In case you have not noticed, for the past few months I have been reviewing a lot of visual novels on this fair little site, with the genre comprising nearly half of my reviews since halfway through 2017. Now, this was not really a conscious decision on my part, and has more to do with how I simply have a large number of visual novels on my list of games to review, and far fewer games of other genres. I have a number of reasons for this, such as visual novels being less prone to disinterest me after playing them for a brief while and less likely to suffer from notable technical issues, but the point is that I am going to keep reviewing a visual novel every other week for the foreseeable future.
Following last week’s Nintendo Direct Mini, there was some discussion about Nintendo putting up some sort of additional announcement video this week. That announcement turned out to be Nintendo Labo, an odd concept that reminds me more of a tech demo than anything. It is essentially a new product line that involves assembling a series of cardboard contraptions that interact with the Nintendo Switch in order to play a variety of mini games, I guess.
It is a cute and creative idea that has some interesting looking applications and a distinct Nintendo-like feel to it, as Nintendo was originally a toy company, though I have to ask who exactly this is for considering that the two packs that will launch with this program on April 20th (yes, really), cost $70 and $80, which is a bit steep considering how much enjoyment someone could get from any quality $60 first party Switch game. Those can last dozens of hours, and this seems like something that would be cool to play around with for a weekend before putting away in a closet. But I guess it is more geared towards children, and if there is one thing children love, it’s cardboard.
In other news, as part of the continuous saga of NIS America mishandling their release of Ys VIII comes an announcement that the PC version of this title, originally slated to debut at the same time as the PS4 and Vita versions, which released on September 12th, 2017, will no longer be released on January 30th due to technical problems, and as such, will be delayed to an unknown date. This being placed on top of how the game’s initial translation was so poor that the publisher had to retranslate the entire game after it came out really does make for a pretty sad story, and one that I think really cements that NIS America will not be handling any more projects for Falcom, and XSEED will go back to being their go-to localizer. Assuming that Marvelous is not keeping them too busy.
In happier news, more gameplay footage has surfaced of Platinum Games’ next project. No, not Bayonetta 3. I’m talking about Granblue Fantasy Project Re:Link, their co-operative action RPG set in the universe of the popular GranBlue Fantasy mobile game. The footage showcased just how beautiful the game is turning out, with scenic towns and flashy kinetic battles, and based on the battles shown, the gameplay seems notably simpler than prior Platinum endeavors. However, considering I am the sort of person who does not really have the mind for character action games with fairly complicated inputs, this actually increases my interest with this title. The game is due out for PS4 in 2018, and considering its production values, I would say that a western localization is inevitable.
That’s it for this week. Now I’m off to work on some more reviews, despite already having 4 fully written. What? I like being ahead of schedule.