Samantha Lienhard

Hideo Baba Left Square Enix; What Will Happen to Project Prelude Rune?

Apr 082019

A few times now, we’ve talked about Project Prelude Rune, an upcoming JRPG from Square Enix’s new Studio Istolia.

Studio Istolia was established when Hideo Baba, known for his work as a producer of the Tales series, left Bandai Namco and joined Square Enix.

Their first game was announced under the code name Project Prelude Rune and was eventually confirmed to be a PS4 title.

However, last week Hideo Baba announced that he had resigned as head of Studio Istolia in December and left Square Enix at the end of March. He left as part of “the change in Studio Istolia’s management policies.” What exactly that means is unclear.

What does this mean for Project Prelude Rune? Since it hasn’t been cancelled, it sounds as though work on it may continue without Baba.

I’m still looking forward to what Project Prelude Rune will become, but I was hoping for a chance to see Baba’s work outside of the Tales series for a better idea of whether or not he deserves the criticism he gets for recent Tales games (until Berseria, which he did not serve as producer for).

Aside from that, it also makes me wonder if something is happening at Square Enix. Tabata left alongside the cancellation of the remaining Final Fantasy XV DLC, now Baba left, and Hiroaki Iwano of the Million Arthur series (which I’m not too familiar with) announced his departure last week as well.

Square Enix has been restructuring its business divisions, so maybe that is related.

What do you think will happen to Project Prelude Rune? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Golf Story: Weird, Charming, and Funny

Reviews, Video games 3 Responses » Tagged with: rpg

Apr 052019

I’ll admit, when Golf Story was first announced, I didn’t think too much of it since I don’t typically like sports games.

Then it came out, I saw positive reviews all around praising it as a unique and funny game, and so I decided to play it.

Golf Story follows a young man who hopes to finally fulfill his dream of becoming a pro golfer, so he heads to the nearby Wellworn Grove golfing course to see what he can do. What results is a game that is definitely charming, has a lot of funny moments, and can get pretty weird (in a good way).

It also has a great presentation that fits its quirky tone, with dialogue appearing at different speeds and sizes or even dialogue partially appearing and quickly disappearing as the character changes their mind about what to say.

Now, it’s a game about golf. If you really hate the golf gameplay, you probably won’t be able to get into it. But while it took me a little while to get used to how to play, I loved it once I did.

Golf Story is an RPG (it even has a world map), so in addition to following the main storyline, each area will also present you with numerous side quests. These are usually related to golf in some way, whether you’re proving you can handle a particular challenge or hitting stolen eggs back into their nests (which is far from the weirdest part). As you complete quests, you’ll level up and earn skill points to increase your stats, and each area has new equipment you can buy as well.

There are occasional gameplay sections that don’t involve golf, as well, such as when you encounter a group of characters who prefer to play “disc golf.”

The whole game has an offbeat tone that really makes it enjoyable. It reminds me a little of how Ace Attorney is technically set in the real world, yet you run into characters and situations that you can’t quite call realistic. Golf Story places the main character in situations that are completely absurd without (usually) being too weird, and pretty much everyone you encounter is odd in one way or another.

Even the reasons for visiting other golf courses were often more entertaining than I expected, such as the greenkeeper wanting to infiltrate a neighboring course to learn the secret of their grass.

Golf Story was a lot of fun, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a light RPG with funny characters and dialogue. And since Sidebar Games already confirmed they’re working on something new, I can’t wait to see what it is.

Neon Tide Demo: Intriguing, Yet Confusing

Video games 2 Responses » Tagged with: crowd-funding, visual novel

Apr 032019

Recently, the developers of Neon Tide contacted me to tell me about their Kickstarter campaign and ask if I’d be interested in playing their demo.

Neon Tide is a cyberpunk visual novel set in a world with sentient AI and a virus known as the “Neon Tide” that is affecting robots.

The visual novel itself is almost completed, and the Kickstarter campaign is so they can add voice acting as well as a Japanese translation.

It’s clearly an ambitious project, with character models instead of the typical 2D sprites used in visual novels and a mixture of still shots and animated scenes. The cyberpunk aesthetic is visible throughout the game, including its menus, which gives it a nice flair.

However, I feel like it could benefit from a bit of traditional visual novel storytelling as well. The silent scenes in the demo, while impressive, were a bit hard to follow. I found myself hoping for a bit of narration to give more context to the game’s events.

(Then again, maybe the ambiguity is intentional, especially if it’s the start of the game.)

Neon Tide’s demo tosses you into the fray with two characters. One is a sentient hologram whose motives are unclear aside from hating AI, and the other is an AI infected by the Neon Tide trying to escape some sort of robot facility.

I was intrigued by what was happening, but again, I wanted a bit more context. Similarly, while the hologram character (Beta) had a few moments of internal narration, it wasn’t quite enough yet for me to connect to him as a character. He seems like the main protagonist, but I was more interested in what was going on with the robots.

According to the Kickstarter page, the fully-infected AI wants to rule over humanity while the partly-infected AI wants the two groups to live in harmony, and it sounds like Beta will be swept up in trying to learn the truth about the Neon Tide.

Neon Tide has an intriguing premise and an ambitious vision. The demo left me just a bit too confused to be sold on its storytelling, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it as we go forward.

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