X Change Alternative 2: The Thread

umarekawari · July 29, 2009, 5:58pm

I can’t find the remake anywhere! That’s the main problem.

umarekawari · September 22, 2009, 12:09am

Just wondering, how long of a time delay was there between the Japanese and English releases of X-Change 1, 2, 3, and Yin-Yang?

So I know what I’m looking at for an average.

Lancer-X · September 22, 2009, 5:38am

XChange
Original release: October 1997
Localisation: March 2001
3 years, 5 months delay

XChange2
Original release: August 1999
Localisation: June 2003
3 years, 10 months delay

XChange3
Original release: June 2004
Localisation: July 2006
2 years, 1 month delay

XChange Alternative
Original release: October 2004
Localisation: December 2006
2 years, 2 months delay

Naively averaging the delays suggests an XCA2 English release date of August 2011.

michelous · September 22, 2009, 7:37am

has the game been licensed yet

umarekawari · September 22, 2009, 6:33pm

This… is almost unbearable. Then there’s the wait for ???3??? ???..

GRAHHHHH!

Nandemonai · September 23, 2009, 12:02am

Bear in mind, XChange Alternative 2 has not even been announced.

Do I believe they have licensed it? Of course I believe they have licensed it. The XChange series is one of their biggest successes. However, they have got a lot of other stuff on their plate, and it hasn’t been officially announced, so it is what it is.

Lancer-X · September 23, 2009, 3:04am

Yes; the XChange games probably do better in English than they ever did in Japanese - they barely even register on the sales charts.

GaiusMax · September 23, 2009, 7:15pm

They must have registered something to get four sequels.

michelous · September 23, 2009, 7:19pm

then there is 3 methods to conquer the world which i hope jast gets as well

umarekawari · September 24, 2009, 5:04pm

You know, I’d literally front Jast the money to translate some of these games if I knew it would make a difference.

zalas · September 25, 2009, 12:24am

Doesn’t that simply mean that the developer thought producing a sequel was more profitable than producing a new original work? A game can be spectacular for the company involved and yet still pale vastly in comparison to the rest of the games out there. Furthermore, popular/successful games don’t necessarily get many sequels, either.

GaiusMax · September 25, 2009, 7:33pm

Agreed, but it seems hard to believe that the company would go back to the well so many times, or even stay in business in such a volatile market, if the games were complete bombs.

umarekawari · October 5, 2009, 3:33pm

Be nice if even some of the other available Crowd games got translated…

michelous · October 17, 2009, 11:10am

it is a 3rd hero and your swap bodies with one of the heroines

umarekawari · November 2, 2009, 6:28pm

Naerylan:

I played this through recently, and I have to agree with what the other folks have posted: it’s a great story, and it has quite a variety of situations (considering you’re basically playing 4 different characters depending on which route you’re in).
I’m surprised no one has mentioned that some of the most amusing scenes are the ones with Mr. Oriba, the ape-man who hangs around the school dispensing sage advice in strange old-fashioned speech patterns. I think ??? is my new catchphrase now.

Surely someone else is an Oriba fan here, right? :?

One other thing that interested me is how they don’t make the typical sidestep on the “incest” part, during the Hiroshi route when he screws his sister, that’s his real blood related sister. I think this is the first eroge I’ve EVER read that did that. To do that without trying to put up some excuse like “oh he’s adopted” or something apparently takes more guts than most writers seem to have. Bravo, Crowd.

Would be very interested to see what the translation (should it ever come out) looks like. Hopefully it will be released before I get distracted and forget to look for it. That happens more often than I like to think about…

Which part had incest? I don’t recall that, but then again, I can’t understand the language a lot of the time.

Lipp · November 2, 2009, 11:11pm

umarekawari:

Naerylan:

I played this through recently, and I have to agree with what the other folks have posted: it’s a great story, and it has quite a variety of situations (considering you’re basically playing 4 different characters depending on which route you’re in).
I’m surprised no one has mentioned that some of the most amusing scenes are the ones with Mr. Oriba, the ape-man who hangs around the school dispensing sage advice in strange old-fashioned speech patterns. I think ??? is my new catchphrase now.

Surely someone else is an Oriba fan here, right? :?

One other thing that interested me is how they don’t make the typical sidestep on the “incest” part, during the Hiroshi route when he screws his sister, that’s his real blood related sister. I think this is the first eroge I’ve EVER read that did that. To do that without trying to put up some excuse like “oh he’s adopted” or something apparently takes more guts than most writers seem to have. Bravo, Crowd.

Would be very interested to see what the translation (should it ever come out) looks like. Hopefully it will be released before I get distracted and forget to look for it. That happens more often than I like to think about…

Which part had incest? I don’t recall that, but then again, I can’t understand the language a lot of the time.

the 3somes in Hiroshi’s route
the other girl that joins in is his sister.
She has short, black hair

umarekawari · November 9, 2009, 8:34pm

Wow, I missed something then, the only threesome I remember was with the science geek and his mom.

umarekawari · December 1, 2009, 4:20pm

Cancel that, I am an idiot who missed the sibling references.

umarekawari · April 21, 2010, 5:59pm

kaley:

I hope this gets translated. IMO, the overall quality of the game is much higher than prior X-Change titles. There’s a fair bit of dialogue, but unlike a lot of eroge, I found it enjoyable and engaging. The protagonist, Yuki is actually a pretty interesting by himself, and the voice acting definitely adds to his character. There’s a lengthy pre-switch section that does a good job making the various character ‘archetypes’ seem more like real people even though they aren’t necessarily all that ‘unique’. Ooh, the soundtrack was quite nice too, more variety and higher quality than most.

Unfortunately, I’m wondering if there won’t be trouble because of the lolis. Tomoyo was already mentioned… but there’s another character who is a much worse offender (much more blatant loli, visually). I feel like Tomoyo might slip by as reasonably mature looking/acting, but… (minor spoiler) Naka has a snowball’s chance in hell… with her outfit, she looks almost 100% like one of those stereotypical little girls with huge lolipops in cartoons and such. Her sex scenes made me fidget uncomfortably… Tomoyo’s didn’t.

So yeah, if they were to go the XC3 route to avoid drawing criticism, it would mess up a good chunk of the game. I guess you could try to just remove the H scenes. I didn’t think Naka’s sex scenes were all that critical to the story… you could probably tweak the story a bit to make it a less physical relationship. Some people would be disappointed obviously, but its better than not having it translated at all.

Some other comments…

If I recall correctly, this is first XChange game to actually deal with menstruation. Not especially important, but I thought it was interesting to see.

What was irritating was that some of the endings didn’t seem complete… The most blatant example: YukixMakoto switched ending just doesn’t exist. They cut to the title. I have to imagine they didn’t get around to finishing it, because it’s the only ending like that.

Interesting note: Sayuri’s body (with either Yuki or Sayuri in it) has by far the most H scenes (not CGs, whole scenes) of any ‘heroine’. Mine has like, 9 altogether? MinexYuki is 1 masturbation, 1 rape, 1 oral, 1 full, and then 3 with Hiroshi and 2 threesomes. Sayuri has 2 masturbation, 3 with Yuki and Sayuri, 3 with Sayuri(Yuki) and Naka, 4 with Sayuri(Yuki) and Iwao, and 2 with Sayuri(Yuki) and arsehole… 14 in all. Iwao’s route has the most H scenes of any single route.

More comments with major spoilers galore:[spoiler]- Hiroshi’s route is like one big gag. At first, the post rape scenes seemed to suggest it would be mildly serious, but it took a wild tangent all the way to the endings. I guess the gay guy just makes people to uncomfortable. (Though I wonder why in a gender-bending game, they didn’t just go more for a full-on ‘trap’ character… pretty popular these days).

Tomoyo’s route is fairly short and simple. With two proper endings to boot, there really isn’t much to complain about. Except the uber falsetto Tomoyo-in-Yuki voice. Gaah.

Makoto’s route was rather disappointing. The tentacle thing just came out of nowhere. The early scene with the bulge CG set me up to thinking she was probably futa. Nope. Instead we have a plot about tentacles… except they aren’t even really used in the sex scenes. What was the point?

Mine’s route seems like the main route. Lots of CGs and plot twists. Overall it was pretty entertaining, but with an underwhelming end. Also, wtfrape? And then Yuki just gets over it like that, giving Mine a BJ the next day. Then no sex scenes all the way until the ending. Speaking of which, the ‘normal’ ending was alright… it fit the tone of the game really. On the other hand, the switched ending was another disappointment. I liked how they kept it hidden for a bit that they were still swapped a year later, but it doesn’t really show the outcome. Being stuck like that for a year involuntarily has got to have some effect. Also, its implied that they’re still having sex, but they don’t give us an H scene! They could have done the ‘reveal’ partway into a sex scene. Now THAT could have been very satisfying!

Sayuri’s route started out great. Really solid. Not only was the reveal a total surprise, but Sayuri’s impassioned speech that followed was definitely one of the stronger moments I’ve seen in any visual novel. Now, if you segue into Iwao’s route, it flows very well. On the other hand, Sayuri’s route becomes a clusterfuck. For one, why did bold impassioned Sayuri suddenly become whiny and clueless? In any case, Yuki-in-Sayuri still having sex with Sayuri could have set up an epic angstfest, but instead they bring in a random loli for some yuri scenes. Okay, well it still was pretty angsty, but I lost a ton of respect for both Yuki and Sayuri in the ensuing action. I really disliked the SayurixYuki normal ending. It went on a theme of letting your feelings out honestly(confessing) and accepting rejection. But then Yuki basically turns Sayuri. Boo. Especially considering that Sayuri said she could have fallen for Yuki if he was a girl, I don’t get why they didn’t have a switched ending route.

Iwao’s route was probably my favorite. It rolls right off the emotional Sayuri confession scenes into a poignant scene with Iwao (including one of the best non-H CGs in the game, oh and the way Yuki “hanamizugomen”. I lol’ed). From there, it moves right on to Yuki going “what am I thinking”, though the transition is pretty quick. It has a kind of stereotypical helpless damsel plot line like in XCA, except more developed. Also Yuki actually seems proactive until the climax. I just have a minor quibble with this route. After making the decision to stay or not, the game goes right to the credits. I can get wanting to have the drama/uncertainty of knowing what the decision leads to, but they missed a golden opportunity for some pretty significant scenes. A) Sayuri and Yuki’s conversation about choosing to stay. And B) Sayuri and Yuki dealing with the aftermath of having all their relationships turned upside-down. However, I did like both the epilogues![/spoiler]

Overall, I thought XCA2 was a pretty good eroge. As you can tell from some of my comments, I think it could have been better, but enh, nothing’s perfect. If it gets translated mostly intact, I’ll probably pick it up.

If Naka is who I think it is, the one lesbian character, they better not cut her. I would have a major breakdown.