Riviera: The Promised Land -PSP Remake- : US bound!

Pata

JPS3 wrote: »

Damn, I loved this game on the GBA... now I'm going to rebuy it, because I am a whore. At least it will give me another excuse to replay it.

Man of the Waves

I'd say that this game deserves a port. It's a really good game that does some interesting things to the RPG genre. The artwork alone deserves more attention.

Gilder

I guess the release date was bumped up a week because I got "the call" from gamestop saying it's coming in tomorrow. So that's pretty awesome if it ends up being true. Amazon also has it as in stock but ships within 8-9 days. Which conveniently puts it into the other release date. So I'm just all kinds of confused now

ikillkenny

Hrmm, my girlfriend got the GBA game and it's been in my DS case for a while now. Maybe I'll give it a shot after hearing the positive things about it in this thread.

Pata

Yay.

I'll need to get my hands on it somehow.

I you Atlus.

Now where's my Summon Night Localizations.

cj iwakura

It comes out... tomorrow?

PikaPuff

ikillkenny wrote: »

Hrmm, my girlfriend got the GBA game and it's been in my DS case for a while now. Maybe I'll give it a shot after hearing the positive things about it in this thread.

G&T's reaction to this game was great when it came out. We sure enjoy obscure games.

MinionOfCthulhu

Neo Rasa

Unco-ordinated wrote: »

While I do think the port of Riviera is weird, you really can't include FF1 and FF2 in that list. The GBA versions were ports of the PS1 versions, which themselves were ports of the NES originals. Sure they were ported to the GBA, but unless they're remakes (like FFIII on the DS), I'd still call them NES games. Calling them GBA games, is like calling Chrono Trigger a PS1 game, when in reality it's a SNES game that's been ported to the PS1.

If that's the case then you should note that the Final Fantasy Origins on the PS1 contains ports of the WonderSwan Color remakes of FFI and II, not games directly ported from the NES.

Gilder

Okay so it is officially in stores today guys. I am holding my copy in my hand. I haven't gotten to try it yet but I will in a few hours. So yes, everyone go buy this game right now. Do it. Come on.

Do it.

PikaPuff

It's been a day. review pl0x.

Gilder

Are you asking for my impressions? Well I was going to post my thoughts anyway so even if you weren't, enjoy my little mini-review. Before we start though, I couldn't find a good spot to put this so I'm just going to say it here. The art has been changed a bit. I think it's for the better but I couldn't not mention it as the art was one of the best things in the original. I loved the art in the GBA version as well so I was happy to see I still love it in the PSP version. I just had to mention this somewhere. Okay, now for the mini-review.

I've only got up to chapter 2 but so far, it's fantastic. The crisper sprites, backgrounds, and art are really good and the voices are, in my opinion, fantastic. I really like Ein's. It suits him perfectly. Atlus really knows how to get good voice actors. Only the voices of the Fairies bug me but they're just high-pitched, like a fairy should be. Every single line is also voice acted, except for stuff like "Rock acquired!" because that would just be silly. Even the townspeople and the monsters have voice acting, as long as they can speak. Like, monkey's won't speak beyond grunts but Lilim's will speak english.

If you absolutely cannot stand english voice acting, you can also switch the japanese voices. Keep in mind though that it will be using the english text so they'll still call Ein Ein. Not Etchel. They actually have a list of the name changes in the manual, which was a nice touch. You can only choose your voices at boot-up though. You can't switch mid-game. You'll have to turn it off and back on again if you get to a boss and decide you hate their voice. Also, I don't think it's possible to not have voices. I think you have to have them. I also can't comment on the quality of the JP voices as I'm sticking with english.

It's been a while since I played the GBA version but I think some of the moves have been given a makeover or just extra details. Like when you use Ledah's execution move, the black feathers are in 3D so they twirl and flutter. It looks really cool. The apes also throw down a really cool looking firey meteor.

One thing that's a little harder is disarming traps that require directional button presses because the PSP d-pad is ass. It's just a tiny bit harder though. Not too much.

Also, there's some loading issues every once in a while while loading the voices. The music might stop for a second or if you go to a new room, you might be on a black screen for a few seconds. It's no big deal though.

Overall, if you loved Riviera like I did or you've never played it before, I wholeheartedly endorse this version. It's still a fantastic game, I haven't spotted any changes to make it inferior (besides not being able to turn off voices if you don't like them, although I could be wrong as the option might be there), and the voices really seem to help the game more than hurt it. It just adds that character. If you don't really think all the changes/bonuses like voices, crisper sprites, new(?)/redone artwork, and the supposed bonus chapter are worth it though, you could probably skip this. Still though, if you liked the GBA version, I don't know why anyone wouldn't want this beyond the reason of not owning a PSP.

Finally, one of the weirdest things is actually in the instruction booklet. It comes with cardboard cut outs of a background and the characters so you can put them on your desk or something. It's really odd.

kuroneko

You can turn off the voices. It's under select->config. I think the voice acting is pretty good, I was pleasantly surprised. I'm also digging the scenes with the extra backgrounds in them. Also, am I crazy or is there extra dialog as well?

MinionOfCthulhu

What software version does Riviera use?

Gilder

kuroneko wrote: »

You can turn off the voices. It's under select->config. I think the voice acting is pretty good, I was pleasantly surprised. I'm also digging the scenes with the extra backgrounds in them. Also, am I crazy or is there extra dialog as well?

Oh there is an option to turn off voices? Excellent. Then that gets rid of the only real complaint I had, even though I love the voices and won't turn them off. I just thought it would be odd if they wouldn't let you turn them off.

I think there might be some extra dialog but they also said there's new scenes. So if there is, new dialog should come with them. I wouldn't be able to recognize new scenes anyway as I haven't played the game in like a year. It's like a new experience, except I remember the last boss and some of the battle tips they never tell you. If you didn't know some battle stuff already, you'd never get an S rank on any of the battles in chapter 1. They're jerks like that.

MinionOfCthulhu wrote:

What software version does Riviera use?

I think I had to update to like 3.40 or something.

kuroneko

Gilder wrote: »

kuroneko wrote: »

You can turn off the voices. It's under select->config. I think the voice acting is pretty good, I was pleasantly surprised. I'm also digging the scenes with the extra backgrounds in them. Also, am I crazy or is there extra dialog as well?

Oh there is an option to turn off voices? Excellent. Then that gets rid of the only real complaint I had, even though I love the voices and won't turn them off. I just thought it would be odd if they wouldn't let you turn them off.

I think there might be some extra dialog but they also said there's new scenes. So if there is, new dialog should come with them. I wouldn't be able to recognize new scenes anyway as I haven't played the game in like a year. It's like a new experience, except I remember the last boss and some of the battle tips they never tell you. If you didn't know some battle stuff already, you'd never get an S rank on any of the battles in chapter 1. They're jerks like that.


The S rank thing is sorta funny because during the tutorial level I was thinking "I don't remember them holding my hand this much in the GBA version." I'm really tempted to pull out the GBA version to see if I can see any other minor differences visually. The sprites look different to me somehow.

cj iwakura

I beat it twice in a row, so I'm pretty sure I'll recognize the new stuff immediately. I don't have a PSP yet, and rushing out to get one with my current DS backlog would be crazy... but when/if Riviera starts vanishing, I'll probably just get the game in advance.

I don't really like the new cover art that much, but oh well.

Bruan

is this game hard to find? i had no idea it was coming out for psp!

Gilder

Bruan wrote: »

is this game hard to find? i had no idea it was coming out for psp!

Right now? Probably not too hard to find. It is Atlus though. They have a print run of about 8 copies and then they're done.

Pjstelford

Did they speed the game up at all? I remember it being abominably slow? A fun game, but so ungodly slow.

Target Practice

Even though I don't have a PSP, I may buy this now. I won't get a PSP until at least October (when the Slim one comes out), but by then it'll probably be impossible to find.

Gilder

God dammit this is pissing me off. For some reason, Riviera sometimes won't load and it just turns my system off when I try to load my file. None of my other games do this. It's making it really annoying.