XSEED Games

Howdy, everybody!

Welcome to what I think will be the final localization blog for STORY OF SEASONS: Trio of Towns. As you might have seen, we announced a release date (Nov. 9) and price ($7.99) for the Trio of Towns DLC. We are also, at long last, able to release the Trio of Towns 3DS theme on the North American eShop for $1.99. I apologize for the drought of information between our last blog post and now. Production proved to be challenging in unforeseen ways, and we didn’t want to give out new info before we were certain the content was ready to be released.

A scene from one of the DLC events.

I’d like to use this blog to lay out all the content that will be released next Thursday.

Patch

The Version 1.1 patch will either be automatically downloaded to your 3DS system, or you can find it on the eShop and download it from there.

In addition to the bug fixes and text corrections mentioned in our previous blog, this patch will add four outfits. These include Lest and Frey’s outfits from our 2013 release Rune Factory 4. We wanted to distribute these outfits to all players as thanks for their support of Trio of Towns, and their patience during the development of the game’s extra content. Once the update is installed, the new clothing items will be available for purchase at Ludus’ shop (the Rune Factory 4 outfits) and the wholesale store in Tsuyukusa (the Perfect Dress and Poodle outfits).

I’m including screenshots of the ingredients needed to make each, so those of you who want to cosplay Lest/Frey (or voice actress Ayana Taketatsu, who inspired the Perfect outfits) can start getting the materials together.

Princess’ Attire

Prince’s Attire

Perfect Top Hat

Perfect Dress

Poodle Hat

Poodle Costume

DLC

Once you’ve downloaded the 1.1 patch, the DLC, called the “New Neighbors Pack,” will be purchasable from a newly added “Downloadable Content” menu on the title screen.

Follow us for more thrilling screenshots of menus!

We decided to roll all of the content into one DLC package, which allowed us to reduce its cost from our original estimate to $7.99. This “New Neighbors Pack” is the only DLC for the game, and will contain almost* everything from the four post-launch Japanese patches:

• Marriage candidates Woofio and Stephanie
  
• The ability to have a child with Inari
  
• Events such as cultural exchanges among the three towns and a visit from your father
  
• Events immediately following the New Year’s Festival and Starlight Gala
  
• About 50 new lines of dialogue per marriage candidate, including clothing/pet reactions
  
• 5 special winter outfits
  
• A performer story

We’ve posted lots of screenshots from this content on the STORY OF SEASONS Facebook page over the past few months. For more information on Woofio and Stephanie, be sure to check back there next week.

If you were wondering, players with the retail game, the patch, and the DLC can all play online with one another without issue. The new outfits will just show up as the default outfit if you are playing on a version without the added data.

*As with Hamtaro, we were unable to secure the rights to use Chebrashka, so this little Russian character is missing from our release.

Theme

This theme features the bachelors and bachelorettes (sadly, it is missing Woofio and Stephanie), and plays one of the romance event songs. You can purchase it (and the STORY OF SEASONS and Rune Factory 4) themes from the Theme Shop on your Nintendo 3DS.

It has been a long road to releasing this extra content, from our first blog post asking for feedback to release about 9 months later. The process of translating and editing was smooth, but we hit several roadblocks during production. Still, I think that Trio of Towns is a really special entry in this long-running series (though I’m obviously a little biased), and so even though we’ve made you wait, I hope that you will enjoy this opportunity to interact with Westown, Tsuyukusa, and Lulukoko in new ways.

Howdy, everybody!

We’ve been busy with E3 here at XSEED, but don’t think for one second that we’ve forgotten about the Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns patch and DLC. We’ve been working on it for several months now, and I’m happy to say that it’s close to completion.

First, let me give you some general information about the patch/DLC, and the effort necessary to localize all of it.

The Japanese patch contents, released in four updates over six months, contained about 210,000 Japanese characters. While this is around a tenth of the total game text, it was still no mean feat to localize, as we anticipated when discussing it in a blog several months ago. We were lucky to have one of the translators who worked on the game back, and I filled in on about a third of the text myself. Our editors were Danielle–by now a veteran of the series–and Nick, who was the project lead on the first Story of Seasons and is a master of puns. Given this, I assigned Nick most of the text for new marriage candidates Woofio and Stephanie, and he did a really bang-up job. He kept a running list of scribbled dog puns while working on Woofio’s text, and as the frowny face indicates, sometimes things got a little ruff.

Look for these in the DLC!

Keep reading

Howdy, everybody! This is John with our final localization blog for Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. The game comes out next Tuesday (2/28). Don’t miss out on your chance to preorder the game from select retailers to get the adorable capybara pocket plushie bonus, which I have had a lot of fun posing for our little “Capy and Bunny Adventures” comics over the past month. (Okay, sometimes it was a little embarrassing getting those photos.)

We just released a new trailer showing off the four Super Mario Bros. costumes that you can unlock in the game. We’ll also be streaming the game on our Twitch channel from 2:30 PM PST today. Stop by and ask us some questions.

Before I bury the lede any further, I’d like to update you all on the DLC for Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. For more information on the patches released for free over the course of six months after launch in Japan, as well as our dilemma about whether or not to localize this content, see my previous blog.

We were really overwhelmed by the feedback we received from it. The patience and support of those who responded was encouraging to say the least, and we were grateful to hear all of your opinions, however you felt about the situation. One issue that came up on our forums that I’d like to address quickly is about the bug fixes that were included in the post-launch patches in Japan. Those fixes are all already included in the core game that we are releasing on February 28.

Now then, on to the big news: I’m happy to report that we have decided to localize and release the DLC in North America. I don’t have information on a release timeline or costs for you yet, but we’re eager to dive into translating and editing the text for this massive update. Stay tuned for updates in the months after the initial release.

Thanks again for all your feedback. It made our decision much easier. While the DLC is a ways off, until then we hope you enjoy Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. Even without the post-launch DLC, it is still the biggest game in the storied history of the farm/life-sim series.

As this is our final planned pre-release localization blog, I wanted to give some of the other members of the XSEED staff who worked on Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns a chance to give their comments on the game. As I mentioned in our very first blog, this game had a massive amount of text that we spent months and months focusing on.

Here are our questionnaire respondents:

Danielle: QA tester and editor

Nathan: QA tester

John: Project lead

1. Who were your favorite character(s) to work on and why? Have any lines in particular made an impression on you?

John: It’s hard to choose, but I will say that I love the dynamics between all the Lulukoko characters. Some of my favorite text in the game are the conversations that will take place between 3-4 characters during certain festivals. The normal groups (Zahau-Caolila, Lotus-Mithra, Iluka-Siluka-Ludus) are great, but funny conversations happen when you mix those characters together. There’s a really great exchange between Lotus and Tototara.

2. What were your favorite changes and/or additions made to the game?

Danielle: Streamlined farming. Unlike in the previous game, harvested animal by-products and crops go straight into your inventory.Another feature I really like is the addition of actual dog/cat breeds. The previous game had about 4 different “breeds,” and were mostly reskins. SoS: ToT has about 16 unique different breeds of dogs, and I have no idea how cat breeds work, but trust me when I say there’s a lot more variety there. And last but not least, there’s the new–and adorable–capybara!

3. Which of the three towns do you like the most, and why?

Danielle: Lulukoko hands down for me. I absolutely love locations with tropical and/or oceanside settings. The music for Lulukoko is one of my favorites in the game as well.

Nathan: Lulukoko. Generally speaking it had my favorite bunch of characters, shop hours that matched my playstyle, and the most expensive stuff on the ground for scavenging.

John: Tsuyukusa has my favorite music and some really beautiful scenery. The homes and shops are jam-packed with interesting decorations and knick-knacks from Japanese culture. All of those cultural references were difficult to localize, but I think they make the town so interesting for players.

Many of the decorations in Tsuyukusa are explained by the characters in dialogue.

4. Favorite bachelor/bachelorette? (Minor spoiler about a secret marriage candidate)

Danielle: Ludus. (Ford is pretty great too, though.)

Nathan: For the bachelors, I like Ludus, as he’s a good dude that works hard and helps directly. As for the bachelorettes, it’s a toss up between Siluka and Inari, though I may be biased as I spent a good deal of time with Siluka. Meanwhile, Inari is a god, so…

John: It’s a little weird seeing Inari referred to as a “bachelorette,” as we tried to keep the Tsuyukusa guardian’s text as gender-neutral as possible. (Though, ultimately, Inari will call him or herself your “husband” or “wife” in some scenes depending on your character’s gender. This is accurate to the Japanese text.)

Anyway, here in the office, Ludus is sort of everyone’s favorite because he’s so attractive and kind-hearted, but for me Ford is the funniest and sweetest bachelor. His response if you dump him just about broke my heart.

Iluka is a treasure. Komari was my choice when I originally played through the game in Japanese, and she’s definitely more my “type.” But Iluka’s sass just turned out so well in English.

To be fair to Iluka, most characters ask you to come back later if you talk to them while they’re eating.

5. Do you have a favorite non-farming SoS activity?

Danielle: Decorating my farmland (or house) is always fun. I also really enjoy creating all the different outfits.

Nathan: Mining for sure, GIVE ME ALL OF THE MONEY.

John: I love fishing in these games. There are so many different fish in Trio of Towns too; it seems like it could almost be its own game. Also, you no longer have to mash the A Button to reel your line in, which is gentler on my hands and my 3DS.

Fish alongside Lulukoko’s master angler, Zahau.

6. Which aspect of the game do you tend to focus on? The social or the farming?

Danielle: I’d say I probably focus about 60% on the social and 40% on the farming.

Nathan: I tend to do an equal amount of both, as I try to set up my farm to require as little attention as possible (and by that I mean planting trees). I do enjoy taking care of the animals though, especially my prize-winning cow: Horse.

John: I’m usually more interested in the social side. I’m always impressed by players who really micromanage their farms. (Like Nathan, who quickly became a fruit tree tycoon during his QA playthrough.)

7. Which festival would you most like to participate in IRL?

Danielle: The Beverage Bash. I like cooking (making drinks counts as cooking, right?), and I love tea even more, so getting together with a bunch of people to try and create a new drink concoction sounds like a ton of fun. I just hope people in real life have more common sense than to bring mayonnaise as an ingredient.

Nathan: Westown’s Goddess Festival, because, let’s be real here for a second, there’s a giant pizza. Giant. Pizza.

John: The “stargazing” events in Westown and Lulukoko are nice. In Westown, you go up in a hot air balloon to look at the stars. In Lulukoko, you go out in a boat to admire bioluminescent “sea sparkles” in the ocean. (Tsuyukusa has a similar event based on the Japanese festival Tanabata.) The prospect of going up in a hot air balloon (Westown) without a trained pilot is less appealing the more I think about it, however.

The “Beverage Bash” event.

8. If you were a character in Trio of Towns, what would be your number one most loved and hated item?

Danielle:

Loved: Pumpkin Pie

Hated: Pickles

Nathan:

Loved: Black Coffee
Hated: Mushrooms, of any type

John: There are over 1,100 items in this game, so it was hard to decide.

Loved: Curry (all types)

Hated: Olive (Who even likes these?)

You would also lose friendship points with me if you shoved a cat in my face (allergies).

9. What features or changes would you like to see implemented in future games?

Danielle: The biggest feature I’d like to see the return of is the multi-floored mining system (as seen in some of the Wii-era games), as opposed to just the mining points.

Nathan: I’d love to see something along the lines of expeditions or fishing trips for rare fauna as pets, plants, or fish.

John: I would like the developers to bring back larger wilderness areas and even caves/mines to explore. That was the thing I missed most in Trio of Towns.

And, of course, it would be nice to finally have same-sex dating options.

Don’t swing too far back, now.

That’s all from us. We really hope you enjoy the game. Look for another entry starting with “Howdy, everybody” on this blog in a few months’ time.

Howdy, everybody! For the past week, we’ve been posting self-introductions written by the eligible bachelors in Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns on the game’s Facebook page. We’ve collected them all here, so get to know them before meeting them in the game when it releases on February 28.

We also have a brand new trailer introducing these handsome hunks.

Wayne

Howdy there, darlin’! You must be the new farmer I’ve been hearin’ so much about.

I’m Wayne, Westown’s postman. It’s a pleasure to meet ya. Welcome to the frontier! If ya ever get homesick, drop on by our post office and send off a letter to your folks.

I came here from the city, myself. When I applied to be a postman and they sent me out here to the sticks, at first I was nervous about the country life. But I have to say I love it out here. The people are friendly, the food is fresh, the air is clean…yessir, country living is the way for me. I hope ya like it as much as I do.

You can find me wanderin’ all over the three towns on my rounds from early in the morning. I couldn’t survive without coffee. After gettin’ home all I want to do is unwind with a bath and a good book.

Ford’s my best friend, though I’m sure he’ll deny it. He’s always givin’ me medical advice, and in return I try and coach him up on how to talk to women. Most of my advice is on the level, but I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t throw him a curveball every once in a while to see if he’ll actually do it. C’mon, don’t look at me like that!

Let me know if ya need anythin’ at all. Don’t be a stranger now, y’hear?

Ford

Good afternoon. Are you here for a checkup?

No? Then may I inquire as to the purpose of your visit?

You would like me to introduce myself?

…Just where do you think we are right now? This is no social club and I am no young man about town. This is a clinic and I am the attending physician. You may call me Dr. Ford while in the confines of these walls during regular business hours. Simply Ford will suffice when I am off-duty.

Furthermore, do I detect traces of dust on your clothes? Are those spots of mud on your shoes? Must I repeat myself? This is a medical facility. When you present yourself in my clinic, you will be clean, groomed, and properly attired. I understand that you are a farmer, but that is no excuse for poor hygiene. There are no fields for you to till in here. I will not have you putting my other patients at risk with your lackadaisical approach toward personal care.

…

Excuse me. I might have gotten a bit worked up just then. I take my work very seriously, and I suppose I am guilty of holding others to the same high standards I set for myself. Wayne has repeatedly told me I must relax, and I believe he is right.

Let me try again. Please call me Ford. If you ever have need of a doctor, my door is always open, day or night. I hope we can be good friends.

Hinata

Thin sticks, thick bricks. Thin sticks, thick bricks.

Six sticky skeletons.

She sells sea shells by the seashore.

Black back bat. Black back bat. Black back bat.

…

Hmm? What am I doing? I’m reciting tongue twisters to practice clear pronunciation. You could hear me? Shoot, I’ve gotta stop mutterin’ to myself.

Anyway, I’m Hinata! I work the general goods counter at Mr. Moriya’s wholesale store. Nice to meetcha!

I’ve been workin’ for Mr. Moriya since I was 13. I have loads of brothers and sisters, so I left home and came to Tsuyukusa to live on my own and earn my keep. I miss my family, but we still trade letters and stuff. And I really like workin’ for Mr. Moriya.

Huh? What about the tongue twisters? They’re useful for makin’ sales pitches, but they’re really for what I do when I get off work. I’m in an actor’s troupe in another town! Got bit by the acting bug when I watched a play with Yuzuki and his grandma Omiyo. I’m still workin’ my way up the ranks though. Gotta keep chasing my dreams, you know?

If you like, come and see me perform sometime. And it goes without saying that you’re always welcome to say hello at Mr. Moriya’s shop. Just…make sure to buy something every once in a while, okay?

Yuzuki

Hello there. You must be the new farmer from the old property by the crossroads. My name is Yuzuki. It’s a pleasure to make your acqua— 

!!

Forgive the imposition, but could I ask you to hold still for just a moment? The light is striking your hair in such a way that… Yes, I see it now. That would be a lovely color. But what to do about the material? And of course it shouldn’t be too—

Oh, excuse me. That was a terribly rude way to treat a new acquaintance. Please accept my apologies. You see, I design accessories by trade and have been in something of a creative rut of late. When I saw your hair, I was struck with inspiration for a new design.

As I was saying, my name is Yuzuki and I live here in South Tsuyukusa with my grandparents, Omiyo and Umekichi. You can often find me in my workshop here on their farm. Please stop by to visit any time.

If I’m not in, then you will likely find me strolling about Tsuyukusa. Nothing helps spark my imagination like a brisk walk. Not to mention that Ginjiro’s restaurant is on my usual route, and I do love tea and a nice dessert after a stroll.

There are many people around our age here in Tsuyukusa. I hope you can become good friends with all of us. I promise not to treat you as a model again…at least, not without your permission, of course.

Ludus

Aloha. You’re the new farmer, yeah? I heard about you from my grandmother. Welcome to Lulukoko Village. I’m Ludus.

People around here call me “handyman” or “jack of all trades” because I offer all sorts of services at my shop, Relacion. Whether you need a home renovation, a tool upgrade, or even some clothes tailored, I take almost all requests.

Have you met the twins, Iluka and Siluka? I built their café. The wind and waves are always battering away at the supports, so upkeep is a full-time job, yeah? But those girls are like sisters to me, so I can’t say I mind helping them out. We all grew up together, after all.

Just…don’t let them tease you too much, okay? Siluka isn’t so bad, but Iluka? She’s a little…okay, she’s a LOT convinced that she’s queen of the world. Sometimes I wish I had a nice “sister,” you know?

Like everyone here in Lulukoko, I love the sea. Work sometimes takes me to Westown or Tsuyukusa, but I have to say I prefer the air here. The smell of sand and salt just mean “home” to me. I often go fishing in my time off. Whenever I catch a big one, I’ll take it to the kitchen in the twins’ cafe and fillet it.

It’s awesome that you’re running a farm on your own. If you ever need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m always happy to lend a hand.

Howdy, everybody! For the past week, we’ve been posting self-introductions written by the bachelorettes in Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns on the game’s Facebook page. We’ve collected them all into a blog post.

We also have a brand new trailer introducing these lovely ladies.

Lisette

Howdy! You must be new around here. Call me Lisette! I’m pleased to meetcha.

I run the flower shop in Westown. I took it over from my parents a few years ago after gettin’ a degree in horticulture in the city. I just love it here in town; everyone is so sweet and helpful. Carrie and Miranda are like big sisters, and Wayne and Ford are a hoot.

What kinda things do I like? Gosh… Well, I like flowers. Duh, right? Nothing makes me happier than makin’ an original bouquet for a customer.

An’ what’s more, fresh flowers don’t just brighten up a room, they have special meanings. Even the same type of flower can have different meanings dependin’ on what shade it takes, so I’m always careful about how I compose a bouquet. Wouldn’t want someone else fluent in flowers gettin’ the wrong idea from a present, you know? The language of flowers even covers fruits and vegetables. For example, the apple flower represents…

Oh, gosh! I’m sorry for ramblin’ on like that.

I also love reading. What kind of books? Umm… I definitely like books that adults should be reading! Not storybooks or anything childish!

My dislikes? Well… I’m perfectly fine with most bugs since I work with plants all day, but there’s somethin’ about snails. The same kinda goes for food too—I can’t stomach anythin’ slimy.

Anyway, come by my shop sometime if you need flower seeds. Don’t be a stranger!

Kasumi

Greetings. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Kasumi.

…

…

Excuse me. I am not much for “small talk.”

Introduce myself? Very well.

I teach basic learning, such as reading and writing, to children at a nearby schoolhouse. However, my place of birth is far from Tsuyukusa. My father is a scholar, and I received a classical education from a governess. This included ancient literature and poetry—of which I am fond—as well as painting and martial arts.

I am not…accustomed to holding conversations with the opposite sex. I much prefer female company or even solitude, and I typically spend my time off working on my calligraphy or practicing with the naginata and the bow. These activities encourage reflection, mindfulness, and self-discipline. Talking with men encourages nothing of the sort.

I do not much care for sweets and will usually pass any I receive along to Komari or Yuzuki, who are more than happy to oblige me by receiving them. Other than desserts, I enjoy many of Tsuyukusa’s traditional dishes. I rather enjoy living here, even though I am separated from my mother and father. It is a peaceful town full of friendly people.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must be going.

Komari

Hiya, nice to meetcha! The name’s Komari!

My dad and I run the teahouse in Tsuyukusa. We’re real proud of it! Dad works the counter and cooks all the food, an’ I take it out to the customers. My mom is off travelin’ the world, so it’s just the two of us holdin’ down the fort.

I like waitressin’, but Dad says I’m too casual with the customers. Sometimes I wish I could be more like Shizu, who runs the clothing counter at the wholesale store and is this totally refined lady. I’ve been thinkin’ I should ask her for lessons or somethin’. I got no time to go to finishin’ school.

Speakin’ of which, sometimes I get the feelin’ I spend TOO much time workin’, y’know? Ever since I was little, almost all my free time has been eaten up helpin’ at the shop. I really, reeeally wanna find some kind of hobby that I can tinker around with. Nothin’s jumped out at me yet though.

There aren’t many things I hate. I’m not a fussy person. Almost wish I was, though. Then I could say I have “taste”! Haha! But I really like most Tsuyukusa dishes. Guess that comes from growin’ up in THE Tsuyukusa teahouse, huh?

Anyway, be sure to say hi when you stop by the teahouse, ‘kay? See ya!

Iluka

Komo mai! Welcome to Lulukoko’s famous seaside café, Carosello. We have lots of fruit drinks, chilled teas, and desserts that will help you beat the tropical heat.

So…what can I get for you today?

…

Well, are you a customer or not?

…

You’re just here to say hello?

*SIGH* Don’t make me waste all my customer service positive aura on you. You’re the new face, right? I’m Iluka, the owner of this café. See the girl in blue, the one who looks EXACTLY like me? That’s Siluka. We’re the famous and enchanting tw–

Siluka! Stop spacing out and take table 2’s order!

Like I was saying, we’re the famous and enchanting twin priestesses here in Lulukoko. We keep the village traditions as passed down by Gram. Oh, right. I’m talking about Ludus’ grandmother, Tototara. Come see us dance in front of the flames at the New Year’s Festival. We’re breathtaking! We also have special powers, so DON’T cross us or we’ll hex you, got it?

I make the drinks here, and tea is my specialty. Siluka does the heavy cooking, though. Not that I can’t cook! I can! She’s just more experienced.

The two of us grew up with Ludus. He can be a bit of a coconuts-for-brains, but I guess he’s handy to have around sometimes. He DID build us this café. He and Siluka are so quiet though. Sometimes when we’re all together I end up doing all the talking.

Here come a few more customers. If you’re not going to buy something, you’re just taking up space. Aloha!

Siluka

Zzz…

Zzzzzz…

Hmm? E kala mai. I must have dozed off.

Iluka’s always scolding me for napping on the job. Her eyes get big and her aura turns dark red and…oh, never mind. It’s nothing worth getting worked up over.

Oh, I’ve never seen your aura before. It’s very pretty. Are you new here?

I’m Siluka. My twin sister Iluka and I run the seaside café here in Lulukoko. We’re also the village priestesses. Iluka talks tough and likes to threaten people with curses, but please don’t take her too seriously. We ALMOST never have to jinx anybody.

Haha. That’s just a little joke. We do have special abilities, though, like predicting the weather and seeing auras.

Everything has an aura. Did you know that? Most people can’t see them, but they reflect the interconnectedness of all living things. Those who are connected to the natural world have the prettiest hues. So I can tell that you work with plants and animals just by the color you glow.

I find nature very…soothing, and my favorite things are the simple bounties of the earth and sun. I love all types of fruit. I am also interested in medicinal herbs. Ludus’ grandmother Tototara has passed down recipes for traditional medicines to me. They’re my greatest pride and a treasured secret…

…

…

Hmm? Oh, I was just looking at that sunny spot and thought I’d take a short rest. Goodbye for now.

Zzz…

This is John again with an update about the Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns DLC.

The short version is, we haven’t decided whether or not to localize it yet, and if we do, we’ll have to charge for it. Read on for more details.

If it isn’t obvious already, we love Story of Seasons fans and pay attention to your feedback. In addition to our Facebook and Twitter pages, I check other outlets to see what players are talking about. So I wanted to give you an honest update about the DLC situation and see what you have to say about it.

The long version is as follows:

To my knowledge, Trio of Towns is the first game in the long-running series to include post-launch DLC.

The DLC, released for free in four patches over six months in Japan, includes the following:

1. A new bachelor and bachelorette: Stephanie the contest MC and Woofio. Yes, Woofio the contest judge in the dog suit. This includes new resident and romance events for these characters
   
2. A few new events such as your father coming to visit and getting together with friends of the same gender for a meal
   
3. The ability to have a child with the game’s secret marriage candidate
   
4. A new “performer” story (Which are similar to the TV channels in the previous Story of Seasons)
   
5. A new pet, Cheburashka, a Russian cartoon character that has a presence in Japan
   
6. New costumes, including ones based on Lest and Frey from Rune Factory 4
   
7. New reaction dialogue for different outfits and pets from bachelors and bachelorettes
   

One of the DLC patches unlocks Stephanie as a Westown resident and marriage candidate. Not to mention she finally has a name.

The total size of the DLC is over 200,000 Japanese characters, making it as large as some games we’ve released. The first Corpse Party, for example, has about 210,000 characters.

The last round of DLC was released in Japan in mid-December, which means that the Japanese text was completed after we’d entered the QA and submission phase of localizing the main game. With DLC of this size, including it in the game would have been impossible under our schedule. It would have forced us to release months after we’d originally planned.

The Performer is a traveling showman who will read one chapter from a story per day. The illustrations are by “guest” artists.

So, will the DLC ever be released in North America? The truth is that we’re still discussing it. Given the size of the DLC, it would cost upwards of six figures to localize it (over half of which is programming and QA costs). For the amount of money and manpower we would need, we could almost release a full other title. The price of the base game in Japan is more than in North America, and they sell about twice as many games as we do here, factors which made it easier for them to release the DLC for free. We are really grateful to fans for their continuing support of the series under its new name, but releasing DLC of this size for free is beyond our means.

This places us squarely between a rock and a hard place. We either don’t localize the DLC at all, or we release it as paid DLC. Neither of these is ideal, but we have to be realistic as a smaller publisher.

The price point we’re looking at, after comparison with other paid DLC with similar content, is $3.99 each for three patches. (Patch 1 and 2 from the Japanese version, which contain less content than 3 and 4, would be combined.) Making for an even more bitter pill is that by charging for the DLC, we would be unable to include Cheburashka (and even offering him for free wouldn’t have guaranteed the license extended out to North America indefinitely). The above details aren’t set in stone, but it is the most likely plan if we do localize the DLC.

In my last blog, I wrote that it kills us to release a game without all the content of the original version. Dealing with this situation has been even harder than removing Hamtaro from the game, as I know that some of you are looking forward to wooing Stephanie or Woofio, or having a child with the secret marriage candidate. We want to work on the DLC. (Though, I don’t know if the person tasked with editing over 500 lines of Woofio dog puns will feel the same.)

Even though there’s no best-case scenario here, we’ve chosen to lay all of this out and see what you all have to say about it. We take your comments seriously, so let us know what you think.

One DLC patch adds Woofio as a marriage candidate. All joking aside, he actually has an interesting backstory.

Hi everyone,

So we’re very happy to have a guest blog entry today from Peter Thoman, better known as “Durante” in gaming circles. Rather than a lengthy intro explaining why, I’ll let his own words below do the talking, so we hope you enjoy it.

Ken
Team Leader @ XSEED Games

A few months back Ken Berry of XSEED contacted me to ask whether I could do anything about the issues with their Little King’s Story port. Despite hearing good things about the game, I hadn’t really followed that particular PC version, since a lot of other titles were released around the same time and it’s not really my genre. Still, I was intrigued to see what was wrong with it, and delighted at how Ken was able to provide me with the source code for the game without too much bureaucracy.

Initial Impression

Before going into the details of how I improved the port, I want to remark on the difficulty of this project for the original team who worked on it. After receiving the source, it was immediately clear that this was not a simple port. Little King’s Story was built on a custom engine designed from the ground up for this particular game, and its particular original target platform (the Wii). Clearly, during its development, it was seen as a one-off project that would be done once it ships, and portability or maintainability were secondary concerns.

In any case, I quickly figured out that the largest issues with the port were overall performance, intermittent stuttering, and a whole host of issues with the 60 FPS mode, and decided to tackle these in order.

Overall Performance

First, I removed the frame limiter to more easily investigate performance issues. Even on my high-end system, I only measured roughly 80 FPS in the overworld area at the start of the game. Basic profiling revealed that it was entirely CPU-bound, and I assumed this was not going to be caused by the original Wii code, given that it ran acceptably on a ~700 MHz processor.

This assumption turned out to be correct after more in-depth profiling: the vast majority of the game’s CPU time was spent interacting with the DX9 API. I won’t go into the full details here, but the crucial point is that many individual objects induced a state change of the rendering pipeline, with its associated CPU overhead. I decided to tackle the issue by implementing various caches (for passes and materials) which prevent state changes unless they are necessary. After a bit of tweaking, this lead to a performance of around 123 FPS in the same testing area, an improvement by more than 50%. More could be done - like always in optimization - but since the game is limited to 60 FPS at most anyway I decided to move on to another issue.

Intermittent Stuttering

On a high-end CPU, stuttering was actually a more fundamental problem than the performance overhead discussed above. While moving around in the world, every few seconds the game would noticeably drop one or even more frames. First, I thought that the culprit could be some timing issue, and while improving the frame sleeping logic helped by making the game play feel better, it still didn’t eliminate the major stuttering.

Profiling an intermittent stuttering issue such as this is far more difficult than working on overall performance. Sampling-based evaluation is almost useless, and that’s by far the most developed category of tools. Ultimately, I resorted to using Nvidia NSight and its integration library, and manually narrowed down candidates for causing stutter by marking individual regions in each frame execution. A somewhat time-consuming process, but it paid off:

In this image, the colorful stacks indicate the stutter causes I ultimately tracked down, and the lower half shows a similar sequence after dealing with the underlying issue. Note that the marked regions, which previously could take up 2 to 3 frames, are now in the 0 to 2 millisecond range. To give you a more visual idea of the improvements I’ve created this comparison video.

Issues with 60 FPS

Offering 60 FPS - or, much better, support for completely arbitrary framerates - is a common demand for PC versions of games, and one I fully agree with. In quite a few cases where it is not offered, mods later demonstrated that the effort to do so would have been very small for the developer, and that the only reason it was not provided is a lack of care for the PC version.

Little King’s Story is not such a case. There are many reasons for this, here are just a small subset of them:

1.     The game does not have a unified system for handling time or animation speed. Many modules act independently of each other, and often time-specific information is encoded in places where it would not be expected.

2.     The central NPC simulation code assumes that it can pre-compute how long it will take (in frames) for an NPC to complete an action, such as moving to another location.

3.     Some bosses, enemies and scenes are moved or designed in custom scripts, which use a custom virtual machine and instruction set that is not intended to share framerate information.

My initial goal was to provide arbitrary framerate support, but point 2 in the list above makes that an infeasible goal. It would basically require rewriting large parts of the simulation, which makes up a significant portion of the entire game’s ~1 million line codebase.  Given that, I shifted to the goal of making locked 60 FPS work as well as possible.

The original port fixed the speed of most NPC animation sequences, but left many other hardcoded animations, and even the gameplay-relevant time progression rate untouched at 60 FPS (resulting in double speed).

I employed a side-by-side 60/30 FPS setup as shown above, and chipped away at framerate-dependent speed mismatches little by little. In the end, I managed to fix the simulation speed, the speed of many hardcoded object animations (such as trees or grass), and the movement speed of NPCs and animals.

However, the custom scripting system used for some boss battles and scripted scenes, point (3) in the list above, still prevents the 60 FPS mode from being perfect throughout the game. However, unlike the initial release, 60 FPS is playable (and a huge improvement in smoothness) during the majority of the gameplay. As a workaround for the remaining situations, I’ve implemented a 30 FPS toggle for the 60 FPS mode, which is engaged using the “F1” key. Note that this comes with some issues due to point (2) above: animations already in progress at the moment the framerate is toggled will run at an incorrect speed until the next movement starts.

Graphics, Launcher and Control Improvements - What I Wasn’t Asked For

While working on the game, I noticed a few things which would significantly improve the visual quality and not really take too much time to implement. So I did. This include multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA), anisotropic filtering, transparency supersampling and a few other minor tweaks.

The most complex addition was creating an option for more shadow casters, including trees and grass. I found the lack of tree shadows a bit disappointing given that other objects cast dynamic shadows, so I added this as a (somewhat CPU-heavy) option. While I was at it I also added an option for soft shadows, to better fit with the soft dropshadows cast by NPCs.

Of course, I also had to add options for these features, and since the original launcher was not particularly extensible I replaced it with a new one. As a personal preference I also re-implemented options to be stored as XML rather than in a custom binary format, and added a lot of information about each option in order to hopefully make their impact more clear.

Finally, while playtesting the controls of the game always felt a bit “off” to me. Even though I was playing with an analog gamepad, movement was restricted to 8 directions, which in particular makes precise directional aiming (a significant gameplay component) more cumbersome than it needs to be. To solve this situation, I added support for analog directional controls for Xinput controllers.

Conclusion

The new version of Little King’s Story should perform significantly better on all systems, most sources of significant stutter should be eliminated, and the 60 FPS mode now provides an accurate (and smoother compared to 30 FPS) experience except in some scripting-related cases. Furthermore, the game now features additional graphics options to make better use of high-performance GPUs, and can be more precisely controlled with analog gamepads.

While I couldn’t achieve everything I initially wanted to - arbitrary FPS and even a completely perfect 60 FPS mode prove intractable for this game - I’m happy that XSEED gave me the chance to contribute a lot more directly and meaningfully to the quality of this PC port.

   *  *  *

So Ken with XSEED again here. To celebrate this relaunch of Little King’s Story, we are running a week-long 40% off sale on Steam and The Humble Store starting right now. Though these enhancements only apply to the Steam build at the moment, we plan on applying them to our DRM-free and GOG Galaxy builds soon, so just hang tight for a little while longer and those builds will be updated too.

Thanks to everyone for your patience and ongoing support, and we hope you enjoy the new and improved Little King’s Story for Windows PC.

Ken

Howdy, everyone!

As you may have heard, Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns has a release date at last: February 28. We also have a brand new trailer–our first since E3! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be revealing more and more about the game’s North American version in a series of blogs and Facebook posts.

In this blog, I want to talk about animals. There isn’t much to report about livestock as the roster is mostly unchanged from the previous Story of Seasons game—the camel is no more and the “zebu” cow has been replaced with a buffalo—but Trio of Towns contains some interesting new features with pets and wild animals.

Pets

The previous Story of Seasons title had just a few kinds of dog and cat in several different colors. Trio of Towns has over two dozen types of cats and dogs. As in previous games, pets have abilities like herding livestock and finding items, and different pets will be adept at different things. Naturally, the way you physically interact with a pet will depend on its size, and different characters will react to the pets that you show them in their own unique ways. For example, here’s Lulukoko’s “jack of all trades” and Story of Seasons localization staff waifu Ludus being adorable:

Here’s a full list of cat and dog breeds in Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns.

Dogs

Tosa

Great Pyrenees

Bernese

Weimaraner

Husky

Doberman

(German) Shepherd

Bull Terrier

Tibetan Mastiff

Border Collie

Jack Russell (Terrier)

Dachshund

Beagle

Shiba

Chihuahua

Poodle

Cats

Siamese

Shorthair Cat

Tabby Cat

Bengal

Black Cat

Maine Coon

Scottish Fold

Himalayan

Tortoiseshell

White Cat

And, of course, we can’t forget about our game’s mascot, the adorable capybara (aka Capy or Capy-san in our office). I asked longtime Story of Seasons fan Danielle, an animal-lover, to get a screenshot of a plump capybara (walk your pets, guys) and she replied, “I don’t want to abuse an animal.”

With a pet, you’ll also unlock the game’s StreetPass function. Register your pet with Dessie, and it’ll visit the games of players you StreetPass with. Your pet will bring back items from their worlds, and it might even show up in their game. Other pets can show up in your game too, and talking to them reveals some information about the farmers who’ve raised them.

Once you meet Tsuyukusa’s guardian Inari, the foxy deity can form a bond between you and a favorite pet, designating it as your “furmiliar.” This will give it an adorable bow and will trigger special cutscenes. The word “furmiliar,” which is translated from “sourumeito (soulmate),” was Danielle’s handiwork, and makes me groan-smile every time I read it.

Protip: If you’re feeling spoiled for choice and can’t decide on a pet to raise, check out the inside of the game box’s cover sheet for a cute quiz.

Wild Animals/Strays

Walking around the three towns, you’ll notice several dozen animals wandering around. These range from stray cats and dogs to wild animals like a bear (Westown), foxes (Tsuyukusa), and monkeys (Lulukoko). As in previous games in the series, the bear will charge you, but thankfully he can’t do any actual “damage” to you.

If you fulfill certain conditions, you will get special cutscenes featuring these animals. Befriend them with gifts and they might leave presents for you. And if you have a designated furmiliar, things can get a little weirder. I don’t want to give away too much, but I will say that many of the wild animals have hilarious personalities.

Finally, A Dearly Departed Hamster

One question I keep seeing on forums, Facebook posts, and Twitter is, “Will Hamtaro be in the game?” For those of you who hadn’t heard, the cute hamster character is featured as a pet in the Japanese version of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, complete with a little voice clip.

Sadly, Hamtaro will not be in the North American release of the game. I can’t get into the specifics of why—the reason is more complicated than the usual licensing fee problems you might expect—but I will say that you’ll be hard-pressed to find new, official Hamtaro merchandise on sale in this part of the world. While many remember the character from his TV debut over a decade ago, Hamtaro doesn’t really have an official presence in North America anymore.

It goes without saying that we were gutted by this development and tried to keep Hamtaro in. We hate releasing a game that doesn’t have all the features of the original version, but in this case our hands were tied. For those of you who were looking forward to raising Hamtaro, I’m very sorry. But even without the little guy, there are still more varieties of pet to raise than ever before. We hope you enjoy all the different ways animals play a part in the world of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns.

Howdy, everyone! I hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday season.

While we still haven’t announced a release date for Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, we’re hoping to share more and more of the game with you over the coming weeks.

People play Story of Seasons games for several reasons, and one of the biggest (and most obvious) is as a farming simulation.

I played these games for years and years before actually trying my hand at real-world farming, so I had a rather idealized image of working the fields. A few years ago I got to know a Japanese farmer, who once let me dig for sweet potatoes in his fields. I split a few in half with the hoe, and he posted pictures of my shame on Facebook for his farmer friends to laugh at. So I retreated back to Story of Seasons, where you don’t even need a hoe to harvest root vegetables!

But I digress…

Unlike in the previous Story of Seasons title, all of the farmland in Trio of Towns is concentrated in the same area, so you won’t be running around the map in order to get to your beehives and flower fields and whathaveyous. And while you won’t have to compete against your wealthy and established neighbors for field space, you’ll have to earn expansions to your fields as your progress through the game.

Actually taming your farmland will require more than just the usual weeding, chopping, and hammering of obstacles—you’ll also need to order “Farm Circles” from Ludus, the dreamy handyman in Lulukoko, and arrange them on your farm. As long as you have open space free of trees and boulders, you will have a lot of freedom as to how to arrange your farm and what to produce.

Farming is hard work and trees are stamina-devourers early in the game. One of the best ways to restore your stamina is to buy a meal at Westown’s Garden Grill.

Here are some things you can do on your farm:

Plant rows and rows of corn. Scarecrow (and crows) not included.

Grow fruit trees.

Harvest mushrooms and paddy crops like wasabi and rice.

Equip the flamethrower. (Just kidding. Bees are our friends!)

And, of course, raise lots and lots of livestock.

Diversifying your farm’s output is essential to progressing the story of the game, a major part of which is building your bonds with the titular trio of towns and helping to revitalize them. These bonds are represented by the Town Link Rank, a gauge that fills up as you do things like participate in festivals, greet townsfolk, and complete part-time jobs. One easy way to improve your ranking with a particular town is to ship crops there by changing the “destination” on your farm’s shipping box. Improving your Town Link Rank will unlock story quests where you can help your neighbors improve their town. Completing these will pay big dividends for your farm in many ways. But I don’t want to give too much away…

Trio of Towns localization blog gaiden: fruits or vegetables?

“Junpei, are strawberries vegetables?”

This was a question I posed to one of my Japanese colleagues here at XSEED, based on an interesting classification in Trio of Towns.

Strawberries, melons, watermelons and pineapples are all classified as “vegetables” in the Japanese version and, to some extent, in the Japanese worldview. (Junpei’s answer to my question, which was asked entirely without context, was “Yes.”)

The reasoning is that these crops don’t grow on trees. While some cursory Wikipedia research has taught me that there are conflicting ways to classify these crops, strawberries, melons, watermelons, and pineapples are generally thought of as fruits in North America. This led us to an interesting localization dilemma.

In other cases, the simple solution as localizers would have been to reclassify these crops in their descriptions, writing “fruit” instead of “vegetable.” However, in Trio of Towns, “vegetables” and “fruits” are categories that are counted separately in things like shipping totals. This issue was managed by renaming the categories themselves from “veggie” and “fruit” (which, in Japanese, was actually “fruit tree”) to “Field Crop” and “Tree Crop.” We were then able to describe crops in the same category as fruits or vegetables in the item description text. I know that “Field Crop” and “Tree Crop” aren’t perfect, but they were the best we could come up with after a lot of discussion, and I’m satisfied with them as general categories.

This might seem like a minor issue to all of you, but at the core of all of this was a fundamental gameplay problem related to an event. In tropical Lulukoko Village, where most of the seeds you can buy from the general store are for fruit trees, there is a special festival called the “Fruit Fiesta.” For this event, you can give fruits to Lulukoko villagers and receive fruits in return.

However, because of the classification system, players who gave strawberries, melons, watermelons, and pineapples would get no special response from the Lulukoko residents. (To say nothing of precious fruit in return!) I was certainly surprised by this on my playthrough of the game’s Japanese version, and we thought it would be disorienting for Western players. Sadly, simply changing the name of the category wasn’t a solution to this problem. We had to take it to the Japanese developers.

Working with our supportive colleagues in Japan, we submitted a proposal with a summary of the issue and several potential workarounds. The developer team accepted our solution of changing the category names AND making it so that these four “vegetables” would be available to give as presents during the Fruit Fiesta.

In the Japanese version of the game, you wouldn’t get a special response from Zahau here.

A lot of times when people ask us about the nitty-gritty of localization, their questions have to do with how we render idiomatic expressions or poetic language in English. While this is a big part of the challenge in going from Japanese to English, this case deals with more fundamental conceptual difference that had an actual impact on gameplay. Working on a solution with my colleagues at XSEED and in Japan was rewarding and even kind of fun.

That’s all for today (and for 2016). Future localization blogs will focus on pets, events, and those lovely bachelors and bachelorettes. Be sure to like our Story of Seasons Facebook page for screenshots, trailers, and other special updates we won’t always be posting to this blog.

Until next time, have a happy holidays and a wonderful new year!

Howdy, everyone!

I’m writing from down on the (localization) farm with an update. The past two months have seen a bevy of releases, from Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity to Xanadu Next, but there hasn’t been much news on one of our biggest titles, STORY OF SEASONS: Trio of Towns, after the pre-order bonus capybara plushy announcement.

(The plushy looks kind of like this, but without the onsen towel!)

I’m one of the newest members of the XSEED team—though this is my third time working for the company (long story)—and I’ve been guiding Trio of Towns from the editing phase through QA testing. My super senpai Brittany strongly encouraged me to write a localization blog (or 10), so I thought I’d take a quick break from the text farm to give you all a brief introduction to this new, enormous entry in the series.

…And I mean enormous. This Japanese text for this game is around 2 million characters, making it easily the biggest title in the series’ 20-year history. (For comparison, the last Story of Seasons title had 1.7 million characters.)

That’s a big number, and maybe a little hard to wrap your head around. Consider these two things:

1. We expect full-time translators to complete 125,000 characters a month.

2. As with past titles, we created a spreadsheet containing all text in the game. See localization blogs about the last Story of Seasons title and Trails in the Sky Second Chapter for more on this. For the latter title, in particular, the spreadsheet was too large to use. We solved this problem for Trio of Towns by making TWO spreadsheets.

This is so much text that it sometimes feels like we’re up to our necks in dialogue, item descriptions, and festival cut scenes. Thankfully, several of us are longtime fans of the series, so we’re invested in bringing you a polished, expansive game that we hope will feel familiar at the same time.

While working on Trio of Towns, I’ve reflected on playing the Nintendo 64 version for hours and hours over 15 years ago. As some no doubt remember, back then your bag could only hold eight items and you’d have to take a sickle to one of your regenerating crops (corn, tomatoes, eggplants) in order to harvest the middle one. While the older games had a lot of charm, I’m amazed by the amount of content that’s stuffed into the newest iteration.

Even as we work on the game, we’ve been paying attention to fan reactions to information as it’s been released from Japan. One of the biggest concerns I’ve seen from fans so far is: “Will Trio of Towns force me to choose which of the three towns to live in? (And will I have to choose an emphasis on livestock or farming?)”

At least to those two concerns, the answer is a resounding “no.” Your farm is a hub area at the bottom of the map, from which you can access the three towns. While you cannot move your farm to any of the towns, the game features an astounding number of decorations and additions to give your farm a “Western,” “Eastern,” or “Tropical” flair. You can also choose costumes, crops, and even pets that will give your farm a consistent theme, or you can mix everything together. Each town has festivals, but in most cases, you won’t be forced to choose between festivals. There are also competitions in which all three towns participate.

With that, I’d like to introduce the three towns with some comments about localizing them.

Westown

Westown is the first town you’re able to visit, and it is home to your Uncle Frank, a jolly farmer known for his tiny hat, skills with a pizza oven, and his love of explaining game mechanics.

The crops and animals on sale in Westown will be familiar to Story of Seasons players, as will the general vibe of the shops and residents. Westown’s two bachelors are Wayne, the postman, and Ford, the doctor. Wayne is the handsome-and-knows-it type. I settled on his “voice” in my head when I filled in as an assistant on the Akiba’s Beat English voice recording for a day, and actor Mick Wingert played his character (“Boss”) as a cowboy.

One thing that I know fans of this series are passionate about is accurate naming and terminology. As mentioned above, I joined Trio of Towns after all the text had been translated, but I had been playing the Japanese retail version for a few months leading up to becoming part of the team. I was surprised to learn upon starting work at XSEED that the Westown florist, one of the bachelorettes, had been translated as Carolina. This was due in part to the difficulty of rendering her Japanese name, which comes from Rescht (a variety of rose) but sounds much prettier when said in Japanese (Lishietto). “Lisette” had been discussed as an alternative back in the early stages of localization, but had been scrapped in part because it doesn’t capture the metaphorical connotations of the name.

After working on the game for about a month, I raised the possibility of changing her name to something closer to the original, and after some good discussions in our office, we decided that Carolina should become Lisette. Needless to say, the Story of Seasons fan in me was pleased with the outcome.

Lulukoko Village

With its unusual wild animals and a big ruin on the outskirts of the town, tropical Lulukoko has a mysterious vibe all its own. The mainstays of the local economy are aquaculture and fruit trees. While you can no longer go swimming and diving as in Story of Seasons, you can still catch and cultivate fish in nets on Lulukoko’s coastline.

A “quick greeting” from one of the game’s many supporting NPC villagers.

As in the Japanese version, the characters sprinkle their sentences with a language other than the game’s main language. In Japanese, it was a made-up language that added “-nga” to common words. So “arigato” (thanks) became “aringa” and “gomen” (I’m sorry) became “gominga.” Instead of messing around with creating a gibberish language in this fashion, we decided to use Hawaiian in the English version in keeping with the town’s Polynesian atmosphere. So you can expect a lot of “Alohas” and “Mahalos,” but also some other interesting phrases that were new to me. I’ve recently been playing a certain other blockbuster 3DS title set in a Hawaii-inspired land, and I’d say we probably have more Hawaiian language, but less slang like “shoots.”

Lulukoko features a seaside café run by the twins Iluka and Siluka, bachelorettes who are, naturally, polar opposites. The sassy Iluka is one of my favorite characters to read in the English version.

Iluka has no time for your freeloading.

Tsuyukusa Town

The last town you can visit in Trio of Towns is a Japanese farming village. The locals grow rice and other paddy crops, and the town features a small shrine, torii gates, and a lively teahouse.

Father-daughter team Ginjiro and Komari run Tea-ful Reunion together.

One of the things that has been challenging about localizing Tsuyukusa is capturing the “Japanese” feel of the village without throwing a bunch of Japanese words (that aren’t common knowledge) at players. References to culture and literature haven’t been excised entirely, as we think that would take away a lot of what makes Tsuyukusa exciting, but we’ve done as best we can to render these intelligible and natural in English without making things read like a lecture. Kasumi, one of the game’s bachelorettes, is a teacher with a classical education. She made this task particularly difficult at times.

As a teacher, sometimes Kasumi’s dialogue necessarily reads like a lecture…

That’s all I have for now. Working on this title has been stressful at times, but I’m so excited for fans of the series (and some newbies, hopefully) to get their hands on it. I’m looking forward to writing and reading more Trio of Towns localization blogs over the coming months. I hope you will be as well.

 -John

All right. So! Guessing you’ve all heard the news by now, but indeed, it’s true: Akiba’s Beat…

(1) …not only is getting a dub, but has already been fully dubbed with English-language voices!

(2) …is going to feature the original Japanese voices too, because choice is always a good thing. (Even though the Vita card can’t fit both language tracks, so we’re going to have to offer the Japanese voices as free DLC – and we’ll be providing more info on just how big a download that’ll be when we find out ourselves!) ((The PS4 version will have the Japanese voices on-disc, though, so no worries there.))

(3) …is going to have a special surprise in store for those who preorder. More on that below!

So, yes, Akiba’s Beat *will* have an English dub. Believe you me, I’ve been living and breathing this English dub for the last several months. There are nearly 22,000 voice files which have been recorded, spanning over 180 different roles, and they’re still being listened through and processed. (Or they were when this was originally written, anyway; they’re pretty much done now, save for some final tweaking.)

Does that number seem high to you? It probably should – our biggest voice project prior to Akiba’s Beat (that being Trails of Cold Steel II) had somewhere in the vicinity of 12,000 voiced lines. Akiba’s Beat very nearly doubles that, making it the single most massive voiceover undertaking in the entire history of XSEED Games – an honor which seems to keep getting passed between the Akiba’s and Trails series, since our biggest voiceover project prior to Cold Steel II was Cold Steel I, and our biggest voiceover project prior to that was Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed!

As you might imagine, all that recording was pretty exhausting, but it turned out beautifully in the end, with one of the most diverse casts we’ve ever featured in any video game. We actually had numerous actors fly in from Texas to record for us (which they seemed happy to do, on account of recording partially taking place during the hottest time of summer!), resulting in a pretty great mixture of LA and Texas talent that helps keep the game sounding fresh the whole way through.

Our lead character, Asahi Tachibana, is voiced by the first of our Texas actors: Mr. Anime himself, Chris Patton – a man who’s done only a select few video game voices in his day, but who has now played a lead protagonist with ~5,700 lines, making this among his largest roles to date. Auditioned partially because he voiced a similar role in the anime “Welcome to the NHK,” Chris delivered a knockout performance that exceeded our expectations, adding a touch of snark and a heaping tablespoon of genuine heart to his every read. By the end of his three weeks in the studio with us, he pretty much WAS Asahi Tachibana – he’d gotten the role down so thoroughly pat that he was regularly breaking 120 lines recorded per hour, simply because his reads were so perfect the first time around that retakes were basically redundant.

The game’s female lead, Saki Hoshino, was voiced by the ever-talented Erica Mendez, whom my coworker Kris kind of wanted to voice her as if she truly believed she were Batman, whereas I was thinking more along the lines of Daphne Blake from Scooby-Doo. What we got was somewhere in the middle, and it’s pretty much perfect – as in, not only perfectly matched with the character’s personality, but also with her Japanese voice, as no other character in our entire dub cast sounds as much like a 1:1 analogue to her Japanese counterpart. It’s honestly kind of eerie how close the two voices are – especially considering we started recording before we’d actually heard the game’s Japanese voices, so this happened entirely by chance!

The next main cast member on the roster was Riyu Momose, a.k.a. Mippity-Mop, the 14-year-old bunny-themed idol singer. We once again called upon Texas for this voice, casting the wonderfully talented Tia Ballard, who delivered a very sweet, wholesome performance that sounds every bit as precious as the character she played. The other Texans all told us that Tia is pretty much renowned for being as close to a real-life Disney princess as you can get, and… yeah, when we finally met her at the studio, that assessment proved entirely apt! She was a pleasure to work with, and I can’t imagine anyone will be disappointed with the results.

Next in the male cast was the role of Yamato Hongo, the party’s whipping boy. His whole deal is that he’s “secretly” an emo anime otaku – by which I mean, it’s plainly obvious for everyone to see, but he firmly denies it, so every other character just CONSTANTLY rips into him. Robbie Daymond took up the mantle, and brought the perfect amount of pure smuggy assness to his performance, bringing Yamato to life in ways we never thought possible. You can look forward to an excellent card-game battle scene with him that was basically played (expertly) as the nerdiest Yu-Gi-Oh match imaginable. An amazing performance all around from a very talented actor!

Moving right along, the role of the tsundere Gothic lolita girl (if you don’t know Japanese cultural archetypes, I’m sorry for the terminology dump, but it really is the most succinct way of describing her!) Kotomi Sanada is played by the one and only Cherami Leigh, who brought a certain… raw violence to the role that really sells every line. We auditioned numerous characters for this game, and Cherami is one of the few for whom we heard the audition and pretty much just chose her on the spot – there simply couldn’t be a more perfect Kotomi.

And in what is perhaps the biggest deviation from the original Japanese voice, we cast Ed Bosco as Reiji Shinomiya, the 28-year-old reclusive computer whiz with a perpetual “it’s complicated” relationship status and a general sense of world-weariness about him. As mentioned above, we began recording before we even had a chance to hear the Japanese voices (one of the travails of working on a game that’s still in development!), so we based all of our casting decisions solely on each character’s personality. In Reiji’s case, the character constantly regards himself as an “old man,” and comes across as a battle-hardened badass who’s ready to take on the world if he has to, but would rather just laze around and build himself a new PC if he had any say in it. So, naturally, we went full-on growly badass with his English voice, utilizing Ed’s low end with liberal use of gravel. The Japanese, on the other hand, went full-on bishounen (pretty-boy). Different takes, but both sound great, if you ask me!

Flash over to the final main party member, Mizuki Aihara – Asahi’s childhood friend, who sort of serves as a general foil for Asahi’s boundless apathy. Constantly even-tempered and fastidious, Mizuki is everything Asahi isn’t, yet the two of them couldn’t get along much better… at least, at first! But as the game progresses, their relationship is strained a bit (DRAMA!), so we needed someone capable of very subtle and precise emotional turns to play this role. The man we tasked with that job was Ray Chase, and Ray absolutely delivered, giving a true tear-jerker performance. His dog, Milo, was in attendance during recording as well, and really, really wanted to get in the booth with him!

(Ray IS in this photo, we swear! It’s just kind of hard to see him due to the reflection of our director in the window. Hi, Kirk!)

On the antagonist side of things, we cast Mick Wingert as “Boss,” the mysterious swagger-fueled punk who leads the Akihabara Freedom Fighters (which have no relation to the Akiba Freedom Fighters of Akiba’s Trip fame) in their struggle against any and all things delusion. Funny story here: I did the initial translation for this game, with Kris on editing. Boss was very clearly written as a classic Japanese street punk in the original text, so I did my best to convey that in the English… but the fact is, I *suck* at writing punks. So when Kris got ahold of my files, he saw what I’d written and immediately interpreted it as “cowboy.” We had a good laugh about that at first, but then realized… it actually works! So Mick’s take on Boss is basically a scrawny-nerd-turned-cowboy-street-punk in Japan. Which is, as you might imagine, pretty magical to hear!

The enigmatic “man in pink,” Kanon, was given to the one and only Todd Haberkorn to bring to life… and bring him to life, he did! Kanon needed to sound threatening, but also soothing… mysterious, but also approachable. And Todd immediately stepped up to the plate, delivering a performance that I swear is inadvertently a near-perfect voice match for the Cardassian tailor-come-spy, Garak, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Which, if you’re familiar with Garak, is basically everything we could possibly have hoped for (because Garak rules!).

And our final main cast member, Pinkun – the floating pink puff-ball who has a thing for maids and idol singers, constantly calls Asahi “dingus,” and seems to address everyone but Saki with a certain level of smug superiority – was played by yet another Texas actor in her first ever video game role: Brittney Karbowski. Known for 11 years’ worth of stellar anime performances, this was her doorway into the realm of video game voice-acting, and as director Kirk Thornton put it, “You said this is your first video game? Yeah… It won’t be your last.” Brittney’s performance was nothing short of wonderful, giving Pinkun a real sense of gleeful obnoxiousness that’s hard to balance just right so it’s actually entertaining and endearing as opposed to grating. But she did it, and she did it in such a way that it seemed almost effortless! We hope to work with her again in the future – along with everyone else we’ve named above, for that matter!

…But wait just a moment. What is that in Brittney’s hand?

 That… would be Pinkun.

Which players who preorder Akiba’s Beat at select retailers (we’ll provide you guys a list soon, we promise!) will be getting as a preorder bonus.

PREORDER PLUSHIE, Y'ALL!! Isn’t he cuuuuuuute?!?!

…Whew! OK, this is getting kind of long now. But before signing off, I just wanted to share two more photos of voice actors we took during recording, to round out the Texas constituency. These aren’t actors who played primary characters, but they are actors who flew in from Texas to record for us, so it seems only right to give them a shout-out and let them know how much we appreciate their efforts!

First up, we have the incredibly talented Alexis Tipton, who played the dual roles of Hazuki Aihara (Mizuki’s proactive and generally filterless sister) and Moé Suzumori (the perfect ideal of an Akihabara maid who struggles to maintain her own impossibly high standards). Alexis was able to play these two roles with aplomb, distinctly separating the two voices and giving them both the attention they deserved to elevate each respective character. Some of my personal favorite lines in the game come from Hazuki Aihara, and I couldn’t be more pleased with Alexis’ sterling performance!

Finally, we have Justin Briner, who flew in to record the role of Megane Taro. Megane Taro is essentially idol singer Riyu Momose’s biggest fan, and a genuinely nice person amidst a sea of relatively creepy otaku – and Justin’s own inherent niceness definitely flavored the character, making all of Mr. Taro’s appeals to his fellow otaku come across as wholly genuine and rather moving. This was our first time working with Justin, but hopefully won’t be our last, because he was an absolute pleasure to record.

There were many, many other talented actors who also passed through the studio during our two months of recording (the game has over 180 voiced roles, after all!), but we only got photos of the main cast + Texas actors, so those have been our main focus thus far. We’d like to stress, however, that everyone we worked with was a delight, and while we don’t plan on revealing any other actors at this time, we know a few have already talked about their involvement with Akiba’s Beat on Twitter and other social media outlets, and others will likely follow suit in the future. And we want to thank each and every one of you for your hard work, as well as the good people at Cup of Tea Studios, the wonderful directors we worked with, and our gracious hosts Michelle and Eddie (as well as little Eddie and the dogs!).

It’s been a whirlwind, but a wonderful experience overall, and I’m grateful to have been a part of it. Hope you guys are ready for an awesome dub once the game is released in Q1 2017 (not to mention a SUPAH-CUTE pre-order plushie!).

Also, hey, if you’re reading this in time, why not head on over to our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/xseed_games? We’ll be streaming the game at 3:30 PST / 6:30 EST today (though if you miss it, don’t worry: we’ll post a recording of it to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4jtViMLgZ1GY-_jCmImWIg sometime next week), showing off some of the voices in action and, for many of you, providing your very first look at this upcoming Akiba experience.

And if you came here FROM our Twitch stream… welcome! Why not read some of our other blogs? We talk about a lot of cool stuff on here! ;)

Take care, everyone!

 -Tom

October 25th, 2016

           All has been quiet on the XSEED Tumblr for quite some time, due in part to the absence of that most crucial of resources: time.

           Time has been getting away from us as we’ve isolated ourselves either on an alien world, or in an otherworldly school, fighting for survival against impossible odds. But that fight… has finally been won. For you see, on this 25th of October, both experiences shall avail themselves to the general populace! Nintendo fanciers can play Corpse Party on their 3DSes, while Sony devotees can play Exile’s End on their PS4s or Vitas. (Nintendo fanciers will eventually be able to play Exile’s End on their Wii Us, too, but not for a little while yet – sorry!)

           The question remains, though: why have we put ourselves through these ordeals? Corpse Party is ground that’s been trodden twice prior: once on PSP, and again on PC. And while this 3DS iteration has much to offer that its predecessors do not – not the least of which being its physical Back to School Edition, packaged with two figurines and an 80-minute soundtrack – it did still require us to devote resources (including the ever-elusive specter of time) to a game you may very well have already played in one form or another.

           As for Exile’s End, our Japanese parent company has not only helped fund the initial development of the game, they’ve also released it once already on Steam, meaning it too is well-trodden ground (and that’s despite it being a desolate alien planet!). So… are we mad? Have we succumbed to the Darkening? To space fever, perhaps? Maybe both?

           Well… yes, we have. HELPMEMYLUNGSAREFILLEDWITHDYNAMITE.

           But we also just really like these games! And I don’t mean as suits in an office, with dollar signs for eyes… but as gamers. Corpse Party, for one, was not a game anyone pitched to us, nor was it a game we pursued with prospects of becoming rich beyond our wildest dreams. Rather, it’s just a game I saw one day while browsing the Japanese PlayStation Store. I saw the screenshots, with their 16-bit RPGMaker aesthetic, and I read the blurb, and looked at the art… and I was intrigued.

           So I downloaded the demo, which consisted of chapter 1 in its entirety. I played through the whole thing that night (attaining its most noteworthy wrong end, as I’d missed that key in the stairwell my first time through)… and I loved it. I loved the no-holds-barred brutality. I loved the emotional attachment I’d formed to Naomi and Seiko after just one hour of play. I loved the voice-acting, in all its creepy 3D binaural glory. And I *adored* that first chapter BGM – man, that track is just legendary. (And, incidentally, the 3DS edition features a unique arrangement of it with opera-style vocals, making a good thing even better!)

           I went into work the next day and told my coworkers about this awesome horror game I’d played the night before. I lent them my PSP so they could try it too… and my boss shared my enthusiasm for it. He took it to our president, who also really enjoyed it. And then, before I knew it, we’d reached out to the Japanese publisher, and were officially evaluating the game for possible publication in English!

           We have a very specific evaluation procedure for games here: there’s a form we fill out called a “TQR,” which I believe stands for… technical quotient review, or something like that? It asks detailed questions about every aspect of a game, and then weighs our ratings on each of those aspects based on the game’s genre and… a bunch of other factors I don’t quite understand.

           Regardless of how TQR scores and comments are tabulated, the end result was an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the game. XSEED’s staff saw tremendous potential in it, and to my surprise, a game I’d brought to the attention of my peers because I enjoyed its demo so much was now left in my hands to translate. Imagine that: I suggested a game because I thought it was awesome, and suddenly, I was now in charge of its English localization!

           This… almost happened again recently, too, with our PS4 release of Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity. I was the one who brought that game to XSEED’s attention as well (though in this case only after reading about it and watching a trailer, rather than playing it). Nonetheless, we contacted the publisher and officially evaluated the game using those selfsame TQR forms, and once again, the result was overwhelmingly positive throughout the office – the game was a hit all around. (I wasn’t able to personally do any translation on this one, though, as I was busy with Akiba’s Beat at the time!)

(^^ Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity in action. Go buy it now on your PS4s!)

           At any rate, Corpse Party has been a very special game for me since the very beginning, and in keeping with XSEED tradition, I was handed the script once more for the four 3DS-exclusive Extra Chapters, which I took special care to translate and edit in the same style as my prior Corpse Party localizations from 2011. The end result should be seamless, and Corpse Party fans can look forward to learning a bit more about the intrepid cameraman Taguchi, Kizami’s classmates from Byakudan, the poor trio of girls from Musashigawa, and – perhaps most surprisingly – that old fop of a bathroom ghost!

           What of Exile’s End, then? Well, that’s a one-man show that got some grassroots help from members of our parent company, Marvelous Japan, after they found themselves impressed by creator Matt Fielding’s labor of love. Because of their involvement, we too were inclined to try the game, and I was instantly hooked when I did. Interconnected 2D adventure platformers (Metroidvania or otherwise) are my bread and butter, and Exile’s End is a very pure specimen of the genre, featuring exemplary level designs, tight controls, and an atmosphere so thick and foreboding, it’s like a pea soup monster.

           I played the game to completion very quickly, and immediately sent my praises to the developer and all those at Marvelous who were involved in its publication… along with a few bits of constructive criticism, for good measure. Several coworkers followed suit shortly thereafter.

           Little did we know at the time that Mr. Fielding was looking to port the game to consoles, and he really wanted to make it the best experience it possibly could be in the process. He’d taken the feedback we all sent him to heart, and set about implementing as much of it as he could.

           Because of this, the PS4 and Vita versions of Exile’s End will, in fact, be slightly different experiences from what you may have played on Steam. There are now more hidden treasures to be found, map features that have been altered to help make certain platforming sections flow a bit better, prominent sound effects added during cinematic cutscenes, and – most crucially – an endgame gauntlet that significantly expands upon the somewhat abrupt final encounter from the original PC release.

           These console and handheld editions of Exile’s End are therefore the most “definitive,” and if you’re a fan of exploration-centric platforming, I would highly suggest checking the game out – especially around Halloween time, since the game’s lonely, threatening environments set the perfect mood for a dark, stormy night.

           …And *especially* when paired with Corpse Party! Death by vengeful child spirit and/or supernaturally induced madness, or death by sickening alien monstrosities on a world where no one can hear you scream?

           Either way, you’re a goner. And either way… you’re all set to have one hell of a Halloween.

Little King’s Story’s story

So we just launched our PC port of Little King’s Story last Friday on August 5th, and it appears that quite a few people are having some performance issues. We had hoped to have a patch by now that would do the talking for us and lay most of the concerns to rest. However, with the Japanese porting team already out for their Obon holiday break, we wanted to touch base with you all and let everyone know that we’re aware of the issues, as well as clarify how we plan to address them going forward.

The main thing we want to focus on is stabilization and optimization so that the game plays as intended, doesn’t crash anywhere, and that it runs smoother at a constant frame rate for any PC that meets our minimum specs. What we will not be doing is adding mouse support as the Wii game did not support the Wiimote’s pointer and doing so would work against the design of the original game, and we will not be trying to perfect the game running at 60fps.

Why even include the 60fps option at all if we knew it didn’t work properly, you may ask? That was one that we debated internally, and in the end the winning argument was that giving more options to the player is always better, just as long as they were warned of the dangers (hence the “Not Recommended” statement). PC players are a resourceful bunch, the argument went, and why restrict them if they want to see what happens when trying to run the game at 60fps and possibly tinkering with it themselves?

Creating a “cheap and dirty port” was the last thing on our minds when initially wanting to port to PC, and we’ve already spent more money on this project, which was originally supposed to release in January, than most of the “finished” games we license from Japan. Little King’s Story on Wii was an absolute gem and one of our favorite games that we’ve worked on; anyone who follows us on social media knows that the onii has been our unofficial mascot for years; so we here at XSEED took it upon ourselves to create and fund a PC port as our first ever project overseeing all aspects of development directly, in the hopes that the game would finally find on PC the wider audience that it deserved.

When finding a company to port the game, while we were aware that some Japanese companies may not be as well versed in creating games for PC as Western developers, our thinking was that if there were any useful notes left in the Wii game’s code by the original Japanese development team, it would be vital for the porting company to be able to read them since the developers are no longer available to consult with. It also didn’t help that from a technical standpoint, games from Wii can be more challenging to port to PC than from other platforms.

With the lack of any game build updates I hope this helps clarify what happened behind the scenes here on how this PC port came to be and our thinking behind it. We knew it wouldn’t be perfect when it launched, but after working on it for over a year and finally progressing to the point that it could run well on all our PCs in the office, it appears our conclusion about being ready for the big leagues was a little premature, and something that we hope to start addressing next week with the porting team.

Ken

Team Leader at XSEED Games

Prior to the upcoming launch of the revamped XSEED Games / Marvelous USA, Inc. homepage, we’re proud to unveil our new message forums, running XenForo software:

http://www.xseedgames.com/forum/

Please pardon our dust as settings for these new forums continue to be tinkered with over the next few weeks.

All users and most messages from our old forums have been copied over to the new, albeit without any avatar or signature images (those will need to be reuploaded to the new forums). If you’re attempting to log in as an old user, however, it may be necessary to reset your password – and due to an error on the old forums, some user email addresses were lost, so if no password reset email is received, we would ask that you please log in to your old account on the old forums at http://forum.marvelous-usa.com/index.php?showforum=249 and send a private message to admin member Wyrdwad identifying what you wish your new password to be. This message should be received by 10:00 A.M. PDT the next business day, and your password will be changed accordingly on the new forums (and may then be changed again at will via your user profile).

The old forums will remain online until July 1^st to accommodate this switch-over, so if you don’t want to lose your old account, be sure to act fast!

(To log in to the old forums, please click here: https://www.marvelous-usa.com/member/input and click the “Sign in” button on the top-right. Logins will only function from this page.)

OK, so it took a lot longer than we were hoping for, but we are finally ready to start selling the extra SENRAN KAGURA ESTIVAL VERSUS “pin-up cards” that are left over from the assembly of our “Endless Summer” Limited Edition for $5 per pack from our online store. I’m sure you guys have a lot of questions, so perhaps it would be better for me to explain what I can in advance in a Q&A format below:

Q: How many of each of the 6 sets do you have to sell?
A: While we can’t give away exact quantities, here’s a general guideline of what we have available:
 - Crimson Pack – None
 - Hanzo Pack – None
 - Gessen Pack – Very few
 - Hebijo Pack – A few
 - Special Pack – A ton
 - Overseers Pack – Enough to support a roaring fire to heat our office through the next 3 winters

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