Anime Games - Is "anime GTA" real?

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Anime games are as old as games with graphics. They are usually called jrpg though some differentiate to Action RPG (Devil May Cry) and Tactics RPG (Fire Emblem). There were a ton of them on the PS2, but there is significantly less due to production costs, but gacha became a place for the genre (granted most of it Chink/Korean since Japs destroyed most of their own native studios).
 
Judge Dredd said:
This is what I don't get about gatcha. There is clearly a huge market for, say, GTA that is more whimsical. Saints Row 2 and 3 were proof of that. And others have mentioned games like Code Vien. Yet, as far as I can tell, they keep crippling themselves by being gatcha. It could have a broader audience, and the conversation would be about the game, not about "pulls" are or whatever.
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gacha games are not made for western audiences, or to fill some kind of gaming niche. gacha games are like pachinko machines, they are made for asian bug people whose idea of fun has been massively perverted by their awful work and honor cultures. it so happens that there is also a market for these games in the west, at least enough to justify the expense of localization. however, understand that these games are made for countries like China and South Korea and Japan where the rate of gambling addiction is 3 or more times higher than western countries. you and I might see it as a predatory price tag on fun; for asians, the gambling is a core part of what makes the game fun in the first place. mobile gachas existed for decades in those countries before huge, high-budget projects like Genshin Impact penetrated the western market.
 
DiabeticSydePhil said:
Go play Trails in the Sky First Chapter. Peak anime gaming (positive).

Trails is super open about being a playable anime but isn't nearly as wacky as some other shit gets and the writing is actually charming.

Gacha gooners can kill themselves, though.
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It is but personally the most "anime" of the trails games is the cold steel arc.
 
Judge Dredd said:
Are they any good?
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It depends on the particular game.

I thought that Granblue Fantasy was pretty good. It was produced by ex Final Fantasy talent (Hideo Minaba, Akihiko Yoshida, Nobuo Uematsu, Tsutomu Narita, and others). The gameplay becomes pretty complex with WoW level elaborate raid boss fights. It has a visual novel story that starts off as whatever but became extremely engaging to me, better than most JRPGs and VNs I have paid for, including mainline Final Fantasy titles. The art and soundtrack is very good. The game gacha system is also not predatory, as the endgame raiding is completely optional and I do not engage with it at all. I have never felt a need to pay or grind in GBF.

The new wave of Genshin Impact styled games are a mixed bag. After having tried them all, I have stuck with Honkai Star Rail. One of the primary reasons why I prefer HSR is 1. the lack of an open world, and 2. it has turn based combat. The other Genshin styled games are obscenely time consuming. You have to slowly walk across and climb up huge open world zones to do puzzles to unlock a chest that gives you 5 primogems (out of the 160 needed to perform one pull) or 6 cents. You also have to hike across the world to do your daily quests. And then the action combat requires you to mash a lot of buttons and hit like a wet noodle. I also do not find the on-the-spot instant switching between characters (who do not fight with you as NPC party members) to be immersive.

With HSR, there is no open world to waste my time. I can just open a menu and instantly do my dailies. And there is an autobattle option, so I can just alt+tab out while the game resolves the dailies. I still find some enjoyment in the pre-battle prep and teambuilding gameplay, especially when doing runs of the roguelite modes Divergent Universe and Currency Wars where you have to pick between different equipment to buy or blessings to get. I also like the aesthetic of the game. I somewhat enjoy the story, but the writing and presentation just is not that good and is outclassed by GBF.

I quite like how these Genshin styled games deliver content every 6 weeks. Not even paid subscription MMOs get content out that fast, so I feel fine buying subscriptions and battle passes for these games. I also like that there are a lot of variety in minigame and gimmick events.

The English dubs of these anime games are monopolized by the Californian/Texan FUNimation clique of unprofessional amateurs, and generally sound mediocre and inconsistent with there being lots of recasting happening all of the time as people get cancelled or botch their contracts. Stick with the Japanese voice dubs. They sound great.

Someone earlier mentioned the Trails series, which I would generally recommend. The Trails of Cold Steel arc is my favorite in that series. Beware that the longterm storyline of the Trails series never has a satisfying payoff, and the issues compound over time. I think that the latest Calvard games are overall very good visually and gameplay wise, but the writing has become intolerable. I would also recommend FF14, but again beware that the story also shits itself too. I cannot think of any long running serialized videogame storyline that went on for years and years and nailed the ending.
 
I'm Retarded? said:
gacha games are not made for western audiences, or to fill some kind of gaming niche. gacha games are like pachinko machines, they are made for asian bug people whose idea of fun has been massively perverted by their awful work and honor cultures. it so happens that there is also a market for these games in the west, at least enough to justify the expense of localization. however, understand that these games are made for countries like China and South Korea and Japan where the rate of gambling addiction is 3 or more times higher than western countries. you and I might see it as a predatory price tag on fun; for asians, the gambling is a core part of what makes the game fun in the first place. mobile gachas existed for decades in those countries before huge, high-budget projects like Genshin Impact penetrated the western market.
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The Western equivalents of gacha games are Counter-Strike skin cases, and card game modes in annual Sports games such as EA Sports Ultimate Team, 2K's MyTeam/MyFaction, and MLB The Show's Diamond Dynasty mode.
 
Golfing on the Moon 1971 said:
The English dubs of these anime games are monopolized by the Californian/Texan FUNimation clique of unprofessional amateurs, and generally sound mediocre and inconsistent with there being lots of recasting happening all of the time as people get cancelled or botch their contracts. Stick with the Japanese voice dubs. They sound great.
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This is something else I've been wondering about. Localization has been a mess in recent years. There's a whole thread about it, but in short they're changing translations to the point where it's a complete re-write. Yet I don't hear anything about gatcha games.
 
Judge Dredd said:
This is something else I've been wondering about. Localization has been a mess in recent years. There's a whole thread about it, but in short they're changing translations to the point where it's a complete re-write. Yet I don't hear anything about gatcha games.
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AFAIK they are translated into English by people living in Japan or China and working at the studio there. The script is not being emailed overseas to a localization studio in California out of sight from the devs. The Chinese gacha game companies - Mihoyo, Hypergryph, Kuro Games, etc - are also extremely in tune with feedback and send out an ingame survey every patch to query the playerbase about the quality of the new patch character, new patch story, voice acting (and they ask what language you listened to), translation, etc. No Californian trannylator stunts can be pulled off in that environment.

There was an obvious difference between the translation quality of the Granblue Fantasy gacha game (localized in house at Cygames' offices in Japan) which had no agenda or tampering in it. Versus the Relink spinoff action game that was localized by XSEED games, which had out of character lines and the usual issues.
 
Good thread and good answers, not much to add really.

As someone said before "anime" for games is just an art style and they're usually made in Asia (Japan, SK and China like 99.9% of the time), gacha is just a mechanic/monetization, not too different from skins, battle passes, card packs etc.

Now regarding why make a game like NTE a gacha instead of a single player experience (since someone asked something similar here), it's quite simple, money and the fact that single player games are rarely made certain countries like China or SK, (when it comes to china black myth wukong is probably the biggest release and most recent) and even when it happens many times they're not translated to other languages (this is changing as of recent years in my opinion, for example one of the latest entries of Sword and Fairy is translated to English), when it comes to money it's as simple as gachas make tons of money, even the shittiest ones, so put a bit of effort and make it more comparable to a AAA game and you're guaranteed to make tons of cash all while fostering a loyal player base, not only that, since it's live service you can keep developing it (something that should reduce costs as you're slowly adding more things such as characters and zones rather than developing something from the ground up) and keep getting money consistently, it's a proven monetization strategy and one of the most effective ones at that.

Overall, it's easier to make a game that will consistently make you money rather than take a gamble with something completely new every couple of years (even more nowadays as AAA games are so expensive to produce and take years to come out), just keep updating it every 6 weeks or so and you have a guaranteed paycheck.
 
Golfing on the Moon 1971 said:
The Trails of Cold Steel arc is my favorite in that series.
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my nigger, I refuse to believe that you honestly like the highschool-anime-drama-with-Redditor-protag arc more than the Crossbell or Liberl arcs. it's simply not scientifically possible.

Golfing on the Moon 1971 said:
I would also recommend FF14, but again beware that the story also shits itself too.
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XIV's story takes a dip in Dawntrail, but it already looks to be digging itself out of that hole. everything else is lit (except ARR is a little corny)
 
I'm Retarded? said:
my nigger, I refuse to believe that you honestly like the highschool-anime-drama-with-Redditor-protag arc more than the Crossbell or Liberl arcs. it's simply not scientifically possible.
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Yes, I liked the castles and mechs and fantasy germany. I found the large cast to be likeable. Combat was fun. Story was interesting.

For Sky, I liked the coup plot of the first game, but found the second game to be a slog. The party was small and I only liked a couple of the characters. Didn't have as much visual appeal as Erebonia. And Crossbell I found to be overall unattractive and did not like any of its party members, and the plot was bad.


I'm Retarded? said:
XIV's story takes a dip in Dawntrail, but it already looks to be digging itself out of that hole. everything else is lit (except ARR is a little corny)
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FF14 had gone off the rails by Endwalker. I found Dawntrail to be mildly more enjoyable since it wasn't ruining a decade of buildup. They both have terrible pacing issues.
 
Golfing on the Moon 1971 said:
I found the large cast to be likeable.
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Golfing on the Moon 1971 said:
Crossbell I found to be overall unattractive and did not like any of its party members, and the plot was bad.
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Golfing on the Moon 1971 said:
I found Dawntrail to be mildly more enjoyable
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my kiwibrother, I believe you may just be from another planet. but other people often have the same reaction to my own opinions, so I can hardly judge you for this. I will say that I did enjoy Cold Steel 3 and 4, and I do generally agree that the CS games are decent JRPGs, if you can suffer through Rean's interminable anime speeches about the fuckin power of friendship or whatever before every god damn boss fight. and the obnoxious villains. and the horrible romance scenes. and the creepy implied loli/siscon shit.
 
Golfing on the Moon 1971 said:
For Sky, I liked the coup plot of the first game, but found the second game to be a slog. The party was small and I only liked a couple of the characters. Didn't have as much visual appeal as Erebonia. And Crossbell I found to be overall unattractive and did not like any of its party members, and the plot was bad.
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Im a Crossbell enjoyer and i can understand why people may not like it. Personally for me is my favorite arc and considering i enjoy detective/cop plots is a fit for me. The cast is below the cast of Liberl but i do enjoy Lloyd and his my favorite due to being a complete normal dude with no powers, special descent or has bullshit abilities.


That said i do encourage kiwis here to give Trails a try so you can get lost in the rabbit hole and not shut the fuck up about it once someone asks you about Trails.
 
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