save More! Spend $100+, Save $25, Spend $150+, Save $50 Spend$250+, Save $100 (extra savings for streaming members 12/2 only)"

If the Aniplex is going to be on sale, and it should be, then that -40% plus member discount is insane. Going to look at picking up the Demon Slayer premium sets, Monogatari sets 2 & 3, perhaps Fate. That turns those outrageous $250 blu-ray sets into < $150 purchases.
 
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Starcrest said:
Can we safely assume this year’s Black Friday is going to be as bad as last year?
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BF is such a subjective time for folks. If you aren't a reseller/flipper and already got good deals on the games you want then it's kind of a bust each year. But if you held out, there's usually something worth it for me. Last year I picked up 6 games during sales for BF. 2022 though I bought nothing and 2021 I only bought one game. Which a year of buying little to nothing in November wasn't really a bad year in my book as any time I'm not spending money feels like a win as a cheapass as is getting a great deal on something I wanted. 2020 was the last year where I felt like I got a lot of great deals between the $30 first party Nintendo games at Walmart (bought Luigi's Mansion 3, Link's Awakening, & Yoshi's Crafted World) and then FF X/X2, FF XII, and Trials of Mana for $20 each at bestbuy. Also Paper Mario Origami King for $35 used at gamefly.


This year if there's nothing, it's a win. I've got a handful of games though I'll probably grab. LIke Prince of Persia if it's $15 would be an easy get.
 
Nothing- said:
My biggest one to watch is Cyber Monday at Righstuf.

"Black Friday up to 40% off sitewide" 11/27-12/1
"Cyber Monday Buy More, Save More! Spend $100+, Save $25, Spend $150+, Save $50 Spend$250+, Save $100 (extra savings for streaming members 12/2 only)"

If the Aniplex is going to be on sale, and it should be, then that -40% plus member discount is insane. Going to look at picking up the Demon Slayer premium sets, Monogatari sets 2 & 3, perhaps Fate. That turns those outrageous $250 blu-ray sets into < $150 purchases.
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RightStuf is dead, is that at Crunchyroll now?
 
nightc1 said:
BF is such a subjective time for folks. If you aren't a reseller/flipper and already got good deals on the games you want then it's kind of a bust each year. But if you held out, there's usually something worth it for me. Last year I picked up 6 games during sales for BF. 2022 though I bought nothing and 2021 I only bought one game. Which a year of buying little to nothing in November wasn't really a bad year in my book as any time I'm not spending money feels like a win as a cheapass as is getting a great deal on something I wanted. 2020 was the last year where I felt like I got a lot of great deals between the $30 first party Nintendo games at Walmart (bought Luigi's Mansion 3, Link's Awakening, & Yoshi's Crafted World) and then FF X/X2, FF XII, and Trials of Mana for $20 each at bestbuy. Also Paper Mario Origami King for $35 used at gamefly.


This year if there's nothing, it's a win. I've got a handful of games though I'll probably grab. LIke Prince of Persia if it's $15 would be an easy get.
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I remember that and got everything you mentioned minus ff12. That was a good one. Probably only topped by the target 4$ 3ds games.
 
TheKbob said:
If only they let you put in your physical disc copy and play it on your system...
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I won't turn my nose up at stuff getting ported to it that is difficult to get physically. But yeah it would be nice and I doubt that it couldn't run a ps1 disc if it can a ps4.
Vinny said:
I hate these "things could happen maybe, probably if something else maybe happens" articles... but WOW, Vic Ireland actually did a podcast? I'll have to listen.

Alundra is an absolute gem that needs a re-release.
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I'd be down for that and the other working designs library.
 
Souffrir said:
Ew.
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Whenever someone shows any type of hate towards Vic Ireland, I always wonder if it's for the localization or the shit way he did business. Mostly seems like it's due to WD's localizations, which I don't get- he did what worked for the time, there were lots of games that were heavy with the cultural references/cheese during the 90s.

I enjoyed the games then and I I still feel like I would now (though I can't say for sure, last WD game I played was Popful Mail like 10 years- and that was hard as balls for me but it was fun).
 
Working Designs did so much bullshit it’s honestly hard to know where to start: the tonedeaf localizations, or the gameplay changes that made some of the games they work on literally unbeatable.
 
He talks about a lot of that in the interview:
  • He said he's been trying to remake or license games for the past decade but he wants to do royalty deals but the people he's talked to want to do one-time payments. He repeatedly says that he wants to license out things "cheap" (the only figure he gave was "a few dimes per unit") and have the re-release of Lunar be the best possible version.
  • Vic seems upset that he was thrown under the bus for the recent Cosmic Fantasy Collection that LRG did - LRG said they had no way to reach out to him, he said they have his email and they never tried.
  • For a deluxe physical version, he said he had a lot of ideas including redoing the locket and more punching puppets, but he wouldn't trust LRG to do them well. He mentioned being open to improving the existing versions, include outtakes, con panels, etc. from his archives.
Overall, the sentiment I get is that Vic has been denied or straight-up ignored on a lot of recent projects that could've been part of. It does come across as somewhat self-important to say that without the materials he has the games won't be good, especially given some of the issues people have with the localization quality. But at the same time I can't deny that it would be cool to have materials like that included. Hopefully someone other than LRG scoops up a physical release and does something nice with it.
 
Apropos of nothing, has anyone ever played Bomberman 64? I knew going in about the bomb jumps and spent like twenty minutes trying to set this up to get over this stupid wall, and now even though I’m clearly bouncing higher than it, I still can’t clear it.

07BB2894-168B-45FC-B853-780B71EFC873.jpeg
 
I dunno, it’s the first level and they’re drip feeding information to me. There are so many of those pillars in such inconvenient places it seems likely that there’s supposed to be some way to destroy them.
 
That DQ ad fits really closely with my love of Zelda. If I thnk about being a teen (as before that we are in Atari 2600 days and the games available to me weren't that deep) it's Zelda that really captured my attention and fantasies. That, Castlevania II as well as Metroid. I loved DQ back then as well, but I only had the first two Dragon Warrior games on NES and it wasn't until late in the GBC life that I got Dragon Warrior III. DQ is one of my all time favorite franchises (and favorite turn based RPG series) but if I think back... Zelda really was the game series that captured my imagination the most.
 
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1858558537770955126

I guess more people will go play Metaphor ReFantazio now. I better hurry up and order some of my imported and discounted LE merch.

I feel kind of bad that Rebirth is going to get shafted or snubbed in several areas just because it came out all the way back in February, and because of sales. Many people chose to not buy it or play it and now it's yesterday's news.
Huge year for Japanese games tho. That's been my biggest theme of the year, and I've been having a lot of fun lately.

GcrmCVHWwAIjlLG
 
pjmomo said:
How is a dlc a GoTY contender when you can't play it without owning the main game?
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There's been controversy in years past about games (such as the excellent Cyberpunk 2077 expansion from last year) being excluded from the main game awards, and so they decided to start including them this year. Phantom Liberty would have won a big award or two.

Also differentiating that this is for large 'whole game sized' types of expansion packs that practically have an entire game's worth of content. Which were snubbed for nomination under previous procedure. TGA are simply treating them as new games now. makes sense to me.
 
TheKbob said:
Standalone expansion? Sure.

If it requires the base game (that probably already won several GOTYs)? No.

Also, go Balatro, beat 'em all.
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Right, I can admit that trying to be gatekeepy over a standalone expansion would be pretty arbitrary. But Shadow of the Erdtree is the exact type of expansion I would definitely exclude. But whatever, I just watch these things for the game trailers lol
 
Vinny said:
It might be garbage and look awful... but nonetheless it's equal parts impressive and scary what AI is capable of doing right now. I'm scared to see what it'll do in 2 years, 4 years, etc.
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Same, everytime I see one of those videos my immediate reaction

1732120643015.jpeg

Mark my words it will happen, it just the T-800 will look like catgirls, sound like Neuro-sama, and dribble out a constant barrage of dad jokes while they wipe humanity.😅
 
The AI that content creators have access to is nothing like what the big corps are building. That shit can do lots of things. But they’ve had machine learning for years, AI is just a progression of that. (My husband is an AI exec - the stuff his group gets AI to do is pretty amazing, but it will take away jobs).
 
Twilightsparkle said:
The AI that content creators have access to is nothing like what the big corps are building. That shit can do lots of things. But they’ve had machine learning for years, AI is just a progression of that. (My husband is an AI exec - the stuff his group gets AI to do is pretty amazing, but it will take away jobs).
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On that subject
Ai can take away some jobs I imagine but most wont. As it can't turn some into automated processes that don't require complicated physical input. And until the machine becomes cheaper than human labor.

And even then it just turns people to qa work then as the robot can make it but that doesn't mean it's safe.

Robot self checkout seem to be going backwards but that's mostly due to input error and theft.
 
Just a couple notes, Final Fantasy Collection is $54.99 at Best Buy for switch. Also Tokyo Xanadu EX+ for switch is $29.99 used over on gamefly. SMT V Vengeance is $24.99 on Amazon. I bit on the FF Collection. While I have the Vita version of Tokyo Xanadu and it's cheaper on other platforms, I mainly play on Switch so I'm glad to add that to the backlog even though it might go lower. At least now I'm not needing to chase getting a copy. Even though I love turn based RPG's... I tend to love action RPG's slightly more these days. So Tokyo Xanadu has extra interest by me. IF Best Buy matches that SMT V Vengeance price, I may grab it as well. I just don't care to give Amazon my business.
 
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Picked up SMT Vengeance (PS5) for $25. Shout out to elessar123 for the recommendation. Persona 5R battles were fun, but all the boring social link stuff & pacing completely turned me off of that series. Looking forward to starting SMT V up. Will pick up Metaphor when it hits $20-25 since i saw that the bad framerate is resolved on PS5 Pro.
 
nightc1 said:
Just a couple notes, Final Fantasy Collection is $54.99 at Best Buy for switch. Also Tokyo Xanadu EX+ for switch is $29.99 used over on gamefly. SMT V Vengeance is $24.99 on Amazon. I bit on the FF Collection and even though it's cheaper on other platforms. While I have the Vita version of Tokyo Xanadu, I mainly play on Switch so I'm glad to add that to the backlog even though it might get down to $25. At least now I'm not needing to chase getting a copy. Even though I love turn based RPG's... I tend to love action RPG's slightly more these days. So Tokyo Xanadu has extra interest by me. IF Best Buy matches that SMT V Vengeance price, I may grab it as well. I just don't care to give Amazon my business.
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I'm regretting buying this now... was thinking it might not last but it's already discounted. Guessing it'll keep dropping.
 
Vinny said:
I'm regretting buying this now... was thinking it might not last but it's already discounted. Guessing it'll keep dropping.
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I assume you mean FF Collection. That first run sold out and built up some FOMO for this recent version. I almost bit on it but managed to resit because I don't really "need" these games when I can just play the ps1/psp digital versions on vita/pstv ... or emulate. I think it'll go lower than $55 if no where else than Gamefly. I would have waited on Gamefly if not for this deal. At just under $10/game... it's not too terribly bad.
 
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