Valkyria Chronicles 2: My Impressions and Views
Valkyria Chronicles 2's hero, Avan Hardins
It's been a pretty interesting last few days for Valkyria Chronicles fans. Not only has the sequel to the cult classic PS3 title, Valkyria Chronicles, finally hit North American shelves and the PlayStation Network, but there have been rumours of a Valkyria Chronicles 3 title. The rumours of Valkyria Chronicles 3 started last week when it was discovered that Sega had purchased the domain name valkyria3.jp. These rumours further gained substance when a teaser site was opened up at http://code1935.jp/ which currently features a single image with the silhouettes of character classes and tanks from the franchise and a date, September 16th, which just happens to be the first day of the Tokyo Game Show this year.
Valkyria Chronicles 2: At last… or is it?
It seems like it has been forever since Sega announced that Valkyria Chronicles 2, the sequel to cult classic Valkyria Chronicles for the PlayStation 3 (PS3), would finally be coming to North American stores on the PlayStation Portable (PSP). It has only felt like forever since Sega has been pretty silent regarding the title, besides creating a website for the game and posted a release date of Summer 2010. However, recent posts on Joystiq and PlayStation Universe claim that Sega has made an official announcement of August 31st as the game's North American release date. This isn't all that unlikely considering that not only Sega has included a Valkyria Chronicles 2 section to their E3 Expo booth this year but the E3 Expo is still ongoing with today being the event's last day.
Arc Fail Fantasia: How a poor localization might kill a game
When I last mentioned Arc Rise Fantasia here on Axis of Bozz it was in a somewhat festive mood. At the time not only had the game won an award from IGN at the 2009 E3 Expo as the Best Wii RPG, but the North American localization and publishing rights were transferred to Ignition Entertainment, the company responsible for the localization of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, from previous license holder Xseed Games. Although my interest in this series has waned over the course of the last several months, my initial interest was due to the presence composer Yasunori Matsuda and character designer Kenichi Yoshida amongst the game's staff, I was devasted when I first learned that the English audio for the game was fairly awful. After hearing the news I couldn’t help myself from asking, “If it’s true, how could things have gone so wrong?”
Valkyria Chronicles 2: The Extras
Sega is really going all out with Valkyria Chronicles 2, in comparison to the original game, in providing extra content and tie-ins with other products. In the first game there really wasn't much in the ways of tie-ins besides the cameo appearances of Skies of Arcadia's Vyse, Ayka and Fina.
Valkyria Chronicles 2 Release Date?
Sadly, Sega has yet to publicly announce an actual release date for the highly anticipated English-language version of the sequel to 2008's brilliant PS3 exclusive, Valkyria Chronicles, for the PSP. It has already been a few months since the game was originally released in Japan, where it has encountered quite a bit of success having nearly matched the original game's 180, 000 total copies sold with 140, 000 copies sold in the span of 3 months.
Valkyria Chronicles: Sega’s April Fools’ Joke
Every year on the first day of April we all get to enjoy a day filled with foolish jokes, but only just for one day, April Fools' Day. The weird thing about April Fools' is that sometimes the jokes are quite obvious, like say being given administrative rights on a forum, but others seem a little difficult to determine whether it's true or false. For instance, there was a bit of a hubbub over at FinalFantasy-XIII.net regarding a purported interview on Kotaku's Australian site given by Final Fantasy XIII Versus Character Designer and Director, Tetsuya Nomura, in which he claims that the main character, Noctis, of his upcoming PS3-exclusive title was gay and that the game would showcase some of Nomura's inspiration from The X-Files TV show. The thing is that a lot of people were fooled due to the lack of information that has been provided for the game. What was interesting was the reaction to the news on the FinalFantasy-XIII.net forums.
Valentine’s Day – Valkyria Chronicles-style
According to RPGLand, via Famitsu, it seems that Valkyria Chronicles is undergoing some Valentine's Day fever! As part of the promotion of the game it seems that there will be a series of cards, so far it seems like there is just 3 of them, featuring a female character from Valkyria Chronicles 2 present. The current batch include the mysterious Valkyria, Aliasse, looking very un-mysterious in a school uniform, the squad nurse Cosette wanting to patch you up and another character, Juliana, looking quite lovestruck in sharing her Popsicle with you.
It's an interesting marketing technique which really shows that Sega is pushing hard to open up the audience of the Valkyria Chronicles franchise. It makes me wonder if they have anything in store with the Western release this Summer.
Valkyria Chronicles 2 trumps the original in opening sales
Avan looks pretty happy about VC2's sales
According to Media Create, a Japanese company that focuses on analyzing data on the digital entertainment industry, sales for the PSP-exclusive sequel to 2008's Valkyria Chronicles have exceeded the original by nearly 20, 000 sales for first week sales.
What Final Fantasy XIII looked like as a PS2 game
According to FinalFantasy-XIII.net there are some scans that have found their way online from a series of thick volumes published by Square Enix recently. Amongst this group of scans are ones from very early builds of the game built for PS2 hardware. The art style incorporated into the early PS2 builds are quite different from what we ended up in the PS3/360 version of the game. It's quite interesting to see that Square Enix changed their minds about the art styles they were planning on using with the PS2; it makes me wonder if the choice was due to the improved hardware present in the PS3.
Rise! Rise! Rise Arc Rise Fantasia!
Arc Rise Fantasia, an RPG for the Nintendo Wii that I've discussed before, looks to have finally been secured a release in North America. Ignition Entertainment, a company who has published the upcoming Nostalgia, Muramasa: The Demon Blade and has co-published King of Fighters XII with SNK Playmore, announced the acquisition of Arc Rise Fantasia last week. So far, with regards to the release date Ignition has so far only announced that it will be released some time during the summer next year.
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