Uhm, Narg’s review wasn’t exactly nice on the game:
http://www.erogereview.com/2007/12/25/zaishuu-the-sin/
I may get the game, since I’m interested in having other similar titles licensed, but it all depends on how busy I’ll be around the beginning of march, and how close the final release date for Demonbane will be.
Narg’s review is much more of a mixed bag than that. He wrote:
… and elsewhere he says that the problem isn’t that it’s bad (other than some complaints about the pacing), just that it was already overshadowed by better titles when it was originally released. That’s fairly damning in the Japanese market, where hundreds of titles are released per year and nobody can possibly play them all.
However, the game is put into a different context entirely when it is released in the English market, where there are less than a hundred titles of any kind, period, over the entire twenty years (or close enough) this market has existed. In that context, there are no rival studios, and no competing titles “outperforming in every regard”. Narg’s review probably roughly corresponds to a very strong B-list game. And since I can only think of two games that really have the same kind of dark supernatural vibe for them - Divi Dead and Bible Black - and one of them is ancient, this game might even rise to A-list material.
So I gather that Shuffle! limited edition release is (sort of) possible. Is that Shuffle!Essence or did it have another limited edition in Japan?
I know the game is quite terrible, but I want my Kareha route SO. MUCH.
how are the other routes extra besides her
How was it terrible? It obviously didn’t live up to its potiential with Sia’s, Asa’s, and Nerines route
but it was still good. Such as Reverse Sia’s route.
I don’t know about Essence, I was talking about Shuffle! in general. It has too little substance for my taste, and I wouldn’t even bother with it if it weren’t for…
So yeah… :oops:
Posting to show my interest for Shuffle! Essence, I bought the first shuffle the minute it came out on mangagamer 
I’m buying the shuffle!essence from whoever translates it and sells it first. I don’t have company loyalty what matters to me the most is product enjoyability.
MangaGamer getting hard copies!
Jast ain’t got nothing on MangaGamer now.
/sarcasm
It seems MG has a mystery game in the works:
http://www.siliconera.com/2011/02/16/ma … ive-title/
Many are figuring that rumor about a deal with Innocent Grey is looking to be true, though I do think another possibility is that MG made a deal with C’s Ware (or whoever replaced it) to ressurect their english department.
Of course there is a possibilty MG made a deal with elf since I know one of their games, Mikagura Shoujo Tanteidan, had a detective/investigation system to it.
Well, seeing as nobody else has said anything yet, I think I should inform everyone that on J-List they area taking pre-orders for a limited edition boxed set of MangaGamer’s translation of Da Capo. Couple of quotes from the product page:
The part of this interview that stands out to me is:
I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy this Da Capo LE, but I feel obligated to now. Classic consumer hostage situation, forced to buy something I don’t really want to ensure something I do want is released.
I picked up their KiraKira hard copy mainly because it didn’t have DRM and I liked the iOS release of it. If I had any interest in Da Capo I would do the same.
I finally got to playing their trial of Koihime Musou and loved it a lot. I just won’t be playing the full game because I am not sure if it will even be able to run on my PC with so many people with a certain firewall/virus scan saying it keeps detecting their games as a virus and turning off my checker isn’t an option. I didn’t see anything about DRM in their blog entry on Da Capo, but I wouldn’t buy a game just to say, “hey I don’t want DRM.” The same can be said if I felt the only way to get games I really want was to get the ones I wasn’t interested in.
I was thinking all day about posting on finding the Koihime Musou trial amazing and wanting the game to do real well, but your post, linger, reminded me why I don’t play MG games.
Huh? Mangagamer is barely staying afloat, and they aren’t sure their products are going to sell in sufficient quantities to make pressing discs worthwhile. I mean, Kohime had the voices cut out cause they were expecting to sell less than 2K copies.
It’s always the way with any business. Things that make money proliferate. Things that don’t … And right now, honestly, hgames aren’t really making a lot of money in English. Mangagamer themselves are kind of being held hostage by the “lack” of demand (which is being filled by pirated copies, more than likely).
That said, I’m not buying Da Capo either; I already own the d/l version of the game, and I think it’s pretty weak and uninteresting.
How do you know “they barely stay afloat”? Their hard copies were a success, so they’re printing da Capo now and other games may follow. The deal with Koihime is “you buy 2k copies, we will add voices”. Simple as that.
Probably the fact that they’ve been largely operating in the red since they began? ‘success’ is also very much relative- success as in sold enough to result in a net profit for those titles? As for the deal with Koihime, doesn’t that make the situation MangaGamer in clear? No other company has had to avoid licensing part of the game because of associated costs up until now. Will they do the same with Da Capo 2 Plus Communication? It’s longer than Koihime Musou.
If their games can’t be counted on to sell more than 2000 copies, then they’re barely staying afloat. They have no product other than these games, and localizing them is expensive. Normally publishers hedge their risk with a large and diverse portfolio - the hits smooth over the stinkbombs, everything averages out. Mangagamer hasn’t got any hits. They release less than a dozen games a year, and Shuffle - one of their strongest-selling titles - had only sold [edit: a thousand] copies as of a few months ago.
Yes the hard copies were a success … But not successful enough for them to roll ALL their games into hard copy production. Only one game was selected, and they explicitly indicated (as linger posted above a few posts) they might be able to do more if their test release is successful.
Edit: As Lancer-X said. The decision to cut voice from Koihime because it was unaffordable says a lot. Look at another localization company - Atlus USA. The first title they released? The original Persona. Huge chunks of the game were cut out. The Snow Queen quest (as large as the main game) was completely eliminated, apparently because there was insufficient time to completely translate the game.
When was the last time Atlus cut content out of a game because it would have been too expensive to localize it? I honestly can’t think of a game they did since that’s had the issues the first Persona did. Because they’re no longer a fledgling enterprise with an uncertain future.
Companies that are on sure footing don’t do things like what Mangagamer’s doing to Koihime.
manga gamer posted a press release about upcoming titles
http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/2011/03 … -pipeline/
it hits on the progress of harukoi otome, dear drops, ef, edelweiss re translation, and more hard copies
Dengeki Stryker if it sells well, does that mean there good chance of getting baldr sky coz I remember it being kewl mech game
Unlikely considering it was made by a completely different company. Especially because the publisher for Baldr, Giga, was in talks with Jast in the past but they broke down when Giga insisted on having mosaics remain in the game. Unfortunately MG can’t even flaunt good sales numbers to entice them, as Koihime hasn’t even reached 1000 sales yet.