Games you wish were brought overseas?

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I'm a big fan of importing so I personally don't really care either way. Two games which make no sense to not be brought over yet are the trails of zero amd trails of blue games. They take place between the events of trails in the sky and trails of cold steel and both of these series were brought over but for some reason they skipped over the middle of the trilogy.

They skipped them because when they were new, Xseed just started working on Sky 1 then 2, and by the time they were able to move forward with another game, Cold Steel had just come out and the PSP was fucking dead for several years, hell, even when those games came out in Japan the PSP was dead for some time in the west. They asked to work on Cold Steel instead, since the PS3/PSV were at the end of their runs too, if the Vita ever had one worth mentioning, and they needed to make atleast some amount of money on any of these games.

See, they have Vita versions too, though. With voice acting too. They had no reason to skip over to sen no kiseki and there was a multiple year period between their release of trails FC and SC during which they could have worked on the vita versions of zero and ao as opposed to simply skipping them over. I didn't even expect them to bring over sen by that point and had already imported and finished both games by the time they had announced sen 1 for US release (no dual audio so glad I didn't wait hehe) but just thinking of people playing it without having played the Crosswell games sounds absurd.

The 'Evolution' ports on Vita are a licensing clusterfuck. It was made by 2 or 3 different companies with Falcom overseeing it, as opposed to Falcom internal, resulting in a quagmire when it comes to licensing it for localisation. Falcom would be fine with those versions being localised, but the other companies are difficult to work with. Xseed employees said that they asked for it and came up short, hinting that their request was flatout denied. Workload might've also contributed in them not pursuing it more than that, but they're quite open about the difficulties with these Trails localisations and why they won't pursue some of them, yet here they straight up said it just wasn't meant to be and that they weren't allowed to elaborate further.

So their only other option would've been the PSP originals, and that fell out of the equation as explained in my first post. They couldn't do PC either, since the second game's PC port is a Joyoland China exclusive, probably not too good a port either, and also a clusterfuck to license at all. They could've made a separate PC port of it, but that would've been too big an undertaking for Xseed at the time. They have said that if they'd ever do it, it would have to be PC exclusive like Sky 3rd.

They also didn't have the free time you think they had. After finishing FC they went straight into SC, and SC turned out to be a real hellish localisation effort, which took far longer than they had wanted. Took more time, money and manpower than they anticipated, needed to hire extra people just for it. By the time they were far enough where they could start up a new project, Cold Steel had come out and the new consoles were announced. It turned into a situation where they would literally only make any money at all off of localising Cold Steel, if they started then and there.

Hell, if they didn't decide to localise Cold Steel, Falcom could very well have given it to someone like NISA instead. They'd kinda like their new games to be released within a reasonable timeframe nowadays. I mean stuff like Xseed losing Ys8 to NISA just happened, even though they've been in charge of that franchise for what feels like a decade, with the most likely reason being Xseed's inability to guarantee a PC port, which seems to be a criteria for Falcom now. Falcom wouldn't have hesitated to drop them if they weren't doing Cold Steel asap. Funnily enough, Xseed just announced Cold Steel I&II ports for PC, so it seems like they're trying to keep Trails and not lose it like Ys.

It sucks, but that's the long and short of it. Nobody outside of Xseed cares enough to go back to those 2 games, and Xseed is busy working on newer Falcom stuff, partially because they make more(read: any at all) money off of them, and partially because they might lose their preferred status with Falcom for the series' new entries if they don't.

Yeah I'm familiar with most of this stuff. SC nearly made one of the original translators commit suicide, literally, so it's no joke. Still, I firmly maintain that if something like Jstars can manage the licensing clusterfuck it is presented with, they clearly could have done something too. I think if they had seen how much trails FC sold on steam they would have pushed harder but back then it wasn't yet available there.

Falcom is generally weird with their audio licencing and dual audio seems to be a big problem due to that but if even persona 5 manages to bring over the Jp voices (about as all-star as any cast could be), they could do something about it. Hell, even bringing the psp versions for sale on the vita would have been better than just skipping them over entirely.



On a brighter note, trails in the sky 3rd chapter is coming out in a couple weeks in the US too. So there's good stuff mixed in there.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Front Mission 5, because after Evolve didn't do so hot it may be the end of the franchise, and Scars of the War was the last of them to be turn-based strategy. Apparently it had lots of cameos from the previous games as well that could be fought in an arena. On a similar note, Front Mission: Gun Hazard was a unique idea I'd like to see done again if the original can't be ported.

Tales of Rebirth. It was released back before the series was well-regarded/known enough elsewhere to be considered worth porting and unlike Phantasia, was never remade.

Lastly, Shin Megami Tensei: if. Persona 5 has everyone singing the SMT franchise's praises once more, and I'm sure the game that originally led to the spinoff series would be well-received with a bit of polish in some areas. Topically, the main antagonist became so due to excessive bullying, in an age where it is considered the motivation behind some school shootings.