Category Archives: Games

Discussing Games

35 Replies

In my opinion there are a lot of problems with the gaming scene, the gaming industry, and of course in many games themselves. The biggest problem in the first place is that there is too little serious discussion on those problems. There can’t be any improvement if no one talks about it, if no one is or seems even aware that there are any! So I guess I might just as well do the little I can and start.

There are so many topics to talk about, it’s hard to decide where to begin. I think some people also want to hear more specifics on why I think Devil Children isn’t a good game. I might just as well do a proper review of it then. But before we get to actually reviewing some games, we need a certain groundwork. One of the biggest faults of the gaming scene is its inability to properly review and generally discuss games. So first, we’ll take an in-depth look at those topics before we’ll consider reviewing anything. So, let’s get started with the first of what will hopefully become a series of essays.

(Warning: Lots of text and no pretty pictures)

Continue reading →

Ice Book script translation complete!

Tom has been on steroids recently and completely finished the script translation of Devil Children: Ice Book! This is a major milestone for the project and one that’s sure to point the way for more good news. Next up for this project will be finishing the hacking and formatting the text (sadly no auto formatter for this one). I already started on the later part a little bit, but there are also still tons of hacking issues to sort out too.

There already has been major hacking progress recently. Kingcom rewrote the game to use 1 Byte text instead of 2 Byte SJIS, which fixed our lingering naming storage issues. It destroyed just about everything else, but hey, it’s all a matter of time. Furthermore the naming screen has also been hacked. That’s a major step since it should be one of the most difficult to hack menus in the game. Other menu fixes are too numerous to list, but we’re getting there.

It’s coming along nicely!

Another matter I’d like to address is that we get asked a ton about what’s the progress on Project XYZ. We write updates on this site for a reason, to keep you informed. When we don’t mention a project than there is propably nothing exciting to report about. Most are in translation, and translating takes a lot of time. We can only hack one game at a time, so sometimes we make a ton of progress on one game and not a single bit of progress on other projects. This is completely normal and doesn’t mean we abandoned any of the other projects. It also doesn’t affect how long it takes for the other projects to be released, since the part that holds them up is usually the translation and not the hacking. When there is something to report you’ll read about it here. So please, reduce the redundant “Nice news but how is the other one?” comments.

Last but not least there is apparently a bit of confusion about which persons are working on which project. Otherwise no one would ask Tom how the translation of Xenosaga is going … To redeem that we created a project overview page. There you’ll find the people that are associated with each project and where the project stands.

Project Overview Page

That’s it for today and I hope you’re as excited about DC as I am! Progress form my side will be a bit slow for a couple of days, but you can blame that on Fallout 3. Absolutely the best game released this whole year so far. Shit! It’s that good >_< I need days with 30 hours each please…

Finally beat Joker

13 Replies

I just finally finished the game. My winning team:
Night Clubber S+8
Black Dragon S+6
Zoma X+11

It was quite an enjoyable ride, although the game wasn’t without flaws. What annoyed me the most were the long traveling times between islands. If I had to go from Fern Isle to the city and back, one could go mad. Other games have teleport spells for this sort of stuff, I wished the developers had thought about that too. Well, otherwise it was quite good. The monster synthesizing was cool and the graphics were impressive for a DS game.

I’ll pass on post-endgame content, I just don’t have time for that. I guess I should get back to hacking Caravan Heart instead. Although currently there are still Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War (PC), … this is surely the coolest time of the year for a game addict like me.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker out next week

29 Replies

Time flies by so fast, a year ago I’d bet that I had Caravan Heart finished before Joker was released in English. Now the release is just a few days away and I’m months behind schedule, damn ^_^

I must admit though I’m not too excited about Joker myself. I heard from trustable sources that Caravan Heart is the much better game of the two. I’ll play Joker of course, at least to compare how they translated some things.

I’d like to ask you, dear fans of Dragon Quest, if the release of Joker will affect your looking forward to the Caravan Heart translation. I wanted to release Caravan Heart first because I was afraid many people wouldn’t be interested anymore in it if there was a new English DQM game. Is that so?

Please let me know your opinion about this, I’m very curious.

Final Fantasy XII

17 Replies

After all the work I did last week I decided it was time for a short break to regain strength. Lately I had the habit to start games (usually RPGs), play them for several days and stop then right in the last third. This is a very bad habit, so I wanted to change something about it, namely to finish a game from that list. My choice fell upon Final Fantasy XII. Yesterday night at half past three in the night I finally beat it – what a great game it was.

The story run pretty thin in the last part of the game, but I really really liked the gameplay. The new battle system makes battles so incredibly fluid. I had lot’s of fun blasting through the hordes of enemies. Sometimes it felt a bit hack’n’slash, but once you reach the next boss all that was forgotten. In those all what makes a great RPG system is back – strategy. Without a well picked set of gambits, a good feeling for timing buffs and healing and a bit of luck you can’t win these (unless you powerleveled for hours, lame :p ).

I was especially happy about the vast set of optional quests to do, most importantly the monster hunts. These are optional boss battles in their own right and can be even more insane than the normal bosses, depending on your level and special conditions. I propably had my greatest fight in any Final Fantasy ever against Gilgamesh. Holy shit that one was INSANE. The battle took 75 minutes but it felt like 15! No kidding, this was insanely intense. I was constantly busy with healing, buffing, keeping my party alive while I slowly did some damage. I will propably forever remember the game for this fight, great stuff.