The Malgorian Blog

Ok according to this post over on Nintendo Life NIS is seriously running dry on funds. Apparently the blame is being placed entirely on their Disgaea RPG game - a mobile game service. And yeah I'm sure that thing would be a micro-transaction infected cancer. Supposedly it was launched in March but due to various issues nobody's been able to download it yet. Which I'm sure causes problems with the business plan.

I don't know if this includes NIS America or if it's ultimately just the Japanese company that's in trouble. I'd assume they're kinda joined at the hip though.

I say this as someone who use to be a fairly huge NIS fan from the PS2 days. Good riddance!

Sorry I can't be any more supportive of them than that but they lost me as a fan when they became massive DLC whores in the PS3 era and onward with anywhere from 50-150 dollars of DLC per game. ALL of it being in the "Bad DLC" categories I explained previously. Stat boosts, Level boosts, good boosts, free item packs, purchased item packs, new classes (things you would unlock in previous disgaea games), bonus stages (ditto), etc. All that cut out of the game design formula to be DLC that effectively doubled to tripled the cost of the game if you wanted the "Full Game Experience".

They never learned their lesson and ultimately they got put on the boycott list for me several times. It seemed every time I lowered the boycott to give them a chance they showed as a company that there was no reason for me to have done so. Naturally half of this ire belongs to NIS America which I doubt the Japanese branch had any say in - or any care about, but like a franchised business, the shame of one international branch falls on all international branches as far as I'm concerned.

Did a quick check on the PSN store for Disgaea games and I guess they got a -little- better with their DLC whoring. Most of the games that popped up there had no DLC because they were streaming-only games from earlier systems. Can't count those really, but let's look at Disgaea 4. It had a bunch of DLC that would have totaled probably about 40-50 bucks (20 things listed not including the season pass, a couple of those are free etc, but the costs of them are between 1.99 to 3.99 or something. So we'll assume about 40 bucks.

The Season pass is 24.99. All the DLC listed falls into the Bad Categories. Ripped out jobs/classes, special characters, and episodes. Disgaea games tend to flow like an episodic game although traditionally you at least get all the episodes as part of the purchase on the disc.

Oh, and to help encourage season passes, one of the special characters which I guess they feel is desirable by the fans more than others, is only available if you buy the season pass.

Their Disgaea Complete games seem to have no Bad DLC although they certainly have a hell of a lot of $0.99 avatar pics to buy. Some only as a batch. I wouldn't bother counting that against them, but you'd have to remember that they have the DLC bundled in here. I assume. They do mention in the desc about what DLCs are added to the Complete edition but I'd have to look at a physical edition of the game to find out if that DLC is actually on the disc or given via a one-use DLC coupon. I can't even say for sure that "Well it's not listed separately as DLC on PSN so obviously it's baked into the game itself!" because I've seen instances where a free DLC coupon for a game wasn't otherwise listed in the store. You either had a coupon for it or you did without.

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, NIS sucks. Sad to see devs lose their jobs but if they're good at their job they'll be able to find work easily elsewhere or even start up their own new group. If NIS actually focused on developing complete games all this time instead of almost leading the charge on nickel and diming the masses they'd probably have more than enough fans left to buy up their new releases each time to keep the money flowing. Lord knows I was eager to buy up anything with NIS on it in the PS2 era, and I was -just- starting to order directly from their online shop for collectors editions of just about everything when the DLC shitstorm hit.

Saw this on youtube. Consider it a PSA.

So I was tempted to buy Death End re:quest when I saw it at ebgames/gamestop the other day. I held off, mainly because I had little choice - couldn't afford it that day. But also because they didn't appear to have any non-gutted copies out on display, it was a full priced title, and where it was primarily a niche jrpg - I've seen way too many cases of DLC whoring in that genre since the day they started launching on a console that could easily do digital downloads.

The main game seems to play similarly to games like .hack and probably SAO - games where you're in another game. This one apparently tries to have you go through multiple game genres and the "real world". So I thought that was interesting enough to at least consider. But not until I saw what kinds of things they ripped out of the game to offer separately.

It's important to note I've been playing jrpg titles since the NES. And while the NES and SNES flavor hold little similarity to what these games do, the best way to determine if they're lacking "basic features" is to compare them to PS2 jrpgs. (As seriously I see very little innovation overall past that era - graphics look nicer, sound is generally still ok, but I'll be honest there's a lot of repetition and stagnation. If you like how jrpgs were back then, then this isn't a negative in and of itself. And I don't particularly mind how they were back then - so long as the story is at least trying to be somewhat unique on it's own somehow and the battle system isn't a colossal screwup (I'm looking at you Ar Tonelico 3!) then I can play through it and feel like I've gotten my money's worth. Usually.

When it comes to looking at the DLC for new JRPGs I look at what types of things were commonly available as bonuses or extras. I also look at if they do the common "item set/stat set/etc" DLC. You know - the one time limited set of consumable items you'll be given at the start of the game. This is harder to judge with new series starting on the DLC-able systems but are so blatantly obvious when you're dealing with a series that started on the PS2 or earlier. (I'm looking at you Disgaea!)

This game is pretty much new, so I just end up assuming if the DLC is of the type of shit that use to be common additives in old games but are now routinely cut out at launch (or offered as preorder bonuses) that it's been cut out of this as well. As otherwise it just means the game was inferior to start with.

So here's the type of DLC shown in this game that was -accidentally- released by the developers during a promo stream of the game. Basically when starting the game Compile Heart games tend to reveal what DLC was added. Oops! So much for "announcing it later". More on this after the breakdown.

1. Character Costumes - There's apparently 12 of these in the DLC for the main character(s). I can't even tell you how expensive they are offhand because the 4-5 of them that are currently listed on PSN are showing it as "unavailable".

2. Bonus areas - There are two of these. I consider this gutted content entirely since it would usually be akin to extra stages unlocked in a games epilogue. (Consider Lunar 2 and the various stages in Disgaea 1.)

3. Item Sets. 6 different item sets. one or two of them are free, the others are being sold for a buck or two each depending on your country of origin. These tell me two things. 1. The game is badly balanced so that you need the starting crutch of items, or the game was deliberately balanced to make these item sets desirable if not needed. 2. The game has probably had it's item drop rates, or shop prices/xp/gold-drops adjusted to make them desirable. (kinda goes with the second half of #1 really but from a different angle.) Devs of course will say "Oh no! we never did anything like that!" but can you really trust them at their word? You'd really have to play through the game twice from scratch and ask yourself how much more of a grind was it to go without the item drops.

4. There's an xp boost item. This immediately sets off a red flag for me, making me think they deliberately set the XP gains too low. Even if you could get the game for free by playing the game, and getting it only near the end of the game. Meaning you had to deal with the xp nerf the entire game.

5. 1 hidden boss. Yeah, no. It's not "hidden", it's "removed". So I count these things as optional bosses and as removed content. Hell consider the original Final Fantasy's "Warmech". A randomly encountered boss you could meet in the final bridge leading to Tiamat. Power-wise Warmech was probably on par with Tiamat if not stronger. This boss is one of two DLC quests. IE: they cut quests out.

6. A bunch of weapons/equipment. Basically these are treated the same as item sets, just not consumable/temporary. I consider all items to be removed rather than bonus content.

7. One extra playable character. Also removed content. Consider all the extra characters you would unlock in old games - especially Disgaea as an easy example. (Of which those bonus characters in Disgaea are all now DLC characters.)


So yeah, a whole lot of content I personally classify as "removed content".

Now for the more offensive take away I had from the devs/pubs promo stream. When asked about DLC they kept saying "We'll announce that at a later date!" ie: we're not telling you before the game is launched so go buy it without knowing!

The devs however accidentally gave away the full list of DLC because as I mention above the game popped up notices of all the DLC being added when they launched the game. Which is not what they wanted based on their refusal to actually talk about DLC prior.

What this tells me is that, whether intentionally or not, they were passing off a fully DLC loaded game as the base game you would get with your 60-80 dollar purchase. IE: intentionally or not, they were attempting to engage in false advertising. If Compile Heart's basic game design didn't throw all those pop-ups on the screen, who would have known all those extra costumes were DLC? That the items you started the game off with weren't what you would REALLY start the game off with? That those extra quests would not ever become available? That those items, XP-boosting item, cool extra weapons and equipment, would never be found as you played? (Or found only after doing the most insane of requirements, etc) and the list would go on.

So. For the DLC state of the game alone, I'm passing on this game permanently. I have WAY too much to play already purchased. I'm never going to miss it, and I think my 80+ bucks can be better spent on other things. But for their attempt at avoiding the DLC issue in their promo stream only to be ratted out by the game itself and their potential attempt to show the game as something more than what you will get if you pay the full price tag, I'm boycotting Compile Heart and Idea Factory games in general for at least a year or so. Again. 9_9

For those who don't care about that and buy and play and enjoy the game anyway - go for it. Just don't whine about the missing content or level/gold grind if you refuse to buy the DLC. And if you buy the DLC, don't whine about the cost.

So, finally got up the willpower to play through this game. I bought the ps4 version at launch and was seriously disappointed by the original localization quality.

I haven't played too many of the Ys games. but the few I did play I enjoyed quite a bit. So I had big hopes going into this game. (Given I had the localization patch) it did not disappoint. You start the game on a ship that you're working aboard as a crew member for passage. After you're given a chance to talk to everyone on the ship the story proceeds and you're attacked by a sea monster and everyone is stranded on a deserted island with a bad reputation.

I like how they tend to use these types of things to explain why Adol ends up with nothing all over again every game. :P I'm assuming the sword Dogie tossed him to fight the sea monster with was probably the most powerful sword from the previous game in the series. Which is now lost at sea forever!

Hours were lost playing this game. I'd sit down and work on various quests and gather materials etc for Castaway Village while rescuing others from the ship and it would feel like I didn't get a heck of a lot done but it'd be hours later by the time I shut it off.

Without using a walkthrough, I appear to have gotten the True Ending. All quests completed, all location points found, all fish caught, all meals cooked, 100% of the map revealed, all of Dana's flashback quests completed, etc. The gallery had everything but 1 image unlocked, which I suspect may be due to an alternate ending - likely one where not all of Dana's story was completed. Certainly the last chapter appeared completely optional to me.

So quick pros/cons

Pros:
Battle system. I enjoyed the general feel of fighting in the game. Where it's ultimately an adventure game with rpg elements to it rather than the other way around, the enemies appear on the map and you ahve to fight them in real time. jumping/slashing/etc as you go. Or you can try to run from them and have the entire map of enemies eventually chasing behind you! :D

Night Exploration. Several of the side quests you can complete can unlock night exploration of a few of the areas on the island. Basically same level, but darker with different and stronger enemies. Additionally, and this is usually the reason for going there, some material components are only available during the night.

Dinosaurs. Lots of them on this island. It's part of the main story as you'd find out quickly enough. Pretty powerful buggers at that, although you wouldn't believe how awesome it is to be able to mow down an entire valley full of rapters that were chasing you down at the same time. Good way to level up once you hit that point apparently.

Cons:
Inconsistent invisible walls. Not entirely a bad thing to have invisible walls to prevent you from walking off a cliff in a game like this, but there were places where it wasn't consistent. Some places you could jump down safely, certainly, but nope! Not allowed! Then there was the few places in the last few dungeons where you could walk off of every ledge. Don't go training people to expect the game to save them just so you can let them fall to their deaths repeatedly later where enemies have attacks specially suited for pushing players off them...

Bad Initial translations. Sorry, having the physical copy I paid full price for I can't let this slip. Mainly because this is a game I can easily see myself playing again sometime down the road. And when I do, if that's after the PS4 is no longer supported by Sony, I'll have to contend with the horrible localization that's on the disc. (As I can't afford to keep the game installed permanently I'm sure. My ps4 only has the 500gigs on it. I'll certainly try to keep it installed but eh.)

Clothing/Accessories. Am I disappointed they had these in there? No, not at all! The thing that pissed me off is that just about all of it appears to be paid DLC. Unlocking most everything in the game I only found 2 accessories to wear. One for Adol (A necklace from Ricotta and some glasses for Laxia.) Other than that Adol gets some adventuring clothes at the start of the game + has his sailor uniform. Nobody else has a change of clothes by default. So they obviously added this whole thing in just to sell DLC. Adol's Silver Armor is a free DLC item, which I downloaded. Pretty sure everything else was paid DLC and after the horrible localization that took massive outrage to get fixed many months later, I ain't giving NIS a single penny for DLC.


I found the game a bit too easy by the end. Bosses were falling without too much trouble despite all their HP but that's a case of how over leveled I was due to the exploration plus the liberal use of the str/def/life/etc pots you can find that permanently increase stats a little bit. By the end of the game, if you've actually done the right quests and found the right chests, you'll be able to brew up the str/def potions on your own anyway. The costs to do so are pretty steep and don't become available til the final chapter of course, but at least that means you can trade up your weaker materials into the materials used to get the "aura grass" needed to brew the potions.

Clearing the game unlocked a few post-game activities, including a dungeon. I'll probably go through that at some point but probably not before Christmas.

Ultimately I enjoyed the game. I wouldn't pay full price for it digitally still but that's because I can't get behind the prices being set for digital games. One of those promises devs and publishers use to bat around in the early days about going digital was that it would be cheaper. Sadly that isn't the case, and more often than not I see digital prices stay high far longer than physical copies. (Despite that being the excuse for keeping them launch-price high for years after release at times.)

If you get it digitally, get it on sale. It'd a good game (with the patches).

That being said, because of the quality of the localization on the physical disc, I wouldn't recommend getting that full price either. If you find it used or on sale AND you plan on playing it while sony still has the patches available for it, then by all means pick it up. If you have the "Day One Edition" (which basically means "badly translated edition" in this case) then at least you'll have the artbook and music cd to make up for it. Assuming it's included. If it's used or has been gutted by the store, you never know if you'll get what you're suppose to.


Anyway, next up for game nights will be Shining Resonance Refrain I guess. It promises to have real time action fights as well. Might be a bit unfair to play this coming down from a Ys game though. ;)

Looks like Telltale Games is closing down for good once the final chapter of the Walking Dead story they're working on is out. They've already laid off all but 25 of the 250 staff members.

I can't say I'm really going to miss them since I don't think I've even played any of their games. I might have one of them bought... maybe... but if I do I haven-oh yeah! the kings quest thing was by them wasn't it?

Let's check the wiki!

Ok, I think I have that Monkey Island game on the PS3. Haven't touched it yet.

And no, that Kings Quest game wasn't by them. Haven't touched it either mind you.

I think I have the first free chapter of the Strong Bad game.

Nothing else on that list does anything for me. So yeah, I guess I can see why they're going out of business. <_< Well, I was originally interested in the Minecraft Story Mode. Up until they released a physical disc with just 1 chapter on it. With a coupon for the rest. IE: A demo game on disc with a coupon to buy the rest. However, if I wanted to get it digitally I wouldn't be interested in the stupid physical game now would I? By the time they actually finished the game and released the "complete" physical edition, it was firmly on my boycott list and I had forgotten about it. I still don't have it and have zero interest in getting it. Apparently they were only given 30 minutes after receiving their notice to pick up their shit and exit the building.

Original post is here. Well, the dreamwidth.org reincarnation of it anyway.

While I was trying to go over my VERY POORLY tagged journal to see if I could find a post about Denuvo (Which I haven't found. I really should go over the journal and do some serious tagging.) I came across the post above.

It was made when "Good Ol' Games" announced their sudden closure. Leaving people to wonder WTF was going on, deliberately, probably for a laugh.

In truth, they closed "Good Ol' Games", the purely drm-free old game webstore, and a few days after the post was made, launched "gog.com".

So the hysteria they put their loyal customers through for a few days ended up over a rebranding with a few changes.

What struck me as funny is that I predicted in that post "if they do come back it will be in a different form."

Specifically I gave two possibilities.


1. DRM shop. Meaning the games will be sold with DRM. Maybe not all of them, but certainly it will become an option for publishers - and publishers tend to demand DRM whenever possible. I doubt you'll see many new games added to the site without DRM if this happens.

2. Steam Clone. Meaning it'll run somewhat like how Steam currently works. You buy games and have them tied to your account. Technically still DRM shop, only no exceptions anymore as likely all the old stuff will be added to the DRM of the site for new purchases.


So let's see.

1. Yep. DRM became an option. Not a regular option by far, but an option. And the first developer to use that option was gog themselves for their new (At the time) witcher game. Can't remember if it was the second or third game though to be honest. Been so long and I haven't even played the first one yet.

2. Hello GOG Galaxy client! (Years later) However thankfully it wasn't remotely as much of a steam clone as I feared.


So like. I guess I was right on both counts? :D


I don't hate gog, although their stunt certainly pissed me off after they did their big reveal. I've still yet to spend actual money on games with them however. I got a freebie from Kane, which started the entire thing, and I've gotten a bunch of freebies as they're offered.

The reason for me being stingy though isn't because of their stunt. I think they've actually done a good job maintaining themselves against the steam tide. However I'm not one for using credit cards online willynilly. There's way too much hackin' going on to risk that in my mind. Especially after companies show us how BADLY they protected their customer information AFTER they lose it all to some hacker kid.

When I buy games off Steam, or PSN, or even the little I bought off of MS Live (40 whole bucks worth!), or Nintendo (more than 40 bucks. >_>), it's always been by getting prepaid cards for the service.

Gog doesn't do that. They do let you add money from credit cards to your account, which is a step in the right direction since you can use prepaid visa giftcards to load money to the gog account safely. However those visa/mastercard giftcards have pretty big activation fees. I can't rule out ever using one to get games on gog, but for the last few years I've avoided the temptation. So it's probably unlikely unless a must have game lands on gog and only gog.


Also postdictions is now a word. And a tag. Using it for when I go back to my old day predictions to see how shit turned out afterwards. Like today! I just don't want to type out "prediction checking". :P

Something recently came to light in the gaming world on reddit - and naturally since I typically avoid the place, I didn't hear about it til it hit slashdot today.

Seems games are now starting to come, in addition to excessive drm and/or online connections, with their own spyware in the form of Red Shell. Like the various DRM options, this is code created by a third party and sold to the game companies to include.

Basically the program collects user data from new installs, along with whatever data it can find on your computer like font information, etc.

It actually got a bit of a stir out of some people for once and it seems some game companies are promising to remove it. I don't know the full list of games infected with this shit, but at the very least none of the games I own appear in the list compiled so far. Yay for only playing old and niche games~ (I suppose that's a "Yay for having a shitty computer." but whatever.)

I hope enough people also swarm Valve with complaints about it. Bad enough we have companies that try to hide the fact that they have third party DRM on their games until people catch them with it - at which point they finally put up the "missing" notice on the steam store page. Now we have to wonder what other third party bullshit they're installing that isn't really a part of the shit the customer wants to buy. Personally I'm hoping Valve requires publishers to disclose if they're using tracking software. (As this can really get those companies in some seriously hot water with the new european privacy laws.)

I think the program that surprised people the most on this list was Kerbal Space Program.

A couple of days ago I found out thanks to slashdot that Lycos is killing off all their free email services on May 15th. It's a shame they didn't do something intelligent such as EMAILING all their free users about the warning. I know I didn't receive anything since the 9th when they originally posted the notice on one of their stupid never-looked-at blogs.

The tin-foil hatted man wants to say they're waiting until the last week before the deadline to send out an email to everyone. You know, cause a sudden "OMG WHAT DO I DO!!!! NO TIME!!!" panic and remind people that the paid premium accounts aren't going away so they can easily just upgrade to that for 19.95. I'll update if I see that email show up prior to the cut off, although obviously not going to wait to start moving things off.

I've been using them as my primary email for a couple decades now. In fact, I've been using them so long that I never actually signed up for Lycos despite having 3 lycos email accounts.

Lycos bought out mailcity, and converted my mailcity account into a lycos account.

Lycos bought out eudoramail, and converted my eudoramail account into a lycos account.

Lycos bought out angelfire, and created a lycos account for it. (I don't think I had an email with angelfire prior to that...)

But yeah. Either way, I now have a few weeks to move everything of importance off lycos and over to gmail.

This includes redirecting any online account I have that uses lycos for password changes/recovery. And there's several. (I just updated the email tied to dreamwidth before posting this.) Luckily for me my Steam, PSN, and Nintendo accounts are already on gmail.

Since I have about 3 weeks til the deadline at this point, I'm planning on moving things over a bit each day.

Going to be trying to become Productive and Non-Procrastinative. (Fuck you spellchecker that's now a word.)

Long story short, I haven't been getting much done at all the last couple of years. Things pile up that I want to do, or need to do, and a heck of a lot ends up being left undone. Started reading a book called Getting Things Done, by David Allen (going off memory here, so hope I have the author right. ^^)

I don't know if this method of his will work to unstick me as it promises, but I'm going to give it a serious shot starting this weekend. Initial Collection/Processing stages for getting the system running can take a weekend - he recommends having two days set aside to give you plenty of time to collect all the "stuff" in your head and process through it all.

I've tried plenty of methods in the past and they'd always fall apart fairly quickly. We'll see if I can stick to this one. If it starts to fall apart I'll regroup and try it again. See if I can make the new habits stick. I'll put a note in my tickler file (once I set it up) to remind me to assess how everything's turned out around December. :)

Over at kotaku they have an article saying after months of controversy the ESRB will now add "In Game Purchases" label to games with in-game purchases.

Is this a step in the right direction? Or is it being applied so badly that it will end up doing more harm than good?

Here's the issue, this warning will be applied to any game that has ANY DLC purchases available for it. It might just be a couple item packs that are completely unneeeded, or it might be a perverse lootbox scam linked completely to character progression in addition to other things.

In either case the only warning to the player before purchase is "In Game Purchases".

The ESRB didn't want to focus on lootbox scams directly, which is the exact thing that caused the controversy to begin with (And really most of the conspiracy was wondering why they were so insistent they weren't a form of gambling. ie: a game of chance played with money. To be clear, they STILL hold to that misguided mindset. They, and the game publishers themselves, are about the only people that refuse to see it as gambling.

Their reason for not harping on lootboxes however is because "parents don't know what lootboxes are, and those who claim they do still don't know what they are."

The future of this tag is that it will be applied to 99% of all games released from here on out, and it will be so watered down that it will not do a damned thing. Granted I know at this point you'd need a full box all to it's own these days to be specific about what DLC is available in a game, but still grouping it all together under a single little line isn't helping much.


I would like to know what happens to a publisher that doesn't have the tag added to their label because they decided to go without DLC at launch, but then add DLC 6 months down the road. So maybe this will help people sue companies that try to avoid the label by delaying their plans when the customer is explicitly trying to avoid DLC.