Silmeria will destroy all. It has the graphics, it has Sakuraba, it has the gameplay, it has the storyline, it has the controls. The only thing that can stop it now is shitty VA work, which some people can dispute that SO3 was pretty bad.

If Square knows what's good for them, they'll hire the real deal and win the game. It's true.

So the import should be a true winner. Good! :)

I wasn't a huge fan of SO3's English voices, mostly because Maria got shafted pretty hard. Neya Michiko is tough to beat.

Yeah, the import would be a winner to those who have mastered their Japanese written, but for people like me that only have spoken mastered it kinda sucks.

I thought Maria was alright for the most part for SO3, but so long as they can stay away from Michelle Ruff, Lia Sargent, and such, all will be well. Just depends on how serious Square wants to get.

Nah... I've mastered the ability of playing Japanese games without knowing the language. It's not that difficult. (Katakana is all you need)

I'm taking japaneses lessons, but I belive that even knowing how to read, if your vocabulary isn't that good there's nothing you can do.
I got FFXII to see if I could play a bit of it, but so far it's almost the same, since I can't read kanji.

I will keep that in mind when I go through to start learning, which shouldn't be too long from now. My reward for toiling over how to deal with all of those symbols and syllables will be a wealth of games along with the rewarding experience of a fully mastered language.

In the meantime though, I will salivate over this game A LOT.

Katakana is all you need for, like, names, and about 75% of equipment, but there's usually a lot more kanji than anything else. A Tales fan like youself should know this!

.....

CONFUSION. MUDDLED. CHAOS. BEFUDDLE. DAZZLED. SHOCK.

Ok, so I should learn both Katakana and Kanji then? What about Hiragana, it used in this game or any other games?

If you're going to learn kanji, you're just gonna have to learn the whole goddamn thing. It's advanced, and you wouldn't focus on it until you know a good deal of vocabulary and have the kanas down. Hiragana is arguably the most important part of written Japanese, but kanji replaces it where it's applicable.

In short, it's all important, and all are necessary to understand the game. Katakana will get you by if you just want to know who you're talking to, what town to go to and what armor you're wearing, but comprehension requires something more all-encompassing. But anyway, on to what matters.

Holy freaking crap, this game comes out next month. I cry tears of joy.

Well, obviously I'm talking about only knowing enough to get yourself through the game, not really caring about dialogue, descriptions and the like.

Hell, this game should be VERY import friendly. Have you ever seen Japanese VP1?

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2470/vp12pe.png
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/81/vp26yg.png
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/1475/vp39zz.png

I think it had the most amount of English out of all tri-Ace games.

Uh, doesn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose?

Hell, good luck following the story even if you DO know Japanese. I've heard that these games are written in the Japanese equivalent of ye olde English, which was a bitch to translate properly. Probably the reason for the occasionally stilted dialogue in VP. I sure hope they tap the same voice actors from before; Lezard's delivery was a big part of what made the character fun.

Also, whoa there, guys. O_o I'm unreserved in my anticipation for this game too, but wait for the actual game to come out before blowing your loads.

Usually there's a translation guide out there which can help you follow the story, but there's a reason why I only do this with Tales and tri-Ace games: they are heavily gameplay oriented. Yes, I find the battle system & gameplay fun enough to play through the entire game without having any idea what's going on in the story.

I used a guide with a lot of translations when I played Dragon Quest VIII but the game was already in english, so I can't tell how usefull it was.

Back to the game, I had sold my ps2 last year and was playing ps2 games borrowing my friends's playstations sometimes, but when I saw this game was being released I had to buy myself a new one. Since I sold it for 3 times the price I'm buying now I surely did a good deal.

A quick question for those who know katakana, is the use of katakanas similar to hiragana ? I mean, I know it's used for foreign words, but grammatically it's the same, right ?

Exactly the same! Just the letters are different :)
Looking forward to the Japanese Release.

I think I'll be satisfied with the English version, myself. I have a great deal of confidence in Squeenix's localization department. Even if it's not the same actors, I think I can be sure the voice acting won't outright suck.

Yeah, I noticed that too. Pretty much the entire menu was english. Even most of the items had english names. Not entirely, but enough to give you a good idea of what it is. The dialogue is obviously a different story, but if you played the original it shouldn't hold you back one bit.

http://rpg-reich.de/main.php?site=news&id=2055

E3 trailer... downloading now.

EDIT: Damn, that was pretty sexy. Music is great, graphics are looking great, gameplay looks fun as hell.

The execution of Barbarossa eh? I guess she didnt want to do it, and Hrist stept in and did it for her?

Happy to see you can still evade battles by turning them in crystals.

That trailer was pretty awesome. This is definitely one of my most anticipated games of the year. The trailer just solidified it as #1 on my hit list when it gets released.

Trailer definetly is good! Already prepared pre-order money for this game ^ ^

Just a quick Q, do you need to play the origina to understand this one? coz I can't find any copies of the original in stores anymore :(

Probably not. There are bound to be a lot of allusions to the first game, but Silmeria is a prequel, so the game events don't depend on knowledge of the original.

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/vp/vp2/index.html

Official website updated today.

Nothing really new we haven't learned from scans, however if you go under System - Game Scene you get to see two actual gameplay videos.

They take forever to load compared to the video size & length, so be warned. It's still nice to see exactly how battles will work in this game (not totally the same as the original) and to hear some voices/sfx/music.

I only saw the trailer today and it looks great.
Without mentioning the great graphics and everything else, the thing that really shocked me was when they showed the in-game (non fighting) and Valkyrie freezed the monster, just like we did in VP1 but WOW what a difference. I know it seems stupid, with so much to be impressed I'm impressed by the ice.

The thing is I've been playing VP1 recently and finished it yeasterday and looking to this ultra refined version the game is tottally being my espectations for this generation.

Wow it's been a while since I've seen stuff for VP2. After seeing the trailers on the site, I LOVE the new way of how the battle stage is set. It starts out pretty much 3d but then once you've gotten up to the enemy, it switces to 2d and retains that awesome side scrolling type action in VP1. This game goes right up with FFXII on my most wanted RPGs, no doubt.

A new long promo video is out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-_ibTRsp9A

About the first 3:30 of it is new, then it replays the old video.