Homeland (GC) Beta: Anyone else get it?

J

john tv

Member
So out of nowhere, this showed up today (on a Sunday, no less):

homeslice.jpg


Anyone else from the Japan GAF crew get their copies yet? I literally have zero time to try it, so it's probably gonna just sit here for a while. I'll try to pop it in at some point if I get a 30-minute breather from work, but it's not looking likely right now. :p
 
Hmmmmmmm, I think I put my work address since I'm never at home to recieve packages. Maybe I'll get a nice present when I show up tomorrow :P
 
Yep, got my box of eight copies today :D
Three for DC, Leosh and Sho. Four for overseas guys who asked me to help them out. I played for a little bit but haven't done any questing yet. I'll try and play enough tonight to write some proper impressions.
 
Wasn't on my desk at work this morning :(

Is everyone who bought the game getting the beta now? I had thought the beta wasn't starting until like the 24th or so...
 
Jonnyram said:
Online beta is supposed to start tomorrow (15th). Did you pay by credit card or did you try to do cash on delivery?
Click to expand...

Paid by credit card.

But then again it's probably gonna take a few days longer for me to get it up here in Aomori vs. 'I live next door to Chunsoft' Tokyo ;P
 
AndriaSang said:
john tv how come you have a copy of Ys Book 1&2 on your desk?
Click to expand...
I'm on an Ys kick so I decided to play through the old games in order before I start Ys VI. They just happened to be sitting on my desk at the time I took that picture, heheh. :)
 
Some impressions then, from the brief time I had to play the game yesterday.

My wife came in the room and said "Wow, this music is nice" - the first time she's said that about a game since Doshin the Giant. That's a plus straight away. She also liked the visual look of the game. But this is not about her - I also liked the aesthetics of the game very much. The view is similar to Animal Crossing in size and angle, but the graphics are cleaner, and more pastel-like. The music is very peaceful, and even when you're fighting, the instruments don't get heavy and the sound fx are pretty light too. This might sound weak, but it all adds to the dreamlike state this game is promoting.

The game starts off with your kid in his/her bedroom getting yelled out by your mother. You have to do some homework and then tidy your closet. You're asked a few simple maths questions (yep, you actually have to do the homework!) and then you do a little quiz in an adventure comic. These choices may affect the way your character is created, I'm not sure - I'll leave it to the resourceful Japanese players to work that out. You get two characters in a "Starter's Adventure Pack" anyway. I've gone with the multi-coloured cube guy for now.

Then you are whisked away to "Quester's Park" where some angels describe what the role of Questers is and give you an overview of the game's controls. I moved to the first area and talked to the townspeople, heard a few problems that needed solving and then headed to the field outside the town. The first time out I stumbled across three monsters that attacked me at once, and since I had no weapon or shield, I got slaughtered. I awoke back at the town with half my money, so it seems to follow the DQ rules in that way.

I bought a sword with what little money I had left and headed back out to find a monster on its own. A few monsters later, and I had a shield (dropped for free), some more money and a bit of experience. After playing for about 15 minutes in this manner, I was level 3, I'd got my first special skill and I'd seen most of the first field, which included exits to a couple of dungeon areas.

The fights are quite simple at this stage - when you are engaged in battle (which is turn-based) the menu of choices surrounds you character. Attack is the default option so you can keep spamming A-button if you are sure of victory. The fights at the start of the game only require 2 or 3 turns, so it's quite fun and fast. Nothing drags like FFXI fights or anything. There are probably quite a lot of DQ references actually. The items seem to have the same names for starters.

I can't wait to play some more, explore dungeons and actually hold hands with some other chars to see how that works out.
 
i dont understand how a game that almost every person on any gamecube board or even non-gamecube related boards wants this game, but its a VERY LIMITED RELEASE

WTF?
 
Loving the DQ references, nice homage considering ChunSoft made that game too. Hopefully some forward thinking publisher (UbiSoft? Atlus? Mastiff? Namco?) picks this one up for the US. :)
 
I echo Anoop's thoughts.
The offline demo is very small. I completed it last night.
But it has me chomping at the bit for the full game. The fights are fast, furious and, most importantly, fun! The art is really pleasing on the eye and it from the demo it seems like the final game will have a lot of content.

Online beta starts today, and it might well be bigger than the offline demo - we'll see.
 
Setting up online now, and I can't help but be surprised that all this online network configuration is actually built in to the GC's OS. It's strange that Nintendo never got round to supporting it when it was already built-in.
 
Gave the single player portion a spin last night and walked away with a lukewarm feeling from the game.

On the plus side, the music was quite nice and gave the game a relaxing feel to it. But visually I thought it was a mixed bag. The art is cool and gives kinda a earthbound 3d feel, but my issues with the visuals were that the camera is way too close when outside. It's hard to get a feel for where you are in the town/dungeon/field when you can't see more than a few feet in each direction. Also the actual polygon models for the townspeople are kinda iffy.

Storywise there wasn't really enough to comment on, though the idea of going to different worlds and doing quests is a great setup for an online game. The dialogue was a bit annoying to read though since there is no kanji. This makes it hard to break up words in a sentence and is like reading "helloboywelcometothequestclubenjoyyourstay" :P

I really liked the way the controls were setup with shortcuts for the various menu actions assigned to each button. Japanese text entry is actually nicely done with clicking on one letter and then it opens a sub-window of the various letters that stem from it.

I didn't really put enough time into the demo to decide how I feel about the battle system. On one hand I thought it was too simple and felt like Ragnorak Online battles where it goes: you hit, the slime hits, you hit, the slime hits, etc...I can see this working well for online as it's pretty much like diablo battling just with menus. I was hoping for a real turn-based rpg system though, so I was a bit disappointed but like I said I didn't give it enough time to really see if there's more depth to it.

I can definitely see the potential in the game, but from the demo I'm unsure whether I'll want to even play the single player portion when there are so many other rpgs coming out each week. Though that being said, I am interested in playing the game online as going through various worlds with a group of friends and doing PSO style quests that have nice art/music should be good fun.

Jonnyram, what are your thoughts with it online so far?
 
I played online for a couple of hours last night.
If's definitely got issues, but it's hard to point them out precisely.

First problem is getting involved. When you search for a game, you get a ton of results, and they're listed with locations, but don't seem sorted in anyway. So I scroll down the list and pick one in Tokyo (probably not necessary). It said there were about 10 people on the game. So you get into the game and then... where the fuck is everyone? It's all well and good being able to join a game at any time, but there's no indication about where people are right now, and sice everyone is probably going to be in a chain in one place, it's pretty hard to find them.

Well I waited around for a bit, and then there was an announcement - a treasure chest has been sighted around one of the towns. At this point you are taken to a cutscene saying the god has lost something important and you have to find it. Then you get put back in the game in a specific place so now EVERYONE is in the same place. Yay! I held hands with the last guy in the line and the game commenced. It's at this point that you realise the game is broken and there are already haijin (umm, power gamers) that have mastered the holes of the game. The guy who lead us knew exactly what he was doing. He was killing monsters in one hit and everyone in the line was getting big exp for nothing. I got to level 8 in about 5 minutes. Then he reached the boss and killed it in three hits. Cue cutscene of opening the chest. Naturally the guy who lead the line got all the bonus points, and that's probably all he wanted.

I imagine this is really good fun with a bunch of friends, playing it properly, but last night's experience was pretty lame. At least online you get to see more of the world. There's some really nice environments in the game and I can't wait to play the final version. They have to add keyboard support, but I don't think they're going to because it's due out in a month. Oh well, roll on the final version so we can try it out together properly. I hope at least one of us can setup a server, as it looks like I can't for the time being.
 
In the current state of the beta, is there a way for all of us gaffers wtih the beta to join a single game and play it correctly? Judging by what you said about the search function, it seems like we can't search by friends.
 
Bebpo said:
In the current state of the beta, is there a way for all of us gaffers wtih the beta to join a single game and play it correctly? Judging by what you said about the search function, it seems like we can't search by friends.
Click to expand...
Oh you can search by all manner of things. You can put a password on games and people who want to join can input the password into the search screen. We just need someone to serve.
 
Jonnyram said:
Oh you can search by all manner of things. You can put a password on games and people who want to join can input the password into the search screen. We just need someone to serve.
Click to expand...

What are the requirements to be a server?
 
Bebpo said:
What are the requirements to be a server?
Click to expand...
Well, port 9003 must be open. I don't think this is my problem though. The other thing is that you need a global IP address - i.e. the world can see you. I think this maybe where mine is going wrong. I can order one from my ISP, but I'm not sure how long it will take. I thought I had one already though :?
 
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