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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Astral Chain reviews: Meta: 87, OC: 87

AngryLittleAlchemist on 27 August 2019
Mbolibombo said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

This game is going to flop bad in Japan, lol. It's a few days away and it's not even charting on COMG. The director of the game has actually had to mention numerous times that there are still plenty of collector's editions in stock. Part of that is the pricing, and the fact that it's a new IP, but still ... it seems like someone overestimated demand significantly. To be fair the voucher system might save it, but I honestly would not be surprised if this debuted at 15-30k.

Just very sad. America and Europe are going to have to save this game. Being a new IP certainly doesn't help, but I have to wonder if just part of it is the platform. Metal Gear Rising Reveangance sold 440k in Japan, Nier Automata did 420k, Bayonetta 1 did 300k. We shall see.

Not expecting it to do lights out, but using COMG as a reference in this time and age aint really good. It's probably going to do more than Bayo 2 did on retail, but it's most definately going to do quite good digital numbers. It was ranked #3 on the digital chart for July - over a month before it's release. I think vouchers will take a good chunk away from retail purchasers.

That sounds encouraging, and we will see. I think it's something like #3/#4 on gaming for Amazon Japan. Might be the #1 game on there, just below other things like cards or systems. But again, I think the issue is that that looks good, but is in a sea of meh. I don't think Japanese eshop sales tend to be that high, and as I understand Japanese gamers tend to buy orders through sites other than Amazon usually. So the picture painted might be a little nicer than reality. 

We'll see I guess. I certainly want to be wrong. 



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RaptorChrist on 27 August 2019
mZuzek said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

Don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I feel like a lot of 87-89 titles are probably games that are as quality as 90+ titles, but simply are much more niche. It certainly feels like review scores are generally tailored towards popular titles, with a lot of 90+ games perfectly capturing both acclaim and popularity. Or maybe they're just titles with slightly less polish in some areas, that overall are fun enough to be as good as games of higher review averages.

That's true without being a conspiracy theory. It's not that reviewers rate games lower because they're not as popular, it's that they think of games lower because of it. It's not exactly down to popularity as much as it is about reputation, though - and new IPs don't have any reputation, hence why they usually never get a 90+. Take a look at Horizon: Zero Dawn for example, considered by many one of the games of the generation, but it has the same metascore as Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Nothing against Fire Emblem, that game looks pretty good, but I mean, yeah, you get what I'm saying.

Horizon was an awesome game, and I found the narrative in particular to stand out as being among the only games that I actually felt compelled to continue playing because I wanted to find out what happened next.

And a lot of what made Horizon amazing was how pretty the game looked, and how ambitious the project was. It certainly seemed like Sony was attempting to curb the Zelda fever that was going on at the time.

But... lol

Gameplay is the ultimate influencer of review scores, and no matter how pretty and big Horizon was, it's gameplay was not a perfect ten score (in my opinion). It's gameplay was great, absolutely, but if I reduce games down to how much fun I had when playing them, it's a lot easier to come to grips with it's score.



Jranation on 27 August 2019
wombat123 said:
Jranation said:
Switch back 2 back 2 back highly reviewed exclusives! SMM2 + FE3H and now Astral Chain! Links Awakening is mext!

Poor Daemon X Machina.

Oh lol. Completely forgot about that.... 

Well I think it wont reach the same impact as those 3 games. 



Pocky Lover Boy! 

Jumpin on 27 August 2019

I’ll wait a bit. I only worry it’s like other Platinum titles. Great for some people, but the combo/masher type action genre are definitely not my of game. Although, if it is mostly an RPG with a lot of interesting sci-fi stuff, I might be in. There’s a lot coming to Switch over the next few months that I have my eye on.

Final fantasy 8 remaster, Animal Crossing, Witcher 3, Dragon Quest 11, Ni No Kuni, Eastward, Rune Factory 4 & 5 are my current priorities.

Next down are Ori and the Blind Forest, Neo Cab, Fire Emblem, Pine, Tales of Vesperia

Third tier: Terrarria, new Shovel Knight, Civ 6 (still haven’t bought), Pokémon, Cris Tales, Astral Chain

I may shift my priorities depending on how the game looks. But basically, if I am getting Astral Chain, it’s not likely anytime soon. BUT, if it goes on some big 70% sale or something, I’ll likely pick it up much sooner.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 27 August 2019

I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

Jranation on 27 August 2019
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

This game is going to flop bad in Japan, lol. It's a few days away and it's not even charting on COMG. The director of the game has actually had to mention numerous times that there are still plenty of collector's editions in stock. Part of that is the pricing, and the fact that it's a new IP, but still ... it seems like someone overestimated demand significantly. To be fair the voucher system might save it, but I honestly would not be surprised if this debuted at 15-30k.

Just very sad. America and Europe are going to have to save this game. Being a new IP certainly doesn't help, but I have to wonder if just part of it is the platform. Metal Gear Rising Reveangance sold 440k in Japan, Nier Automata did 420k, Bayonetta 1 did 300k. We shall see.

They really need to advertise more. Why not let it get a demo? New IPs like Splatoon and Arms had testfire demos (it was probably to test servers but still)



Pocky Lover Boy! 

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Chrkeller on 27 August 2019

I watched a few video reviews, it comes across as nier automata like (ish).



wombat123 on 27 August 2019
Chrkeller said:
It is a victim of crowded year for me, without a doubt. Between Fire Emblem, Astral, Pokemon, Link's Awakening and Luigi's Mansion... Daemon isn't even on my radar. Maybe next year when gaming is slow.

Astral Chain turned Daemon X Machina into an afterthought almost immediately after it was revealed and I feel badly for the devs because it looks like they put sincere effort and love into the game.



abronn627 on 27 August 2019

Deamon X Machina seems to have improved a lot since the first demo, it’s a shame that it’ll be forgotten between releases, for the few times a developer release a demo to actually get feedbacks to improve the game.

As for Astral Chain, Friday can’t come soon enough. I don’t think the initial sales will impress anyone, specially in japan, but I have a feeling it will have good legs, not evergreen legs, bit good legs nonetheless.



AngryLittleAlchemist on 27 August 2019
Jranation said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

This game is going to flop bad in Japan, lol. It's a few days away and it's not even charting on COMG. The director of the game has actually had to mention numerous times that there are still plenty of collector's editions in stock. Part of that is the pricing, and the fact that it's a new IP, but still ... it seems like someone overestimated demand significantly. To be fair the voucher system might save it, but I honestly would not be surprised if this debuted at 15-30k.

Just very sad. America and Europe are going to have to save this game. Being a new IP certainly doesn't help, but I have to wonder if just part of it is the platform. Metal Gear Rising Reveangance sold 440k in Japan, Nier Automata did 420k, Bayonetta 1 did 300k. We shall see.

They really need to advertise more. Why not let it get a demo? New IPs like Splatoon and Arms had testfire demos (it was probably to test servers but still)

I am a little disappointed we didn't get a direct on the game. They created these sort of strange poorly advertised overview trailers a few weeks after E3, which just felt out of nowhere. What's even more disappointing is no Eshop Demo, and as far as I know, the game has never been playable in demo form to the public ... even though the creators were at Gamescom and E3. Which is odd, because every demo shown looks really well optimized. They did have press demos but that's it.

Still, I could always just be wrong about Japan. I've actually heard it has a lot of advertisement in Japan, particularly in terms of displays and the like. Japan still sells Eshop vouchers, America is actually the only place where Nintendo isn't selling the vouchers anymore (excluding places that never had them to begin with, lol). It's still selling good on the Japanese Eshop, and Amazon Japan (though there's more popular online retailers in Japan I think). We'll see, I'm just extremely skeptical... I could honestly see it selling worse than Bayonetta 2 in Japan. 

Hiku said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

Yeah and I basically agree, which is why I hope this game does well sales-wise even though it likely will do OK at best. 

I was going to say pretty much the same thing as mZuzek, that I think it isn't an uncommon opinion at all. But with an opposite example.
I think Metal Gear Solid V is an example of a game critics gave a higher score to than they would have if it wasn't a Kojima MGS game. I hear critics often praising the gameplay, but commonly comment on the weird story, and how the game was unfinished. And that was my impression as well. But it got a 93 regardless. Which is two points higher than MGS 3. And I don't know about that...

Yeah lol. That game got so much praise when it released, now it sort of seems like the butt of every Metal Gear joke. Not that it's horrible, just the gameplay is better than everything else. 



Chrkeller on 27 August 2019

Metal Gear Solid V is my favorite MGS game to date. It has the best gameplay, which is 99% of what I look for. Plus it had way less talky.