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~SparktDog
Hey everyone!
Decided to jump here since I heard DA is going downhill. Granted, part of me is still going to die on that hill, but whatevs.
Decided to jump here since I heard DA is going downhill. Granted, part of me is still going to die on that hill, but whatevs.
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Comments Made: 16
Journals: 1
Recent Journal
Solatorobo 10th Anniversary post
3 years ago
So over the past week or so, I recently decided to play through Tail Concerto and Solatorobo (via emulation, mind you. No way I'm setting myself back $200 for games I wasn't even sure I was going to like) and just found out that today marks the 10th anniversary of Solatorobo's original launch in Japan. So instead of doing something like an art piece (my drawing has been really lax lately), I decided to instead give my thoughts on the two Little Tail Bronx games.
Tail Concerto: Part of me doesn't want to be too harsh on this considering it is CyberConnect2's first ever game developed, but at the same time this game screams "I need a full on remake, stat." The story is simplistic, yet at the same time, the Tail Concerto artbooks (which are Japanese-exclusive), does include additional world-building that will unfortunately never see the light of day in US and EU territories thanks to underperforming sales (personally, I blame the lack of western marketing on Bandai's part). Of course, the main thing that holds this game back big time is its controls. Waffle's Police Robo handles like it's constantly dabbed in grease meaning you'll slip and slide all over the place trying to do basic things. Now for the most part, this isn't an issue as stages are normally designed akin to that of Mega Man Legends' open ended worlds, but good god they dropped the ball hard by the Weapons Factory stage, where the game suddenly demands you make overly-precise platforming jumps with a control scheme that wasn't meant to handle that kind of gameplay. The lack of manual camera control also hurts as you have to carefully rotate Waffle left or right just to reorient the camera. There is an option to shift the camera up or down, but that's about it. Man, I wanted to like Tail Concerto.
Solatorobo: I'm going to start this off with a hot take: Solatorobo shouldn't have been a DS exclusive. And the reason behind this is short-term vs long-term success. The DS was the more popular system, yes, but at the same time, Solatorobo was a very late release (2010 in JP and EU, 2011 in US), and combined with again, the lack of western advertisement (It was only covered once in a Nintendo Power magazine) and the advent of the 3DS means that Red was fighting an uphill battle from the start (Hiroshi Matsuyama confirmed that the game only managed to push 100,000 units worldwide). Now had this been on the PSP, then it would've gotten far more recognition in the long-run thanks to the fact that basically most if not all of the PSP's library is on the PSN for $10 each at least (besides, Solatorobo doesn't take advantage of the dual screen aspect of the DS save for cutscenes). With that out of the way holy crap, does Solatorobo blow Tail Concerto out of the water, and nothing solidifies that feeling more than the fact that Red's Dahak doesn't control like he's walking on ice 24/7. On top of that, there's a bunch of customization options in order to better improve your capabilities, plenty of side-missions and world building compared to the first game, and the second half of the game, without giving away too much details, is when Solatorobo truly shines, as it just straights up decides it wants to become a furry-themed Mega Man Zero game.
Tail Concerto: Part of me doesn't want to be too harsh on this considering it is CyberConnect2's first ever game developed, but at the same time this game screams "I need a full on remake, stat." The story is simplistic, yet at the same time, the Tail Concerto artbooks (which are Japanese-exclusive), does include additional world-building that will unfortunately never see the light of day in US and EU territories thanks to underperforming sales (personally, I blame the lack of western marketing on Bandai's part). Of course, the main thing that holds this game back big time is its controls. Waffle's Police Robo handles like it's constantly dabbed in grease meaning you'll slip and slide all over the place trying to do basic things. Now for the most part, this isn't an issue as stages are normally designed akin to that of Mega Man Legends' open ended worlds, but good god they dropped the ball hard by the Weapons Factory stage, where the game suddenly demands you make overly-precise platforming jumps with a control scheme that wasn't meant to handle that kind of gameplay. The lack of manual camera control also hurts as you have to carefully rotate Waffle left or right just to reorient the camera. There is an option to shift the camera up or down, but that's about it. Man, I wanted to like Tail Concerto.
Solatorobo: I'm going to start this off with a hot take: Solatorobo shouldn't have been a DS exclusive. And the reason behind this is short-term vs long-term success. The DS was the more popular system, yes, but at the same time, Solatorobo was a very late release (2010 in JP and EU, 2011 in US), and combined with again, the lack of western advertisement (It was only covered once in a Nintendo Power magazine) and the advent of the 3DS means that Red was fighting an uphill battle from the start (Hiroshi Matsuyama confirmed that the game only managed to push 100,000 units worldwide). Now had this been on the PSP, then it would've gotten far more recognition in the long-run thanks to the fact that basically most if not all of the PSP's library is on the PSN for $10 each at least (besides, Solatorobo doesn't take advantage of the dual screen aspect of the DS save for cutscenes). With that out of the way holy crap, does Solatorobo blow Tail Concerto out of the water, and nothing solidifies that feeling more than the fact that Red's Dahak doesn't control like he's walking on ice 24/7. On top of that, there's a bunch of customization options in order to better improve your capabilities, plenty of side-missions and world building compared to the first game, and the second half of the game, without giving away too much details, is when Solatorobo truly shines, as it just straights up decides it wants to become a furry-themed Mega Man Zero game.
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