|
I caught up to this over the past few days, what an interesting game. Easy to see why it had a cult following. I'd seen Bogleech's monster review for this game ages ago, but I didn't recognize it until seeing the Pigs....he certainly steered clear of the actual plot, at least so uhh uhhhh *gestures vaguely* all that, was new. Thankfully I also forgot all the monsters he showed off other than the Pigs and Tigers so it's been quite the journey seeing all these weirdos Weirdly, the game reminds me of, like...RPG Maker games? It's hard to pin down what exactly, maybe it's just the offbeatness of everything from the world to the dialog to the designs or the general aesthetic of the game or how generally ancillary the combat is. But it has this vibe of something I'd probably see made today...but in the past! Knowing that the game was originally conceived closer to Scenario C explains some things about A & B to me, namely how even though they had a plot it still felt a little tacked on and a bunch of plot beats just coming at you that suddenly and aggressively resolve. And also why despite being the name of the game and heavy focus on the marketing, Linda herself feels kind of tacked on. Just constantly being taken out of the plot and briefly put back and so on. Also explains why there's so many side mechanics; it was originally concieved purely as an open world collection game so it needed a lot of different ways to collect monsters to encourage exploration, talking to NPCs and other avenues than battle. A lot of people called A+B an extended tutorial but to me C feels more like an extended "free mode". There's no real plot to tie you dow nso its just you and the world and side quests across 7 years, with some of those sidequests only being notable because you have context of alternate "what ifs" from the other 2 scenarios. It sounds like you could even make some headway on exploring a few mysteries in the other routes if you were so inclined. Anyway my read on the plot is all the animals are familiar-but-freaky because Neo Kenya is earth but it keeps dying and getting recreated. The ark picks up all the animals and then does a bunch of genetic engineering on them so there's genetic diversity and not instantly running into inbreeding. Same likely happens to the humans but on a smaller scale, which is why they get beast traits and it resolves the Life Force problem by rebooting humans and making them hardier and live longer. We'll probably learn something like "our" Earth, the one that already died and got remade to Neo Kenya, was probably the xTh time this has happened and our "normal" critters are just the weird genetically manipulated off spring of "more normal" creatures before; and that for hte life problem the humans are having now it was even worse in the past. Presumably the "end result" from Scenarios A & B (& I presume C) will produce even freakier critters, and then when THAT Earth dies, even WEIRDER and so on and so forth. The remake making a lot of designs more recognizable/tame might've been to help sell the idea better.
|
#
¿
May 27, 2022 22:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 20:03 |
|
|
Raitzeno posted:what if both versions are canon due to time travel/loop fuckery? some of the animals have stayed the same because they worked during the last series of arkloops but some didn't so it's trying again and hoping that something changes so they don't have to remake the game a second time and change things up yet again Also possible. There was that brief camp dialog akin to "Hey Ken if we were reincarnated, would you still marry me?" not a time loop just so happens that over a course of 30,000 years things happen to keep working out the same, but different, way 
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2022 15:14
|
|
|
Might have been a tweak on the "traumatized, amnesiac" linda storyline. Less "afraid of Ken", specifically, and more "nervous around people, in general" or maybe "had a bad flashback". Could also have been us coming in just as she crawled into the corner and knocked over the flower vase
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2022 03:26
|
|
|
poor sachiko gets kidnapped and then a weirdo jumps out of a well, rushes through her vows and kicks her new in laws down a well
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2022 18:09
|
|
|
Poor Ken's dad. Died, got brought back to life but it seems like half his mind is taken up by the god program so he's only kind of half wawre of what he's even doing, and he's got no one to talk to and barely has time to talk when he does. cool jacket tho
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2022 00:35
|
|
|
DACK FAYDEN posted:I have no idea how anyone would ever 100% this game blind with all the time limit stuff/very strangely located animals. It's not like any individual bit is too stressful but they add up and you only have to miss one! The intent was probably you'd play Route C multiple times. There's a lot of interlinking parts and time limits. A & B help with easing you in, letting you figure out various methods and getting about half of the monsters and things to watch out for, but there's still a lot to do in C so you're probably meant to take notes see what you did wrong and then do it again, but better.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2022 14:20
|
|
|
Sum Gai posted:Yeah- beyond a missing slot in your animals-collected list, is there any hint these things exist? They're listed in the sheet of animals you get from that farm subquest. imo, if you were doing that sidequest and didn't know these existed, they'd probably stick out in terms of animals you haven't seen yet. I could see a "casual" player seeing them and just picking them up if only because you might have already known how to get the others so may as well take the new one. e: yeah so this is the selection Hydra / Snakehead / Tree frog / Carp / Tiger / Ladybird Some are definitely rarer than others, but you've probably stumbled on most of these in A & B, if not already found. So while it's definitely still a dick move to have them so rare and not give a hint to them, I do think it's reasonable to see this unknown name and pick it without knowing the context. rannum fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jul 25, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2022 17:01
|
|
|
Kind of seems like Ken's dad probably should have sent out a lot of arcs, and not just the one It'd be funny if you could register all of them and fill them up with animals. True 100% Hell: maximize every arc I like the "undiscovered" species gimmick where you get to name them. Do they happen to "stick" across files or is it just for the one?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2022 00:28
|
|
|
Well obviously the PC98 game was a previous cycle, but Hedgehogs, Hands & Stands didn't get on the arc. I agree that the Piranhas look creepier in the new game; PC98's are just way goofier. Kind of a fun turn around on that. The Whale is so cool! Definitely my favorite of the critters, I think. I assume they look the same in PC98, but could we still see them just to see it rendered in the old style?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2022 15:30
|
|
|
Oh the Giraffes are very fun designs. Couple a cool guys right there. You can really start to feel the vibes as the planet empties by this point, and the anxiety as you only have a year left to get those last couple animals. Imagining getting to this point and not having 100 yet. I wish the music changed at this point. There's not going to be very many people left moving forward, and you're scrounging around in a rush to get the remainder...it'd add some fun melancholy to it. I really like it when games do something like that
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2022 03:33
|
|
|
Randalor posted:I know that there are games that add instruments to a main theme as the game goes on, but is there any that remove instruments as the game progresses? This would be a good use for something like that, start off with a full lively orchestral score, then slowly remove instruments as the years go on until mid-97/start of 98, all you're left with is a piano or violin providing the overworld music as the cities have mostly emptied.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 28, 2022 16:10
|
|
|
1. My brow raised a bit at the new earth already having natives on it. I suppose those are meant to be separate, different beings other than humans? Bit surprising since the way the "loop" was set up seemed like beastians were just humans who had a bunch of genetic engineering done on them. Suppose that sets this up to be a "nicer" couple hundred thousand years at least.ivantod posted:By the way, regarding that MA-RI-A part which is spoken with a synthesized voice. You might remember that when they were camping at the very beginning of this scenario, Linda asked Ken what they should name their first daughter and offered the name Maria as suggestion. You can accept that, or you can change the name into something else, where as player you have the freedom to input there any name you want by using katakana syllables. So, here when you get to the end, basically the game will synthesize the speech to pronounce whatever name was chosen for the first daughter during that conversation. 2.I'm glad you explained this because I legitimately could not make out what the synthesized voice was saying. That's a pretty fun thing to include in this (and absolutely would have been cut in localizatoin if there was one) quote:
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2022 21:59
|
|
|
I hope the Last year is super literal. It's Summer 1998 and you have one (1) year to collect 150 animals also there's 30 more animals get at it, player 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2022 22:03
|
|
|
Randalor posted:Oh thank God. Also, I love how Ken becomes the leader of the village and then Linda just takes over with no explanation later on before he dies. I'm guessing it's because he's busy with hunting parties and work away from the village while she's busy focusing on matters in the village, it's just funny how it's "Ken became the leader! Then everyone realized that was a bad idea and made Linda the leader instead". Maybe he slipped on another banana peel. The entire planet blew up
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2022 23:16
|
|
|
This mode definitely feels like something the developers though would be neat, but towards the end of development so they didn't have a lot of time to fully test, fine tune or change things so they popped open the developer tools to give a bunch of pre-set stuff to make it possible without being a nightmare. Also seems like the mode that would get a lot of speedrunners interested in it to optimize routing and stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2022 22:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 20:03 |
|
|
That was a great RPG, thank you for translating it for us. What a treat! The scenario D was a nice victory lap too, collecting all those effeciently. Little surprising the Aye Ayes were something you still had to grab from the NPCs; just furthers my thoughts that this whole thing was modified off a save state they made on a Route C run. Do you have any links to a nice speedrun, I'd love to see the "optimal" gameplay the community's gotten to
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2022 22:58
|
|