Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Eternia: Pet Whisperer is a Strange Little Game

 Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Mar 212022
 

On the weekend, I decided to take a short break from dying incessantly in the Lands Between to instead play a bite-sized visual novel called Eternia: Pet Whisperer.

It was described as being inspired by Hatoful Boyfriend, a favorite of mine, and I got it as part of a bundle, so why not?

You have decided to adopt a pet, so you head to a special animal sanctuary, and the animals living there start talking to you.

I felt like this could have been expanded a bit more, since it seemed to me I went from the protagonist denying the possibility of animals speaking, to happily wondering what a koala will enjoy talking about, without anything in between to bridge it.

Anyway, the visual novel takes place over a series of days. Each day, you can pick an animal to talk to from the animals that are currently around. Once you’ve talked to an animal enough times, they’ll start showing up more and more, until the possibility of adoption comes up.

Once you adopt an animal, it’s effectively the end of the route, but you’re given an option to loop back to the start.

The loop being built into the game if you choose to take it means you don’t have to skip through dialogue you’ve already seen, because only the new conversations are available for you to choose from. That’s convenient, although it does make subsequent routes feel shorter and shorter.

Each animal has their own little story, although the stories are nothing exceptional. I also wished the ending had a bit more content, since it felt abrupt even for what it was. Eternia: Pet Whisperer is a short (less than 30 minutes for me) game about talking animals with some wacky humor. I don’t necessarily recommend you rush out and buy it, but if you do end up getting it, it should bring a few smiles.

Jack Jeanne Localization Confirmed

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Mar 182022
 

We have yet more unexpected localization news to discuss!

Yesterday, during the game’s 1st anniversary live stream, Broccoli announced that Jack Jeanne will be translated into English and Traditional Chinese.

Jack Jeanne (which I’ve also seen written as JackJeanne) is a Nintendo Switch game that comes up quite a bit in discussions of otome games people want localized, and now it’s finally happening.

There’s been some disagreement about whether or not Jack Jeanne is an otome game. As far as I can tell from what I’ve read, it is, just one where the romance is lighter and starts as friendship that grows into love. That, together with the developer not marketing it as otome to try to draw in a larger audience, seems to be where the confusion comes from.

(This brings to mind my personal “Is Steins;Gate a galge?” debate while I was tagging posts. I concluded it is.)

Anyway, Jack Jeanne is a visual novel about a young woman who gets permission to attend a prestigious men’s-only opera school on the condition that she star in the final performance of the year and hide the fact that she’s a woman.

In addition to the visual novel gameplay, it also has some form of stat-building as well as rhythm game segments during performances. Stat-building elements in visual novels aren’t my favorite thing, but I don’t mind them if the game sounds interesting enough, and this one definitely does.

One of the key people behind the game is Sui Ishida, the creator of Tokyo Ghoul, so that has drawn a lot of attention to it as well.

No release date has been given for Jack Jeanne yet, so we’ll have to wait and see. We don’t know who is handling the localization yet, either, so it’s up in the air as to whether or not this could be IFI’s mystery announcement or what PQube was teasing.

Meanwhile, apparently this is a big deal because no game developed by Broccoli has ever been localized before, so I’m adding this to the list of games no one thought would be localized that are being localized. Kenzan and Ishin must be next.

Are you looking forward to Jack Jeanne?

Capcom Filed an Apollo Justice Trademark

 Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Mar 162022
 

With the Phoenix Wright Trilogy and the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles available on just about every platform, fans have been hoping the other games will follow suit.

Especially in light of the upcoming closure of the 3DS eShop, a port would be welcome news, since once the 3DS store is gone, Apollo Justice will only be available on the DS and mobile devices, and Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice will be on mobile alone.

(Investigations is already only available on DS or mobile. It didn’t even earn a 3DS port.)

I want to hear about Ace Attorney 7 as much as anyone, but I’ve been hoping for a collection of 4-6 in the meantime, so that all of the games leading up to 7 are more readily available.

Well, maybe there’s a chance. People watching for new game trademarks noticed that Capcom recently filed a trademark for Apollo Justice. You can read the details of the trademark here, although it’s mainly just a long list of concepts related to video games.

One puzzling thing is that it’s a Japanese trademark, but it’s for “Apollo Justice,” not Gyakuten Saiban 4. So… what do we take from that? Did they file a trademark specifically for the western release? Or for something related to the character, but using his English name?

(Update: I’ve seen a plausible suggestion, which is that it could be a port/remaster/collection with English included in the Japanese release, like they did for the Trilogy & Chronicles, so they’d need the English title trademarked in Japan.)

I took a look at Capcom’s other recent trademarks, which include the Capcom Fighting Collection, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, and some hunting trademarks that seem related to Monster Hunter, among others. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to when trademarks are filed compared to when the games were announced, though, but seeing an Apollo Justice trademark among all of these gives me hope!

Trademarking only Apollo Justice might suggest they’re going to port the games separately, but maybe not. Right now, this trademark is more puzzling than anything else.

Of course, trademarks don’t always mean anything. I’m still patiently waiting for Baten Kaitos news after those promising trademarks.

Ideally, I’d like this to lead to a collection of Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies, and Spirit of Justice, followed by an Investigations duology with Investigations 2 getting an official western release, and then of course Ace Attorney 7. …Okay, I would trade away most of these for a Great Ace Attorney Investigations. I need that to exist. Please.

In the meantime, Capcom has all of their 3DS games on sale, with Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice at $5 each, which is ridiculously good.

So what do you think is up with this mysterious Apollo Justice trademark? Is it for a port? A collection? Something entirely different? Random chance?? Let me know what you think!

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