Operation Backlog Completion 2026

The Tales Developers Hope to Remaster “as Many Titles as Possible”

 Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Sep 182024
 

The recent Nintendo Partner Showcase took me by surprise with several announcements, one of which was Tales of Graces f Remastered.

A since-removed retail listing made it seem as though Tales of Xillia would be the next Tales remaster, so the Graces news was especially unexpected.

It was soon revealed that Tales of Graces f Remastered is only the first of a Tales remaster project, with more to come. Now we have a few more details thanks to a Famitsu interview with producer Yusuke Tomizawa, translated by Automaton.

It seems they originally intended to release remasters in chronological order, but “due to various circumstances, trying to stick to chronological order too much made us unable to release anything” and instead their new goal is “prioritizing titles that had the highest potential for release.”

No further context is given, which makes this a curious statement.

Quite a few Tales games released in between Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Graces, so if the remaster plan started with Tales of Symphonia Remastered last year, that would mean they’d originally intended to remaster Rebirth next, then Legendia, then Abyss, and so on and so forth, but ran into difficulty. Without clarification, though, it’s unclear if he meant that or if they’d intended to start from the very beginning with Phantasia.

Now their decisions of which games to remaster take fan feedback into account, which apparently led to them prioritizing Graces f. (I’m surprised, I would have thought Abyss had the most requests.) Their ultimate goal is to release “as many titles as possible.”

This feels like it could be interpreted in either a positive or negative way. On one hand, wanting to remaster as many Tales games as possible sounds great! It should mean we’ll get more than just a handful. On the other hand, saying they couldn’t go in chronological order raises concerns that they’re going to skip over the earlier games after all.

But here’s an interpretation that takes both statements into account – what if they realized those earlier titles would require a lot more work, so they jumped ahead to a highly-requested game that would be easier to remaster, to get it out in the meantime while they’re working on the longer project? A Tales of Rebirth remaster, for example, might not be shelved but simply moved ahead since it will take longer to have ready.

(Tales of Rebirth is one of the few games left on my original list of untranslated games I wanted to see translated. Come on, Bandai Namco. It’s your turn.)

Overall, I think this interview is a positive sign for the future of the series and the revival of Tales games that are no longer readily available. Which games do you think they’ll remaster after Graces?

A Reynatis Demo is Available Now

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Sep 132024
 

A demo is now available for Reynatis, the upcoming action RPG from Furyu.

According to the demo announcement on Steam, progress is not carried over to the full game but you can get some bonuses if you’ve completed the demo.

The demo is available for all platforms Reynatis is coming to (PS4/5, Switch, PC).

We’ve talked about Reynatis quite a few times now, not only because it looks like my sort of game on its own but also because of its collaboration with The World Ends With You.

I’m interested enough in Reynatis that I already have it preordered, so I don’t know if I’ll try the demo or not, especially since progress doesn’t transfer. On the other hand, it might be good to check it out (especially to see if the Switch version has any performance concerns).

Reynatis is due out on September 27 in a year so stacked with great releases that I’m nowhere near caught up on them, but it’s one I definitely want to play sooner rather than later.

(In completely unrelated news, Voltage has a big announcement coming on September 20, so that could lead to yet another game added to my list. The upcoming weeks could be crazy.)

Are you interested in Reynatis? Are you planning to play the demo?

Atelier Yumia Live Stream Reveals Party Members, Combat, and More

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 022024
 

Heads-up: if you’re a blog subscriber, it may be a few days before you get email notifications again, as the service I was using shut down.

All right, now let’s get into today’s topic – Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land and the unanswered questions we had about it after its announcement trailer.

This morning, Gust and Koei Tecmo held a live stream at which they revealed new information about Atelier Yumia, followed by a 10-minute English trailer.

Now, the stream wasn’t translated, so I had to pick up what I could just by watching it and then fill in some details with the English trailer later. Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to see that the next trailer they showed was featuring party members. I don’t know if they saw fans jumping to conclusions that there wouldn’t be party members or if they always intended to introduce them during this live stream, but they showed off five party members.

Their next focus was on field exploration. It looks like you can shoot enemies and materials in the environment. They showed some crafting after that and then moved onto combat.

Combat was the other big question from the announcement, and I watched the combat section over and over to try to figure out if it’s action combat or very fast-paced ATB. They show the character moving right at the start, but for the most of it they stay more or less in one place aside from movement related to the attacks, and there’s a “range” button that changes what range you’re attacking at, so right now I’m leaning toward it being a highly fast-paced ATB system like in the Ryza games. You can also switch characters on the fly.

Base-building also looks like it’s going to be a big deal, as you not only can create and arrange furniture, but also construct entire buildings?? I’m really curious about how much that’s going to play into it.

The story does seem darker than usual for the series, but it also looks like a beautiful game. The environments they’ve shown so far have been breathtaking!

(Oh, and they’re definitely aiming for fanservice again with some of those designs. They know it worked with Ryza and want to keep that momentum.)

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land will be out on March 21, 2025. I still have not played most of the Atelier games in my backlog. I promise to get on that! In the meantime, are you looking forward to Atelier Yumia?

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