Ok I tried to find threads to discuss Shadow Hearts 3 but they all had misleading titles due to being ancient threads bumped over several months. Shouta started his own Grandia 3 thread too but I thought it would be best to create a brand new thread that we can hopefully keep bumped all the way until FFXII's release discussing everything we're playing currently right now Japan-release-wise.
Remember: Keep ALL spoilers marked and tagged!
Ok here are my contributions for now:
Sengoku Basara
I only played a few characters (Nobunaga, Sanada, Date, Uesugi) and only actually completed one character's quest (Date), so if you have different opinions feel free to correct me!
Basically I feel the game is awfully unbalanced character-wise with some characters playing really poorly at first (Nobunaga) and some characters being REALLY fun right from the start (Date). The voice acting is top notch and I really like the game design-wise. Sadly the gameplay really falls short imo, and is pretty damn repetitive. While that's fine when a character is FUN to control and fast, it becomes a real chore playing someone like Nobunaga, and that's sad because Nobunaga's voice is fucking WAKAMOTO.
The CG FMVs are pretty decent, and the rare anime FMVs are pretty nice while not really visually impressive due to them not being action sequences. Overall the production values are good but the load times are fucking terrible. We're talking PSP-level load times here.
I would give the game a B- at the moment but I plan on putting more time into it after I'm done with SH3/G3/ToL this month, so things might change, we'll see.
Shadow Hearts From the New World
If you enjoyed Shadow Hearts 2, this game will be enjoyable from the start. The mechanics of the game stay exactly the same so you can skip pretty much every tutorial in the first hour and that really speeds up the pace. While the basic mechanics have stayed the same it'll definitely help to take a glance at the manual to check out the massive strategic improvements they've made in the battles. Tons more options this time round and some things that previous really didn't matter much in SH2 (spells, angleup/knockdown, excessive use of combos) are pretty much a matter of life and death now. The options available to the player are all also available to the enemies so this means that the new additions to the game system like DOUBLE are all also available to the enemy, making certain battles (bosses especially) much more challenging.
Azure has taken the extra effort with SH3 to completely optimizie the SH engine so the graphics and animations are way better than before. SH2 was pretty impressive but SH3 blows away even Grandia 3 in terms of actual character modeling and animations/expressions imo. Load times are also superb and while the amount of CG FMVs have been reduced to fit the game on a single disc, they look really really good when they do occur. The music and voices continue to uphold the high standards the series has been known for. Basically if you're a Shadow Hearts fan you won't be disappointed.
The only area the game suffers from is a lack of an ultra strong narrative. The game is pretty much a hilarious and effective anime-style parody of 1920s America and American pop culture and movies, covering everything from the mafia, Lovecraftian research and experiments, native American lore, South American culture, fake ninjas, to ancient Incan temples. The actual narrative of the game remains vague even after it seems I've hit the game's mid-point (at almost 10 hours that seems a little short, but that might also explain the single disc format), so while the game maintains the high quality set by SH2 in terms of enjoyablity and a great engine, I doubt the plot will remotely come close to SH2's masterpiece.
Grandia III
I should note that of all the games I've probably played Grandia III the least as I'm trying to finish off SH3 first, so these are merely first impressions at best.
The presentation of the game is amazing and the cutscenes are really well directed (we expected no less from the director of the live-action Boogiepop Phantom and Video Girl AI movies but he sure has hell delivered) and the gameplay is pretty much Grandia through and through. The same awesome battle system returns except with tweaks that allow for aerial combos and other visual goodies. One gripe I have with the battle system is that the camera seems too close to the action and when there are a bunch of enemies on screen at a time it can be really hard to see who's really hitting what and that DOES affect the strategy quite a bit. I wished they used a camera similar to the previous Grandias which was a little higher and further away giving a wider view of the action. While I understand the current camera is more cinematic, I would like my battles to be informative and less flashy. ^^;
Story-wise I think Grandia III is one of the stronger games I've played all year, at least from the first hour or so. The character designs are also awesome, and some of the enemy designs and armor/weapons really remind me of Valkyrie Profile. As other posters have stated, the font does truly and utterly suck, and the lack of full voice acting in non-cutscenes doesn't help either. The graphics engine is pretty good, and being able to rotate the camera is really nice too, music-wise it's competent but the voice acting is pretty good so far and I guess that makes up for it. Theme song's great though, especially the use of it in cutscenes.
Okay I guess that's it from me for now. I encourage all that play Japanese games to keep this thread alive so we know where to go for advice/discussion/comparisons/impressions with a one-click solution. Mods, it'll be great if you could sticky this too!
Remember: Keep ALL spoilers marked and tagged!
Ok here are my contributions for now:
Sengoku Basara
I only played a few characters (Nobunaga, Sanada, Date, Uesugi) and only actually completed one character's quest (Date), so if you have different opinions feel free to correct me!
Basically I feel the game is awfully unbalanced character-wise with some characters playing really poorly at first (Nobunaga) and some characters being REALLY fun right from the start (Date). The voice acting is top notch and I really like the game design-wise. Sadly the gameplay really falls short imo, and is pretty damn repetitive. While that's fine when a character is FUN to control and fast, it becomes a real chore playing someone like Nobunaga, and that's sad because Nobunaga's voice is fucking WAKAMOTO.
The CG FMVs are pretty decent, and the rare anime FMVs are pretty nice while not really visually impressive due to them not being action sequences. Overall the production values are good but the load times are fucking terrible. We're talking PSP-level load times here.
I would give the game a B- at the moment but I plan on putting more time into it after I'm done with SH3/G3/ToL this month, so things might change, we'll see.
Shadow Hearts From the New World
If you enjoyed Shadow Hearts 2, this game will be enjoyable from the start. The mechanics of the game stay exactly the same so you can skip pretty much every tutorial in the first hour and that really speeds up the pace. While the basic mechanics have stayed the same it'll definitely help to take a glance at the manual to check out the massive strategic improvements they've made in the battles. Tons more options this time round and some things that previous really didn't matter much in SH2 (spells, angleup/knockdown, excessive use of combos) are pretty much a matter of life and death now. The options available to the player are all also available to the enemies so this means that the new additions to the game system like DOUBLE are all also available to the enemy, making certain battles (bosses especially) much more challenging.
Azure has taken the extra effort with SH3 to completely optimizie the SH engine so the graphics and animations are way better than before. SH2 was pretty impressive but SH3 blows away even Grandia 3 in terms of actual character modeling and animations/expressions imo. Load times are also superb and while the amount of CG FMVs have been reduced to fit the game on a single disc, they look really really good when they do occur. The music and voices continue to uphold the high standards the series has been known for. Basically if you're a Shadow Hearts fan you won't be disappointed.
The only area the game suffers from is a lack of an ultra strong narrative. The game is pretty much a hilarious and effective anime-style parody of 1920s America and American pop culture and movies, covering everything from the mafia, Lovecraftian research and experiments, native American lore, South American culture, fake ninjas, to ancient Incan temples. The actual narrative of the game remains vague even after it seems I've hit the game's mid-point (at almost 10 hours that seems a little short, but that might also explain the single disc format), so while the game maintains the high quality set by SH2 in terms of enjoyablity and a great engine, I doubt the plot will remotely come close to SH2's masterpiece.
Grandia III
I should note that of all the games I've probably played Grandia III the least as I'm trying to finish off SH3 first, so these are merely first impressions at best.
The presentation of the game is amazing and the cutscenes are really well directed (we expected no less from the director of the live-action Boogiepop Phantom and Video Girl AI movies but he sure has hell delivered) and the gameplay is pretty much Grandia through and through. The same awesome battle system returns except with tweaks that allow for aerial combos and other visual goodies. One gripe I have with the battle system is that the camera seems too close to the action and when there are a bunch of enemies on screen at a time it can be really hard to see who's really hitting what and that DOES affect the strategy quite a bit. I wished they used a camera similar to the previous Grandias which was a little higher and further away giving a wider view of the action. While I understand the current camera is more cinematic, I would like my battles to be informative and less flashy. ^^;
Story-wise I think Grandia III is one of the stronger games I've played all year, at least from the first hour or so. The character designs are also awesome, and some of the enemy designs and armor/weapons really remind me of Valkyrie Profile. As other posters have stated, the font does truly and utterly suck, and the lack of full voice acting in non-cutscenes doesn't help either. The graphics engine is pretty good, and being able to rotate the camera is really nice too, music-wise it's competent but the voice acting is pretty good so far and I guess that makes up for it. Theme song's great though, especially the use of it in cutscenes.
Okay I guess that's it from me for now. I encourage all that play Japanese games to keep this thread alive so we know where to go for advice/discussion/comparisons/impressions with a one-click solution. Mods, it'll be great if you could sticky this too!