Hero of Legend's Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga Initial Impressions. Not too bad!

Platform: Wii
Publisher JP: MMV
Publisher NA: MMV USA/XSEED
Publisher PAL: Rising Star Games
Developer: MMV, K2 and Kurogane (Helping with NA localization)
Players: 1-2
Rating NA: T
Rating JP: B
Release Date NA: September 29th, 2009
Release Date PAL: ???
Release Date Japan: October 8th, 2009
Price USA: $39.99
Price Canada: $44.99
Price PAL: ???
Price JP: 7,140円

So I've only played about an hour of the game thus far, I finally found a brand-new, NON-gutted (opened) copy at my local Walmart. Only it and EBGames in Canada seem to sell it. :/ :(

So I popped it in, and noticed at first the audio got quieter than it seemed at first, I found out why. Turns out, there's an option in the Options section of the Title Screen where you can change the balance and volume with it between the music and the sound effects. Guess what? You can make it so that the sound effects are mute, thus, NO FOOTSTEP SOUNDS, CHECK MORE CAREFULLY REVIEWERS!!! :/

So, the game begins with a CG opening, a usual thing for the series.

Then you begin by selecting between:

Game Start
Options
Gallery

Options include:

Blood Display - Decide if you want the Blood Display on or off.
Screen Adjust - Shows a picture of the different shades of black, grey, and white so you can change your TV's picture so that you can see all the gradations.
Sound Balance - The one reviewers just happened to miss, as mentioned above, you can move the dial to the left for make the music louder and the SFX quieter, or to the right for vice-versa.

Gallery allows you to look at actual characters up close, this includes monsters! You have to actual encounter them to unlock them in here of course. ;)

So onto Game Start you begin by choosing a save file, and there are three in total, the middle one is the default. :P

Then you choose an episode, 1 or 2, yes you can do that from the beginning, strange I know.

Then you proceed to choosing how your character looks, you choose the character's Face, Hair (and Hair Color), and Voice. Strangely I heard a female sounding voice for one of the choices even though you're a Male, oooookay? You can only choose your gender in Episode 2.

Then you begin in the town of Vestlia and you can do things first like check out the item shop, the forge to repair swords and such, the Wi-Fi area, another place to change your hair and hair color and change Wi-Fi speech settings (not sure what this is yet), but to save, you have to find this drunken old man near the church area, and after saving you have the option of returning to the title screen, took me a bit of time before I found him. XD

Before heading out into the North Mór Plains (first major outdoor area), you're greeted by Sebastian (not the Crab XD) and he asks you to meet him at the Mansion to do a favor for his master. When you first enter the plains, it's empty of monsters even though you can fight.

About the fighting, you do a weak attack with A and a strong one with B, run and ascend and descend ledges with C, and Lock-on to enemies with Z. As Spencer of Siliconera noted, A and B attacks are quite slow, even the A ones, and you can do small combos by hitting the button multiple times and of course you press the button quickly, but if you miss, you have to do the whole combo (just up to 3 at the moment I think) before you can actually move. So it definitely needs getting used to.

As you fight, your Burst Meter gets full, and you get reminded of that by your hand twinkling and a ding-ding sound effect, took me a bit to figure what that meant. lol You activate it by WAGGLING!!! XD

So far you fight Vicious Killer Rabbits (Hares), Capybaras, Wild Birds, Wood Leeches, and... and...

FISH THAT KNOW KARATE!!! (Amphis) LOL XD

Seriously, they jump out of the water and slap you around with their tails, and can jump EXTREMELY high DBZ-style, AND can flop back into the water if they end up on land! LOL

I'll stop here as I don't want to say anything about the story. :)

Now to the technical parts, this game supports 480p, 16:9 with very minor black bars, no Dolby Pro Logic II, and runs in 30 frames but can drop when it rains and just for a split second during fights, it also drops when using items.

My opinion on the graphics? Not that bad, it's nothing to complain about as I'm not one to bitch about them when I know that the developer (K2) was never a hardware pusher and this game was low-budget anyway! :) I was impressed by how much land there was to explore with zero load times, and the draw distance seemed really far, as I remember seeing the Knights who were blocking a crossing to the other side of the plains were viewable from all the way at the entrance to the plains, it was pretty far. Also I'm pretty sure the water's bump-mapped with some kind of reflecting going on. Animations are nice as well, and the characters do have good facial animations, there's no voice acting other than someone who narrates the beginning of the story, kinda like in Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire.

So it's been worth the searching for a new copy and paying the $45 price tag, as I am a big MMV fan, I have Rune Factory Frontier, Little King's Story, and now Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga, and next I'll get Muramasa: The Demon Blade and then of course, Arc Rise Fantasia! :D

And one last note, I noticed a teensy typo, the aforementioned master of Sebastian ask you to get "An Herb" :P Look, you've obtained "An Herb"! XD

That's it for now! :)

I've been banned from GAF YET AGAIN, this time the reason is just fucking rediculous.

This post:

http://i.minus.com/ibndmJxmxzcxvm.jpg

http://i.minus.com/ibkKd19EMSVKYY.jpg

Why was I banned for this?

Because:

"Even if Epic Mickey IS on the Wii, it doesn't need your fanboyism "helping" it."

What the flying fuck? Just because I support the move and explain why (because of the demographic)? I find it EXTREAMELY strange that the user I was responding to, who was obviously flaming the decision of it being on the Wii, is not banned.

Well, if I actually decide to go back when I am able to, I'll see you on September 29th at 9:00PM. Good luck to fellow Wii and Nintendo fans over there, watch your back.

Pass this on to Dabookerman at NeoGAF!

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=363087

I experienced that VERY issue for the past couple of days!

It's your milk, it's gone bad, try making another cup of tea with that same milk, you should see this again, then AGAIN with a fresh carton, it shouldn't happen!

The possible problem, may be that your milk hasn't been in a cold enough fridge. My fridge had that thing that makes it cold got blown, thus my food spoiled quite quickly.

Happened to two or three large and small cartons.

It's now fixed, and my milk's just fine! :)

May Boxart Post of can't XSEED decide on a box for Little King's Story?!

Click on the link beside(?) the image for the high-res version!



http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3409/3548722473_6805450b97_o.png



http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3585/3552507022_fdd6e61777_o.png

About this Shane feller. Addressing thr GAF thread.

He works at Ignition, how many more pages are you guys going to make before realizing that?! LOL

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=361875

Geez! :P

Edit: OH, okay, it only took until the 93rd Post:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=15873664&postcount=93

Another XSEED update.

Looks like we finally have a proper clarification on the XSEED branding sitauation:

Flower, Sun, and Rain in June will be the last game published under the Marvelous Entertainment USA label for a while, and we had a chance to become the sole publisher on other titles that were originally supposed to be under the co-publishing agreement with Marvelous Entertainment USA. Of course we wanted all titles that we were already working together on under the XSEED Games banner moving forward, but unfortunately that didn't happen and we have to respect the decision that was made.

Sure, we may have lost one title, but we'll be announcing tons more titles between now and E3 so stay tuned.

I just wish they just kept the MMV USA branding for consistency.

An update about XSEED.

After e-mailing them about the current situation with Muramasa and such, I asked them to do some damage control, and Ken said:

No damage control needed, things with us and Marvelous are fine as they are still a very important partner of ours. A business decision had to be made regarding the future of Muramasa: The Demon Blade and we respect their decision.

And I'm sure you've heard by now that Ignition Entertainment is the new publisher, so the title is in good hands.

I then asked for a more detailed explaination about what happened, I'm still waiting for a reply.

More as it happens!

April 2008 Boxart Post.

This post will be updated with the full-sized boxes found at Amazon. :)

Remember the Sonic DS E3 2004 Demo? See the best video of it here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bCefT3uKHs&fmt=18

So far you've all must've seen those two videos of the game, one that shows like a five second trailer, the other is a poorly recorded off-screen video of a play session.

Finally, you can see direct-feed gameplay complete with direct audio so that we can finally hear the music (which is a remix of Escape from the City!) and the announcer going "Ready... GO!", is that the same guy from the Super Monkey Ball games?

While we'll probably never even get a leaked rom of the game (the one you may have heard of is fake), you can at least finally get a true look at this game that could've been. :)

XSEED is now branding their games with MMV, the answer as to why will become clear "very soon".

I'm sure a few of you have seen the confirmed final box of Little King's Story:



As a MMV fan and I'm sure others have thought the same, was WHY does the box now sport XSEED's logo instead of MMV USA's?

I got on the case ASAP, first by asking XSEED if the box was even final, and mentioned the logo change, Ken said:

That's correct, that's the final boxfront image for Little King's Story.

Dodged the logo bit, so I replied back asking about the logo specifically, he then said:

Ah, good question - very impressive attention to detail. It will all become clear very soon...

What could possibly be afoot? Sadly I have no clue, if I HAD to assume, it could be a change in agreements between XSEED and MMV USA, but it's probably no more than say XSEED getting to have the spotlight on the boxes now.

Just an FYI, AQ Interactive owns XSEED, so I think people can avoid speculation of "ZOMG MMV BUYS XSEED!1!1" and such. :P

I currently am waiting on a reply about the question of if this is permanent, will they be reshipping their previous MMV games like Rune Factory Frontier (awesome game BTW) and Avalon Code (haven't played this yet).

Here's RFF's box just for reference:



I hope this whole thing isn't just some strange rebranding decision just for the hell of it, why do this NOW after releasing three games under the MMV name (Valhalla Knights 2 PSP, Avalon Code DS, Rune Factory Frontier Wii)?

Besides, wouldn't MMV USA want to keep this up so that they can become a better known name?

Actually, my new guess is this:

It's possible that MMV USA is closing (it only has like ONE person IIRC who's name I forget), perhaps this person is moving to XSEED (which FYI is in the exact same building as MMV USA, I'm not kidding), to make things more efficient?

Obviously XSEED's the larger of the two companies, so obviously if one goes, it's MMV USA.

But still, couldn't they just keep the MMV USA brand name? Like how Disney uses the Touchstone label for more mature films even though Touchstone isn't even a physical company from what I recall reading.

Oh well, MMV Japan's the boss. :P

Hopefully we'll find out soon, this should have ZERO effect on any future projects.

Hang on, could this branding change have been the cause of Little King's Story's constant delays by any chance at all? I'll ask about that after this is all been cleared up, because obviously XSEED won't talk about this yet.

Valhalla Monster Hunters? Monster Knights? Take your pick!

So new scans of MMV and K2's Wii entry of their once PSP-exclusive series showed up earlier today, showing the first look at the game after 6 months since the game's TGS trailer!

But I could not help notice something VEEEEERY familar, and it wasn't just the whole ARPG similarity...

Exibit A, Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga:




Exibit B, Monster Hunter 3:



See the two dragons, one in each game?

WOW, they're going all out to make Valhalla Kngihts into a Monster Hunter clone! :O

Their recently unveiled PSP entry, Valhalla Knights 2: Battle Stance also changed the core game of VK2 into a MH clone, where as before it was a turn-based game.

SuperVillain Studios developing a Wii-exclusive RPG?

Apparently, yes they are!

The findings all began while going through superannuation.

First, I saw this post about Tom Swogger, who said:

At SuperVillain Studios I did several props for the Wii title Order Up! then began work on environments and effects for an unannounced rpg, also on the Wii.

Obviously he's specifically at SuperVillain working on that Wii RPG.

This originated from this resume.

Second, the website of the résumé contains something very inexpected yet very interesting; four in-game screenshots of the Wii RPG!:






All of these were found at the website's artwork page.

Finally, the Co-Founder / CCO of SuperVillain Studios, Chris Rausch's résumé was found by superannuation which had the following:

Co-Founder / Chief Creative Officer
SuperVillain Studios
(Privately Held; Computer Games industry)
January 2004 — Present (5 years 4 months)
Unannounced - Wii 2010
Unannounced - PSP 2009

So SuperVillain will be releasing their second Wii game (after Order Up!) in 2010, and that is no doubt the above RPG!

This is quite the "leak", but I guess it could be allowed as SuperVillain's independant, but wouldn't the publisher (if the game has one at the moment?) might not be so amused. Hopefully this won't cause any trouble. Well it's the guy's fault for leaking it, don't shoot the messenger! >_<

But can they please not use such a generic and boring character design? But maybe I'll warm up to it, I kind of am already. :P The environments look really good! Reminds me of Crash of the Titans, I wonder why...

Good luck to the people at SuperVillain at working on the game! Thanks for the sneak peek! :)

I've been banned from NeoGAF, why is that?

Make sure to read the update below.

Hi!

So it's sadly apparent that I've been banned from NeoGAF. What's the story you ask?

That's what this post is for!

The main reason is in here:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=358522

And the very second post.

That's the cause, but the reason and I quote is:

"I warned you before to stop going into threads that have nothing to do with the Wii just to stir that shit up. Too bad you didn't listen."

That warning is from this post:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=15249063&postcount=38

The good news is, this is only a two month ban!

As you GAFers and some outside folk know, I run a thread at GAF about questions about localizations to XSEED Games.

Fret not, all that will temporaily take place in this humble little blog until my ban is lifted. :)