I don't know if it's fair to blame Elden Ring for an Atelier game's poor sales. Like, those games seem like they're aimed at totally different audiences.
I think the standard Atelier/NicheJRPG fan also plays From games (not the other way around) so I think they kinda overlap. Its not really a Ryza3/RE4 case. I think the diehard fan would try to buy both, though.
Atelier Ryza generally had much bigger marketing in Japan, as well. I’d never heard about it until going to Japan for a few weeks and seeing it EVERYWHERE.
I actually played only Blue Reflection 1 (way begore 2 existed) and I LOVED IT! Hinako is amazing, one of the best JRPGs protagonist I ever played. The combat is great as well. Very simple, yet well done turn based RPG.
I also played it some time after it was released, and really loved it. Yeah - There where some bad acted and animated moments, but they where not frequent or distracting. The main game was great. I liked Blue Reflection 2 too. It's clear Gust learned a lot with the development of the Atelier Ryza games, because it's clear some mechanics found their way in Blue Reflection 2. It's a terrible shame that the Blue Reflection "Sun" mobile gacha garbage game completely ruined the franchise by dumping in a male protagonist in the game series. Not only is a male character not really done in a Yuri oriented game series, but making that male the main protagonist is an insult to the very core of the series. We probably will never see a Blue Reflection 3 (and even if we see one, it will probably be with a male protagonist too)...
Hey dude - Your channel got recommended to me (I'm not even that much into JRPGs, but I was looking for new RPGs in general to get by grabby paws on) I just wanted to tell you that I find the "Low Quality" of the Camera super charming. It has a really nostalgic feel to it, way back when RUclips was actually about fun content, made by some nerds for other nerds. Now everything is super optimized, every bigger RUclipsr is essential their own business at this point. While effective, this also makes them kinda homogenous and steril in my opinion. So don't worry about it, you're doing a great job
This has happened to many movies as well. I feel so sorry for some film that worked their ass off only to compete against a historic box office success like Titanic or Star Wars Original Trilogy. The JRPG equivalent would be having released anywhere near the release of FFVII.
for Project X Zone 2, while it had a lot of developers the main developer was Monolith. What actually killed that franchise is that Xenoblade became a success so Monolith has not had any reason to go back to it and neither Capcom or Namco care to pick it back up again under a different studio
During the release of SMT Strange Journey, I was not familiar with the franchise, so of course I bought Pokemon HeartGold at the time. But in 2021, I bought SMT5 over Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shiny Pearl. So I guess SMT had its revenge.
I bought Persona in 1996 and it turned me off from the series. SMT is a hardcore series. I recently watched playthroughs of a bunch of non-Persona SMT games, yeah I would never have played them on my own, you need to put so much effort into simply navigating the games. Even if they had no competition I don't think they would have done well. Persona 3 and especially 4 popularized SMT because they are like 1000 times more accessible.
Yeah, I'm an older gamer and a lot of these I remember coming out and this seems a bit like revisionist history. A lot of these games didn't sell because they were obscure and a lot of people didn't know about them or they were on systems that very few people had at the time (like Lunar 2 on Sega CD). That being said content gotta crank out the videos somehow I guess, and I enjoy his content, so even though it feels like a reach I enjoyed watching.
TriAce games always get shafted in the west. Chrono Cross was supposed to allow you to recruit basically every character that existed in the game before the director realized just how much work that would be and settled on 40 characters instead... Guess what you can do in Radiata Stories? There are no non-unique characters in Radiata Stories and well over 100 characters can be recruited.
@@Fermin-hw5pd Let's take Chrono Cross first. There are 40 characters that you can recruit, then there are also a lot of unique characters (with story relevance and special models) that you cannot recruit, aside from that there are also a lot of NPCs with no particular importance to the story and they only say random things. In Radiata Stories, basically all the characters in the game are unique characters. In addition to that you can have most of them as party members. Radiata Stories basically did what Chrono Cross originally set out to do but gave up on because it would be too much work.
I remember being there when Trails SC was released in the west, but I don't remember it being crushed by Zestiria phenomenon. If anything, the perspective with Zesty (and with Tales in general) was in at all-time low because it was said from the japanese fans that it was bad, so a lot of people skipped it and picked another thing instead. I specially remember myself skipping it (Im a huge talesfan and Xillia 2, the immediate previous game in that time is one of my favourites) because I was burn for the horrible reviews, and a lot of people from forums and all doing the same. Its a personal view but It feels weird to see it "crushed". SC reason to not sell much was because is niche, not another bigger JRPG (that was also niche) Anyways, good video, its always pretty interesting to see the coincidences and I still find hilarious that Gust released its Atelier to die against Elden Ring.
Maybe the other small niche jrpgs, but not the big titles. Notice how NISA waited for Square to announce Final Fantasy XVI's release date before announcing Trails into Reverie's.
A huge mistake Level-5 made is to release Ni No Kuni 2 in march 22 2018, when everyone was busy because Capcom released Monster Hunter world in January 26 2018
Not the same crowds. A foul-mouthed 12-year-old CoD zombie won't even play non CoD games. Though I guess today Fortnite and its peers are now the normie bait.
Funny, I never played Chrono Cross (Trigger?) but I played the CRAP out of Lunar 2. I must've beaten it 4-5 times I believe, maybe more. I was 15 back then ... good times. :)
My family couldn't afford a Sega CD, I think it was like another $150 at least in addition to the Genesis so I didn't play Lunar until like 1999-2000 with the PS1 remakes. The funny thing about Trigger and Cross is, Trigger is accessable to basically everyone. It's a simple game. Cross on the other hand is very involved and makes you question whether it was the same team that developed it or not. Honestly I'd almost say Xenogears feels more like a sequel to Chrono Trigger than Chrono Cross does. Xenogears has basically a straight up Gundam anime plot pretty much.
Regarding Sky SC, from what I heard, the PC versions of both Sky FC and SC ended up making up the shortfall on the NA PSP sales. That's why XSEED decided to move forward with localizing The 3rd for PC exclusively.
Just found your channel and I’d like to say there’s nothing wrong with your camera, it reminds me of old school videos that I used to enjoy all the time.
In what universe is Valkyrie Chronicles 1 a massive hit and one of the best selling JRPGs on the PS3!? I can agree with it being one of the greatest of it's generation, but it isn't the game that screwed up other JRPGS in the same release window. That honor goes to Fallout 3.
I picked up Diofield based on your recommendation, Erick (specifically one quest-giving character being some kind of chaos enabler.) Haven't had a chance to start it, but I'm looking forward to it.
Sophie 2 did manage to recover as it got 200k sales by the end of 2022, roughly 100k behind by Ryza's 3 sales. This number is surprising considering her prequel was 7 years ago.
Great vid. I think with a lot of these, they were probably trying to avoid having their games release at the same time as the biggest games. For example, no one wants to release at the same time as Zelda Tears of the Kingdom now, so most likely there will be a zillion AA and indie games released a few months after Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. There are actually more games that get released in January/February than November/December now a days.
I remember i burned Valkyrie Profile on the ps1 back then, I was too young to understand, just did the first dungeon, then I bought the psp version. Still have to do it nowadays ^^'
I agree that SQEX did oversaturate games when Diofield came out. Not only was there Star Ocean 6 but it was about a month after Valkyrie Elysium as well.
Blue Reflection Second Light has my favorite all out battle system of any JRPG. I bought the first one digitally on sale back in the day so I was probably one of the only people excited for Second Light and it didn’t disappoint
Poor Diofield Chronicles, but you forgot about what I think was probably the biggest slayer of them all. Even though it was released almost two months earlier, Xenoblade 3 is such a long game, people probably still played it in September! I know I did! Anyway, Square Enix had quite a year last year. They still make great games. All they need is to stop making non-RPGs like Avengers and Babylon's Fall, and stick to their guns. And drop that obsession with NFTs, or they may end up like Shinra.
honestly it was thanks to Xseed that i caught wind of the trails series, however my issue with them is that they never include dual language meaning we either had to play in English for eng VO or Japanese for Jp VO. As a PC only other games never affected trails release for me, heck i didnt know they were over shadowed, Trails is such a gem in the rough for people in the West. Also i tried Blue Reflection and Atelier Sophie and i couldnt get into it, not for me.
I'm the type of guy who roots for the underdog so I like these types of videos as it makes me go buy and play these games. Thanks for this video Erick!
The Atelier series could have an entire month to itself and it still won’t move the needle. There’s been a release damn near every year since Iris came out. It’s impossible to figure out where each game slots in without research. That kills impulse buys. They rarely advertise the games and most are never reviewed by major outlets. It’s a niche series that will always be overshadowed by bigger franchises.
I love the legend of heroes games, but I did discover them very late. Or well, Trails of Cold steel I got on the Vita, during a sale, both games for 15 euro each, a barging. Loved it so much, then I saw it was on PC, bought it there as well as I didn't finish the vita version, barely touched the PC version, then bought it again on the PS4, finished both games on the PS4 (yes I bought the game 3 times in total xD). So happy I got the second game on disk as well! Bought part 3 special edition for the PS4 on disc too, but later bought it on a steam sale as well, playing it on PC atm, I love the series. Such a shame it stops after 4 games, but understandable, you can't keep telling stories with the same characters.
uh? It doesn't stop after 4 games. Trails into Reverie is out in August, and it features many of the same cast, many of the protagonists are cold steel characters actually. Also you should play trails into the sky 1(FC), 2(SC), and 3rd (same series, has some of the same characters like Olivier, Tita, Agate, and later on, Renne). Then you can play Trails to Zero and Azure.. Please don't play them before sky. Like all the best scenes involve Renne, and they will fall flat if you don't have her backstory. Ideally you should play them before Reverie because alot of Reverie's content is crossbell stuff, including one of the 3 main protagonists (Don't play zero before sky! =P).
Awesome perspective check on why and how these great titles ended up obscured. I've played most of them but I still have to give a go to PCZ games and DioField (wishlisted it here and there but still have to get it). Thanks for this video, you truly did your homework on the subject and giving a brilliant lesson here! I already anticipate your next video of this kind.
Ah, yes, the critically acclaimed, Pockiemon games, where you capture different flavored biscuit sticks and make them battle other biscuit sticks for supremacy.
3st Hey, animu girl in the 1nd one reminds me of Misato from Evangelion. Edit: Eternal Poison? Is that related to Shadow Hearts? Looks like Blanca and a similar style.
It's not made by the same people (I think) but it is a gothic JRPG like Shadow Hearts. If I recall, it has multiple stories told from multiple protagonist's POVs, and all of them are searching for the titular Eternal Poison. It's one of Erick's favorites, so finding a video where he talks about it shouldn't be hard.
I vaguely remember Lunar 2. There was a hint of its song somewhere in my head. There were 2 endings I believe. Other than that I'm drawing a blank. Valkyrie Profile was a game I missed until I got it for the PSP many years ago. The love story of the MC was absolutely heart-wrenching. It was pretty much the only thing that made me plough through its difficult combat. I was oblivious and played it by ear, listening to the words of Freya and obeyed like a sheep. It was only after 3 playthroughs that I finally managed to get the ending I desired. Trails of Cold Steel. I managed to get through 1, hard to get back on the 2 or 3 for that matter. It feels like going through .Hack trilogies all over again. Shin Megami Tensei Apocalypse was an absolute beast. I bought it out of a whim without even playing the original and I still loved it. I perfected my combination of demons and got all the endings, even the bad ones. I enjoyed becoming a god the most. It even rivals that of Devil Survivor 1 and 2. The voice acting in particular was superb. 10/10 would play again.
It had 1 ending and an epilogue that was playable after the ending where Hiiro goes to the moon and finds lucia after fighting the 'star dragon' boss who is that weird gunslinger boss you found early in the game just after you get the blonde mage-girl. It was a good game, better than the ps remake IMO. I liked the magic experience system (people hated it because saving cost some but the amount it cost was basically negligible like 3% thru the game), but being able to select which skills you wanted to level up how much was really cool. I don't know if the music was better too. T he ps1 version of the silver star had inferior music to the sega cd version so I imagine eternal blue did too but I never actually heard the full soundtrack for the ps1 version. I wanted to try Valkyrie profile so bad but could never find it up here in Canada. Some block buster rental places had it for like a week and then not because they would end up 'lost'. Cold steel 2 is my least f ave trails game, though I still love it. Cold steel 3 is much better imo. The new main cast are alot more evenly fleshed out. Rean finally grows up a little and by being an instructor, his self-sacrifice epiphany moment I'm worthless nonsense he has to relearn 500x is less cringe since he IS the instructor so it makes more sense, and the politics are good, much better than Azure's imo which everyone raves about.
Have you tried playing Honkai Star Rail? The game is like a love letter to Trails Fans. The game mechanics is similar to Trails, (though dumbed down a lot) Even the 2 main Characters is named Stelle (for the female) and Caelus (for the male) which is the Primal God of the Sky in Roman mythology
As an RPG Gamer you know we knew about these games lol... i skip the more popular rpgs and usually buy the ones that are not as popular as i know the budgeted rpgs will go in price later.
I saw the first blue reflection in gamestop with my roommate, I was gonna buy it and showed my roommate first and he took it out my hand and bought it for himself...it was the last 1....never heard of it before then
never heard of it before now. Already eBayed a copy. Yet again, damned expensive as almost all copies are either from France or America. I've really gotta stop watching this guy's videos :)
The main reason why Lunar: Eternal Blue sold Poorly wasn't just because the Sega Cd was on it's way out; It also was a failure commercially(though not as bad as the 32x). The Sega CD only sold 2.24 million units world wide. It doesn't help that the game looked dated as both the SNES and Genesis had better looking game. Some of these games were ruined more by being released well past the release of the console's successor.
I legit do not think Chrono Trigger had anything to do with Lunar 2 not selling well. Purely a platform issue, Sega CD was so expensive nobody owned it in comparison to the other consoles of the time.
Damnit I wanna play the trails games. I wanna play them soooo bad! I own all of the ones available on ps5. But I refuse to touch them until trails in the sky comes to console. I know I can just play it on even my shitty laptop but I refuse. Games are like meals for me and Trails looks like a whole buffet
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on the trails cold steel 2 part. I'm a part of several RPG collection groups on Facebook, And everyone was talking about and getting trails of cold steel 2 no one was talking about getting or collecting dragon quest 7
While they both have kind of a bad reputation, I actually enjoyed both Tales of Zestiria and Fire Emblem Fates. They are among my favorites in their respective series.
i dont know, but for me atelier sophie 2 has waaay better input transitions in and out of actions and battles, smoother fps, than ryza 2. story wise its mid but gameplay for me is 9/10
Chrono Cross was a subpar sequel and was not big and neither overshadowed anything, if anything Chrono Cross was mostly received with criticism as a subpar sequel to Chrono Trigger.
For me, DioField is just so bad. I stop playing the game about 10 chapters in since it was so boring to me. The game mechanic is so shallow compare to other game, for example Triangle Strategy. The equipment shop is not diverse, the skill upgrade part, I feel is not so diverse. Even the character is not so diverse. You're basically getting the same character types with a different face. The more you play, the more you're doing the same action routine. I just basically sold it off at 70% price.
actually your camera is giving the video a nostalgic look
All of youtube used to be like that. It was really personal
Yeah I really like it
Agreed.
I miss these kind of videos
I don't know if it's fair to blame Elden Ring for an Atelier game's poor sales. Like, those games seem like they're aimed at totally different audiences.
I think the standard Atelier/NicheJRPG fan also plays From games (not the other way around) so I think they kinda overlap. Its not really a Ryza3/RE4 case.
I think the diehard fan would try to buy both, though.
Atelier Ryza generally had much bigger marketing in Japan, as well. I’d never heard about it until going to Japan for a few weeks and seeing it EVERYWHERE.
I actually played only Blue Reflection 1 (way begore 2 existed) and I LOVED IT! Hinako is amazing, one of the best JRPGs protagonist I ever played. The combat is great as well. Very simple, yet well done turn based RPG.
I also played it some time after it was released, and really loved it. Yeah - There where some bad acted and animated moments, but they where not frequent or distracting. The main game was great. I liked Blue Reflection 2 too. It's clear Gust learned a lot with the development of the Atelier Ryza games, because it's clear some mechanics found their way in Blue Reflection 2.
It's a terrible shame that the Blue Reflection "Sun" mobile gacha garbage game completely ruined the franchise by dumping in a male protagonist in the game series. Not only is a male character not really done in a Yuri oriented game series, but making that male the main protagonist is an insult to the very core of the series. We probably will never see a Blue Reflection 3 (and even if we see one, it will probably be with a male protagonist too)...
Hey dude - Your channel got recommended to me (I'm not even that much into JRPGs, but I was looking for new RPGs in general to get by grabby paws on)
I just wanted to tell you that I find the "Low Quality" of the Camera super charming. It has a really nostalgic feel to it, way back when RUclips was actually about fun content, made by some nerds for other nerds. Now everything is super optimized, every bigger RUclipsr is essential their own business at this point. While effective, this also makes them kinda homogenous and steril in my opinion. So don't worry about it, you're doing a great job
Agreed.
I still don't know why publishers always release those niche JRPG's in worst possible time: Spring and Autumn, the time when AAA titles arrives.
This has happened to many movies as well. I feel so sorry for some film that worked their ass off only to compete against a historic box office success like Titanic or Star Wars Original Trilogy. The JRPG equivalent would be having released anywhere near the release of FFVII.
for Project X Zone 2, while it had a lot of developers the main developer was Monolith. What actually killed that franchise is that Xenoblade became a success so Monolith has not had any reason to go back to it and neither Capcom or Namco care to pick it back up again under a different studio
During the release of SMT Strange Journey, I was not familiar with the franchise, so of course I bought Pokemon HeartGold at the time.
But in 2021, I bought SMT5 over Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shiny Pearl. So I guess SMT had its revenge.
From Pokémon to SMT 😄
I bought Persona in 1996 and it turned me off from the series. SMT is a hardcore series. I recently watched playthroughs of a bunch of non-Persona SMT games, yeah I would never have played them on my own, you need to put so much effort into simply navigating the games. Even if they had no competition I don't think they would have done well.
Persona 3 and especially 4 popularized SMT because they are like 1000 times more accessible.
@@xxJing That's more so the older SMT games. The SMT games from the Nintendo 3DS era and onward were/are much more accessible and fair.
Yeah, I'm an older gamer and a lot of these I remember coming out and this seems a bit like revisionist history. A lot of these games didn't sell because they were obscure and a lot of people didn't know about them or they were on systems that very few people had at the time (like Lunar 2 on Sega CD). That being said content gotta crank out the videos somehow I guess, and I enjoy his content, so even though it feels like a reach I enjoyed watching.
I have that psp Valkyire Profile. It may have been a failure in the west, but it was a success in my heart
Triangle Strategy allegedly sold over a million copies, which is way more than I thought it would
It saddens me to think about how niche Strange Journey is, especially since Redux is possibly my favorite Megaten game of all time.
Strange Journey and Valkyrie Profile are some of my favorite RPGs.
Yeah, same, VP along with Xenogears are the only ps1 games I have played xd
I couldn't get into Valkyrie, but Strange Journey Redux is in my top 3 favorite video games.
Blue Reflection 2 despite being overshadowed still sold well by GUST standards.
I do wish Lunar can come back again especially on switch with cel shade graphics.
Lunar 1 and 2 in the 2D HD art style would be amazing
As always, I love your content. It's a shame some of these games get overlooked. Have you ever considered writing a non fiction book about JRPG's?
TriAce games always get shafted in the west. Chrono Cross was supposed to allow you to recruit basically every character that existed in the game before the director realized just how much work that would be and settled on 40 characters instead... Guess what you can do in Radiata Stories? There are no non-unique characters in Radiata Stories and well over 100 characters can be recruited.
But...aren't those 40 characters (which is decent I think) all the characters that exist on the game? I don't get what you are saying
@@Fermin-hw5pd Let's take Chrono Cross first. There are 40 characters that you can recruit, then there are also a lot of unique characters (with story relevance and special models) that you cannot recruit, aside from that there are also a lot of NPCs with no particular importance to the story and they only say random things.
In Radiata Stories, basically all the characters in the game are unique characters. In addition to that you can have most of them as party members. Radiata Stories basically did what Chrono Cross originally set out to do but gave up on because it would be too much work.
@@xxJing Oh okay, I get it now
"RPGs are released like hot chocolate all around the world." Yeah? Hot chocolate is the best simile you got? Haha. Loved it, great vid. Thank you.
Lufia being over shadowed by Secret of Mana, was very sad for me
I remember being there when Trails SC was released in the west, but I don't remember it being crushed by Zestiria phenomenon. If anything, the perspective with Zesty (and with Tales in general) was in at all-time low because it was said from the japanese fans that it was bad, so a lot of people skipped it and picked another thing instead. I specially remember myself skipping it (Im a huge talesfan and Xillia 2, the immediate previous game in that time is one of my favourites) because I was burn for the horrible reviews, and a lot of people from forums and all doing the same. Its a personal view but It feels weird to see it "crushed". SC reason to not sell much was because is niche, not another bigger JRPG (that was also niche)
Anyways, good video, its always pretty interesting to see the coincidences and I still find hilarious that Gust released its Atelier to die against Elden Ring.
I like how trails was first crushed by other jrpg and now is crushing others.
Maybe the other small niche jrpgs, but not the big titles. Notice how NISA waited for Square to announce Final Fantasy XVI's release date before announcing Trails into Reverie's.
A huge mistake Level-5 made is to release Ni No Kuni 2 in march 22 2018, when everyone was busy because Capcom released Monster Hunter world in January 26 2018
Great video, didn't even imagine some bangers were released in such short time frames
Can't wait for "Top 10 JRPGs RUINED by non-JRPGs"
Not the same crowds. A foul-mouthed 12-year-old CoD zombie won't even play non CoD games. Though I guess today Fortnite and its peers are now the normie bait.
@@asmodeus58XX for example, Ryza 3 was being overshadowed by RE4 remake
Funny, I never played Chrono Cross (Trigger?) but I played the CRAP out of Lunar 2. I must've beaten it 4-5 times I believe, maybe more. I was 15 back then ... good times. :)
I loved the Lunar Series and still waiting for another remake on the current console
My family couldn't afford a Sega CD, I think it was like another $150 at least in addition to the Genesis so I didn't play Lunar until like 1999-2000 with the PS1 remakes.
The funny thing about Trigger and Cross is, Trigger is accessable to basically everyone. It's a simple game. Cross on the other hand is very involved and makes you question whether it was the same team that developed it or not. Honestly I'd almost say Xenogears feels more like a sequel to Chrono Trigger than Chrono Cross does. Xenogears has basically a straight up Gundam anime plot pretty much.
Regarding Sky SC, from what I heard, the PC versions of both Sky FC and SC ended up making up the shortfall on the NA PSP sales. That's why XSEED decided to move forward with localizing The 3rd for PC exclusively.
This guy is the KING of jrpg content!!!
The remastered trails in the sky trilogy is available with really good fan translations on the vita, but a jailbroken device is necessary.
Diofield also had a demo that, as I recall, also came out around the same time Star Ocean 6 also had a demo available.
Just found your channel and I’d like to say there’s nothing wrong with your camera, it reminds me of old school videos that I used to enjoy all the time.
In what universe is Valkyrie Chronicles 1 a massive hit and one of the best selling JRPGs on the PS3!? I can agree with it being one of the greatest of it's generation, but it isn't the game that screwed up other JRPGS in the same release window. That honor goes to Fallout 3.
Im glad you went back to mostly showing gameplay and tone down thr intro song. Wish more youtubers did this format.
I picked up Diofield based on your recommendation, Erick (specifically one quest-giving character being some kind of chaos enabler.) Haven't had a chance to start it, but I'm looking forward to it.
I still think that the biggest RPG crime is Konami dropping Suikoden II so close to Final Fantasy VIII. Only one week earlier in North America.
2:22 VP only sold 73,000 copies in North America. And its current price tag is well worth it. It's a masterpiece.
Yeah, deep and sad character stories and fun combat, if only it had a better story outside character recruitments
I couldn't get into it.
Sophie 2 did manage to recover as it got 200k sales by the end of 2022, roughly 100k behind by Ryza's 3 sales. This number is surprising considering her prequel was 7 years ago.
a pitty for so many Jrpg release dates :/
Great vid. I think with a lot of these, they were probably trying to avoid having their games release at the same time as the biggest games. For example, no one wants to release at the same time as Zelda Tears of the Kingdom now, so most likely there will be a zillion AA and indie games released a few months after Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. There are actually more games that get released in January/February than November/December now a days.
Resonance of Fate was published 1 week AFTER Final Fantasy XIII. It stood no chance despite being a far better game imo :(
I remember i burned Valkyrie Profile on the ps1 back then, I was too young to understand, just did the first dungeon, then I bought the psp version. Still have to do it nowadays ^^'
I had to burn it back in the day because Europe... Haha it didn't get a release here until the psp 😂
At least old games are accesible by emulation today!
I agree that SQEX did oversaturate games when Diofield came out. Not only was there Star Ocean 6 but it was about a month after Valkyrie Elysium as well.
I remember getting Blue reflection day 1, The good days when gamestop was stacked
Blue Reflection Second Light has my favorite all out battle system of any JRPG. I bought the first one digitally on sale back in the day so I was probably one of the only people excited for Second Light and it didn’t disappoint
Ive bought the trails series on like every platform its available these guys need to be successful 🙌
Great video Erick, I definitely missed some of these gems. Great shirt too, I'm a big fan of Hocico.
Poor Diofield Chronicles, but you forgot about what I think was probably the biggest slayer of them all. Even though it was released almost two months earlier, Xenoblade 3 is such a long game, people probably still played it in September! I know I did!
Anyway, Square Enix had quite a year last year. They still make great games. All they need is to stop making non-RPGs like Avengers and Babylon's Fall, and stick to their guns. And drop that obsession with NFTs, or they may end up like Shinra.
It's too late; Square Enix is already becoming the Disney of Japan. :(
honestly it was thanks to Xseed that i caught wind of the trails series, however my issue with them is that they never include dual language meaning we either had to play in English for eng VO or Japanese for Jp VO. As a PC only other games never affected trails release for me, heck i didnt know they were over shadowed, Trails is such a gem in the rough for people in the West. Also i tried Blue Reflection and Atelier Sophie and i couldnt get into it, not for me.
I'm the type of guy who roots for the underdog so I like these types of videos as it makes me go buy and play these games. Thanks for this video Erick!
Valkyrie profile is 100% better than chroni cross!
Epic music epic story great game
The Atelier series could have an entire month to itself and it still won’t move the needle. There’s been a release damn near every year since Iris came out. It’s impossible to figure out where each game slots in without research. That kills impulse buys. They rarely advertise the games and most are never reviewed by major outlets. It’s a niche series that will always be overshadowed by bigger franchises.
So this was really a video of the chrono games eating everyone’s lunch.
Wonderful episode! You folks truly are an inspiration :)
I love the legend of heroes games, but I did discover them very late. Or well, Trails of Cold steel I got on the Vita, during a sale, both games for 15 euro each, a barging. Loved it so much, then I saw it was on PC, bought it there as well as I didn't finish the vita version, barely touched the PC version, then bought it again on the PS4, finished both games on the PS4 (yes I bought the game 3 times in total xD). So happy I got the second game on disk as well! Bought part 3 special edition for the PS4 on disc too, but later bought it on a steam sale as well, playing it on PC atm, I love the series. Such a shame it stops after 4 games, but understandable, you can't keep telling stories with the same characters.
uh? It doesn't stop after 4 games.
Trails into Reverie is out in August, and it features many of the same cast, many of the protagonists are cold steel characters actually. Also you should play trails into the sky 1(FC), 2(SC), and 3rd (same series, has some of the same characters like Olivier, Tita, Agate, and later on, Renne).
Then you can play Trails to Zero and Azure.. Please don't play them before sky. Like all the best scenes involve Renne, and they will fall flat if you don't have her backstory.
Ideally you should play them before Reverie because alot of Reverie's content is crossbell stuff, including one of the 3 main protagonists (Don't play zero before sky! =P).
Eternal Blue needs more love
Honorable Mention: Radiata Stories released between Dragon Quest 8 and Shadow of the Colossus
Awesome perspective check on why and how these great titles ended up obscured. I've played most of them but I still have to give a go to PCZ games and DioField (wishlisted it here and there but still have to get it). Thanks for this video, you truly did your homework on the subject and giving a brilliant lesson here! I already anticipate your next video of this kind.
13:50 I had no idea blue reflection had a sequel, I loved the first one, I have to go but this one right now
I own both blue reflections and I love them
Ah, yes, the critically acclaimed, Pockiemon games, where you capture different flavored biscuit sticks and make them battle other biscuit sticks for supremacy.
Working Design was a 🤡show. That´s what ruined Lunar.
3st
Hey, animu girl in the 1nd one reminds me of Misato from Evangelion.
Edit: Eternal Poison? Is that related to Shadow Hearts? Looks like Blanca and a similar style.
Storywise and gameplay, no; but maybe staff? I dunno.
@@tigerhorse6321 Gonna try it out. I like Disgaea and FF Tactics so this looks good.
It's not made by the same people (I think) but it is a gothic JRPG like Shadow Hearts. If I recall, it has multiple stories told from multiple protagonist's POVs, and all of them are searching for the titular Eternal Poison. It's one of Erick's favorites, so finding a video where he talks about it shouldn't be hard.
@@Kaitou1412Fangirl Nice. I'll probably be playing it on the emulator tonight.
Chrono Trigger Series destroyed everyone's careers
I enjoyed Project X Zone more than Fire Emblem Birthright/Conquest
Never publish a game within a month of a Square Enix or First Party Nintendo RPG...a less on even Squeenix itself doesn't know!
And also with Persona (Neo TWEWY) and Monster Hunter (Valkyria Chronicles 4).
I vaguely remember Lunar 2. There was a hint of its song somewhere in my head. There were 2 endings I believe. Other than that I'm drawing a blank.
Valkyrie Profile was a game I missed until I got it for the PSP many years ago. The love story of the MC was absolutely heart-wrenching. It was pretty much the only thing
that made me plough through its difficult combat. I was oblivious and played it by ear, listening to the words of Freya and obeyed like a sheep. It was only after 3 playthroughs that
I finally managed to get the ending I desired.
Trails of Cold Steel. I managed to get through 1, hard to get back on the 2 or 3 for that matter. It feels like going through .Hack trilogies all over again.
Shin Megami Tensei Apocalypse was an absolute beast. I bought it out of a whim without even playing the original and I still loved it. I perfected my combination of demons and got all the
endings, even the bad ones. I enjoyed becoming a god the most. It even rivals that of Devil Survivor 1 and 2. The voice acting in particular was superb. 10/10 would play again.
It had 1 ending and an epilogue that was playable after the ending where Hiiro goes to the moon and finds lucia after fighting the 'star dragon' boss who is that weird gunslinger boss you found early in the game just after you get the blonde mage-girl. It was a good game, better than the ps remake IMO. I liked the magic experience system (people hated it because saving cost some but the amount it cost was basically negligible like 3% thru the game), but being able to select which skills you wanted to level up how much was really cool.
I don't know if the music was better too. T he ps1 version of the silver star had inferior music to the sega cd version so I imagine eternal blue did too but I never actually heard the full soundtrack for the ps1 version.
I wanted to try Valkyrie profile so bad but could never find it up here in Canada. Some block buster rental places had it for like a week and then not because they would end up 'lost'.
Cold steel 2 is my least f ave trails game, though I still love it. Cold steel 3 is much better imo. The new main cast are alot more evenly fleshed out. Rean finally grows up a little and by being an instructor, his self-sacrifice epiphany moment I'm worthless nonsense he has to relearn 500x is less cringe since he IS the instructor so it makes more sense, and the politics are good, much better than Azure's imo which everyone raves about.
Oddly enough, I played Sophie 2 before I played Stranger of Paradise, and boy did I abhore the latter.
Am still wishing for Project X Zone 3, with even far more chars ;-;.
Have you tried playing Honkai Star Rail? The game is like a love letter to Trails Fans. The game mechanics is similar to Trails, (though dumbed down a lot)
Even the 2 main Characters is named Stelle (for the female) and Caelus (for the male) which is the Primal God of the Sky in Roman mythology
A very good example is Fire Emblem Radiant dawn. It was released a week after Super Smash Bros Brawl
You are wrong!
Super Mario Galaxy is the game that released 4 days before Radiant Dawn.
Those 2 are 1 year apart bro xd
@@Fermin-hw5pd Rhea really messed up when he put this kid in charge, or is she secretly trying to rewrite gaming history via proxy?
Funny to see a Square game get ruined by a Falcom game. How the tables have turned.
As an RPG Gamer you know we knew about these games lol... i skip the more popular rpgs and usually buy the ones that are not as popular as i know the budgeted rpgs will go in price later.
damn I remember well the lunar games.. those were difficult to beat!
I saw the first blue reflection in gamestop with my roommate, I was gonna buy it and showed my roommate first and he took it out my hand and bought it for himself...it was the last 1....never heard of it before then
never heard of it before now. Already eBayed a copy. Yet again, damned expensive as almost all copies are either from France or America. I've really gotta stop watching this guy's videos :)
@@TheBlackSeraph yes my roommate cheated me out of a physical copy, I got digital and the second one physical
Blue Reflection 2 looks good. Might buy that game if there's a sale
The main reason why Lunar: Eternal Blue sold Poorly wasn't just because the Sega Cd was on it's way out; It also was a failure commercially(though not as bad as the 32x). The Sega CD only sold 2.24 million units world wide. It doesn't help that the game looked dated as both the SNES and Genesis had better looking game.
Some of these games were ruined more by being released well past the release of the console's successor.
i just needed 2 seconds to recognize the song at the start. the memories...
I legit do not think Chrono Trigger had anything to do with Lunar 2 not selling well. Purely a platform issue, Sega CD was so expensive nobody owned it in comparison to the other consoles of the time.
9:23 Thumb up for Geki Teikoku Kagekidan song :)
Lunar Silver start story was the only turn based rpg I enjoyed. A shame there's no sequel
Blue Reflection is up my alley but they killed my interest with all their scummy DLC.
Elex 2 was crushed, with Eldenring out in the same window..
(Elex 2 was a west, but good action-rpg.., just starts rough)
Damnit I wanna play the trails games. I wanna play them soooo bad! I own all of the ones available on ps5. But I refuse to touch them until trails in the sky comes to console. I know I can just play it on even my shitty laptop but I refuse. Games are like meals for me and Trails looks like a whole buffet
I remember the original Blue Reflection
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on the trails cold steel 2 part. I'm a part of several RPG collection groups on Facebook, And everyone was talking about and getting trails of cold steel 2 no one was talking about getting or collecting dragon quest 7
nah i like Blue Reflection 2 coming out on nov 9th cause it was my bday and I was excited for that
I bought a physical copy of CS 2 on Vita day one
Another great video, Eric u are the best
I love lunar 2, too bad there is no remake like the ones of Lunar 1
KT cares more about the JP audience. All of the titles you mentioned dropped in Japan months before the global releases.
While they both have kind of a bad reputation, I actually enjoyed both Tales of Zestiria and Fire Emblem Fates. They are among my favorites in their respective series.
Bro, that camera is from the 1980’s😂
How dare you play on my nostalgia by playing Golden Sun music?!
🤣all im hearing for explanation is "this is a good rpg HOW CAN I REACH DEZ KEEEDZ"
Did someone hear anything about Suikoden Remaster?
Great video!
The issue with Blue Reflection is too much fan service with teenagers, not when it dropped. It is a decent game out of the fan service though.
Only if you go crazy over a couple digits on a fictional character's wiki page, lol.
FFXIV was ruined by NeiR Automata microtransactions
glad poison control got some views
i dont know, but for me atelier sophie 2 has waaay better input transitions in and out of actions and battles, smoother fps, than ryza 2. story wise its mid but gameplay for me is 9/10
Chrono Cross was a subpar sequel and was not big and neither overshadowed anything, if anything Chrono Cross was mostly received with criticism as a subpar sequel to Chrono Trigger.
VP for me is the best RPG of all time🥰
For me, DioField is just so bad. I stop playing the game about 10 chapters in since it was so boring to me. The game mechanic is so shallow compare to other game, for example Triangle Strategy. The equipment shop is not diverse, the skill upgrade part, I feel is not so diverse. Even the character is not so diverse. You're basically getting the same character types with a different face. The more you play, the more you're doing the same action routine. I just basically sold it off at 70% price.