Operation Backlog Completion 2025
Sep 232021
 

May 2022 is the 25th anniversary of the Atelier series, and a big celebration is planned.

According to the 25th Anniversary website, “various Atelier-related projects” are planned.

One of these will be a new game, a 25th anniversary title to be announced on October 2 at TGS during Koei Tecmo’s live stream.

Meanwhile, the website has six spots listed for projects, with the first dated October 2 while the others all say “Coming Soon.” These projects should be revealed between now and the anniversary. They probably aren’t all games, of course, but maybe we’ll get more game announcements than just that one.

A rating recently surfaced for Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, so it’s highly likely that it is the October 2 announcement.

Not only are six anniversary projects planned, but there is also currently an Atelier sale going on across Steam, the PlayStation Store, and the Nintendo eShop.

(Blue Reflection and Fairy Tail are also on sale where they’re available.)

Atelier sales are rare. The last time the Arland trilogy went on sale in the eShop was 2019. I know I won’t play these games too soon, but I’m tempted to buy them all now because it could believably be years before the next sale. Also Fairy Tail, because I was starting to think they forgot it existed.

Anyway, what do you think the Atelier anniversary announcements will be? Are you planning to pick up any of the games in the sale?

Sep 202021
 

So after Deltarune Chapter 2 came out Friday night, I downloaded it and played it over the weekend.

Like Chapter 1, Chapter 2 is free. Both can be downloaded together now and are considered a long Deltarune demo. The current plan is that Chapters 3-5 will be released together and cost money.

But anyway, let’s get back to talking about Chapter 2.

The first chapter ended on quite an unsettling note, and Chapter 2’s beginning suggests that nothing sinister happened after all… or did it? With that note of uncertainty hanging over you, you soon return to the Dark World.

Like in the first chapter, you have a small party of characters and various options during combat. You can either attack enemies to force them to run away, or choose the correct actions that will allow you to spare the enemies. Although at first only the main character can use these actions or ask another character to, the other characters eventually gain the ability to use their own actions.

A new system introduced in Chapter 2 is recruitment, which means that spared enemies will go to your town. Recruits don’t do a whole lot here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s expanded in subsequent chapters.

The main area for Chapter 2 is based on the Internet, with an AI queen who has seemingly become a tyrant due to the Internet outage and the appearance of a fountain, which you need to seal. There’s a lot of humor again, with several goofy situations and wacky characters getting in your way.

It also has its share of sweet moments, a few moments that hint at darker things to come, and some continued questioning of the relationship between the player and the main character.

Click for Deltarune spoilers
Ralsei, specifically, is acting suspicious, and multiple things suggest that he is aware of you, the player, being a separate entity from Kris. One scene in particular implies that he diverted your attention to watch the scene with Susie and Noelle so he could speak to Kris without you there to witness it.

(Apparently there’s also a much darker alternate route that sounds incredibly disturbing.)

Chapter 2 was a bit longer than Chapter 1 and took me over five hours to complete. Together with Chapter 1, the Deltarune demo has now taken me almost as long as all of Undertale. That’s a hefty amount of content for a free demo!

Now, due to the way it started, I was concerned that each chapter might end on a shocking cliffhanger that would be left ambiguous in the next part. However, while Chapter 2 definitely ends on another unsettling note, it suggests a much clearer picture of what’s going on and raises some intriguing possibilities for what will occur in Chapter 3.

I’m really enjoying Deltarune now in its own right (rather than viewing it as an Undertale alternate universe) and I can’t wait to see how this story will unfold.

It also looks as though there will be 7 chapters total, which is more than I expected. Here’s hoping the wait to 3-5 and then 6-7 won’t be too long!

Sep 172021
 

Remember Deltarune?

Yes, adding to the list of exciting games all coming out at the same time, Deltarune Chapter 2 was announced with a release date of today at 8 PM ET.

Deltarune was a surprise game from Toby Fox that came out back in 2018.

I played it expecting it to be a demo, only to learn that it was Deltarune Chapter 1, the first part of a new game that may or may not be connected to Undertale.

Back then, the plan was that subsequent chapters would be released all at once, although an update last year made it sound more like the plan was to release it chapter-by-chapter, and that seems to be the case now. This is Chapter 2, and further chapters are still in development.

I’m a little disappointed by that, since there might be another long wait to Chapter 3. Still, I’m excited to get more Deltarune at last!

Nothing has been revealed yet about pricing, but since Chapter 1 can be seen as essentially a long demo, I’d expect Chapter 2 to cost money. We’ll know tonight, one way or another!

In the meantime, I’d better refresh my memory about Chapter 1, since it’s a bit fuzzy after all this time. Are you looking forward to Deltarune Chapter 2?