Summon Night

[Discoalucard]

Mentioned before, but here's the official thread:

hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/summonnight/summonnight.htm

First off, I apologize for this. I've been meaning to work on this since like a year and half ago, and I finally started when I got to playing the recent SN4 and...jesus, they're pretty dull. But since I'd already devoted so much cash into buying up the early games, I'd figure I'd at least finish it off. I think you can tell by my tone that I'm not exactly enjoying myself with these, and I'm honestly glad to get them done.

I guess I feel a bit bad, because they're not TERRIBLE games by any means. Just...lazy. My thoughts are at the end of the article. Let's just say we're not missing much by them not being localized.

However, the GBA side stories games that did get localized have some good lines. I put in extra screen craps of some of the good ones. Also, I still need to record the intros to the rest of the games so that might take awhile.

[MRSKELETON]

Well, Alot of my friends love summon night, so I figure it's one of those series/games that's not for everyone like ICO or Godhand.

[Shellshock]

Nice. I always wondered what the 2 GBA roms I have lying around in my HDD were about since they got no attention. Although you said they are not very good, I'm gonna try them just because I like their graphics and originality.

Good job.

[Malroth]

I'm rather partial to the "BLUE SCREEN OF DEEAAATH!" image.

[skycroc]

admin said:

I put in extra screen craps of some of the good ones.

craps? lol freudian slip

[recap]

Hi! Nice to find the series covered on a Western site. I think the special thing about it, is the graphic art. Hi-res 2D graphics on the recent episodes is something too rare these days, unfortunately, and just for that, it deserves the attention. I find on them the very same gameplay faults I find on any other S-RPG (or just "RPG", for that matter), but then again, I've never been a fan to this genre.

Whatever. Just wanted to point the actual name for the Zelda-type episode, which is currently wrong. I think that even I misspelled it when I covered its release on IC, but hey. It's "Summon Night Ecstacy ~Yoake no Tsubasa~". It obviously alludes to the philosophical meaning, "being outside of oneself".

Cheers. Keep it on.

[Discoalucard]

Ah, cool, that definitely makes more sense. I'll fix it.

In stills, the PS2 Summon Night games look fantastic, but they're really poorly animated. That seems to be a consistent problem in high res sprite based games, especially in Gust's Atelier Iris/Ar Tonelico games. They have like three frames of animation and glide across in the screen in a manner that looks incredibly unnatural. It looks OK in SRPGs, where the sprites don't move much anyway, but not anywhere else.

[zaciroth]

I didn't know they had that many summon knight games. I bought my gf the GBA games the other day she loves them. Did any of the playstation ones come to America?

[YourAverageJoe]

It says so relatively clearly in the first paragraph: No.

[aganar]

With all due respect to the good author, outside of a decent intro page and at least extensive documentation of each game in the series, the individual articles for the Summon Night games leave a great deal to be desired. They look like placeholder pages that were going to be expanded later but then...weren't. No real discussion of the story, paltry mention of gameplay changes, no discussion at all of the soundtrack, and even the reliable catalog of character with portrait icons often contains nothing more than "The male protagonist." It feels like the author was completely lukewarm to the series, which I have no problem with in theory, but then, why would they bother to write an article on a series they have no enthusiasm for?

They just feel like the equivalent of wiki stubs, I suppose is what I'm trying to say. Are they ever going to be expanded upon, or is the series so bland that it's not even worth the effort?

EDIT: Oh, and I'm pretty sure there are at least a couple DS iterations that would presumably need inclusion. But I'd say the bigger priority would be overhauling the existing entries before adding new ones.

[Discoalucard]

Feb 27, 2011 22:38:56 GMT -5 aganar said:

or is the series so bland that it's not even worth the effort?

This, pretty much. I really have no interest in doing anything remotely related with these games ever again. Even getting this one out the door was a gigantic pain. While Flight Plan isn't as stupidly obtuse as Idea Factory, they are incredibly bland.

I started writing it because some guy on the Penny Arcade forums was like, totally the best SRPG nobody has ever played! After spending significant time with all four of the main games (and the spinoffs) they totally aren't! The article up now isn't great, but I'm of the attitude that mid-grade coverage is better than no coverage at all.

[Discoalucard]

Barely played them. I picked up the Saturn and Dreamcast games around the same time as these, but I got so totally burnt out I didn't even bother with them. They seemed pretty similar, except they replaced the bright and cheeriness with goth and broody...ness.

[Ganelon]

Feb 28, 2011 0:42:34 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

I started writing it because some guy on the Penny Arcade forums was like, totally the best SRPG nobody has ever played! After spending significant time with all four of the main games (and the spinoffs) they totally aren't!

Ha, I think after playing Langrisser, most other SRPGs feel pretty bland and disappointing.

I share your sentiments about Flight Plan and it's pretty clear JP gamers felt the same way, resulting in the company heading out the door. I like Summon Night X more than the previous games but haven't gotten far enough in any to consider expanding the article.

Anyway, I'm still confused as to how Idea Factory has remained open all these years. Sheer publishing quantity?

[Sinople]

I really liked Black/Matrix+ when I played it a couple of years back. There is a lot of neat ideas and the story is pretty decent. And that's coming from someone who stopped playing Summon Night 3 halfway out of boredom.
Black/Matrix 0 on GBA is horrible though.