**I wrote this shortly after finishing AI: The Sonmium Files but never got around to posting it. Now that we are at the end of the year, I thought I’d polish it a bit and finally upload it. As I say in the write up, I actually do like this game but this post is more about me venting about my issues with the title and how I thought it could have been better. For an abridged version of my thoughts on this game you can check out my 2019 Game of the Year list.**

--------------------------------------------------------------------

It has been 7 years since the last time I played a game created by Uchikoshi that I actually enjoyed, which was 2012’s Virtue’s Last Reward. That game was one of my favorite titles for the Nintendo 3DS, if not one of my all-time favorites, and its predecessor, 999, basically introduced me to the visual novel genre. I don’t think it would be much of an exaggeration to say that both 999 and VLR are some of the most important games I played this decade, helping to shape my fandom and eventually inspiring me to write a big blog post about the history of visual novels. So, while I would call myself an Uchikoshi fan, I have not actually been impressed by his output since VLR. Zero Time Dilemma was pretty disappointing for a variety of reasons and Punch Line, which was written Uchikoshi, was just kind of dumb and lacked polish. I was excited to play AI since it looked like Uchikoshi’s proper return to directing a game with an actual budget, but I also didn’t quite know what to expect. The first two Zero Escape games were big titles for me when they were initially released but the world of Japanese adventure games and visual novels available in English has expanded exponentially since VLR was published in 2012, and even since ZTD’s release in 2016. I didn’t know if Uchikoshi could still compete with the big hitters that were now available in English, such as the Danganronpa franchise or the recently translated 428: Shibuya Scramble.

However, after I obtained all of AI’s endings and put the controller down after watching the credits, I had a big smile on my face. AI: The Sonmium Files was a fun experience and a huge improvement over Zero Time Dilemma in many ways. I left AI feeling positive about the game overall but when I was in middle of my playthrough I was not always happy with my experience. I feel like AI has a few flaws that really nagged at me throughout my playtime and made the game much worse than it could have been. The story’s main mystery is compelling and kept me curious about what would happen next. The final crazy plot twist, as is tradition in most Uchikoshi titles, is fun and does a good job of flipping the story on its head. But where the game suffers the most is with its structure and tone.

While the Zero Escape titles are very serious, they do have genuinely funny moments. AI tries to mimic this tone by having plenty of jokes and witty banter between characters even though the story deals with grisly murders. Some of the humor hits, and I definitely laughed a few times, but the problem is that the humor can often feel like the game is flipping a switch between “serious mode” and “funny mode” with the tradition between these two “modes” often being very jarring. As a comparison, Danganronpa is very effective at blending humor with tragedy, with the jokes even enhancing the horror of certain scenes, and always feels in-character with the overall tone of the game. AI’s humor, on the other hand, often feels like it is clashing with the serious tone the story has most of the time and deflates the tension in a lot of scenes. The most annoying tonal shifts for me occur basically any time Date, and a lot of the other characters, get all prevy. Date specifically doesn’t seem like the kind of character that would act like a pervy protagonist from a high school anime romcom but whenever he breaks out that side of himself it almost always ruins the mood of any scene. A good example of this is the ongoing porno mag joke that is used whenever a shootout sequence begins. Every time there is a dramatic scene where Date needs to fight his way out of a situation, Aiba will say: “Look Date, it’s your favorite thing!”, and the entire action scene will turn into a joke about Date getting super saiyan horny. It almost feels like Uchikoshi heard a bunch of fans say that they loved the “elevator scene” in 999 so he decided to double and triple down on the sex jokes in AI. I can enjoy a good dirty joke from time to time, and AI even has some funny innuendoes here and there, but maybe 65-70 percent of these desperate attempts at humor either fall totally flat or clash harshly with what is happening in the story at that moment. I’m not saying that the game should have been completely serious, but I wish the narrative had balanced its humor better with the serious story it was telling. AI’s ending credits sequence is zany and whimsical in an awesome way and I almost wish the game had had more of that style of humor rather than trying to make Date into the main character from a 90s eroge.

During interviews Uchikoshi mentioned several times that AI was more of an adventure game compared to his previous games while still containing a branching narrative, with a flowchart and everything just like the Zero Escape games. However, in his attempt to blend these two elements, I feel that Uchikoshi created a spork where the game does neither of these two gameplay styles well. Just like in an adventure game, the player has the ability to go wherever they wish, investigate locations and talk to people in order to progress the narrative but the problem is that AI doesn’t allow the player to problem solve anything themselves. For the most part, the player is really only able to interact with things that will progress the story. While Date has several cybernetic abilities, such as x-ray vision, he can only use them on objects that will reveal new information. Old-school adventure games are notorious for having obtuse puzzles that are frustrating to solve, so I can understand why AI would want to limit what the player can do in order to make sure they don’t get stuck. However, so much freedom is taken away that I often wondered why I was even given the ability to investigate anything. It just felt like an extra button I had to click to get to the next chunk of dialogue. Even most background objects you can click on just contain terse two or three-word descriptions. If the game had just done something minor like giving me the ability to use Date’s cybernetic abilities whenever I wanted, it would have gone a long way in at least making me feel like I was actually problem solving something.

And as for AI’s branching structure and multiple endings, I honestly don’t know why it needs to exist. The Zero Escape games have very clear story reasons for why there are multiple endings and other titles like 428 integrate their branching structure into their gameplay and narrative themes. But the multiple endings in AI seem almost designed to just extend the length of the game. When I did my first playthrough of AI I made all the choices that lead down the path for the true ending but when I got to a certain point the game blocked my progress and forced me to explore other routes before I could continue to the true ending. These other story paths mainly focus on other characters, fleshing out their backgrounds and giving them a nice bit of character development. During these routes you’ll learn little details about the overall mystery and Date will remember these details in the different timelines which allows him to solve the case. Date will even mention that he doesn’t know how he remembers these details in other story paths very similar to the protagonists in the Zero Escape titles. However, unlike in the Zero Escape games, there is no actual reason given to why Date can remember information from other timelines and it plays no role in the overall mystery. It just feels like this random thing in the background of the narrative that is never touched on. On top of that all the information you learn in these different timelines feels like stuff you could have easily learned somehow in the main story path. So, getting all these different endings comes off as if the game is just trying to extend its playtime rather than adding something meaningful to the narrative. Plus, I was sort of bummed out because, as I said before, all of the side characters get their development in timelines outside of the main route, so the true ending acts like all that development never happened. Some of my favorite moments in the story were in those side routes so it was frustrating to have the cast act like none of those events happened. In the end the branching structure doesn’t add much and feels like it was there just because Uchikoshi’s other games had it.

While I’ve been venting my frustrations with this game, I did enjoy AI: The Sonmium Files when all is said and done. Many of the characters are fun, with Date and Aiba's relationship being a highlight for me. The presentation is a huge step-up from Zero Time Dilemma and while it is limited in some ways it has an attractive cel-shaded look. All the characters are fully voiced and have very solid English performances. Characters like Rohan had kind of weak vocal performances but there are also some real standouts like Mizuki who hit every emotional moment perfectly. I even liked the Sonmium sequences a lot more than most people seem to. The solutions to a lot of the puzzles in those sequences can be a bit random but I liked trying to navigate the Sonmiums and the time limit added a good amount a tension. Again, the story is full of fun twists and the game is solid overall. I suppose I may have unfairly hoped that AI would be the next god-tier Japanese adventure game that would stand tall with the other big boys of the genre, such as 999 and VLR. But what I got was a flawed experience that was still enjoyable and full of its own unique charms. In terms of quality, AI is perhaps more similar to a title like Time Hollow on the Nintendo DS. Not the best game ever but still fun and memorable.

I've been a fan of the Sakura Wars franchise for a while, and have posted about the series several times on this site, so I experimented with making a video where I share some random fun facts about this once prolific Japanese franchise. Hope you enjoy it!

Last year I made a blog post about the history of visual novels. Originally I had thought of making that post as a video but I quickly realized that it would be a lot of work, especially since I didn’t know how to record gameplay footage at the time nor use any editing software outside of Windows Movie Maker.

However, this year, I made a resolution to teach myself some basic editing skills and turn my blog post into an informative video. After two months of work you have the video before you.

Hopefully you find it interesting and hopefully I didn’t get too many of my facts wrong.

I feel like the term “visual novel” is fairly new for a lot of western game fans. If I had to be exact, I’d say a majority of English speaking players had only been vaguely aware, or completely unaware, of the word “visual novel” until maybe January 4, 2012 when the English freeware game called Katawa Shoujo hit the scene and made many people fans of the genre (at least that is the impression I get from reading around the internet on sites like the visual novel sub-Reddit). I am certainly one of those people because while I had dabbled with visual novels like Ever17, which I played right after experiencing 999 around 2010-ish, I only started to read more visual novels after playing Katawa Shoujo, which made me more aware of the genre.

Today visual novels occupy a sizable niche within the western gaming community with all sorts of titles, both from Japan and by western developers, available on popular storefronts like Steam. With this surge in popularity both fans and critics have begun throwing the term “visual novel” around all over the place to classify basically anything that bares a surface level similarity to the genre, especially if they are Japanese in origin. Games that were once correctly classified as “adventure games”, like Ace Attorney or Hotel Dusk, are now being called visual novels or visual novel adventure games or even “visual novels with point-and-click elements”. I’ve even seen some people call games like Persona 5 a visual novel with RPG elements. Pretty much any Japanese game that is heavily story based and is mainly presented through character portraits and textboxes is being labeled a visual novel in the West. Sort of like when a little kid learns a new word and starts wanting to use it on everything.

Kid points at dog, “Dog!”

Kid points at cat, “Dog!!”

The visual novel genre originates in Japan and has a long history that is directly connected to the Japanese adventure genre, all of which are deeply locked away behind a thick language barrier. I think a lot of the misunderstandings behind what a visual novel is has a lot to do with the lack of English translations for many of the games that lead to the genre’s creation, causing a lot of confusion and misinformation. So, I wanted to try and clear some things up about visual novels by looking at their history and their relationship to adventure games. Bear in mind that I do not know Japanese, therefore I cannot really play most of these games, and a lot of what I know has been figured out by Google translating my way through Japanese wiki sites and picking up stuff from random sources over the years. But I’ll do my best.

First thing to understand is that all visual novels are adventure games. Let me explain. It is basically like how action-RPGs and turn-based RPGs are both still role-playing games, visual novels are just a branch of the larger family tree of Japanese adventure games. Visual novels don’t look anything like the classical western definition of an adventure game, which includes point-and-click titles like Maniac Mansion or modern games like those once released by Telltale, but if you look at the history of adventure games in Japan it makes a lot more sense.

Just like how most fans classify games like The Elder Scrolls series as “Western RPGs” and titles like Final Fantasy as “Japanese RPGs” or “JRPGs” it will be helpful to think of adventure games in the same way. There are western adventure games and Japanese adventure games. Both have their origins in text adventure games (like Zork, Deadline and other Infocom titles) and both were heavily influenced by Roberta Williams’ Mystery House, which was popular in Japan and in the West. However, after this point, the two regions went down different paths with the genre. Just like how the origin of JRPGs can be traced back to Yuji Horii’s Dragon Quest series, Japanese adventure games can basically be traced back to another Yuji Horii title, 1983’s The Portopia Serial Murder Case. A prototypical crime story, Portopia has the player take the role of a detective investigating a murder with the assistance of another detective named Yasu. There are other Japanese adventure games released before this, most of which were clones of Mystery House, but Portopia, specifically the more popular 1985 Famicom port, is the title that in many ways created the modern adventure game in Japan and would start many traditions and conventions that other Japanese developers would copy.

The Portopia Serial Murder Case	(Famicom - 1985)

Unlike many Western adventure games of the time, Portopia is presented in a first-person perspective instead of the third-person view seen in many point-and-click titles. There is also a much larger emphasis on character interaction with the game not being able to progress unless you talked to certain people in a certain order whereas western adventure games tended to focus much more on complex environmental puzzles. The screen is separated into three windows: one for the visuals, one for text and finally a verb window which is the player’s main tool for interacting with the world. The game is about gathering pieces of information from conversations with other characters and collecting items that can be presented as evidence which allows the story to move forward. A magnifying glass can be taken out at any time as well to examine the background of any scene and just the same an icon of a hammer can be used to hit anything in the background which can reveal new information to the player. The world can be navigated in a somewhat nonlinear fashion allowing the case to be solved in a different order each playthrough and even contains multiple endings depending on which character the player chooses to arrest, although there is only one true ending. This is the basic template that all future Japanese adventure games would follow.

Portopia’s presentation is very similar to visual novels, with its first-person perspective, combination of still backgrounds with character sprites and textbox, but it is far more focused on problem solving with progression often being blocked behind puzzles and its writing being direct and terse. Japanese adventure games would go through a few more iterations over the ensuing years before they would look and play like modern day visual novel titles.

The adventure genre in Japan, just like any game genre, changed and simplified over time but a lot of this evolution would happen on Japanese computers, similar to the West. This is yet another reason so much of the history of early Japanese adventure games is lost on western fans since the titles released on machines like the NEC PC-88 and 98 are very obscure in English territories and practically none of these titles were released on other platforms. One of the notable steps in the transformation of adventure games into visual novels would be System Sacom’s Novel Ware franchise which lasted from 1988 to 1990. These games were basically adventure games in a similar vein to Portopia, often containing verb windows and puzzles, but were much more focused on delivering fully featured stories. The selling point of the series was that the games were written like a novel, containing plenty of dialogue and descriptive text instead of the sparse sentences one would often find in early adventure titles. Problem solving was greatly simplified and some entries didn’t even have puzzles at all such as the first entry in the series called DOME. The idea of making an adventure game more like a novel is a key step in the history of the genre and would be taken further by Chunsoft, the company who itself created the Famicom port of Portopia that kickstarted the genre. Chunsoft would release a horror title called Otogirisou (the Japanese name for the St. John's Wort flower) in 1992 for the Super Famicom which the company branded as a “Sound Novel”.

Otogirisou was quite literally a digital novel with the story’s text covering the entire screen and the game even simulating turning the page of a book. Visuals took a backseat to the story’s text with the only graphics being mostly static backgrounds that would sometimes have limited animations or have effects layered on top of them, such as rain and lighting. Atmospheric sound effects and spooky music embellished the game’s horror storyline hence Chunsoft calling it a “sound” novel. Player interaction was simplified to the point that the only input was pressing a button to advance the text and selecting choices that could branch the story to a number of different endings, with the franchise being famous for its large number of bad endings. This is the game that created the visual novel genre in all but name, featuring almost all of the characteristics and presentation of modern visual novels. After the sleeper success of Otogirisou, Chunsoft would create another sound novel in 1994 called Kamaitachi no Yoru (which translates to “The Night of the Sickle Weasel” and would later be localized as “Banshee's Last Cry” in Aksys’s 2014 translation of the iPhone release) which exploded in popularity in Japan causing a slew of copycats to be released by other companies. Chunsoft would continue to make games under their Sound Novel brand name but fans also began calling similar games created by other developers sound novels as well.

Throughout the 1990s, dozens of sound novels would be released on the Super Famicom and PlayStation eventually leading to an adult video game developer named Leaf throwing their hat into the market as well. In 1996, Leaf released a pornographic horror sound novel called Shizuku, which translates to “Drip” or “Droplet,” and branded the game as being the first volume in their “Leaf Visual Novel Series”. This, from what I can tell, is the first instance of the term visual novel ever being used to classify a game. Shizuku was basically just another sound novel featuring the same storytelling style of Chunsoft’s titles. Leaf may have just called their game a visual novel to differentiate themselves from the competition, but there were some notable differences between Shizuku and other sound novels. While most sound novels had minimalist visuals, often not even showing the characters or representing them as vague silhouettes, Leaf’s visual novels had defined character sprites with multiple expressions and fullscreen event illustrations, often used for sexually explicate scenes. So instead of relying mostly on text to tell its story like other sound novels, Shizuku also used visuals to convey its narrative. This tangent to the sound novel genre grew in popularity with Leaf’s third visual novel, 1997’s To Heart, which changed the usual horror theme seen in many sound novels to that of a romantic high school comedy. Obviously taking inspiration from the rising popularity of dating simulation games such as Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial and Elf’s Doukyuusei, To Heart repurposed its branching structure to lead to different character routes that corresponded with a specific love interest. So instead of making choices to avoid bad endings like past games, the player was making choices to lead to an ending where they could romance one of several girls in the game.

This new style of novel game would grow in popularity, especially with the otaku audience, and is the origin of the modern-day visual novel. While not all visual novels are about romance, the idea of having more visuals, routes that lead to different endings that are often attached to a specific character and the prevalence of romantic stories (as well as pornographic material) originates from Leaf’s titles. The presentation of visual novels would change slightly over time with most titles containing their text in a box at the bottom of the screen, similar to adventure games, instead of the fullscreen style seen in sound novels. Other variations of the genre would also emerge over time such as kinetic novels, a term originating from VisualArt’s brand of linear visual novels, which describes a visual novel that contains no player choice or gameplay of any kind. There are also titles that are hybrids between visual novels and other genres with the two gameplay styles often being separated into clearly defined sections. Examples include titles such as Utawarerumono which has strategy RPG segments, Baldr Force which has mech combat sections and even the Zero Escape series could be considered a hybrid between a visual novel and a puzzle game. But when a game is classified as a traditional "visual novel" it should be describing a mix-media digital novel that often has a branching narrative.

That’s a lot of history, so here is a visual timeline of the major changes in the adventure game genre that lead to visual novels:

Now that we got that out of the way lets go back to what I said earlier, that all visual novels are adventure games. In Japan novel games, whether they be visual, sound or kinetic, are just another type of adventure game with magazines like Famitsu including titles like Steins;Gate and 428: Shibuya Scramble in their poll for best adventure games of all time. While that might sound crazy to a western fan since they seem so different from a “normal” adventure title it makes sense after seeing how the adventure game genre has evolved over the years in Japan. But, just like in my comparison to turn-based and action RPGs earlier, while every visual novel is a type of adventure game not every adventure game is a visual novel. A game that is focused on problem solving (containing some kind of fail state, block to progression or puzzles that need to be overcome) like the Ace Attorney series is a Japanese adventure game in the most traditional sense. Ace Attorney specifically is directly copying the exact gameplay structure of Portopia. Phoenix Wright’s design even pays tribute to its heritage by sporting the same iconic blue suit and red tie worn by Yasu in Portopia. Western fans may think a title like Ace Attorney must be a visual novel of some kind since there are so many surface level similarities but that is because visual novels, as we’ve seen, are just an evolution of the Japanese style of adventure games. Visual novels look like Japanese adventure games not the other way around. Their presentation may be similar but what each genre focuses on and how they play are very different. Again adventure games are about problem solving and visual novels, or any of the novel games previously mentioned, are mainly about reading a narrative.

To give an analogy: adventure games are like driving a car to a destination. You directly control where you go with the potential of taking a wrong turn and getting lost. Visual novels are like if you took a train to a destination. You choose a route and the train takes you there.

The purpose of this write-up is not to argue semantics about what games belong in what genre. Genres are confusing in general and we could argue all day about what exactly an RPG is or what exactly an adventure game is (whether their western or Japanese). Words also often change when they are adopted by other cultures. Maybe the word “visual novel” will simply become a term in the West that encompasses any adventure game made in Japan or any game made in that style. Similar to how the term “anime” in the West means “animation from Japan” whereas in its country of origin anime is just another word to describe any kind of cartoon from anywhere in the world. But I also don’t think it is helpful to just throw genre names around willy-nilly and put the visual novel label on anything that sort of looks like a visual novel. When I was first getting into visual novels, I actually didn’t like them very much because people online were saying they were similar to the many DS adventure games I was playing at the time but they weren’t. When I played games like Ever17 I was frustrated at the lack of interactivity and never ended up finishing most of them. It wasn’t until I played these games on their own terms that I began to enjoy them. People who are fans of games like Ace Attorney are not always going to like visual novels and people who like visual novels are not always going to enjoy adventure games since they are trying to accomplish different things despite their similarities. I think understanding where these genres came from and acknowledging the differences between them will make it easier for people to appreciate them for what they are. I may have gotten some of this history wrong, and if I did please let me know, but I hope this has cleared up what a visual novel is for some people.

Sources

• Chrontendo History of Japanese Adventure Games: 1982 to 1989 and 1989 to 2010
• Game Developer Research Institute - System Sacom
• Japanese Wikipedia: サウンドノベル, ビジュアルノベル, システムサコム
• Kotaro Uchikoshi’s GDC 2013 Presentation
• Mobygames - Novel Ware
• Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma
• Pixelated Audio (Staff Roll: Manabu Saito – PA101)
• The Possibilities of Adventure Games
• What is Game Design? Three Perspectives
• Chunsoft 30th Anniversary Interview

I finished Valkyria Chronicles 4 last week and decided to quickly write down some of my thoughts on the game in a hope to start a general discussion about what everyone’s opinions are now that they’ve completed it.

Throughout this year I've played a bit of each mainline entry in the Valkyria Chronicles series, finishing Valkyria Chronicles 3 in the beginning of the year, replaying two thirds of the first game and about 10 hours of Valkyria Chronicles 2. So, with the whole series fresh in my mind I think I can safely say that Valkyria Chronicles 4 is one of the strongest entries in the franchise. I don't know exactly where I would rank it yet, still have to let it sit with me, but it is pretty much everything I've wanted in a Valkyria sequel since finishing the first game several years ago.

The Gameplay

While some people may say the game is very similar to the first Valkyria Chronicles, I feel that the small changes 4 brings to the series drastically changed how I played the game. The Grenadier may be the only new class, but its presence made it much harder to just bum-rush the enemy's base camp like in past titles since Scouts could now be easily taken out by the Grenadiers. New anti-tank gun placements, and the fact that Grenadiers could knock out your tank's treads, also made it a lot harder for me to just muscle my tank through maps. Unit transportation is also a lot more important since the maps are so much larger than past games and there are a lot of interesting options to get large numbers of troops across the battlefield, such as using the APC or Command skills. Valkyria Chronicles 4 also returns to the mission structure of the first game where ever mission has a unique story-based objective instead of the dozens of generic missions seen in the PSP games. Sometimes missions could feel a little too much like a puzzle, where the only way to advance is to figure out exactly what order the designer wanted you to do everything in, but for the most part I really liked this return to a traditional mission structure. VC4 even managed to surprise me with some of its mission stipulations such as when you try to use your medic in Chapter 13 only to see her get snipped down, leading to you having to take out the sniper before you can use your medic again. Thoughtful stuff like that and the small additions to Valkyria’s gameplay formula made VC4 one of my favorite entries in the series in terms of pure gameplay.

The Journey

Story wise, one of biggest things I liked about the narrative is how it was structured. Past games were far more episodic, especially the PSP titles, with each chapter setting up a new conflict that is resolved by the end of it and the protagonist’s overall goal often being kind of vague like "end the war" or "prove my innocence". Valkyria Chronicles 4 is specific. The characters are trying to get to the Imperial Capital and every chapter shows a progression towards that goal. While there are still tangents in the story, the characters always feel like they are laser focused on that one goal of getting to the capital and it is always exciting to see what new obstacle the team needs to overcome on their journey to their objective.

I also like how Claude's relationship with his childhood friends is complicated. Raz is more of a childhood bully than an old friend and Riley initially hates Claude for being a coward in the past. It is also interesting that Claude is not like Welkin in the first game where being brave and kind just comes naturally to him. He has to work hard to overcome his past cowardice, he has to work to gain people's trust, and he is always struggling with making the right choice. Even when it looks like he is making a great decision the story will almost always punish him for being so sure of himself, such as when he delays meeting up with Squad F to attack an enemy supply line which directly leads to Squad F being annihilated. Even during the game's ending, when he hears the broadcast for the cease fire right before detonating the bomb in the capital, he doesn't breathe a sign of relief like maybe Welkin would but initially gets angry, questions what all of his friends’ sacrifices were for and almost detonates the bomb anyway. Having a lead that has high-minded ideals but is constantly struggling and having to make compromising decisions made the story that much more intense and even relatable.

The addition of Squad Stories is also very welcome. The PSP titles had similar features where if you used a unit often enough in battle it would unlock a side mission that focused on them. However instead of focusing on one character, Valkyria Chronicles 4's Squad Stories focus on a group of three squad members. I liked this since it shows the camaraderie between your soldiers better and gives further insight into why certain units are friends with each other. The Squad Stories also make the suicide mission near the end of the game, where you pick one other unit to go with Raz, that much more tragic. I picked Aulard Abington to go with Raz since I thought I had already seen his side-story and I never used him much anyway but my heart was still broken when I watched him bravely sacrifice himself.

The Bad

Not everything about Valkyria Chronicle 4's story is perfect. My biggest problem is that I felt that some characters’ development happens a little too quickly, like how Riley gets over her pyrophobia and hatred towards Claude very quickly, and certain characters like Angelica just don't get enough screen time considering how important they are to the narrative. Scenes like when Forseti revealed why he betrayed the Federation are also kind of offhandedly explained when it felt like you could have had a whole chapter about that event. Unlike some games where the story drags in the middle it almost feels like Valkyria Chronicles 4 moves too quickly through its story during the middle chapters but, overall, I think the narrative is very strong.

Valkyria Chronicles 4's presentation is also kind of weak. The game still has that cool watercolor style like the first game did, which still holds up nicely even 10 years later, but reuses a lot of assets from the first game as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Valkyria Chronicles 4 was simply running on a modified version of the engine created for the PS4 remaster since so much of the game feels exactly like the first title. While there are plenty of new graphical effects and assets not present in the first game, and maps are much larger among other things, almost all of the generic animations that play during story sequences and many battle animations are all directly reused from VC1. Most of the soundtrack is comprised of reused tracks from VC1 as well and while the main characters' models all look good many of the side characters are pretty rough looking. There are also far less fully animated story sequences than the first game with a majority of the 4th game being presented through simple scenes consisting of text boxes and the character's animated heads. The game tries to make up for this by having a few diorama style images to emphasize certain scenes, but it is evident that Valkyria Chronicles 4 didn't have the same amount of budget and/or time put into it that the first game did. However, Valkyria Chronicles 3 was a great entry in the series and it is mostly entirely made up of reused maps and assets from Valkyria Chronicles 2. And just like 3, I think Valkyria Chronicles 4 uses its limited resources wisely and has a presentation that is still strong enough to properly convey the story it is trying to tell.

Conclusion

Anyway, there are plenty of other points I'd like to make about Valkyria Chronicles 4 such as how the story portrays that both sides mistreat the Valkyria, how much I liked Klaus or how much I like the game's Giant Robo style ending but I will stop here. What did you guys think of Valkyria Chronicles 4? I think in terms of gameplay it is even better than the first game but I'm still not sure where to rank it in the overall series, even after writing all this.

While most Western Sega fans are excited about some of the recent announcements at Sega Fes 2018, such as Shenmue HD and the new Sega Genesis Mini, I am instead over-the-moon about one piece of news from the event that isn't being discussed by many English fans. A brand-new Sakura Taisen game was announced! While details are still scant, and we don't currently know the exact scale or nature of this game, it appears like the project might be a revival of the series similar in some ways to Sega's recent resurrection of the Valkyria Chronicles series. For those of you who are unaware of what Sakura Taisen is, it is a strategy RPG series that combines elements from adventure games and dating sims that was once a huge franchise for Sega in the late 90s and early 2000s in Japan. The Sakura Taisen series, specifically the five mainline entries, are games I hold very near and dear to my heart. I even made a list of my favorite games in the series last year on GiantBomb and I couldn't be more excited to finally hear that a new game is in development. It has been 8 years since my brothers and I played through NIS America's release of Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, the fifth, final and only localized entry in the series, and a whopping 13 years since the game was published in Japan. So there has been plenty of time for me, and probably many fans, to daydream about what a new game in the series could be like. So here are some hopes, dreams, and questions I have about the newly announced project, with the expectation that it will indeed be a real-deal Sakura Taisen title and not some mobile game or spin-off. Let's do all we can for now and hope.

A New Cast?

First and foremost, the teaser site for the new Sakura Taisen title says that the game will once again be set in Tokyo, after the last few entries were set in Paris and New York, and will feature a "completely new story". This statement is vague enough to mean a number of things, but I hope it means that the game's story will feature a completely new cast. Fan service and returning characters can be fun but since the franchise has been dormant for so long, and the fact that this new title could attract a lot of new fans, I think it would be best to start the series fresh. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love had cameos of old characters, such as Ogami and Sakura showing up in the game's opening, but I think it is important to not have the new game be weighed down by the series' long history by having a bunch of old characters coming back in any form. Don't let it be like the current Ace Attorney series where there are so many returning characters and plotlines that there almost isn't any time to focus on the current story. Also it has been so long since fans have seen anything new from the franchise that introducing an all new team would go a long way in making the next game feel fresh.

Returning Staff?

One of the biggest hopes I have for the new game, and the most likely to happen, is that I want to see the return of Kousuke Fujishima as the character designer. While I think this is pretty much a given since his artwork and designs are so intertwined with the franchise, it still hasn't been confirmed. I think I could be okay with a new artist designing the characters, if Sega got the right person, but it certainly wouldn't feel like a proper comeback for the franchise without Fujishima's iconic style.

On the note of Fujishima, I really wonder how much of the staff from the previous Sakura Taisen games will return to work on this new project? Red Entertainment wasn't mentioned anywhere during the announcement, which is the studio that co-created the series with Sega by coming up with the story and characters. While once a prolific company involved in hugely popular franchises like Tengai Makyou, today they are unfortunately a shadow of their former selves and are currently owned by a Chinese company where they have mainly worked on the occasional visual novel and otome game. Series creator and producer Oji Hiroi was also not mentioned during the announcement and who knows if series writer Satoru Akahori will be involved in the project either. And most importantly, will Kohei Tanaka return to compose the soundtrack? I think Sega could still create a new entry in the series without these people, and it would be interesting to see some new blood work on a Sakura Taisen title, but it would be more than a little worrying to see any of these key players be absent from the project.

Presentation?

There hasn't been a new mainline Sakura Taisen game since the PlayStation 2 era which means this new title will be the very first HD game in the series. I have a lot of ideas about how the franchise could be updated for this current generation of hardware, but I would mainly want to see the new game go full 3D. While the franchise has been known for its beautiful hand-drawn artwork, I think it would be cool to see the franchise move towards a fully polygonal presentation. I think this transition would help the series look more modern while also giving the game a more consistent appearance by showing the world and characters in one style, instead of having the graphics constantly switching between 2D in the story scenes and 3D for the battle segments. Plus I think 3D graphics would allow for more dynamic possibilities with the presentation, because while 2D portraits can certainly look nice they are also very limited. If you wanted to show a character at a different angle, or integrate them into the background in some way, they would need to be completely redrawn, which is not a problem when using polygonal models. If the new Sakura Taisen game had a cel-shaded look similar to the recent Ace Attorney titles or even Bandia Namco's iDOLM@STER games, it would be a real upgrade over the previous games in the series and a welcome change for me personally.

Also, how could it be a Sakura Taisen game if it didn't have some kind of animation by Production I.G.? They always did amazing work for the series and it would be cool to have the studio at least make an animated opening for the new game.

Gameplay?

The later Sakura Taisen titles served as an inspiration for the gameplay of the Valkyria Chronicles series back in the day, with both franchises sharing a lot of the same staff. Years later it would be interesting to see the new Sakura Taisen game take some inspiration back from the series it inspired. The battle segments in the Sakura Taisen series have always been a little weak with there often being little to no difference in the abilities between each unit, making battles a little repetitive (at least from what I remember). Maybe the new game could take a note from Valkyria Chronicles' class system and have each character have their own unique abilities and strengths/weaknesses. Having more interesting maps to navigate and the option to modify your mechs outside of battle would also be a nice addition. Honestly, I don't know exactly how Sega could beef up the battle segments for a new Sakura Taisen, but I hope at the very least they put some effort into making the battles more strategic and varied then they were in the older titles.

The Adventure segments and dating sim elements are another area I hope to see changes. Town exploration in past games was always rather limited with your character feeling like a simple node moving around segmented areas from hotspot to hotspot. I want the new game to feel more like you are physically in the environment. Move the camera in closer, give the locations more detail, and have there be a larger variety of things you can do outside of battles besides just talking to people. I don't think it has to be as in-depth as Sega's Yakuza games or anything, but it would be nice to see something more in line with Persona 5 in terms of presentation. Dating and dialogue choices could also use some updating. Choices in past games effected your relationship points with other characters but had no lasting effect on the story or characters themselves. While I doubt Sega would go full Telltale with their new title it would be nice to see characters at least treat the player differently depending on the choices you make instead of them reverting back to their default opinion of you after each choice. It would also be nice to see the protagonist slowly build their relationship with one of the girls throughout the story somehow instead of their relationship suddenly taking shape near the end of the game. I'm no game designer but I just hope that Sega doesn't take the easy route and carbon copy past game's mechanics and call it a day. It has been 13 years since So Long, My Love and there have been a lot of games that have combined RPGs with dating elements since then, again like Persona or even the recent Fire Emblems, and this could be an opportunity for Sega to learn from those titles or add something new to the space.

Conclusion

There are countless other smaller things I would like to see in the new Sakura Taisen game or theories about the future of the franchise. An orchestrated soundtrack would be cool to have instead of the MIDI tracks from previous games. What if Atlus, who are owned by Sega now, is developing the new game? It would be interesting to see someone like the team that created the Devil Survivor games and Tokyo Mirage Sessions take a swing at the franchise. If Sega is making a new game does that mean they may also port the older Sakura Taisen games to modern systems? If they do, maybe that could open an opportunity for Sega of America to finally localize the first four games in the series. It would be especially cool to see the PlayStation 2 remake of the first game in English. There are so many random things I'd like to discuss but I will stop myself here.

Video games have changed a lot since the last Sakura Taisen's release and the Western gaming community has changed just as much since So Long, My Love was first localized by NISA. I feel like American game fans have become much more excepting of "weird Japanese games" and the success of titles like Yakuza, Nier and Persona as well as the rising popularity of visual novels makes me believe that a game like Sakura Taisen would be accepted much more positively if it was localized today than it did in 2010. This new Sakura Taisen project could still end up being a huge disappointment, since we don't really know what it will be yet. But Sega seems to be turning themselves around these past few years and I want to hope that this new game will be a return to form for the franchise, like Sonic Mania or Valkyria Chronicles 4. I may look back on this post in a year or two and laugh at my optimism but right now I couldn't be more excited about the future of one of my favorite franchises.

In the mean time, if you want to jump into the series for the first time, you can play Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love on the PlayStation 2 or Nintendo Wii as well as the first four games using albeit ancient translation guides.

To learn more about the series in general I'd recommend checking out HG101's article on the series and this extensive video detailing the history of the franchise.

Most of my blog posts have been about video games in some way, because Giantbomb is obviously a gaming site, but I don't just play video games all the time, I also watch a lot of movies. While I was still in college I actually minored in film studies and, inspired by the classes I was taking at the time, began keeping a list of every movie I watched and the exact date I saw them. This didn't include movies I re-watched, only films I saw for the first time, and I also included shorts and television series that I watched to completion. It has now been 5 years since I started this project and I have amassed a huge list of 797 movies, short films and TV shows I watched from 2012 to 2016. That is a lot, and a lot of it is honestly forgettable garbage. I will never watch most of these movies again but there are a handful of very memorable titles that have stuck with me or that are just so weird that I could never forget them. So I thought it would be fun to go through each year and share my personal favorite movies I saw throughout the past half-decade.

Each year lists the movies I began and ended the year with followed by a list of my 15 favorite films I watched that year along with the worst movie I saw. I am not including TV shows or shorts in order to keep it simple and the favorites are listed in chronological order.

There are so many movies I've watched over the past 5 years and every time I look through them all I pick different favorites but these are the films I remember fondly or that I still re-watch. I hope you enjoy looking through my choices.

2012: Stolen Summer (1/11) - Krull (12/28)

1. Redline (1/20)
2. Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust (2/11)
3. The Night of the Hunter (2/15)
4. Lethal Weapon (3/8)
5. End of Evangelion (4/6)
6. The Raid Redemption (4/17)
7. Die Hard (4/23)
8. The Cube (5/23)
9. Battle Royal (7/9)
10. Fantastic Planet (7/17)
11. The Fifth Element (8/28)
12. Ed Wood (9/7)
13. Enter the Dragon (10/4)
14. An American Werewolf in London (10/7)
15. Wreck-It-Ralph (11/10)

Worst: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12/20)

2013: Looper (1/2) - The Fantastic Adventures of Unico (12/29)

1. Yellow Submarine (1/8)
2. Dredd (1/17)
3. Clue (1/29)
4. For a Few Dollars More (2/13)
5. Time Bandits (3/14)
6. Suspira (3/21)
7. Paper Moon (4/18)
8. Pulp Fiction (5/30)
9. Wake in Fright (6/27)
10. Repo Man (7/29)
11. Drive (8/11)
12. Mean Streets (8/15)
13. The Big Lebowski (8/24)
14. Hausu (9/22)
15. On the Waterfront (12/10)

Worst: Only God Forgives (10/29)

2014: The Royal Tenenbaums (1/4) - Hard Day's Night (12/29)

1. Donnie Darko (1/15)
2. The World's End (1/18)
3. The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1/22)
4. The Lego Movie (2/8)
5. Grand Budapest Hotel (3/30)
6. Wizard of Speed and Time (6/20)
7. Snowpiercer (7/4)
8. Flash Gordon (7/12)
9. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (9/23)
10. Galaxy Quest (10/15)
11. Stand By Me (11/13)
12. King of Comedy (12/3)
13. Arthur Christmas (12/12)
14. Eraser Head (12/28)
15. Hard Day's Night (12/29)

Worst: Midnight in Paris (6/8)

2015: Dark Crystal (1/2) - The Hateful 8 (12/31)

1. Never Ending Story (1/12)
2. Apocalypse Now (1/31)
3. John Wick (2/17)
4. Walkabout (3/25)
5. Blues Brothers (5/3)
6. Mad Max: Fury Road (5/15)
7. This is Spinal Tap (6/4)
8. Rock & Rule (6/16)
9. High Noon (6/17)
10. Deer Hunter (6/26)
11. Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade (7/4)
12. Sorcerer (9/15)
13. Face in the Crowd (10/19)
14. Dog Day Afternoon (10/25)
15. Unico in the Island of Magic (11/3)

Worst: Jupiter Ascending (7/27)

2016: Sweet Smell of Success (1/1) - Rouge One (12/31)

1. Sweet Smell of Success (1/1)
2. The Dog of Flanders 1997 (1/10)
3. The Hidden (1/17)
4. Aguirre the Wrath of God (1/30)
5. Phantom of the Paradise (3/6)
6. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (3/12)
7. East of Eden (3/13)
8. The Wanderers (4/22)
9. The Outsiders (4/29)
10. Black Narcissus (8/30)
11. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Collector's Edition (10/14)
12. The Exorcist (10/31)
13. American Graffiti (11/9)
14. Arrival (11/25)
15. Groundhog Day (12/9)

Worst: Money Monster (9/9)

Here's to another 5 years of movie watching!

Before I share my thoughts on Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, I think it is important to explain my history with this goofy courtroom drama that has been going on for more than a decade now.

History With Ace Attorney

I've been playing the Ace Attorney series almost since it first became a thing in the West, playing the original game in 2006 on the old fat Nintendo DS. I love the series. I love the series for all the reasons everyone loves Phoenix Wright: great characters, screaming objection into the microphone, getting testimony from a patriot, all that great Ace Attorney stuff. When I was a little kid I really enjoyed adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Phoenix Wright felt like a grand return to that genre after it had disappeared on most modern platforms at the time. Since then I've finished every officially released Ace Attorney game, including all the spin-offs and I even played a bit of Investigations 2. Since everyone has different opinions on which games are their favorites, here is my ranking of the series so you can know where I stand:

1. Trials and Tribulations
2. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
3. Justice for All
4. Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright
5. Apollo Justice
6. Dual Destinies
7. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Now if I could put this list on a physical plane, the original trilogy would be far above the other entries in the series by a large margin. Although I just said I loved the Ace Attorney series I honestly feel that the rest of the franchise hasn't even gotten close to capturing the brilliance of the first three games. A lot of this has to do with Shu Takumi, the writer, designer and director of the original games, leaving the franchise after Trials and Tribulations and the sort of confused direction the franchise took thereafter. After Apollo Justice the franchise has been in the hands of Takeshi Yamazaki, who has written and/or directed all the Investigation games and the newest mainline titles on the 3DS. A lot of these, Investigations 1 and Dual Destinies in particular, have gimmicky gameplay systems that are usually just reskins of older mechanics, monotonous characters that love to harp on their one or two character traits or phrases, incredibly bad pacing with courtroom sections that last too long, dead simple mysteries that treat the player like they are an idiot, and an overreliance on bringing back old characters even when they play no actual role in the story.

However, while Investigations 1 is irredeemable in my eyes, titles like Dual Destinies certainly have their good moments, I really enjoyed some of the new characters as well as the final twist, and Investigations 2 seems like a big improvement over the first from what I've played. So Takeshi Yamazaki's take on the Ace Attorney series is not completely horrible but the mediocrity of these titles really put a damper on my enthusiasm for the Ace Attorney series and I had very little interest in playing more of the franchise after Dual Destinies, unless Shu Takumi was involved.

Which brings me to the newest entry by Takeshi Yamazaki, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice. I was not expecting much form this game but with Takuro Fuse, the current character designer for Ace Attorney, Co-Directing with Yamazaki I had a small hope that the game might turn out better than the recent titles, since Fuse seems to really understand the spirit of the franchise, but I wasn't holding my breath.

Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice may be the most solid entry in the Ace Attorney franchise in a long time. While it is still far from competing with the original trilogy, Spirit of Justice manages to finally find a good stride after the franchise has stumbled and tripped over itself for the past decade.

Capturing the Spirit

One of my biggest complaints with the previous 3DS title, Dual Destinies, was that the cast had far too many "main characters" fighting for the spotlight. The story's focus was obviously centered on Athena but she had to share the leading role with Apollo from the previous game and of course big papa Phoenix would overshadow both of them whenever he appeared. Spirit of Justice fixes this problem by separating the cast into groups: Phoenix is working abroad by himself, where he can't steal anyone's thunder, while Apollo and Athena stay behind in the States, who work well as a pair since they are both fairly inexperienced. Not only does this allow the characters more room to breathe on their own but it also adds a sense of tension to the narrative.

Phoenix is a stranger in the strange land of Khura'in, where his years of law experience don't apply to this unfamiliar court system. Not only that but the environment is openly hostile, with the country's people being actively against lawyers and a law that sentences the accused to death along with his defender if found guilty. This sense of tension also extends to Apollo and Athena, who have to run their law office without the guidance of their mentor. The characters really feel like they are thinking on their feet in Spirit of Justice and it gives the episodes a sense of energy and consequence that has been missing is recent installments. This energy is also represented in the game's pacing, which is much faster this time around.

Dual Destinies had very long drawn out courtroom sections that always felt like they should have ended 3 or 4 testimonies before they do. Spirit of Justice is much faster paced, keeping the story moving at a decent clip with new reveals and twists happening at a steady rate. Courtroom sections seldom last more than a single day but the episodes don't feel shorter thanks to the return of more detailed investigation segments. For whatever reason investigations where shortened down to just examining the murder scenes in Dual Destinies, instead of every area, but Spirit of Justice brings back the fully featured investigations of old. These give a nice respite between the chaotic courtroom sections as well as allowing characters more opportunities to develop and have comedic banter. The game does occasionally move a bit too quickly, with characters coming to conclusions very suddenly or certain reveals not having enough time to sink in, but I still thought it was much preferable to Dual Destinies' elongated cases. Another improvement in Spirit of Justice, that may not be as immediately noticeable, is that the visuals are greatly improved from the previous entry.

Dual Destinies was a beautiful game, one of the best looking 3DS games when it first came out 3 years ago, but when you see all the small changes SoJ does to character models, colors, and animations, it's hard to go back.

Dual Destinies	Spirit of Justice

Not only are the visuals more polished but even the franchise's trademark "character transformations" are very cleverly done and even managed to surprise a veteran of the series like myself. There are also a lot more unique animations that are only shown once such as in the second episode when a character's testimony includes them doing a stage performance in the courtroom that is all fully animated in-engine. You can tell that the series' artist, Takuro Fuse, Co-Directed this title because of just the shear verity of visuals and how well they are integrated into every aspect of the game. However Fuse was not the only man putting his all into Spirit of Justice, you can also feel Yamazaki being a lot more thoughtful with the game's writing.

While Spirit of Justice certainly has a lot of returning characters, the biggest of which is Maya, it puts the focus much more on the new characters from the Kingdom of Khura'in. Because these new characters are not bound by the previous history of the franchise they have the ability to change a lot more than the main cast. Princess Rayfa especially develops and grows a lot as a character. Rayfa doesn't just suddenly change in the final chapter either, she develops bit by bit in each episode which makes the drama in the game's climax that much more satisfying. Not only are the new characters well done but I felt that Phoenix and the gang were written much more consistently as well. Dual Destinies had a strange problem where the main cast, especially Phoenix and Apollo, would act like stoic professionals when the player wasn't controlling them but then they would transform into inexperienced goofs when they were the lead for the episode. Thankfully the cast in SoJ act in-character at all times, making cases like the one where Apollo and Phoenix face-off against each other a lot more entertaining than they would have been. Maya's characterization was also pretty spot on and Ema Skye is finally back to her old science-loving self instead of the grump she was in Apollo Justice. There are also lots of fun twists throughout the whole game, instead of just in the final case like in Dual Destinies, and there is great use of foreshadowing that really makes every reveal meaningful.

All in all I would say that Spirit of Justice is a big improvement over recent entries in the series and gives a little bit of something for every type of Ace Attorney fan. However that doesn't mean the title is without flaws.

Losing Faith

While Spirit of Justice is a very solid entry in the Ace Attorney series, it still suffers from many of the problems that have plagued the franchise in recent installments.

To begin with a few small complaints, the soundtrack for Spirit of Justice is rather weak. The score is effective and adds the proper amount of gravitas to important scenes but it lacks the memorials tunes of the older titles. None of the new songs are particularly memorable and even the arrangements of returning themes sound like uninspired midi remixes that lack the catchiness of the original chiptunes. Maybe it is just because the last Ace Attorney soundtrack I heard was Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, which had a beautiful score, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed by Spirit of Justice's less-than-stellar soundtrack. Also the Divination Séance mechanic is interesting on a visual level but is annoying to use. There are just so many things to examine that it is overwhelming at first but eventually boils down to just clicking on one of two things over and over again, making it feel too simple. However, the game's greatest flaw is a much more complicated problem that has to do with the franchise's long history.

The Ace Attorney franchise is sort of being crushed under the weight of its own legacy. The series currently has three main characters, several "assistant" characters, and a whole bullpen full of prosecutors among other side-characters that keep reappearing in each game. Some fans love having all these reoccurring characters, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited when I heard Maya was returning for this title, but there are just too many characters and plotlines going on for everything to get the proper amount of attention. I think Spirit of Justice deals with this problem pretty well by separating the cast into groups, as I mentioned before, but it still doesn't allow for everyone to get their time to shine. Athena is sort of pushed to the sidelines in this entry with her only getting one short episode where she is the lead, which I still enjoyed, and she is pretty much forgotten in the game's final case in favor of focusing on Apollo. Even Maya, for all the hype about her return, never even gets to do a case with Phoenix in the main game and is pretty much just a side character that does a couple of testimonies (gotta get the DLC if you want to actually have a proper episode with her).

Also the franchise is STILL not addressing any of the developments from Apollo Justice. What the heck is going on with Apollo's mother and his relationship with Trucy? How come everyone seems to have forgotten that they created a jury system at the end of that game? There are some interesting developments in terms of learning about Apollo's past in SoJ, and I think it is handled a lot better than the sudden reveal of Apollo's best friend in Dual Destinies, but it has been almost a decade since Apollo Justice came out and none of the cliffhangers from that title have been addressed. There are hints during the ending credits that these plot points could be the focus of the next installment but it just feels like someone rubbing salt in the wound of all the fans that have waited so long for a resolution to Apollo Justice.

Ace Attorney is beginning to feel like a long running mystery novel series or a movie that has had one too many sequels. These characters somehow keep getting into progressively unbelievable situations and the franchise's history and lore is beginning to be more of a burden than anything else. More characters and plotlines keep being added but it really feels like the series just needs a reset. Maybe have a game with a totally new cast in a new setting, something different like Meiji-Era Japan or a steampunk London. Maybe even Sherlock Holmes could show up. That would be cool...

Conclusion

Anyway, despite some of my troubles with Spirit of Justice, and the direction of the franchise in general, I think the game is a very solid entry in the series. While it still doesn't quite capture the magic of the original trilogy, it feels like the series is finally beginning to find its own path. It seems that Takeshi Yamazaki and the rest of the team at Capcom are learning from their mistakes and making positive changes. All the new gameplay systems are still gimmicky but at least the writing and pacing seems to have finally found its footing. If nothing else I am actually excited to see what an Ace Attorney 7 would be like, which is something I haven't felt in a long time.

As a side note, going back to my ranking of the series, I think I would put Spirit of Justice above Dual Destinies and maybe even above Apollo Justice, but that placement changes depending on how I'm feeling.

This is a re-posting of something I wrote on Tumblr back near the end of April. It is obviously not really about a video game but a lot of the voice talent mentioned in the blog are actors from various video games and the company that released the show in the US was a former visual novel publisher, so I thought the community here might find this interesting. Make sure to click on all the fun hyper links for videos and other informative stuff :)

Soar High! Isami - Group TAC - 1995

Back in 2003 Hirameki International, a short lived company mainly known for localizing a handful of visual novels in the early 2000s, briefly threw their hat into the anime publishing industry by releasing two shows, Idol Fighter SU-CHI-PAI and a kid’s show named Soar High! Isami. The later follows a young girl named Isami and two boys, Toshi and Soshi, who are all descendants of the Shinsengumi. They use technology left behind by their ancestors to fight against the Black Goblin, an evil mastermind that is trying to control the world and who is hunting Isami’s missing father in order to steal his scientific research.

Lately I’ve been obsessing over this seemly average kid’s anime because while Idol Fighter can be easily found and watched online there is surprisingly little information about Hirameki’s release of Soar High! Isami. I was especially curious of the show’s English dub since there are no details online about the actors or whoever produced the dub. Because of the lack of information on the show my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to pick up the DVDs, which wasn’t very hard since there were only three volumes released and they can be found almost anywhere for real cheap. According to the ending credits on the DVDs these are the actors and actresses that starred in Soar High! Isami (at least the ones that were credited):

• Isami - Rumiko Varnes
• Toshi - Sean Nichols
• Soshi - Jaya Drats and Jeremy Felton
• Kei, Reiko - Angela Im and Terry Osada
• Kanryusai, Kai, Jusuke - Michael Naishtut
• Kanryusai, Jusuke - Blake Crawford
• Heisuke - Matthew Barron
• Haruka, Sonoe, Mechanical Doll, Crow Goblin Female - Soness Stevens
• Black Goblin - Dennis Falt and Barry Gjerde
• Kazuma, Yasuyuki, Mr. Spider - Greg Dale
• Kai, Kazuma - Richard Allen
• Genbe - Masatake Amemiya

I couldn’t find information on every actor, and I’m not sure if all of my information is correct, but most of the people I did find have pretty interesting backgrounds. Isami’s actress, Rumiko Varnes, has done a lot work in video games including playing Jennifer Simpson in Clock Tower for the PlayStation, the narrator in Taiko: Drum Master, and more recently she played Chloe in Pokkén Tournament. She also did some additional voices for the infamous dub of Shenmue along with several other actors in Soar High! Isami, including Michael Naishtut and Dennis Falt. Dennis Falt was the Master Librarian and Death himself in another infamous dub for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as well as notably playing Walter Sullivan in Silent Hill 4. Soness Stevens is also apparently the official English voice of Hello Kitty according to her website and Sean Nichols is semi-famous for playing the character Sean White in Ultraman Max.

After the first DVD some of the characters were played by different actors. Dennis Falt was replaced by Barry Gjerde as the Black Goblin, who’s voice you may recognize from the first Resident Evil where he famously played Barry Burton. Gjerde also did the voice for Poro Rosso, years before Michael Keaton, in a little known English dub of the famous Studio Ghibli film that was shown on JAL trans-Pacific flights in the 90s. Soshi’s voice actor was also replaced by Jeremy Felton, Greg Dale replaced Richard Allen as Kazuma, Michael Naishtut took over all the roles previously played by Blake Crawford as well as Richard Allen, and Kei as well as Reiko were now played by Terry Osada (who is another actress that played a few classic characters in Shenmue).

Although Hirameki credits most of the English cast for Soar High! Isami, they never mention who exactly created the dub for the show. However my personal theory is that it was the NHK themselves who made the dub for Hirameki. The NHK is the license holder and broadcaster of the show and several of the actors involved in the dub, such as Michael Naishtut and Soness Stevens, worked for the NHK at the time or were English actors living and working in Japan. It makes the most sense to me and there have been other cases of Japanese companies creating dubs for English publishers, such as when Tezuka Productions provided Central Park Media with the dub for the 90s Black Jack OVAs. But I guess we may never know for sure.

Even though the voice talent behind the English release of Soar High! Isami may seem like a mixed bag, the dub actually has a lot of charm to it and I found it to be very entertaining. At the very least it is refreshing to hear an anime dub that doesn’t have the same ten actors that you hear in almost every modern production.

Outside of Soar High! Isami’s interesting dub history, the show itself isn’t half-bad and is a fun little comedy with cute characters as well as some genuinely funny moments. There is also some notable talent that worked on Soar High! Isami: Tatsuo Sato of Nadesico fame directed the series along with supervision from Gisaburo Sugii, who is a an industry veteran that famously directed Night on the Galactic Railway. Animation production was done by the once prolific Group TAC and characters were designed by Kazuaki Mouri, who’s done character designs for the long-running Pokémon anime along with another TAC production called The Daichis: Earth’s Defense Family. If you are a fan of any of these people’s works then I would recommend giving Soar High! Isami a watch, especially if you are a fan of Tatsuo Sato’s later works like Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars.

But don’t take my word for it! I uploaded the dubbed episodes released by Hirameki on YouTube so you can make your own judgment and experience an obscure bit anime history.

EDIT: I re-uploaded DVD rips of the show onto the Internet Archive.

With the new remake of White Day: A Labyrinth Named School being released in English for iOS and Android, as well as the PC sometime soon, now seems like a good time to revisit, or experience for the first time, the original Korean classic that started it all. Although it was never officially localized, the original White Day can still be played in English thanks to a fan mod that was released by Unnamed back in 2012 or so. The translated version is freeware and can be easily download from ModDB but what is not so easy is getting the game to run on a modern PC.

I ran into several crashes and bugs when I first attempted to play White Day on my Windows 10 computer and it took me a few months to figure out exactly what I had to do in order to get everything working properly. I've seen other people having similar problems so I thought I'd share the solutions I used so that others can have a smoother White Day experience.

I'll run down some of the common problems I, and many others, have encountered and walk through the solutions to fix them. Now there may be other ways to troubleshoot these problems but this is what I found to work and the game hasn't crashed once since I implemented these fixes. Hopefully they work for your computer but I can only share what I know.

The Floating Door Knob

One of the most common issues people run into when trying to start White Day is being unable to get past the first room. None of the doors work and there are several graphical glitches, such as a door knob floating midair in the center of the room. The reason for this bug is that your computer is not running in the Korean Locale, since this is a Korean title it will not work properly on a computer from a different region. The fan mod got around this by installing AppLocale, a program made by Microsoft that allows applications from any region to run on any computer. However AppLocale does not work on modern Windows operating systems, so even though the fan mod installs the program it won't actually work once you start the game.

The workaround I saw many people suggest online was to use an AppLocale substitute called Locale Emulator. Basically once you install the software you can right-click on a program and run it in any locale that you have created a profile for. I found this to work perfectly but be careful when installing the program because once it is installed you will not be able to move it to another folder. Also make sure to start White Day through the "WhiteDay - Start" executable instead of the one simply labeled "whiteday." The game will start no matter which you click on but the "WhiteDay - Start" executable is more stable while the other crashes randomly.

If for whatever reason you don't want to install Locale Emulator the only other way to run White Day that I know of is to change your computer's system locale to Korean by going to the "Region" option in the Control Panel. This an annoying process since you will need to restart your computer every time you change the locale and you'll need to change it back to your primary locale once you are done playing the game.

Everything Is Running Too Fast

Once White Day is playing in the proper locale you may notice that the game seems to be running fast. Characters move very quickly during gameplay and cut-scenes will be out of sync with the audio.

Now to fix this problem I made the common mistake of changing my graphic card setting to the option beginning with "[DX7]" in the Device Settings tab on the launch menu. This appears to work at first but eventually causes the game to crash later on and messes up some of the lighting effects (such as the match and lighter looking like a flat glowing polygon instead of a flame). So don't do that, keep that setting on "[DX8]" which is what it defaults too anyway.

The actual problem here is that the game is trying to run in DirectX 8 but it can't since it is no longer supported by modern operating systems, at least that is how I understand it. So in order to have White Day run properly in DirectX 8 you will need a wrapper, which is just a simple DLL file that you place in the same folder where the executable is located. There are several different DirectX 8 wrappers out there but I downloaded mine from HERE.

Once the wrapper is placed in the "WHITEDAY" folder the game should run at normal speeds.

Conclusion

So to summarize, in order to run White Day on a Windows 10 computer, or any other modern Windows operating systems, you need to:

1. Download the game from ModDB
2. Install Locale Emulator in order to run the game in Korean locale
3. Place a DirectX 8 wrapper in the "WHITEDAY" folder
4. And always start the game using the "WhiteDay - Start" executable

And that is it! White Day should run perfectly after following all these steps and if it doesn't then I'm not sure I can help you. Everyone's computer is different and this is just what worked for me and should also theoretically work for anyone with a Windows 10 computer. If you have any other kind of technical questions or need help with troubleshooting something I would suggest going to the Unnamed forums, which is the official forum for White Day's fan translation. I found some of the solutions to my problems there and I'm sure the people there could help you more than I could.

I hope this blog was helpful and have fun playing White Day!