This Week in Games

Atlus With the Old, In With the New

Welcome back, folks! As you probably noticed, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes came out earlier this week. It's a fun time, as you could see in my review of it. It's come to my attention that there are some performance issues with the game; the Switch version runs really poorly (it's my understanding that the Bear & Rabbit team didn't even think the Switch could run Eiyuden Chronicle). I feel bad for my Switch peers. Also, there are a few bugs in the game involving recruitment and the scoring for one of the cooking contests. I'm not one to diminish these matters—make no mistake, I hope they're patched out. But I feel like the weird glitches help sell the "ambitious PS1 RPG" vibe even more. Like, I wouldn't want Eiyuden Chronicle to run worse if it didn't have the glitches, but it all makes me think of how the instant-kill moves in Breath of Fire II never did anything because they were glitched. Also, regular reader b-dragon was nice enough to share a recruitment guide, which I think will come in handy for anyone trying to recruit the titular hundred heroes.

Last week, I touched on some of the graphical updates done in Final Fantasy XIV; long story short, the new engine previewed in the benchmark test had a few peccadilloes with its lighting engine, so people's avatars came out looking a bit washed out and lifeless. As one of my readers pointed out, around last week's column going live, Square Enix issued a statement addressing the matter and confirming that they were working on fixes. Around the same time, Niantic rolled out some updates for their avatars, such as new customization options.

The options include a smattering of details that pretty much any character creator worth its salt offers by default: in addition to a handful of preset body types, there are sliders for modifying your avatar's height, body fat, or shoulder or hip width. And these are good additions! Heck, Phantasy Star Online had those features way back in 2000. Extra options for character customization are never a bad addition.

But things went sideways.

The options are there, and they work, but the results, even after a lot of effort, left people's avatars looking somewhat gormless and doughy. Female avatars get it the worst: the old models had very cinched waists (which also emphasized their boobs, modest as they were). The new sliders' proportions are realistic, but they nevertheless leave women looking a bit square. Folks are understandably disappointed because as old as Pokémon Go is, some folks have invested a lot of money in cute accessories for their avatars, and it's a shame that everyone looks like they're having an allergic reaction to shellfish.

If that were the end of it, well, that would be fine. Games feature updates that break things all the time. It's just a part of live service games. And sometimes the pre-update versions can be more popular with fans; going back to Final Fantasy XIV, folks mourned the old low-poly grapes (a.k.a., "squapes") being updated to look less... polygonal. But it wasn't the end of things, and folks have raised discourse about the updates. A contingent of Gamers™ have raised issues with women in games "being ugly"; there have been complaints about how women look in AAA games. Now, the argument is pretty vague on its face, which is how some people like it. Still, realistically, this is a case of people being angry at Horizon: Zero Dawn, Spider-Man 2, and the upcoming Star Wars: Outlaws for how they've portrayed their lead actresses and how the results are allegedly "ugly." It boils down to their weirdly pronounced jaws or a woman who grew up in a post-apocalyptic setting with peach fuzz and no makeup.

A lot of the complaints about the updates in Pokémon Go specifically have led to many users being openly transphobic. Folks have blamed it on Niantic HQ being in California because California is a boogeyman to people for some reason (ignoring how California has been a hotbed of game studios for ages). It doesn't help that many of the examples people share are intentionally made in bad faith. I get that the new models look doughy, but if your model has beefy shoulders, it's because you designed it that way. Don't blame Niantic for how far you move the slider around.

There are many things wrong with the game industry that we fans could probably do more about. Layoffs are rampant from every company, no matter how many massively successful games they release or how many mergers they make. Creatives lose their IPs to corporate fat-cats who squat on the rights with no greater ambition than just that. Developer burnout is a significant issue. Old games are vanishing from access faster than we can store them. If folks want to enact some positive change, there's plenty they can work on.

The post I shared earlier from MsRoscoeFierce—she later followed up on her tweet, hoping that Niantic "improves the models and the customization so that everyone can feel represented and feel satisfied." And I hope so, too. Her response on the matter illustrates something that many people forget: for all of the millions upon millions of people who play Pokémon, the problem here is that the sliders look "off"—not that they exist in the first place. As it turns out, audiences like seeing themselves in games.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph H. Christ, someone remembered that Sega has properties that aren't Sonic The Hedgehog. Longtime Sega fans might remember Golden Axe, Sega's fantasy beat-'em-up series set in a Conan The Barbarian-esque fantasy world of swordsmen, amazons, dwarves, and dinosaurs. Golden Axe saw quite a few games in both arcades and on the Sega Genesis, along with an RPG on the Game Gear, a tournament fighter on the Sega Saturn, and... actually, that's about it. Like Sega's many other properties, Golden Axe fell off rather precipitously as the new millennium rolled around. There was Golden Axe: Beast Rider in 2008, which starred the series' amazon Tirys Flare, but that one didn't go over very well. Well, no series is too old or abandoned to adapt to a comedy series, right?

In a bizarre twist, Comedy Central picked up Golden Axe for an adult comedy series. Considering we live in a world where we have two very good Sonic The Hedgehog movies (and more and more studios seem to be eyeing video games as the new pony to ride to death now that superheroes are getting a little worn out), it's not too weird to try and pick up Golden Axe. And yet, I have some misgivings. Making Golden Axe a comedy is a novel take. Sure, most Golden Axe fans would likely prefer a gritty, violent action series along the lines of Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal, but also, it's not like Golden Axe necessarily has the rich lore and worldbuilding that would lend itself to such a high-concept series. It's a bunch of 80s-action-movie-stereotype-laden games that espouse mowing down waves of mud-covered goons to fight a big, buff dude named Death Adder, who has a Golden Axe. Heck, Death Adder himself is evidence of how far Golden Axe has fallen. A big, imposing guy named freaking Death Adder ought to be a memorable figure as a villain. And yet, he's bland as an antagonist. It's a small wonder Cream The Rabbit isn't scared of him.

So if we can't take much of Golden Axe seriously, lean into the goofiness of it all. Crack wise about Ax Battler having to oil his pecs up before battle. Poke some fun at Gillius Thunderhead being a playable character when he's a geriatric old man with a beard. The bad guy falls into a dino-poop, a classic element of physical comedy—then some charming background characters throw their heads back and laugh. My only genuine concern is this being an Adult Comedy Cartoon, with everything that entails: wiggly aesthetic, endless rambling instead of actual humor, "Well, that just happened"-dialogue. I can hope we get something smarter than that. No word yet on when Golden Axe: The TV Series drops, but they've already got the cast set, so let's wait and see, I guess?

It's always a bummer when an artist closely tied to a series must leave it. It's hard to imagine Xenoblade Chronicles without Masatsugu Saitō's character designs. As an Izuna fan, I'm stoked for the new design, but also a little disappointed Yoshida-On isn't around to handle the art—even if the vibe wasn't quite what the game was like, the original cover art sold a vibe. So it is that a famed Japanese RPG studio finds itself losing one of the visionaries behind it. Last week, news broke that artist Kazuma Kaneko, best known as the artist behind the Shin Megami Tensei series, was leaving Atlus after 35 years.

For what it's worth, Kaneko isn't retiring—his departure from Atlus coincided with his joining a new studio, COLOPL. In an interview, Kaneko explained that he wanted to set out and have a chance to make his own IP. And a small wonder: Kazuma Kaneko has the talent. His demon designs from Shin Megami Tensei are the definition of "timeless." At the same time, he's best known for his very modern-looking designs from the '90s onwards, with demons demonstrating a clever mix of folkloric references and bleeding-edge fashion design. Even his older designs from the 1980s feel timeless. Pixie, who's had a ton of designs throughout the years in spin-offs like Devil Summoner or Soul Hackers, regularly comes back to the design Kaneko originally threw out for Shin Megami Tensei 1. (And it's not even her original design!)

The downside is that COLOPL is a game studio that works on games featuring "the latest technologies." Translation: it's blockchain crap. I don't take this to mean that Kaneko is some "Web 3.0" evangelist. The sad truth is that game development is in a rough spot, even in Japan. You could be a figure known industry-wide like Kaneko, but the funding needed to get some project off the ground could still be out of your reach by virtue of just how much money it would take. So, a lot of folks do the obvious thing: they downsize in scale to mobile projects. In this case, that means "blockchain game." It's a crying shame. Back in Puerto Rico, the phrase for a situation like this is "Esto llora ante los ojos de Dios" ("this cries before God's very eyes").

Precious little else is known about Kaneko's further projects. We're hoping for the best for the guy. A talented artist like him deserves to have the ground rise to meet him when funding any game. Cooking sim, phonebook simulator, heck, even a clicker game—anything is better than crypto-stuff.

Let's keep the Atlus news going! We care about game preservation here at This Week in Games, and that's a touchy subject because that doesn't just go for console releases—it goes for mobile games, too. A goodly chunk of gaming history is lost to mobile games being taken offline or games no longer compatible with current smart device models. Sure, this might include weird stuff like Flappy Bird, but some of these can be fairly important! Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII was part of The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and the current Final Fantasy VII remakes are referencing characters and plot points established in that game, but Square Enix never made it available on American phones. Persona 3 had one such game: a cell phone game starring Aigis, everyone's favorite ditzy gun-fingered gynoid. And it seems that Japanese studio G-mode has resurrected it for fans!

Titled Persona 3: Aigis The First Mission, the game features Aigis in 1999, fighting shadows on Yakushima Island long before she encounters S.E.E.S. It's a simple action game where you can use a handful of weapons and skills to gun down shadows. Aigis The First Mission represents G-mode's 100th title, as they have a long history of tracking down and archiving old cell phone games. They've already rescued a few other Shin Megami Tensei games, like the Persona: Be True Your Mind spin-off Ikuu no Tou Hen.

G-mode plans to release Aigis The First Mission both on Nintendo Switch and Steam. Only the Steam port, however, will be released worldwide. Oh, and it won't have an English translation. Fair's fair, I think; it's great that they're archiving this game and making it available to fans worldwide, but I imagine translating it might be a bit beyond their ability, if not budget-wise, then technologically. I mean, it's an ancient cell phone game. The thing probably runs off of some antediluvian version of Java. Maybe some packrat out there in the world has a jerry-rigged system that can crack it and add some English to the game, but for now, G-mode has done plenty. Here's hoping they can save more old phone games.

I admit, I was a bit suspicious of Metaphor: ReFantazio when it was first announced. Former Persona director Katsura Hashino was in charge of it, and the artwork is very much in Shigenori Soejima's style. Don't get me wrong; I love Soejima's work—I mean, have you seen his Aigis art? I mean, really seen it. I know Minato Arisato when I see him, and well, you can give him a circlet, but Minato is still Minato.

We'll come back around to Minato. Anyway, I've come around on Metaphor, and not a moment too soon: we have a confirmed launch date! Metaphor: ReFantazio arrives on October 11. A snazzy trailer gives plenty of sizzle for this steak.

That might be Minato, but holy crap, are they getting every last drop of juice out of Shigenori Soejima's art for this game's gorgeous menus.

Atlus also hosted a special showcase earlier this week for Metaphor: ReFantazio, breaking down its mechanics and systems. In short, this game is likely Atlus's big tentpole release for their 35th anniversary. You play as a young man who enters a competition to be crowned king of the land. The world is divided between the haves and have-nots, forcing you to do a lot of legwork to earn the approval of both sides. This also includes several other tribes of fantasy folks you need to sway to your cause. However, there's a time limit at work—and you travel to different locations on your legged ship, the Gauntlet Runner. It's even possible to see the travel in real-time. So players must carefully decide what quests to undertake and which ones to let fall by the wayside to maximize their time.

The "Archetype" system isn't just the Persona system with a new name; it's Metaphor: ReFantazio's job system. Each Archetype takes the form of a particular hero, but each character's archetype can be customized to suit their individual needs. There will be a turn-based combat system, but it's also possible to hack and slash at enemies in real time to skip battles. You earn your Archetype's skills through a Social Link-esque system wherein engaging and interacting with people "inspires" new abilities for your Archetype. The upside is that this means that Metaphor: ReFantazio's Social Links aren't strictly romantic. The downside is that there's still that big time limit dangling over everything.

With Metaphor: ReFantazio being Atlus's big 35th-anniversary project, they're pulling out all the stops for the game's Collector's Edition. It has the usual goodies: maps, costume DLC, and a steel book. But what caught my eye were the digital artbook and soundtrack; both feature artwork stretching back across Atlus's 35-year-long history. I wonder how much of Atlus's story is in Metaphor: ReFantazio? Is it a metaphor for Atlus's properties, showcasing the Persona series' rise to fame and glory from relative obscurity at the cost of Atlus's other games? The jury's out; it's way too soon to tell (though making your protagonist Minato Arisato and giving him a Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne Pixie with a dye-job is certainly turning a few gears). Players can look forward to Metaphor: ReFantazio on Steam, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S this October 11.

That'll do it for this week, I think. We touched on some rather polemic topics this week; I'd like to remind anyone to hit the comments that I don't stand for abuse, bigotry, or behavior in bad faith. Gaming is about bringing people together and exploring new places and ideas, and it always has been. The people who have made our games come from all walks of life: from Roberta Williams and "Phoenix Rie" Rieko Kodama to John Romero Nasir Gebelli and Gerald Anderson Lawson. You have no enemies. No one in the world is your enemy. There is no one you need to hurt. Touch grass, eat a hot pretzel, and smell the flowers. It's springtime, it's beautiful out there. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.