Like usual, if you're going to use this entry or paraphrase it, please have the decency to indicate the source instead of claiming it as your own.
Looks like e-Digi in Japan released additional Trinity Universe information ahead of any publications or website updates. Here's the entire entry translated.
Game Features and Gameplay Active Animation Adventure In order to bring out the appeal of characters, animation aspects have been developed to be included in event scenes so that things such as facial expressions change in real time. As further examples:
-Accessories, hair, ears, wings move -Facial parts such as eyes and eyebrows move in tandem as emotions change -Mouth movements in line with voice -Changes in poses as event scenes necessitate -Visual expressions from anime/manga (! icons, blue vertical lines when disappointed, etc)
Unconcious head movements and breathing, smooth changes in emotional expressions help bring the characters to life.
Game Flow The game primarily consists of events, dungeon searching, and battles.
By examing debris that flows into the world map, you may be able to enter a dungeon, encounter events, etc.
In dungeons, your primary goal is to destroy the gravity well of that particular debris. After finding the gravity well, eliminating the boss guarding it, and destroying the gravity well, you will have a limited time to exit the dungeon. Upon destruction of the gravity well, the space time continuum in the surrounding area becomes unstable. As a result, various rare items will start to be drawn into the local area. If you spend too much time collecting the rare items, you will be unable to escape in time.
If you're unable to escape, instead of being "Game Over", you'll stuck drifting about in space. At this point, sandwiching chat events between party members (and bickering events on occaision), you will need to wait for help from the likes of aliens. Of course, they won't help you out of good will and you will be required to give up earned money and items.
After you've cleared a set number of dungeons, the story will progress with various events and previews being sandwiched (see Cross Edge) in between.
Sensation You will have search magic called sensation to search the local area for hidden gravity wells. If no gravity wells are nearby, as a hint, a streak of light will go flying in the direction of a gravity well. In addition to this, you will be able to find hidden rare items and hunting points with sensation, but due to the limit to the number of times you can use sensation, you will need to conduct your searches efficiently using the hints as mentioned above.
Hunting Points Hunting points are locations which are densely populated by monsters. By searching for them, you'll be able to enter into battle with them in rapid succession. After a set number of battles, the hunting point disappears and your encounters with monsters become non-existant, temporarily, making it possible to search further without interruptions. In addition, by using hunting points, you are able to gather mats for crafting from monsters more efficiently.
Materials You will be able to use materials gathered to synthesize items used to power up your characters.
-In the demonlord scenario, you can use materials to create powerful monsters. Then, by defeating the monsters you create in the "arena", you are able earn items which will increase your stats.
-In the goddess scenario, you can use the materials to create meteorites, which, when multiple are equipped, will allow your characters to gain new skills depending on what combination of meteorites are equipped.
Furthermore, in both scenarios, there is a system called "Mana Graphics" that utilizes these materials.
Mana Graphic By drawing various designs on your weapons, you will be able to strengthen them. While you're able to change mana graphics based on the enemy weaknesses to exploit them, changing the mana graphics also results in visual changes during battle as well as a variety of different effects.
Excite Encounter If you spend too long searching a dungeon, a powerful monster (excite monster) will sometimes appear. The encounter won't be sudden. Rather, the monster will gradually chase your party down, with scenes indicating that the monster is doing so. While it is possible to safely escape, if you take the time to prepare for, and defeat the monster, you will be able to obtain rare items and such as a reward.
About the Battle System Time Encounter Battle You will have a limited amount of time in the attack phase. Further, attack skills are associated with AP (action points), and the amount of time you have remaining will decrease with AP consumption. The stronger the attack, the more AP will be required to use it. Thus, in order to move the battle forward in your party's favor, you will need to adapt your battle strategy as the situation requires.
One Button Skill Link The basic attack skills are divided into 3 types: combination attacks, heavy blows, and magic, all of which can be executed with 1 button.By executing these skills in various orders, you will be able to execute stronger skills.
Fury Chain Before your attack phase timer runs out, you can swap to the next character and maintain a chain of attacks. In addition to in-battle benefits, such as increase in attack power and filling of the image gauge, this may also result in additional XP or money earned as well as other post-battle bonuses.
Furthermore, by meeting certain criteria by chaining, you will be able to execute combination attacks between 2 to 4 characters.
Image Guage The image guage will fill by various means such as attacking or exploiting an enemy's weakspot, and will ultimately allow you to unleash mana graphics in-battle.
By unleashing Mana graphics, you will be able to do the following:
1. Unleash character specific special attacks 2. Recover HP (it is possible to recover beyond your Max HP) 3. Deploy a shield that will reduce your damage taken
Action Ability This will allow you to use various support skills such as using items, recovery, and stat boosts. You will, for the most part, be able to freely set the various support skills between rank 1 and 4, with rank 1 aspects being usable immediately and further ranks requiring progressively more time to become usable.
Because of the limited amount of time during the attack phase, skills which are used frequently can be set to a lower rank whereas aspects which are used less frequently can be set to higher ranks. The player can adjust these to suit their needs and style of play.
Soul Barrier By exploiting weaknesses and making good use of chains, it will be possible to destroy a monster's soul barrier. A monster whose soul barrier is destroyed will have various changes associated with it. From the basic enrage where defense goes down and attack power goes up, to a change in weakness, change in attack strategy, or change in items that are dropped, destroying a monster's soul barrier will result in quite a few situations where you will need to actively alter your strategy, increasing the depth of battle.
Been a little busy to update due to work, but things have calmed down now so I have a little more chance to update things here. Now, it seems like this is turning into a Gust/Compile Heart blog but I assure you that's not the intention. 3 niche games from those 2 companies are approaching completion so it's inevitable that there's a lot more information about them cropping up.
That said, on the Atelier Rorona's developer blog, it's mentioned that the staff is on a short holiday to relax from work. There will be a lot of things to do once the staff returns, but it's explicitly mentioned that the tasks on hand will not be related to Atelier Rorona at all. Whether it will be for Trinity Universe or the new Playstation 3 Gust game project is unknown.
Unless a similar issue with Atelier Annie occurs with Atelier Rorona where materials used for the limited edition paper weight doesn't meet new materials safety laws in Japan, it looks like the game itself will not be delayed. The preorder allotments for the premium box set and Gust store limited edition premium box sets are sold out in Japan so if you were looking to get the premium box set, I recommend you order soon from your online import shop of your choice.
**If you'd like to use this translation or paraphrase it, please have the decency to give credit where credit is due.
From the July 2009 edition of Gemaga
Atelier Rorona is an RPG which has a puzzle-esque aspect in which you gather materials and transmute them within a limited amount of time to pass various exams set forth. As long as you clear these exams which crop up on a regular basis, you're free to do what your heart desires, whether it be helping townsfolk out and earning money, gathering mats and transmuting left and right or what not. Thus, the amount of freedom granted to the player in this game is extremely high.
Because exams are designed so that you're able to clear them in a just barely a timely manner, I told myself often, "I can do this with just a little more time!" and ended up prolonging my play time.
The alchemy system is simple, but for those that want to delve into more of it, there is an advanced system prepared as well so gamers new and old to the Atelier series will be able to enjoy this game easily. In addition, the musical score contains some amazing tracks. Highly recommended.
Recommended for these types of gamers: People that are looking for a game which has a LOT of replayability People who like Rorona's character design
Some new details for Atelier Rorona have surfaced in what I believe is this week's Dengeki issue.
There will be 3 different task types that Rorona can accept:
Government exams Request from townsfolk Request from friends
As you may or may not already know, Atelier Rorona is based around the premise that the Alchemy Atelier that Rorona has taken the reins of will eventually be shut down by the government of Arland due to inactivity. To keep the Atelier alive, Rorona is required to submit to government exams every 3 months.
Requests from townsfolk range from item synthesis to eliminating monsters and leads to trust and positive rating from townsfolk when successfully completed. The UI is designed so that it is easy to see how many of each items and what not are required for the quest.
And finally, friends you meet in the town will occasionally have requests for you to fulfill which not only lead to income, but also strengthening the relationship between Rorona and her friends. Various events and endings will be reliant upon these types of relationships throughout the game.
The bald weapons merchant makes another appearance with the name Hageru Baldness. For those that know Japanese, you might get a small chuckle out of that.
Finally, back to some of the more niche games from Japan.
Trinity Universe Official Homepage is now open. While there's not much information available, the known characters and their VAs are listed as well as some details of the two story lines in the game.
A 3 party cross-over RPG featuring characters from Disgaea (NIS) and Atelier Viorate (GUST) as well as a few Idea Factory originals, characters from their respective developers are the protagonists for two separate story lines dealing with space debris polluting the underworld.
Featuring Noriko Shitaya as Viorate, Tomoe Hanba as Etna, and Asuka Tanii as Pamela. Release date is set as September 10th in Japan. Whether this gets localized or not probably will hinge heavily on how Cross Edge, which was released today, does in terms of sales.
3 tracks from Atelier Rorona are embedded in the official site. A track listing for the 2 CD original soundtrack, as well as some preview clips are available at the OST homepage.
I've gone ahead and compiled the 45second clips into one video here. Track listing can be found underneath the video.
0:00~ 森の散策 / A Stroll in the Forest 0:45~ 困ったときは相談してね / Talk with me if you're Troubled 1:30~ 父と母 / Father and Mother 2:15~ Ultimate Rondo 3:00~ 地下に眠る基地 / A Base that Slumbers Underground 3:45~ ひなたぼっこ / Sunbathing 4:30~ 水辺の詩 / Poem of the Shore 5:15~ いいコトあるかも / Something Nice Might Happen 6:00~ 古代樹の鼓動 / Heart Beat of the Ancient Tree 6:45~ Nose Dive 7:30~ Eyes of the Dragon
Typical GUST fare which conveys the light hearted nature present in most of their games. If you enjoyed the Mana Khemia soundtrack as well as the non-vocal Ar Tonelico soundtracks, you'll most likely enjoy the music Atelier Rorona has to offer as well. Scheduled to go on sale on June 24, a day before release of Atelier Rorona
Buried amongst other things in this weeks news, it appears GUST has started development of a new, yet-to-be-announced, Playstation 3 title. Details are scant, but a new banner appeared a few days ago on Salburg.com, which is a Gust run informational website about their games.
While most without Japanese knowledge might be quick to dismiss this as being fake due to the hiring banner displaying Rorona from Atelier Rorona, translated, the banner states that Gust is quickly looking for programming applicants coinciding with the start up of a new Playstation 3 game project.
With Atelier Rorona scheduled for release on June 25 and Trinity Universe being headed up by Idea Factory and being ~60% complete as of a few weeks ago, it's highly doubtful that this is for either of those two titles. With Mana Khemia being part of the main Atelier series of games, that most likely eliminates a possibility of a Mana Khemia sequel as well, bringing hope that this may be the next installment in the Ar Tonelico series or a completely new IP.
Like with most companies, they're also always accepting applications. If you're fluent in Japanese, have a background in sales & marketing or scenario writing, and are interested in Gust as well as living in Japan, why not go ahead and send them an application?
Perhaps you've heard of Agarest Senki, also known by the name Record of Agarest War or Agarest: Generations of War. It was a niche SRPG by Compile Heart / Idea Factory that was released on the PS3 in October 2007 and approximately a year later for the Xbox 360. While sales figures weren't amazing by western standards, the PS3 release had a rumored break-even budget of 3000~4000 copies sold, and ultimately went on to sell slightly shy of 15k copies.
More known for its "soul breed" system where characteristics of future generations of protagonists depended on who prior protagonists "bred" with, the game itself didn't feature anything technically groundbreaking. It had a solid story line, a complex and enjoyable battle system, amazing replayability, and gorgeous 2D character designs which saved this game from mediocrity. In reality, for the niche that the game was targeted at, it ended up being quite good.
The 2D character design use standard fare in the sense that they were static and facial expression changes were a result of a new image being redrawn. However, in the prequel, Agarest Senki ZERO, a 2D graphical system dubbed "Active Animation System" (AAS) has been incorporated into the adventure portion of the game which allows for a more natural looking change in facial expressions of the characters.
The AAS appears to be similar to the "Motion Portrait"(MP) system used by Namco-Bandai in games such as "Tora Dora Portable!" and "The Promise of Suzumiya Haruhi". Due to the fact that "Motion Portrait" is not mentioned on the official website, it is thought that the AAS is different from the MP system with both accomplishing the similar tasks. To note, it is also thought that Trinity Universe, another upcoming RPG from a trifecta involving Idea Factory, as well as Gust and Nippon Ichi Software, will be utilizing a variant of the AAS, dubbed "Active Animation Adventure" (AAA). Preliminary information in a recent Famitsu mentions that AAA will feature qualities similar to AAA, but going a bit further in also incorporating graphic symbolisms of emotion which are used throughout anime.
See below for a few examples of the AAS in action with the first generation heroines of Agarest Senki ZERO.
