For a fresh, new JRPG franchise like Valkyria Chronicles it’s no surprise that to this day, nearly a year later, there are still fans that are opposed and refuse to support the franchise due to Sega’s decision to move the franchise to the PlayStation Portable (PSP) rather than continue the success of the first game1 by releasing sequels of the game on the PlayStation 3 (PS3).
The argument at the time that Valkyria Chronicles 2 was announced for the PSP was that Sega wanted to increase the fan base of the franchise. (more…)
- Which to this day has sold nearly 1 million copies worldwide thanks to a price drop in North America which lead to the game selling 631 748 copies in that area alone) [↩]
It was only a short, few months ago that Namco Bandai released a few pieces of artwork for their next “mothership” Tales game to celebrate the franchise’s 15th anniversary (which coincidentally is today!) and they even launched a site counting down the days to the 
So I tried out the Valkyria Chronicles 3 demo, via Anoop at AndriaSang.com (4gamer.net), and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Here we are at the end of this short marathon.
I am sure some of you might look at this and think, “What the heck is Radiata Stories? I’ve never heard it!” While I am sure there are quite a few of you (or a lot) that have never heard of Radiata Stories, it is a game, that despite poor sales in North America, sold very well in Japan, even outselling Devil May Cry 3 by about 10, 000 copies in total after both titles were out for nearly a year.
If there is one game franchise that PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners (and fans of JRPGs) would love to see is ANY Tales game on the PS3 that is in English.
The Tokyo Game Show has come and gone, leaving in its wake a slew of new upcoming games for all platforms. This year was no different as we saw old franchises in new lights, such as the new Yakuza game which features zombies, to new franchises such as the Level 5 – Studio Ghibli collaboration Nino Kuni, to even new installments of recent franchises, such as Valkyria Chronicles 3. Whenever these game shows end I always take a moment to consider what would have made the event more interesting to me as a gamer who has a particular preference for Japanese-developed RPGs (JRPGs).
“Ugh, this English dub sounds awful!”, “I wish they picked better voice actors!”, “Gahhh… My ears!!” – These are some example of the common things you’ll hear people say about English audio tracks on their favourite Japanese-developed Roleplaying Games (RPG). Through the years we’ve seen the best (Disgaea) and worst (Arc Rise Fantasia, Xenogears) that English audio tracks can inflict on all games, from the mediocre (Arc Rise Fantasia) to the very great (Xenogears); yet over the years there has been great strides taken in providing gamers with good localizations. We see this in games which are text-heavy, such as the Ace Attorney series, where a lot of Cultural jokes and references are molded towards a North American audience, to games which feature a lot of audio, such as Valkyria Chronicles or Disgaea 3. 
It’s a different time these days with gamers split between the PlayStation 3, X-Box 360 and Wii, it’s a far cry from the previous generation in which the King of the Mountain was the PlayStation 2. With the amount of Wiis, PS3s and 360s out there it is no surprise that more and more third party developers have decided to go multi-platform to recuperate development costs and make a profit while also being able to get their games into as many homes as possible. What is a developer to do when there is a near 50-50 split of X-Box 360 owners as there are PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners (the Wii is another story entirely)? It would seem pretty silly for any third party developer to not make the most of this and double their audience and offer their games on both consoles. 
Little Big Planet is one of those rare video games that you come across these days that manages to be many things all at once and get it all right.