I heard that at E3 <s>okay, this is technically old news</s>, Atlus announced its licensing of two of the Summon Night GBA games, Summon Night Craftsword Story 1 (release on June 27!) and 2.
...YES.
Although the story they outline is only CSS1, and they have no mention of CSS2. But since CSS2's going to be released in the fall, I guess that's a given. I prefer CSS2, but CSS1 is awesome, too. :3
I absolutely LOVE the Craftsword games, and it makes me so happy they're coming to NA. It has a quick, easy battle system like the one from the Tales series. Multiple endings. Awesome, awesome storyline. And maybe one day we'll see Black/Matrix Zero, too.
>It has a quick, easy battle system like the one from the Tales series.
I'm interested.
Know of any sites with info on the series? The elitist superstructure gaming sites aren't giving so much.
Atlus are my new heroes! Mecha Strategy game whatever, Yggdrasil, Summon Night..great selection! Good job!
CSM 1's my favorite. 2 and 3 offered gameplay improvements for the most part but I thought they turned out a bit more bland...I didn't enjoy the "swords cut grass, spears hit targets" crap, or the giant robot/dragon/whatever mash-the-button battles.
Not that I enjoyed smacking a thousand and two boxes and barrels in the EX dungeon, but....
None in English. What do you want to know? Craft Sword Monogatari is a markedly popular sub-series of the Summon Night games...so popular, in fact that the "fourth" Summon Night game on the PS was an action RPG:
Summon Night 1, 2, 3*: PS1 and PS2, Strategy RPG.
SN:CSM: GBA, Action RPG.
Summon Night Ex-These: PS2, Action RPG.
*3 is officially titled "Hajimari no Ishi", i guess they got tired of numbers
You might try hitting up gamefaqs for xcomp's faq, it's got a bit of character info translated for the first CSM game.
If you like pretty pictures but can't read Japanese you could still hit up www.summonnight.net -- there are some wallpapers and the official sites for all of the SN games. And music. Nice music. Not hard to see that Banpresto is pretty good at raking it in with the merchandising.
More in the next post...
About the games:
In all of the games you train to become a master weaponsmith. You make your weapons using ores collected in dungeons, etc. The mechanics for crafting have changed significantly from one game to the next but the end result is about the same, you make weapons that you can use.
The battle system is very Tales-like, except you only control one character: Yourself. But because this is a Summon Night game, you get one (yes, only one) summon beast partner. True to form, you can pick: there's always a robot, a male spirit (usually a devil), a female spirit (fairy/demon/catgirl), and some kind of cute thingamabob to round them out. Your partner is basically your magic; each summon beast has his/her own list of spells and levels. You have five slots to use in battle for weapon techs, spells and items, and to make the game more interesting you can only use magic/items a certain number of times in battle.
Dungeons are standard RPG style dungeons with random battles. In terms of interaction, there isn't much...you can whack barrels and boxes to find weaponsmithing items; later games introduce innovations such as TREES that can be whacked with a SPEAR, GRASS that can be whacked with a SWORD, STUMPS that can be whacked with an AX, STONES that can be whacked with DRILLS, and finally they ran out of ideas so they placed random TARGETS that you could hit with BOWS in the third game...
In the first game, there was only one huge dungeon with a hundred+ floors (I think there was a second minor area as part of the story, I don't recall--but it has been awhile). In the second and third the game starts to look more like a traditional action RPG with different areas.
If there's anything else you wanted to know go ahead and ask. I can't guarantee that I can answer your questions (sorry, my weaboo japanese sux). Alternately: tl;dr accepted. I just happen to really enjoy the games and thought I'd share.
also,
Yggdra Union fucking rocks. It suffers from Sting's penchant for placing hundreds and thousands of little irreplacable event items that can only be found once during the game, but ... other than that the card/strategy RPG system is more kinds of awesome than I can count. Well, I can't count though so it doesn't matter. The feeling of "oh shit I missed XXX two maps ago" is terrible, though. The game takes longer to play than Riviera so it's much more annoying when you miss an important item. Still...loads of fun, two thumbs up if only I had two thumbs...
...wait, I have two thumbs. Nevermind, forget I said anything.
I'd probably get mobbed if I even tried to suggest that SRT is absolute shit...but I happen to rather like Alfa System and I haven't actually played OG1/2, so suffice it to say I'll be watching the US release with interest.
Longer than Riviera? I haven't finished Riviera yet because I got upset after not curing that mute mermaid. :(
Thanks for the info, I'll check it out if I have the money.
I don't know if you'll like SRW if you're a strategy game fan and not a robot fan. OG1 isn't actually difficult on your first playthrough.
Is >>5 still around? I just got Swordcraft Story 1. When you get a choice of people to talk to at night, do you need to pick one all the time to get a "good" ending? I tried looking it up, but the FAQs don't say much about the dialogue scenes.
Oh, and Summon Night Craftsword story 2 is out! ( ﾟ ヮﾟ)I don't like it as much as the first story/character wise, but DAMN, it was great. Mechfight~ Mechfight~
>>9,10
Actually, for the ending, the only night that matters is the last one. You can choose whoever you want for all the other nights, it won't make any difference.
>>10
I finished the requisite Pratty/Sugar path. It was <3<3<3. I don't really want to slog through the extra labyrinth levels if it's just straight dungeon crawling, so now I'm looking for other paths that are also good. I started a Cleru/Rasho game, and it looks promising. Any others? I tried the openings for the robot and Kutty, but since they can't talk the opportunity for humorous banter seems reduced.
Now that I'm getting older and have less free time to play games(but more money to buy them OTL) I'm finding this kind of short RPG ideal for me. When I play longer ones like FF3 I tend to get bogged down about 3/4ths of the way through. The story and my motivation stay fresh and the multiple paths add replay value while not taking too long to complete individually. Thinking of replaying a 40+hour RPG makes me shudder. The actiony battle system is also a refreshing change, especially the ease of escaping the still too frequent random encounters with no damage.
The Summon Night: Twin Age commercial has a small Densha reference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lcpcLgJskk
Maybe Atlus will bring over this one even though they skipped the third GBA game?
I got this game new a few days ago and it's great so far! I didn't get Pratty/Sugar, but I'm still having fun (and now it's more reason to replay).
I love the battle system, very Tales-esque except almost better.