Sega Series - Hurt and Healed

[Sharky]

My newest article, please read it and comment on the front page.

Also pimp it to every forum you attend, thanks!

http://www.segabits.com/?p=3446

[Sieghardt]

Good article, agree with a lot of that stuff. Phantasy Star Universe is quite the sore spot with me too, it kinda personifies one of my biggest annoyances with sega, developers making a great game and management ruining it. It had great gameplay and great content and then they locked it all away on the disc and gave people months of being level capped and stuck with only raffon fields and linear line to play. Even years after release and with the western game dead there are still hundreds of missions and items they just wont release.

The psp games are pretty much 95% the same game but with everything available day one and everyone loves them

[fluffymoochicken]

As I wrote on the main article, this character has totally saved the Shining Force franchise by himself:



HE'S SO AWESOME! ^_____^ God, I just love his design. Here's a great video with him in it too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bScCkeKe7k#t=3m05s

Who wouldn't wanna play a game with such a great playable character in it, hmm? Every game should have designs like that.

[Barry the Nomad]

^ how does that save the franchise? Quite clearly it appeals to your own personal taste of leggy boys dressed as furries, but it has absolutely nothing that saves the Shining Force franchise.

Wanna know how to properly save Shining Force? For one, drop the bland art style and return to what made the series great: http://www.fantasyanime.com/shiningforce/sfart.htm

[Sharky]

Good article, agree with a lot of that stuff. Phantasy Star Universe is quite the sore spot with me too, it kinda personifies one of my biggest annoyances with sega, developers making a great game and management ruining it. It had great gameplay and great content and then they locked it all away on the disc and gave people months of being level capped and stuck with only raffon fields and linear line to play. Even years after release and with the western game dead there are still hundreds of missions and items they just wont release.

The psp games are pretty much 95% the same game but with everything available day one and everyone loves them

Pretty much, although Portable 2 also has some changes to its gameplay and enemy AI is much better and more challenging. They also brought back Challenge mode and Battle mode which I'm very excited for.

[Aki-at]

Pretty good article and nicely written, got to agree with a few of those points completely, in particular the Shining series and Golden Axe.

[Sega Uranus]

I did not know there was a discussion of it here in the forums, so I think I will repost what I did in the comments of it.



I never really considered NiGHTS a ’series’. I dunno, it should have just never gotten a sequel as the original was perfect the way it was. JoD was just such a massive mistake, and now there are tons of people who will whine until SEGA probably pushes other potential great characters and levels out of whatever SEGA crossover comes out next.

Golden Axe is something that is not hard to fix at all. Look at something like the Scott Pilgrim game, if Ubisoft can make a cool game like that, then it should not be hard at all to make a new Golden Axe in a somewhat similar way. I truly agree that the potential for a massive and epic adventure like Viking is there, but before you can do that you will have to rebuild the brand again. The last like… 20 rereleases of Golden Axe have left a lot to be desired, so the fanbase is going to be hard to get back.

About the Shining series. My big issue is not really the gameplay, but how the style, world and complete story is completely different from how the series was. Basically think how Sonic and Final Fantasy were ruined, but multiplied a few billion times over. The first Shining was not even an sRPG, and I do not think they should limit it to that as this series also has so much potential.

And I do not really agree with the Sonic the Hedgehog 4 stuff, as usual. I mean, Sonic Pocket Adventure was a fantastic game that had a lot of the same goals as Sonic the Hedgehog 4 does, except it really did improve on stuff without taking away anything *coughhomingattackcough*. I can tell they are trying NOW, but the way they had it before and ready to release… Like even the rolling sound was all wrong, they obviously did not care. For console releases like Sonic Colors they seem to be happy with a completely different style now too, and with the past 10 years of Sonic games being hated… He will remain the butt of jokes regardless of quality for at least the rest of this console generation.

But yeah, good read. Though, I can think of a few things all these series need. Something that would be great is Phantasy Star Online with no subscription on the XBLA… That would be fantastic.

[Sieghardt]

About the Shining series. My big issue is not really the gameplay, but how the style, world and complete story is completely different from how the series was. Basically think how Sonic and Final Fantasy were ruined, but multiplied a few billion times over. The first Shining was not even an sRPG, and I do not think they should limit it to that as this series also has so much potential.

They should certainly limit the Shining FORCE series to srpgs. The creator of NEO and EXA didnt even know what the Force in shining force meant and took it to be some kind of magic power star wars force.

[Aki-at]

They should certainly limit the Shining FORCE series to srpgs. The creator of NEO and EXA didnt even know what the Force in shining force meant and took it to be some kind of magic power star wars force.

It's true the current producer/director knows very little but it's highly unlikely we will ever see another Shining Force game or SRPG in the series, considering how dismal Feather's sales were.

The fact that the ARPG all vastly out do the SRPG in the series for a while now and that the old look Shining games do not unfortunately appeal to the audience in Japan, the current sorry state of the Shining series is most likely to exist for many years to come.

[Sharky]

Can't say I have really enjoyed any of the non S-RPG shining games that much... In the Darkness was the most dull of the lot imo.

Shining Force is what people really remember and want to return.

[fluffymoochicken]

^ how does that save the franchise? Quite clearly it appeals to your own personal taste of leggy boys dressed as furries, but it has absolutely nothing that saves the Shining Force franchise.

Because he turns Shining Force EXA a MUST-PLAY experience! ^___^

Seriously, I'm being drawn into the series now. :3

[Sharky]

^ how does that save the franchise? Quite clearly it appeals to your own personal taste of leggy boys dressed as furries, but it has absolutely nothing that saves the Shining Force franchise.

Because he turns Shining Force EXA a MUST-PLAY experience! ^___^

Seriously, I'm being drawn into the series now. :3

Stop flame baiting please.

[Sega Uranus]

Can't say I have really enjoyed any of the non S-RPG shining games that much... In the Darkness was the most dull of the lot imo.

Shining Force is what people really remember and want to return.

I can agree with that, but something I really loved about the series was how you could play all of these really very different games that all shared the same overall story. I cannot even really think of a series that does this otherwise (it is risky, after all!) so especially back in the day it is really something that helped the series stand out among everything else to me.

[crackdude]

fluffy that's your own personal case. I highly doubt it will save the franchise.
I agree that there are little things that make us like certain otherwise bad games.

[max_cady]

Good article.

Here's what I think, the Shining Force series just doesn't have the same appeal, in a market where if you are not shooting stuff up for a couple of hours, playing a Strategy RPG is like having a chess match and that's not what gamers in general want.

Golden Axe can still be saved granted they get a good dev behind it. But honestly about 90% of Golden Axe Beast Rider's problems could have been solved if Secret Level would've just included an actual block button and not a parry and evade system and made cinematic kills easier to pull off.

With Sonic, well, just don't use any gimmicks and that's about it.