Initial Dragon's Crown Impressions

Here I have a flame tosser, yes it is as awesome as you think.

As is usually such when I get a game, I don't generally get to play that game until sometimes the following day or at least until after I've attempted a blog post for the night because I at least try to be responsible, damn it.  So my impressions are generally a little bit late as I like to sink at least a little bit of my teeth into it properly because coming away with something approaching an opinion.  Since I have, at times, had a positive reaction initially that festered into something quite negative or in the best cases, the exact opposite of that reaction where I plug at a game until it becomes something special and amazing.  I know how easily it is to be pushed into a purchase because of positive impressions around and about, so I don't like throwing out my hat until I'm pretty positive on it.

With only about half an hour of playtime in Dragon's Crown I am pretty much bucking that trend because I don't care.  Dragon's Crown makes a very nice first impression with the art, with the voicing and presentation, and eventually the gameplay which I am obviously still a novice in, yet it doesn't -feel- as much.  Throwing down with the Wizard feels natural and I'm not sure if that's just because I dig him or because of some other crazy reason, but I'm not about to complain.  I've heard tale of people stating that he's kind of weak against the bosses and I can -understand- that, but, well, I didn't have that problem.  I don't say that to brag or anything, I'm obviously not a pro-gamer or anything, but I've found that it's all about the Teleporting.  The Wizard can teleport about the distance of an enemy (even a boss character) so....you know, use that.  Teleport behind them and Up+Square that bastard for a nice clip of damage.

It's curious that all the characters are geared toward different "Tiers" of players - Fighter is for 'everyone', Dwarf and Amazon are for 'Normal' players and the Sorceress, Elf and Wizard are all listed as being for  "Expert" players - since these types of games try to at least put up the façade of all the characters being balanced so that nobody plays favorites for such reasons.  Though I suppose maybe it's not an indication of who's 'better' like that, but rather just who is simpler to play which doesn't necessarily mean better returns and such.  Actually, yeah, it is probably just that and I'm just being silly.  Again, having just played this a little bit, it's not something that I have fully settled in on yet.  Still, I can see why the Wizard falls into the "Expert" category since he does have some advanced things to keep him viable - mainly the teleporting thing and the fact that you have to recharge his mana after using the nice big dangerous spells that are his bread-and-butter.  I imagine the difference between him and, say, the Fighter is that the Fighter can just charge up and hit things with his sword until they stop breathing, so, yeah, I can see the difficulty shift there.

I'm pretty confident that Dragon's Crown is going to be something that's going to keep my attention despite the ease that I put it down with.  In my defense, I did that because, again I'm trying to be responsible, and because I'm too distracted by all the other goings-on of being on the computer (talking to people, or at least trying to, checking message boards, reading things, etc.) to really sit down and enjoy what the game has to offer.  Tomorrow, that's when I'll be able to delve into it and likely throw hours upon hours at, so that's the game plan for it.  Though...I -do- have my Vita right here playing some music through the Music Unlimited app, and after I finish this....hrm.  It is tantalizing.  That is a good sign, friends.  That is a damn good sign.

seriously though, teleport is something you want to do a lot of, it's so good

I Am Inordinately Excited for Hometown Story

Frequenters of my blog probably know of my excitement for Hometown Story by now and by that virtue, they probably know what Hometown Story -is-, which is something I'm not utterly convinced they would know otherwise.  So for those folks, Hometown Story is a new game from the mind of Yasuhiro Wada, the guy that made Harvest Moon waaaay back and it entails a similar approach of Harvest Moon of being a simple person doing a simple task.  However, instead of farming and animal rearing as in Harvest Moon, you'll be running a storefront in Hometown Story with all the same ability to go out and charm the locals and eventually woo a spouse as Harvest Moon offers.  Basically, it's just a new spin on what Harvest Moon was built on and an appreciated one at that even though I eagerly await Harvest Moon (and Rune Factory by virtue) games like crazy.

Again, folks who read around the blog here already know just why I'm excited for Hometown Story or at least can guess as much, considering I have a whole section of posts titled "Gaming by the Numbers" in which I get all frothy and excited about doing all sorts of game math because I am just the worst nerd.  It's even more apparent when I bring up my latest post about Animal Crossing:  New Leaf, where I go a little crazy about using the Flea Market because it is basically a miniature storefront simulator with absolutely no bells or whistles.  So basically my assumption here is that a game built from the ground-up to be a Storefront simulator is going to be infinitely more exciting and rewarding, thus I am really hyped for this shit.  That I can also carve out a life for my character in the process is, well, just....fantastic gravy on top, but it's not why I'm really into it.

I'm not quite sure just what the mechanics to the game are, but that's pretty standard since it's not actually coming out til October 14th, barring a delay.  When it gets closer to being out, there'll likely be all sorts of gameplay trailers showing off how the game is going to be when it ships (there's technically demo gameplay videos out now which I've seen, but it's not very enlightening) which I will devour like delicious, delicious information, but until then I'm just stuck wondering.  The crux of the gameplay will likely be designing your store (putting down where you're actually selling things to try and control flow) and then pricing them, but how you get stock is a mystery to me.  Presumably, it's all just stuff you go out and find, perhaps you can even craft things and sell them, but I don't know for -sure- yet.  The above screenshot shows off dishes of food (which I assume you can cook and sell) and a hammer (which I assume you can craft and sell) so that's where I'm kind of coming from here, but still.

I'm not really sure why I find this kind of game alluring, to be perfectly honest.  I'm not a super huge math guy, in that I can't do very advanced things and sometimes I mess up the basics quite spectacularly.  But there's just something when it comes to video games that causes me to run the numbers almost obsessively, and it's definitely not a problem, but something of a quirk, I suppose.  As with the previous Gaming by the Numbers posts I've made, most of that is just things I sit down and -do- when I stumble across the specifics of it, not something that I play up for the posts themselves.  As stated, somewhat jokingly in the sub-text of the AC post, I really do lament the fact that I haven't played Recettear as it seems like a game that is -made- for me because of that little quirk.  Yet, Hometown Story does as well, and it manages to incorporate all the lovely features I look for in a proper Harvest Moon game (and lament when they're simply not present) so it's...just something that I'm excited for.  I've said that a lot, but I don't think I can actually state it enough, or with enough emphasis.

Hometown Story will be one of the seven 3DS games I will own by the end of the year, but it's likely going to be one of my top three games of the system by far, which is saying something strange for me, I think.  Especially when something like Fire Emblem:  Awakening will probably be towards the bottom, I haven't even popped Shin Megami Tensei IV into my 3DS yet and my excitement for Pokemon X is....tepid at best.  It's only Harvest Moon:  A New Beginning, Rune Factory 4 and this, s'far as I can tell, and it'll likely just be a shuffling match to figure out which one I actually go with to round out the list not only for myself, but for when GotY time rolls around.  I am aware that this is probably blasphemy to the vast majority of 3DS fans, but, hell, that's...just how I roll it seems.  I just like simulation games and I'm grateful that the 3DS is allowing me to explore that route and is something that I really hope developers start bringing to the Vita as well.  (KOEI, just friggin' port some of your Romance of the Three Kingdoms/Nobunaga's Ambition games and I'll be ecstatic.)

Update!:  Okay like literally right after this post, this new trailer went up and shows off a bunch of shit and I look silly now but I'm so much more excited.

 

I just wonder what kind of profit margins I'll be able to force in Hometown Story and I wonder if the townsfolk will not like me based on my likely absurd prices.  One way to find out!

Dokuro - Escort Quest: The Game

Just recently, Dokuro was added to the line-up of the Playstation Vita's Instant Game Collection, so I decided I'd grab it up and take a look at it, since it's something I've been rather interested in for a while thanks to the rather unique art style it's got going on.  It was not a game that I paid close attention to, however, which shows as I thought of it as a sort of puzzle platformer instead of what it actually is...which is a puzzle-platformer wherein you have a little partner of sorts along for the ride.  This is....more than a little off-putting to me as I started to get into it, but it was something that I sort of would become cool or at least not a hassle as things went on.  It was wishful thinking of course, and as we all know, wishful thinking and two quarters usually just leaves you with fifty cents.

The story behind the game is basically that you are some kind of skeleton knight and a demon kidnaps a beautiful princess and is holding her hostage because that's just kind of what happens.  The skeleton thinks that's kind of shitty and then just goes and frees her because he likes her or something, so she starts leaving.  Problem is, she wasn't being held, you know, right by the front door or anything, so she has to get -out- of the castle and be free, but the thing is, she's patently unable to do so without a little help.  And that is, indeed, where you come into play, being the thing that aids her escape by basically doing everything in your power to ensures she has a level piece of flooring or something equivalent under her feet since she can't jump worth a damn or....be...useful in any capacity whatsoever.  Really, she's more of a hindrance, as you might guess.

Escort quests are usually the most reviled thing you can put in any form of video game simply because the AI of the escorted is generally coded in such a way that it's a wonder they don't actually trip over their own feet and snap their neck.  It's not inherently wrong - after all, if someone is battle-worthy enough in the worlds that such quests inhabit, then they generally don't need an escort - but it's definitely an exaggeration of the issue at hand, because oftentimes they're not really programmed with surviving in mind.  Egregiously so.  The princess in Dokuro is of the same cloth, willfully walking into angry looking things with swords, bottomless pits in the right circumstances, and under anything of considerable weight as it's very obviously coming down from above.  She is at the level where we consider the NPC "beyond saving" because clearly nature and Darwin have something out for them.

That's not to say there's nothing good to the game, as it does feature a few neat little things from my minimal exposure to it.  You get some magic chalk which you can use to connect ropes at certain points which will likely be a neat mechanic....eventually.  Beyond that, you get a potion that allows you to transform into a handsome knight who is not only stronger (can actually kill foes) but is also able to carry the princess at points.  On the downside, he's taller meaning that it's impossible for you to get through certain parts, and he cannot jump as high or as often as the skeleton form, meaning mobility is a bit limited.  Both of these points are kind of hampered by the fact that the controls are a bit finnicky - jumping doesn't feel like it's right where it needs to be which is a problem for a platformer, and the melee combat as it is is far too simplistic while also leaving you open for counter-attack as a fault, not a mechanic.  Even though the levels are rather short and compact, these two little factors can often cause one to drag on forever which is...less than ideal.

Perhaps I'm just not the best judge for this game since it's admittedly in a vein of things that is not my cup of tea.  Puzzle-Platformers, by and large, go right on by on my interest radar, so really the only reason I grabbed this was because it was free and because it looked unique.  And in that respect, it -is- unique, and is definitely something you should check out yourself.  But after clearing the first boss and finding myself sighing in frustration a few levels into the second chapter because I keep missing easy jumps and getting smashed by falling roofs that work much faster than it looks, it's clear I'm not enjoying it.  I don't think I can get into it enough to find the enjoyment that I'm assured is sunken within it somehow.  I'm still well within the "Give it a good shot" phase, but it's wearing quite thin and come Tuesday when I load up Dragon's Crown into my Vita, it'll be a forgotten non-issue.

I think what bothers me the most is the melee because you hit things, they fly back and, if you're playing the knight, they then explode, but why?  And doing that as the skeleton knight just...seems superfluous, really.

Gaming By The Numbers - The Silly Economics of Animal Crossing: New Leaf

For as much as I have grumbled on and on about Animal Crossing:  New Leaf (even though I had some nice things to say in my review of it) I can't bring myself to say that I don't like the game, even if I can tell you in very many strings of words how I hate a lot of the parts of it individually.  I like Animal Crossing, and I especially like New Leaf because it's the best of the games so far by default.  Though they didn't get a lot of it right, they got more than enough right that even as someone who hates every single villager in his town save two, someone who is so very, very tired of paying off Tom Nook's endless debts, I still play it every day and I still have -fun- with it every day.  Though part of the fun is admittedly in hoping that today will be the day that I finally get a picture from somebody so that I can happily tell them to get the hell out of Kupolis when they talk about moving away.

The other part, however, is the little Shop Simulator they've managed to cram into the game in the form of the Flea Market spaces in Re-Tail, the place where you go to sell the crap you don't want anymore.  Shop Simulator is stretching things a little bit, since basically all that happens is there are eight slots in which you (and other villagers, provided there are empty slots for them, which there will NEVER EVER BE) can put up items that you intend to sell for a price that you get to decide.  Obvious rules apply here - the price has to be somewhere in the realm of reasonable, so if you think you're going to sell a Cushion for 999,999 Bells, you're out of your damn mind and the villagers will tell you as much.  Of course, the issue then becomes -what- is a reasonable price for any given item?

The answer is that it's just complicated because the villagers all actually know exactly what everything costs because the game is cheap and they're cheating assholes.  See, because it's a Flea Market, the actual intent is -not- to make a profit because the items are all used and as such they've depreciated and blah blah blah.  Of course, that's not how things work in Kupolis, because I know the bullshit and things do not depreciate in value in Animal Crossing no matter what anyone says because they're digital and not programmed to degrade as such.  So I fly my Capitalist flag high and make a profit on every damn thing I sell.  The side effect of this is that everything is a bit of a hard sell because it's, well, being sold at a premium so that I make something out of the deal.  It doesn't actually matter what the price -is- so to speak, so much as it matters what the price is in relation to.  For instance, trying to sell a Wooden Box (Retail: 200, suggested sell price: 50) for 300 Bells and trying to sell a Kitchen Sink (Retail: 2,400, suggested sell price: 600) for 3,000 result in the exact same grumbling that they won't have enough bells for their groceries or this or that.  Which is bullshit.

Generally speaking, you will be able to sell something to everyone who walks in (only one at a time, of course, and sometimes they stick around after a purchase to go "OH MAN, I REALLY BOUGHT SOMETHING, IT WAS SO AWESOME", yes yes, get the hell out) though it may take a while.  There's a 'flow' to the sale, so to speak.  A villager will walk in, move about and usually get a sort of surprised expression before rushing up to whatever it is they're looking at to wait for you.  Then they'll go "Oh man, this is pretty good, BUT it's PRETTY EXPENSIVE, I DUNNO" (unless you're just selling things for quarter-retail in which case, pfft, whatever sucker) which gives you the option to tell them "BUY IT ANYWAY" or "Yeah, you don't want it, actually", the latter of which is only good if you are playing on the same cart as someone else and you want to be a gigantic asshole and make sure nobody buys the other persons things.  Telling them to buy it will either lead to them going "You know what, I better treat myself" and buying it, or them saying "NOPE, TOO EXPENSIVE AFTER ALL".  If it's the latter case, you just sort of...nudge them into line-of-sight for another item to repeat the process.  If you do this for every item for sale and nothing gets sold, congratulations, your villager is an asshole and you should look forward to the day they move out.

Ideally, this won't happen because you're probably not going to want to stray -too- far off of the Retail Price since profit is profit.  Because of the randomness in whether or not they'll reliably buy something, it's hard to say what kind of margin to -expect-, but I can tell you that trying for the ideal 100% retail markup is going to end in tears.  Somewhere between 30-50% would likely be acceptable - obviously start at 50% and work down if things aren't selling as fast as you want them to (as in, somebody looks at all your items without buying) and understand that it's random.  As are most things in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf.  So what I'm saying is that, for your 2,400 Retail Kitchen Sink, you'll want to try and sell it from anywhere between 3,120 - 3,600 Bells and you'll likely see a purchase on that.  Easy money and depending on how long you've had the item, it might seem -more- profitable than not since sometimes you just want to get rid of shit, god.  Of course, as long as you're making profit, it's all good no matter what.

Now you might be thinking "Well that all seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of profit" and you are correct, because it's not a lot of profit if you're selling things that you have just bought (or bought previously at Retail price), but that's where a lot of the fun things come in that make the Flea Market seem downright evil like CAPITALIST HEAVEN.  You see, very little of your inventory of items will likely actually come from you handing over retail bells to acquire said item in the first place.  Every day, there are two trees that you can shake to get random items (let it be known that by Items, I mean furniture) for absolutely nothing.  This isn't counting that sometimes your villagers will say "HEY, I feel super generous here, so have this item" or some variation of that, and just hand it over.  Or sometimes they give you a little errand (get this package to this person before the end of the day) which they will hand over something (sometimes clothing which is bad, but usually furniture) for the sweet sweet price of free.

Do you see where I'm coming from?  That Kitchen Sink you shook out of a tree somehow, that sells for 2,400 bells Retail and 3,120 - 3,600 bells via mark-up?  PURE PROFIT.  That Balloon Dresser you shot down from a balloon with a suggested sale price of 670 bells, meaning a retail price of 2,680 bells, meaning a markup of 3,484 - 4,020 bells?  PURE PROFIT.  -Now- you can see how the bells start piling up rather quickly and -now- you can see why the effort is actually worth it.  Because this isn't a profit margin, now, of 720 - 1,200 bells, this is a profit margin of everything you get.  That's not even the sweetest part.  No, no no no, not even close.  Do you want to know what the sweetest part is?  What the absolute best, greatest part of the whole thing is?

When you sell something to someone and they turn around and give it back to you as a gift, free of charge.  Because that means you can put it back up for sale at the same markup and make that profit all over again.

That, my friends, that is a thing of beauty.  And -that- is why I'm still playing Animal Crossing:  New Leaf in a nutshell.

this is why I'm sad that my computer is shit and I can't play Recettear because I would be so good at it

Bonus Post - Konami has a REVENGEANCE Fan Survey Up, Hints at Sequel

This is just a quick PSA for the folks like me who liked Metal Gear Rising:  REVENGEANCE and would like to see more of it happen.  Konami has a fan survey on their Official Metal Gear Solid page (linked both in case the former is not a direct link, as I've already taken the survey so it's telling me I can't take it again).  The survey prompt -might- shift around a bit, but currently it seems front and center, so it's something that they clearly want to draw attention to, though I'm not quite sure if they've actually done that.  So I'm helping because REVENGEANCE is a damn good game and deserves the attention.

It's a rather lengthy survey, unfortunately, but it does have a few questions towards the end that are along the lines of "Would you like a sequel?" and "If there were to be a sequel, what would you like to see in it?" and things of that nature.  Could be nothing.  Could be an indication that there's a real, quantifiable interest there to make another game in the Rising series which would be incredible and is definitely something I am behind.  Something I am all for supporting.  Something that I want like I want air in my lungs.  Which is a lot, clearly.

I bring it up because, as said, I'm not sure it's being properly advertised anywhere.  I only knew about it because I saw a NeoGaf thread that mentioned it and I dropped literally everything I was doing to sit down and take the survey right on the spot.  So, you know, if you're reading this and you haven't taken the survey, but have played REVENGEANCE, well, give a little bit of your time if you would.  Anything and everything that could lead to a sequel is worth attempting, so let's hope for something good!

please, Konami, make a sequel, I will love you forever

Id Software Games Probably Not Coming to Wii U, Vita or 3DS

Ever since I made the post about Developers/Publishers existing in some sort of paradoxical world wherein the only sane business model seems to be to do nothing at all because of risks (since absolutely nothing has an audience until it has an audience, and developing for something without an audience is bad according to them), I just sort of sat back and waited for the next big example of someone calling it into the light.  Or -a- big example, since I have probably already missed one prior to this one.  Turns out I didn't have to wait very long thanks to John Carmack who just had a Keynote speech at this year's QuakeCon.  He had some choice things to say about pretty much everything in the industry today, which Joystiq has collected (though likely not in full, so grain of salt, etc.) and, obviously, some of the things were about the Wii U and Vita specifically, both of which have obviously been identified at this point as "risky" because of the Catch-22 surrounding them.

"I always thought that the Wii U and Vita would be great targets for Doom 3: BFG Edition," Carmack explained. "We should be able to bring that over directly, but [the platforms have] generated nothing for us on the publishing side of things, because they're somewhat marginalized platforms."

"Clearly there's a difference on the handheld platforms," Carmack continued. "While the 3DS is doing okay, the Vita's really not doing particularly well."

"A lot of that has to come from the fact that [...] everybody is carrying a pretty good gaming platform already, and selling a new one to them is a little bit of a harder sell," Carmack said, referring to the widespread adoption of smartphones.

"I'd love to be able to develop on the 3DS and some of the other small platforms," Carmack said. "I'd like to see the games show up on the Vita or the Wii U, just to play with some of the characteristics they've got there, but it's extremely unlikely to happen. There's a finite amount of time and only so many things we can focus on."

At best here, we have a case of John Carmack simply talking out of both sides of his mouth, saying "Oh these things are really neat and great, but nobody likes them so we're not going to bother" and at worst, he's simply parroting the same damaging rhetoric that's already been attached to the Wii U specifically (and to some extent the Vita) which is only making it out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.  "Nothing sells on it because nobody has it because there's nothing on it because nothing sells on it"  It gets less and less convincing every time you hear it because it only allows you to draw from the obvious absurdity that it exists on because it amounts to one big finger-pointing match which, as we know, is far from the height of maturity.  "They're not doing it, so we're not either!"  There's a point where it goes from being understandable to straight-up shifting the blame.

What draws particular attention to this as a blame-shifting exercise is the part of the quote where he infers it would be a very, very basic port job to see Doom 3 (Almost guaranteed the BFG Edition) on the Vita and Wii U from a structure angle, with then a little bit of extra thought to utilize the exclusive features of the devices themselves.  Which seems to infer that it's a very, very low-cost, low-risk situation, otherwise why would he say it would be easy and is something that he wants to do in theory?  Low-Cost, Low-Risk situations are exactly what you want to do in situations like this because it creates a steady platform for you to draw consumers to your particular brand that you can then support with future products.  That whole "If you build it, they will come" situation, basically.  The closing line of that spiel, saying that there's only so much time and so many things they can work on does make perfect sense clearly, but if that's the case then why again is he saying some of the other things he says?  "We'd love to support this platform, but we're currently stretched thin on our own projects" makes sense, but "We'd love to support this platform, but nobody else is so what's the point and OH YEAH, we're kind of busy as it is" doesn't.  It's redundant and unnecessary.

That's rather tame in relation to the other rather dumb thing that he's going on about, in bringing up the whole Cellphone situation, because it's yet another thing that everyone -says- without it being the least bit true.  I consider myself a pretty tech-centric guy in that I like all the new shinies as they come out, if sometimes only enough to find out what they're about before I'm not interested anymore, but my cellphone does not reflect this in the least.  I'm nowhere near alone in this.  I have a basic flip phone that can do standard phone things because it's a phone and that's all I want it to be.  Being just a phone serves it pretty well considering I can go a week and a half or so without even thinking about charging it, and I'm not shackled to some idiotic Data and Messaging plan that allows me the privilege to use my device for its intended purpose for a ridiculous sum of money every month.  Yet, I do enjoy handheld gaming which is why I buy handheld gaming devices.  As in devices specifically designed to be gaming things that are also handheld.  Crazy idea, I know.

This all goes without pointing out that everyone shouting that the cellphone gaming space is awesome so let's all jump head-first into it is creating a situation where that's not the truth of the matter at all.  The resulting bloat, combined with the rather inefficient methods of sorting and visibility on the platform-holders parts lead to hundreds of developers releasing a game and not seeing anywhere near enough money to break even, let alone make a profit.  Which is only one of the myriad of problems with the mobile space, of which we've already expounded on several times in the past, so I don't really even need to go into further detail here about it.  Really, this whole little thing is just kind of some weird meta-reflection of what an unhealthy majority of the industry seems to be thinking at the moment and it's rather unfortunate.  While I don't think Doom 3 on the Wii U or Vita is going to make a difference of any sort, it's just the principle of the matter.  Just another person in the industry shouting all the wrong things at the wrong time.

I would've played Doom 3 on the Vita, but oh well, guess I'll just have to settle for Killzone:  Mercenary, and clearly I am on the losing end of this scenario, clearly

Capcom Hates You - Breath of Fire VI In Development as a Phone/Tablet Game

Alongside a little under a dozen other titles revealed during a Network Game Conference by Capcom, focusing on mobile and social games, there's one that stands out quite a bit for several reasons.  That title is Breath of Fire 6 and though the title of this post has already spoiled it, this is the same Conference where Monster Hunter Frontier G was announced for the PS3 and Wii U, so there was some modicum of hope interspersed amongst the original few to learn of this.  It was for naught, as Breath of Fire 6 is basically being saddled with everything we don't want out of a game these days - It's going to have an online element, if not an outright online/social focus, it's being made specifically for Smartphones/Tablets and PC as a browser-based game and it's designed specifically for a touch interface.  Plus, it looks like the above screenshot that contains what I can only imagine is the main character, maybe.  You will notice that he does not have blue hair, nor is he currently a dragon.

There has obviously already been feedback because of this and none of it is positive in the least, but, well, I don't think Capcom much cares.  This isn't the first time they've gone full-steam into an unfavorable decision about a much-loved franchise and it likely won't be the last.  A lot of the outrage is much of the same, directed at the expectations and thoughts of the platform as a whole that they're taking this to, and they're not exactly unfounded.  I can't find concrete evidence as to -how- this is going to work (if there's going to be a single-player mode at all, if it's going to be an MMO or an MMO-like, if it's going to be microtransaction-based) but there really aren't a whole lot of examples of Tablet/Phone RPGs with online/social aspects working out well an intuitively to the player's direct benefit, and nobody's willing to give Capcom the benefit of the doubt on their attempt.  Least of all me, really.  I, like most others, can feel my eyes glaze over when I hear "browser-based", because....there's just not a lot of faith there when you don't have anything tangible of the game itself.  Even a download, when it comes to your PC, isn't present because of it being played via your browser if you're not playing it on a tablet or phone.

This won't be the first major departure that the Breath of Fire series has seen, as the last instance in the series was exceptionally polarizing - to the point where people took offense to calling it Breath of Fire 5 in the first place.  I haven't played it myself, but I've heard it likened to a Roguelike which is....interesting, but certainly not a classic Breath of Fire gameplay style.  Still, regardless of the opinion of that, I think everyone is more or less united in the opinion that it was at least a proper try, given its platform and the effort behind it (as well as carrying over BoF-specific things) which is hilariously a little bit of a unifying factor for the community for that game against this new one.  While this could be another case of history repeating itself in regards to we people who play games being afraid of change, it's also important to discuss whether or not there's merit.  There's definitely merit here as much as there was merit to question Dragon Quarter - after all, you can't turn Legend of Zelda into a Third-Person Shooter where Link exclusively uses slingshots, bows and crossbows and not expect people to say that it's not a Legend of Zelda game anymore.  There are certain 'requirements' placed on everything that necessitate their design and deviating too far from those sparks things like these.

According to a Eurogamer update, it's still up in the air as to whether or not the game will come to Western shores, and it's no surprise that people are of a mind to wish that it simply wouldn't.  Regardless, Capcom has done something they honestly can't take back - whether or not we like it, this game, however it turns out, is Breath of Fire 6.  Well, I suppose they could cancel it, they're good at that after all, but I highly doubt they're going to do that, nor are they going to drastically change its scope and platform, nor are they going to simply rename it to something else, -completely- divorcing it from the series in all ways and not just stylistic, gameplay-centric and traditional as it stands now.  Maybe.  To be honest, there's very little information about the game, and even less of it is reliable at this point, but at the very least, this was definitely not a good foot to put forward, and as we know from recent experience, that's all it takes sometimes.

I always like making "Capcom Hates You" posts, they're hilarious in a sad way