Author Archives: InTheSky

Project X Zone 2 E3 2015 Trailer; Ulala, Felicia, Valkyrie Confirmed in Separate Image

InTheSky June 16, 2015 Leave a reply

Bandai Namco Europe just uploaded a new trailer for Project X Zone 2 for E3 2015 promotional purposes. It’s the first glimpse of gameplay in motion for the game. It features two teams in action from each publisher. The trailer theme is a remix of the previous trailer’s background theme; looks like it will be the main musical theme for this game.

From Sega, it’s Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima from Yakuza, and Akira Yuki and Kage-Maru from Virtua Fighter. From Bandai Namco, it’s Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima from Tekken, and Yuri Lowell and Flynn Scifo from Tales of Vesperia. And from Capcom: Mega Man X and Zero from the Mega Man X series, and Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter. Attacks from each pair of characters can be seen in the trailer. The combat interface is different, and even returning teams have new attacks.

The thumbnail for the E3 trailer shows Project X Zone 2-styled art for Felicia from Capcom’s Darkstalkers, Valkyrie from Bandai Namco’s The Legend of Valkyrie, and Ulala from Sega’s Space Channel 5. Presumably they are all support characters; while there will probably be more teams that branch across publishing companies (like Strider Hiryu from Capcom and Hotsuma from Sega) there’s nothing quite yet to suggest that any of these three is a pair unit. These characters aren’t present in the trailer, but it’s confirmation of their presence nonetheless.

Continue reading to check out the trailer!

Stella Glow North American Release Date and Prices Announced

InTheSky June 16, 2015 Leave a reply

Stella Glow is coming to the United States and Canada during the holiday season (probably the latter half of November to anywhere in December.) The prices are as follows: $49.99 for the US, and $59.99 for Canada.

The pricing is a point of contention for many gamers. Generally speaking, Nintendo 3DS games are sold at $39.99 for standard editions in the United States. That the price is being marked above this convention is drawing claims of what’s colloquially called the “Atlus Tax” – a pattern of pricing games higher than the general prices of non-Atlus titles on similar platforms. Most recently, this can be seen with Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth.

Stella Glow has just released in Japan, as of June 4. Games in Japan have been offered at price points that vary quite noticeably within platforms. That said, it’s hard not to think of Atlus’ pricing in North America as conspicuous, compared to most other games.

In a Gematsu article announcing this information, Atlus also details additional features from a press release. Notably, a Free Time system allots players a limited amount of time per story segment with which they can grind out battles, shop for and upgrade weapons, explore dungeons, and form bonds with party members. Some bonds, when pushed to high enough levels, will yield more combat abilities or special story events. The game boasts 40-60 hours of play, main story and sidequests combined, with 50+ maps, a New Game+ mode, and multiple endings. Odds are the endings will be tied to the bonds formed in game, alongside other choices made with Free Time.

Seeing as this is a recurring topic, be sure to let us know what you think of the pricing for Stella Glow!

Featured image found at this Gematsu article.

Phantasy Star Online 2: Guilty Gear and Blazblue Content, PSO2es Gets Shining Resonance Chips

InTheSky June 15, 2015 Leave a reply

In the newest PSO Live Stream event, Sega announced new collaboration content with the Guilty Gear and Blazblue franchises, prominent fighting game IPs that belong to Arc System Works. Of course, Sega is no stranger to collaborating with franchises that aren’t in-house as far as Phantasy Star Online 2 is concerned.

However, a fun fact: Guilty Gear was owned by Sega for a couple of years following the merger of Sammy and Sega. While Arc System Works developed the Guilty Gear games, Sammy owned the IP. In any event, years later Arc System works would reclaim the IP and eventually develop the Guilty Gear Xrd series. And in the meantime, they launched another popular fighting game series called Blazblue.

Blazblue itself was party to a collaboration with Sega’s Border Break a year ago. The campaign was stylized as “BB X BB.” By visiting the respective game websites at the time of the collaboration, fans could unlock special items or treats for each game. It’s hard to figure out what prompted such a collaboration as the franchises are noticeably dissimilar, but in the end perhaps nothing gets in the way of true love.

English Yakuza Webpage Online, New Yakuza 5 Release Date Window Hinted

InTheSky June 15, 2015 Leave a reply

TojoHQ, a Yakuza fansite, recently noticed the return of the official English Sega webpage for the Yakuza franchise. After proceeding past the age-gate, visitors can check out the profile pages for the Yakuza games that have been released in the West or are going to be released in the West. Do so by visiting the Games category at the top of the site.

Among those games is the game that is chronologically the latest in the franchise – Yakuza 5. It has its own page, and curiously a release window is mentioned on the website.

Fall 2015.

It’s been a while since we’ve had word on the localization status or any further release updates on Yakuza 5 since its localization was confirmed. It’s nice to see the game receiving attention again, although considering that the original release window was scheduled Summer 2015, the news is not entirely without some misfortune.

It’ll be interesting to see what Sega and Sony have planned next for Yakuza 5. As you may be aware, Gio Corsi of Sony’s Third Party Productions recently traveled to Japan to conduct an interview with Yakuza 5 development team (including Toshihiro Nagoshi) and was planning to release a video production of this interview – perhaps we may see this in the future?

Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax Adds “Heavy Object” Team

InTheSky June 9, 2015 Leave a reply

Not long after the announcement of an expanded release and new characters for Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax, Sega announced another new team that will be coming to the crossover fighter. Quenser Barbotage (voiced by Natsuki Hanae) from Heavy Object will be a playable character, with Froleytia Capistrano (voiced by Shizuka Ito) serving as an assist character. Quenser will be able to summon other characters from his series as part of some of his attacks.

While the Heavy Object franchise currently only exists through light novels and manga, an anime adaptation is coming very soon: October of this year, according to AnimeNewsNetwork! Heavy Object is a military fantasy franchise that centers around the protagonist Quenser, an androgynous young man who is perceptive and strategically creative, as he finds ways to thwart the massive war weapons known as Objects. These Objects are so powerful that conventional wisdom held that humans stood no chance against them, until Quenser and his partner Heivia appeared. Froleytia, the assist character in Fighting Climax, is their commander and she comes from nobility, unlike Quenser.

You gotta love how the Valkyria Chronicles stage is used to show off the Heavy Object characters. It’s definitely fitting.

The expanded release, currently with a tentative title of Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax New, is set to hit Japanese arcades this summer. No plans for the game’s consoles releases are known as of yet. I can’t immediately tell what comes next for the non-arcade releases. The game may see some more new characters though, but we’ll have to wait and see for now.

Credit for the featured image goes to this Gematsu article.

Blade Arcus from Shining Receiving Expansion, New Characters

InTheSky June 9, 2015 1 Reply

It’s been more than a year since Blade Arcus from Shining hit Japanese arcades. With this new year we have the arrival of an expansion of this fighting game and it will be titled: Blade Arcus from Shining Version 2.0. The updated game is coming to Japanese arcades during this summer.

This is the poster art from the game, found at this sega-mag article. The article also contains a handful of new screenshots to promote the game’s release, so be sure to check it out.

As is customary to expanded releases of fighting games, Blade Arcus is receiving a variety of touches. The character select screen received a visual makeover, and got a little busier with the arrival of four characters from Shining Hearts: Rick Elwood, Rouna Murasame, Urayukihime Hayane, and Dylan Rowen (in the order that they’re introduced in the trailer.) Besides this, the UI during fights received some minor aesthetic changes as well.

Sega also plans other new content for the game, including new stages, balance adjustments to existing characters. New gameplay mechanics named “Rejection Card” and “Reversal Strike” were also announced, but they haven’t been explained as of yet. Seeing as we’re about to head into the summer, it remains to be seen if any other major additions (like more new characters) will be added, but if so, we shouldn’t expect too much considering the existing roster size. Given the size of the current character select screen, assuming most of the elements remain relatively untouched I might guess two to four new characters at most, if the development team is inclined.

In the first version of Blade Arcus’s lifetime, the game never saw a console or Vita release. It’s not entirely clear if such a thing will ever happen; I suppose it’s a possible consideration once the final version of the game comes out.

Continue reading to check out the trailer, recently uploaded to Sega’s YouTube account! It mostly focuses on the newer characters, but it also offers a look into game menus as well.

Etrian Odyssey II Untold North American DLC Schedule

InTheSky June 7, 2015 Leave a reply

AtlusUSA recently unveiled their DLC plans for Etrian Odyssey II Untold: The Fafnir Knight, set to come out on August 4. Starting on the week of the game’s release, and every week after that (for three weeks, with the last pieces being added on the last week of August) a couple pieces of DLC will be made available during the month of August every Tuesday.

Some DLC will be available free of charge for the first week it becomes available online. But when a new round of DLC goes online, any DLC that was previously free will then require money to unlock. So for example, a free DLC piece that goes online on August 4 could be free until August 10, and when new DLC goes online on August 11 the DLC was previously free might not be free anymore.

Gematsu recently compiled this DLC schedule, which I will reproduce after the break. Check it out!

Etrian Odyssey II Untold: English Flavio Trailer

InTheSky June 4, 2015 Leave a reply

Meet Flavio, Ranger/Survivalist and a bottomless well of camaraderie and goodwill. Atlus USA uploaded a trailer introducing waiting gamers to the jovial archer (“The Upbeat Survivalist”, as the trailer stylizes him,) which you can check out after the break. It’ll offer viewers a preview of Flavio’s English voice acting, too.

As a reminder, Flavio as a character is exclusive to the game’s Story Mode, where characters and their classes are fixed. Flavio has the potential to support the team in a variety of ways, including debuffing enemies, revealing chests on the map, and lowering the encounter rate. All the while he will be keeping himself alive with skills that lower the enemy’s accuracy or raise a teammate’s own evasion.

Stella Glow Character Trailers: Sakuya and Mordimort

InTheSky June 2, 2015 Leave a reply

The Stella Glow Song Magic Ensemble trailers continue with videos for Sakuya and Mordimort. The videos were uploaded to Sega’s Japanese YouTube account not too long ago.

Sakuya is themed after fire, reflected in the red and black color schemes and the volcanic demo stage shown off in her trailer. Reflecting her color scheme, her song is intense though not as peppy as Popo’s song. She’s voiced by Yui Sakakibara.

Mordimort is themed after the element of earth, rounding out the four classical elements. Honestly, I can’t guess much behind the aesthetics or personality of this character. The color choices don’t make me think of the earth element. She doesn’t seem emotionally expressive, which could perhaps be tied into an interpretation of the earth element as something stoic. The song feels mostly simple and bass-driven; I feel the presence of the rhythm more than anything. She’s voiced by Emi Nitta.

Continue reading to check out the trailers!

Etrian Mystery Dungeon, Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker Dated for Europe

InTheSky May 30, 2015 Leave a reply

NIS America announced the release dates of Etrian Mystery Dungeon and Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker not too long ago. Etrian Mystery Dungeon is set to release on September 11, while DS2:RB will release on October 30. Physical and digital presences are planned for both games.

Off of the news of Etrian Odyssey II Untold’s release on February of next year, I’m of the opinion that the pacing of these Atlus releases feels slightly better knowing DS2:RB is coming at the end of October. Of course, this is not to suggest everyone in EU is planning on buying all of the Atlus games to begin with (DS2:RB and the Etrian Odyssey games play differently, after all.) Interestingly, these releases also puts into perspective that the past couple of years were quite busy for Atlus and the Nintendo 3DS, even if two of the games are expanded remakes.