Stop Making Great Anime Into Terrible Video Games
Stop Making Great Anime Into Terrible Video Games
Video game adaptions of anime have had a rough go of things in recent years, and there doesn't seem to be any indication of it getting better.
Okay but really, why are they all boring 3D fighters that have barely changed since the PS2 era?
“Stop trying to monetize popular IP!”
Or as Yogurt put it “merchandizing, merchandising, merchandising. That’s where the real money is”
I believe the word you're looking for is "moichandising".
Stop making great video games into terrible anime. Looking at you, Persona 5 and The World Ends With You.
But don't sleep on the Persona 4 anime. That one was amazing.
Good to know, I'm gonna play Persona 4 Golden first regardless.
Perfectly balanced...
But seriously, I wasn't aware that there was a TWEWY anime... I have a friend that doesn't play games and when I want to share her videogame stuff we do it with these adaptations....
So far we have watched Ace Attorney (it was okay) and have Nier Automata on the list...
But seriously, I wasn't aware that there was a TWEWY anime...
I absolutely love the games, and the anime is just... Bad. I couldn't stomache watching more than the first two episodes. I suppose there's the off chance it "gets good", but somehow they took a game that has one of the most bangin' soundtracks of its era and made an anime that is mostly talking with basically no music and little to no ambiance. The flair and style is just completely absent in a franchise that literally built game mechanics around style.
Show her the P4 anime. It's really, really good. It makes me wonder how the P5 anime shit the bed so hard. I imagine the answer is different studios, but I haven't really looked into it.
Ace attorney anime was kinda ass sweat though and vastly inferior to the games, I just wished they continued using the same japanese voice for naruhodo/phoenix mayoi/Maya for the main games as they did for the Layton crossover. It was the live action movie actors that voiced them in the crossover IIRC and it was an excellent job that felt way more natural than generic male anime voice #27 and generic female anime voice #13
Honestly most anime games were hot garbage. Kinda like games based on movies.
Dragon Ball Z Kakarot was incredible though. And was really wishing it kicked off a revolution, but nope. One Piece pirate warrior series is only fun because it's just Dynasty Warriors with a anime reskinning.
I liked the concept of Kakarot but boy was it full of filler. Other than that we've had a One Piece RPG which was supposedly alright and a Fairy Tail game which was supposedly alright. We had Dragon Ball Fighters which is one of the most visually impressive Dragon Ball games imo. And we had the Shounen Jump game which seemed like it was supposed to be a big deal anyway but wasn't great.
On a different note there's a Shin-chan and Doraemon game for something more low stakes.
The Half Life mod Earth's Special Forces will forever be the GOAT to me.
Couldn't find a good gameplay video. But man that was kickass with other players or even just bots.
I heard people really enjoyed One Piece Odyssey last year. Never seen the series myself.
I found it kinda funny when they gave fighter z and kakarot as examples of DBZ games that broke that mold when fighter z is a fighting game and kakarot was an adventure game that followed the original story. Don't get me wrong, I loved kakarot (because it was the my first time going through the whole DBZ story), but Xenoverse would have been a better example IMO because it did break the mold more (it does still focus on the original story, but you're a part of a time patrol whose job it is to basically provide help to the original heroes because villains are trying to change the original story).
FighterZ is an actually good fighting game in the style of MvC or Street Fighter though, not the same 3d drivel with copy paste movesets and terrible game balance usually associated with anime tie-ins.
They are the easiest one to make since you only need an arena and characters movesets, don't even need to balance it properly since there's no esports money to be made on it (unless it's called gundam extreme versus).
What? gundam extreme versus has an e sport scene?
Yes, way stronger in japan since game is still mainly arcade, but they appear as a side tournament in EVO all the time.
Games are hard to make. Its even harder to adapt plots because what works for watching doesnt drive the same enagagement when you play it.
Except for Berserk, what the fuck guys. FromSoft had to come in and make something because whoever was handling this just couldn't see it.
There is a long history of video games cash grabbing any IP they get their hands on. Pokemon and the sort are few and far between. Do we need to talk about ET?
My biggest gripe right now is game designers have an incredible platform with mobile devices, that I would havre murdered for when I was kid, and the best they can do is slot machines. There are some great titles for mobile but it's way overshadowed by the dopamine harvesters. I'll be dead before they get this shit sorted.
It's virtually impossible to make money selling mobile games because your average player expects the game itself to be free, and then expect some kind of premium currency.
If you try to charge an actual reasonable price for a game like $15 no one would buy it. But they'll happily spend $170 on premium currency over the course of a year.
Against those kinds of economic metrics originality and high quality gameplay stands no chance of survival.
I wouldn't buy it either because mobile devs have a terrible track record of not bothering to update their games to the newest version of the OS, the older the game, the less likely it is they will update it, I lost considerable money many years ago when CAVE shooters weren't updated to the current (at the time) android version.
Even big ones like square enix had to be almost harassed to update The World Ends With You Solo Remix for newer versions and I think in 2021 capcom just gave up in updating monster hunter freedom unite.
I disagree. Yes, peoples expections are warped because of freemium but an indie developer should be able to make plenty of money with a small bit of notoriety. It really comes down to if developers expect capture the entire mobile gaming market they are barking up the wrong tree. They need to build an audience and not let freemium practices get in that space. I grew up on the snes and I would put those games head to head against any PS5 AAA game. Sure the PS5 game may be a visual spectical and have all sorts of complexity but the Nintendo developers had to do more with less. End of the day you could have the same amount of engagement with a cheaper to make product and we would all be better for it. Look at deadcells. Look a hollow knight. I know these are platformers but they are best in class and their budgets can't be extraordinary.
I'm a huge fan of freemium games. Free mobile games with ADs that you can one time purchase an ad free option.
Unfortunately there are MANY games that piecemeal the permanent upgrades instead of a one time price package.
Gold and Goblins has a $10 unlock that includes double coins and ZERO ADs.
Idle Cave Miner has a $5 unlock to turn off ALL ADs with other premium (but totally not required) upgrades.
Where other games like Tomagachi has a $2 unlock to turn off mandatory ADs but still has optional ADs in other areas. They even have a $5/month subscription to get a better play experience...
I'm happy to throw down $5-$20 on a game to get rid of all the AD infested crap and make it an enjoyable experience.
Maybe I'm the outlier here, but if I'm a big enough fanboy of a certain anime, I don't mind a semi-crappy video game port that let's me further bask in that universe. Even moreso if the game's throwing out extra new lore or good fanservice at me.
Plus there was always something oddly charming about clunky PS2-era licensed anime games to me, although I admit nostalgia may be influencing my perspective there.
And this is coming from someone who played through both PS2 Eureka Seven games to completion.
Yeah, I could never in good conscience recommend the first Attack on Titan game they made as an actual game. But if you're a fan? It's a fucking blast and I loved it. There's not as high of a bar to clear. Same with Dragonball Xenoverse. It's fun, but not incredibly good.
The AoT games are far from lazy though, they had to really think about how to adapt it, I heard the second one was good.
Same with me but I can get that from anything BUT a fighting game. Musou games at least have actual environments and lots of characters including one-arc characters and glepshittos. I've never felt like a fighting game offered me anything that mugen hasn't done better for over 20 years.
Corporations:
I remeber enjoying the Naruto gekitou ninja taisen games on gamecube. Everything since then has been in the ultimate ninja storm arena fighter format and is garbage.
Clash of ninja games were a better series than Ninja Storm, it sucks that the flashier games were more popular and ended up “winning”.
I don't play these games much but at a glance I swear every anime fighting game has had the same artstyle and graphics for the past 15 years.
It's really baffling how there still isn't a single good One Piece fighting game. Burning Blood was terrible, and the Grand Battle games are meh and 20 years old.
Where is One Piece Budokai Tenkaichi?
Burning Blood was a little jank, but no less fun for it. I loved the interactions it had between charachters (sanji v any woman) and some moves are just straight up unfair (kumas vacation) which is just fun for this game for some reason. Its the best one to come out so far though
Until Budokai DBZ was an untapped gold mine and not for lack of trying. One Piece ought to find its way someday.
There is no better game of anime than Jump Ultimate Stars (especially if we talk about a big roster and a crossover), fight me.
Well, actually you could say it is a manga game...
stop making video games anime great terrible