Up and Comming

[Josiah]

I'm more excited about Lightning than Kain but anyway, now that they're gotten the main character and main villain set completed I'm looking forward to seeing what other characters get added. My preferences for each game...

FF: Don't care since Warrior of Light was kinda a catch all.
FFII: The girl maybe, but no strong preference.
FFIII: All four Onion Knights were exactly the same, unless you played FFIII DS, in which case they all had unique appearances and personalities. But since they used a generic Onion Knight in Dissidia, I doubt they'll switch to the DS characters so they don't really need another one here.
FFIV: Kain should be cool, but I'd kind of like to see Rydia (a summoner could be interesting to play).
FFV: Faris, cause pirate princesses are cool.
FFVI: Locke, Celas, Sabin (though Realm or Gau would be pretty interesting to play).
FFVII: Tifa (I'd really like to see a straight up brawler character in Dissidia), Vincent (it needs a gunner too), Red XIII.
FFVIII: Rinoa
FFIX: Dagger (see my earlier summoner comment), Amarant
FFX: Auron and Rikku would both be awesome, though summoner Yuna would be interesting as well.
FFXI: Don't care.
FFX-2: Gunner Yuna (hot pants aside, she'd be fun to play).
FFXII: Vahn, Fran (no strong preference though).
FFXIII: Lightning (my top choice) is already confirmed. If I could choose another...either Sazh or Vanille.

If I could throw in some side games, I'd also like Ramza from Tactics, and Layle (the hero of Crystal Bearers). And Sora, of course. Aside from characters I'd also like to see a totally revamped story mode and less of a grind to get ultimate equipment.

[NabMaster]

Rinoa and Ramza would be awesome to have thrown in. I'd also like to see Seifer from 8 - and Seymour from 10. There were a lot of people saying Jecht should have been replaced with Seymour in the first game seeing as he's the bad guy you see the whole way through, but their reason behind it was that he was more of Yuna's true adversary. Maybe if they throw her in he'll come too?

[Silver]

All heroes? That's boring. I wanna see more villains included. Sure, most FF bosses are like crazy monster things and that's a little hard to work with, but still. I'm with Nab on the Seifer and Seymour thing. Also your lack of Balthier disturbs me.

Also what Colly and I have been discussing is the possibility... that if they're thinking about including characters like Sora from spin-offs, maybe they'd include, say, Chrono Trigger as well? And when I realized they have the option to add TWEWY in...

[Josiah]

Throwing in some Chrono and TWEWY characters would be awesome (Crono, Ayla, Frog, Serge, Neku, Shiki, etc), but I doubt it'll happen. At least not in this one (maybe Dissidie 3 or 4). The only reason I think Sora has a shot is because Kingdom Hearts is kind of a FF spin-off, the others aren't. I didn't mention Baltheir just because I already listed multiple gunners, but he'd be another good one.

As for villains, I'd rather have the heroes I listed but...
FF - FFIII didn't really have any particular great villians that aren't already in Dissidia (unless they want to toss in some elemental fiends).
FFIV: Not really anyone left besides the elemental fiends and Zemus (who I can live without).
FFV: Gilgamesh would be a good one.
FFVI: Ultros? Nah, it'll never happen...
FFVII: Some of the Turks wouldn't hurt.
FFVIII: Seifer.
FFIX: Thorn and Zorn would be kinda amusing.
FFX: Seymour. Maybe Yunalesca.
FFXII: What's his name, the prince who was the final boss.
FFXIII: Hmm... Cid or Barthandelus maybe.

[SuzuTitor]

The 3DS continues to impress me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-khobY1H2KE

Also, estimated price of the 3DS is $300.

In unrelated news, xenophobic VN developers "minori" has formed a partnership with former translator group NNL and VN licenser and distributer MangaGamer.

I'm honestly surprised this happened, and hope the same can happen with many other companies/fan translators as well.

[Josiah]

Speaking of MangaGamer, apprently their sales aren't overly great. I blame a combination of lack of advertising (I've never seen an ad for them anywhere), kinda high prices (at least in dollars), extremely annoying DRM (I have to disable part of Norten in order to open their games), and (to a lesser extent) their rather uneven selection of titles. I sent them an e-mail a while back offering some advice to help them out, but got a rather generic response back. Anyway, as a result of the sales numbers, Koihime Musuo (which I've been looking forward to) is going to be released without the voice acting (due to liscensing fees for the voice acting). On the bright side, they promised that if it sells over 2000 copies they'll release a free patch to add the voices back in. So yeah, everyone (or everyone 18 and over, anyway) should totally buy Koihime Musuo when it comes out next year.

Personally, I think I could do a much better job of running a visual novel translation company...but finding a Japanese developer with good titles that would be interested could be tough (I actually approached Type-Moon about it earlier this year, and they said they didn't want to release their games in English because they were worried that the story couldn't be conveyed properly in a different language. ).

As for the 3DS, I'm not overly excited by the launch line-up but I'm looking forward to it regardless. Hopefully they'll have some demo systems at GDC Austin...

[Doodleshark]

Insomniac has just released a bunch of screenshots for Resistance 3, and they look fantastic. Personally I'm hoping they bring back James Grayson from the PSP game...

[SuzuTitor]

So apparently Umineko no Naku Koro ni is legally out here in the US, but US only.
http://secure.hobibox.net/umineko/catalog.php
If you have a non-American IP, you won't be able to purchase it.
After purchase, go to http://witch-hunt.com/index.html and download the English patch.

[Josiah]

Wow, very cool! Except for the lack of episode 7 anyway. Personally, I would have just sold the second set with 7 and released an upgrade patch once the translation is finished...

Question though. I haven't really been following Umineko news (avoiding spoilers and all that) so I was wondering, is 7 the final chapter? If not, when is it going to end? I definately want to get it, but I'm kinda tempted to wait until the entire thing is complete so I can just play it straight through...

[SuzuTitor]

We don't know exactly when it ends. 7 isn't the end, and 8 will come out this Comiket. 6 pretty much ends one of the main plots, but doesn't get everything answered just yet.
If anything, get Umineko 1-4 first, wait for 8 to get the last four. That is, unless MangaGamer grabs it before then and forces us to buy 5-8 all separate.

[Doodleshark]

4 days until Fallout: New Vegas... 4 days until Fallout: New Vegas...

[Josiah]

Well, 8 seems a likely final episode. I'll probably take your advice, grab 1 - 4 now, and then get 5 - 8 whenever they put it up for sale. As for Manga Gamer... 07th Expansion actually supports free fan translation patches for their games and prevented Manga Gamer from shutting down a Higurashi fan translation (note that, at the rate they were going, said translation won't be finished for another few years, but yeah). So have to switch to the Manga Gamer version mid-way through probably won't be a problem. Chances are, I won't actually start playing Umineko until the rest has been translated though. I had enough trouble waiting waiting for each Higurashi Kai arc to get released... Playing them all straight through would definately be ideal.

[SuzuTitor]

The wait certainly does kill, but also helped organize our thoughts. Of course, this also kills me waiting to see if my theories are wrong or not.

[Josiah]

I can wait, sure. And I know what you mean (I certainly had plenty of time to theorize about Higurashi). But since I've got enough other games to play in the meantime...

[Josiah]

Um... Not really sure what to think of this.