Tokitowa - Time and Eternity (third person 2D/3D RPG, imageepoch, PS3) announced

[TiamatNM]

http://gematsu.com/2012/10/famitsus-thoughts-on-toki-to-towa

so....sounds like it will be pretty good afterall if famitsu is to be believed

[kyuusei]

http://gematsu.com/2012/10/famitsus-thoughts-on-toki-to-towa

so....sounds like it will be pretty good afterall if famitsu is to be believed

You could say it’s Utopia for boys.

Ha.

[Kos-mos]

Those soundtrack samples in the second video clip from the 27th of last month were awesome!

I really hope we can get this game in the US too since they've talked about the possibility already.

[Yggdrasil]

"Fans of Masuda's scenarios have to check it out."

Who is this Masuda guy? I always like to know who the scenario writer is just to have a point of reference with his previous work.

[Annubis]

NSFW Flash mini-game on site

http://tokitowa.channel.or.jp/shower/connect.php
(or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0zyz2uxmJk if you don't want to play)

Gundam music

[Yggdrasil]

Toki to Towa footage (1:58:46)

Skip to 3:37.

[Dice]

Toki to Towa footage (1:58:46)

Skip to 3:37.

What the fuck just happened at 5:55!?  Not only shit frame rate, but that chick sort of flips like an ani-tard.

The gameplay looks cool, but repetitive and...well, boring after so many battles.

[Aeolus]

Toki to Towa footage (1:58:46)

Skip to 3:37.

What the fuck just happened at 5:55!?  Not only shit frame rate, but that chick sort of flips like an ani-tard.

The gameplay looks cool, but repetitive and...well, boring after so many battles.

Came to post this. This game looks more to be Tea-Time: The Anime: The Game; staring: The Pervert as: The Dragon. There's no real chance for surprises here (well not GOOD surprises at least).

That said, the biggest problem I noted (aside from the player being terrible) was the gobs of HP bosses have (chump encounter enemies don't look too bad if you're not spamming the less effective attack even when you have encounters of four of them) and the frequency of enemies guarding everything (I guess it's to let you approach melee distance safely). Also non plot essential characters are literally cardboard cutouts, their lips and eyes move and that's it (you can see that they don't even change direction when the scene shifts to Toki/Towa by looking at their hands); it looks particularly lifeless and stilted.

On the plus side though I noticed a little gauge up on the mini map HUD that shows when you can expect the next encounter so there might be something later on that influences that, there's quick travel crystals scattered about the dungeon the guy visited, it looked like running into those cardboard cutouts NPCs nets you sidequests and loot, and the map was kind enough to mark treasure chest locations without having to find them first. I'll also defend the combat a bit since the player didn't make it out of tutorial country and he was pretty terrible at it anyways, and the battles did go pretty quickly when the player actually had his act together and I doubt many of us will note the tedium if we were playing ourselves.

Beyond that though this game is giving me more of a Ar Toneilco vibe, except much less sophisticated (i.e. no in-depth made up languages or musical numbers made out of said languages thus far, no party beyond Toki/Towa+Drake/Prince, no Atelier _____ mechanics, no crapsack world, and no visible dissection of your anime's psyche) and only similar to Thousand Arms in ascetic.

[Kevadu]

Toki to Towa footage (1:58:46)

Skip to 3:37.

Oh man...this game looks bad...everything I feared has come true.

First of all, the guy playing it is completely obnoxious and I wish he would just shut up.  I know that's not the game's fault but I had to comment...I want to leave the sound on to hear the game but listening to him giggle at every immature joke is torture.

I already completely hate the prince character.  His personality is awful.  Almost every line he speaks makes me cringe.  Oh, and sure enough it looks like he's going to be in Drake's body for most of the game.

The gameplay looks stiff and awkward.  Panning around on the map is particularly bad.  Drake is flying next to Toki but they're both 2D sprites so when you move the camera it actually moves Drake to keep them in the same respective orientation, which looks really silly.  Then there's that ridiculous backing up animation, I guess because they didn't want to have to animate Toki facing different directions.  I feel like it should be accompanied by that beeping sound trucks made when they back up.

But then there's the combat.  Admittedly this is pretty early in the game, but it doesn't look like there's much depth to it.  Just attack and block/dodge, which the option to use long-range attacks or jump up close to the opponent for short range attacks (sorry, no freedom of movement, it's strictly a binary choice).  Animations take a lot of frames and most of the challenge seems to be in not leaving time to dodge.

The story is incredibly stupid.  Apparently Toki/Towa just happened to have this time-travelling ability but never bothered to use it before.  Then she goes back in time and, after finding out absolutely nothing from the fortune-teller, has another friggin tea party.  (I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of those)  Toki discusses things with her friends and one of them points out that the assassins at the wedding might be related to the assassin's guild (based solely on their appearance).  So what do they do?  They wander around the assassin district of town looking for people dressed like assassins!  Then they actually find some, fight them, and then--I swear to go I'm not making this up--they find out that they're actually assassin wannabe's who just dress like assassins to be cool.  It does actually make more sense that way, I guess, but the whole exchange is ridiculous.  This is not a game that wants to be taken seriously.  Then they go back and have another tea party (an hour into the game and this is the third one already)...that's about where I quit.

In summary, this game looks shallow, awkward and very heavy on the fanservice and innuendo.

What the fuck just happened at 5:55!?  Not only shit frame rate, but that chick sort of flips like an ani-tard.

Nothing.  Seriously.  She's just yelling at the idiot couple for being too close before their wedding.

I see while I was writing this Aeolus wrote something similar, oh well.

[TiamatNM]

whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[Yggdrasil]

The moment they showed the screenshot with the tentacles I was having my doubts about this. Didn't think it was going to be such a bummer.

[Iron Maw]

Well... thats certainly is a Imageepoch RPG. ^^;

I don't think looks as bad some of you do, but it does seem like a subpar title so far. The combat does have some potential, but it seems like Famitsu was right about Bosses taking forever to beat and the combat being fairly repetitive.  Well, the music is generally nice at least.

Don't like how empty the town looks or the fairly awkward voiceless scenes.

The story is incredibly stupid.  Apparently Toki/Towa just happened to have this time-travelling ability but never bothered to use it before.  Then she goes back in time and, after finding out absolutely nothing from the fortune-teller, has another friggin tea party.  (I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of those)  Toki discusses things with her friends and one of them points out that the assassins at the wedding might be related to the assassin's guild (based solely on their appearance).  So what do they do?  They wander around the assassin district of town looking for people dressed like assassins!  Then they actually find some, fight them, and then--I swear to go I'm not making this up--they find out that they're actually assassin wannabe's who just dress like assassins to be cool.  It does actually make more sense that way, I guess, but the whole exchange is ridiculous.  This is not a game that wants to be taken seriously.  Then they go back and have another tea party (an hour into the game and this is the third one already)...that's about where I quit.

In summary, this game looks shallow, awkward and very heavy on the fanservice and innuendo.

Damn, that does sound pretty bad, but frankly Imageepoch's games never really had decent plots so I'm not too surprised. All the "tea" scenes come off a lot your generic anime stuff, even through I couldn't understand a whole lot.

[Aeolus]

The gameplay looks stiff and awkward.  Panning around on the map is particularly bad.  Drake is flying next to Toki but they're both 2D sprites so when you move the camera it actually moves Drake to keep them in the same respective orientation, which looks really silly.  Then there's that ridiculous backing up animation, I guess because they didn't want to have to animate Toki facing different directions.  I feel like it should be accompanied by that beeping sound trucks made when they back up.

Ah yes, I had noted something similar along those lines but forgot to elaborate on that during my previous write up. It's incredibly jarring to note how Drake has like 3 or 4 frames of animation on the field map total while Toki/Towa have like 8 or 9 idle frames alone. Not to mention that they still have those camera issues from before. You can really tell where the developers focused all of their efforts towards.

[Aeolus]

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/12/31/time-and-eternity-imageepochs-hd-anime-rpg-english-name-probably-is/

And now PALand gets to go on dainty tea parties with the animes. Have fun with that.

[Dice]

Awesome a super-niche title like this is getting a release... but yeah... From what I've seen/heard about the game, I couldn't care less.

Atelier Ayesha for Europe as I sit in NA though... hmm.... any good EU game store that ship out to the wintery canadian north?