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[Wii] Shiren the Wanderer coming, courtesy of Atlus
elkatas
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And things are getting better! I need to do Rockman dance now.
Hypnotically inclined.
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This is happy, happy news.
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I'm just amazed they decided to take the risk. Xseed would have been interested in the game, but said that localizing it would be too risky as console games don't more niche than this.
I just wish Japan knew how to make western-style roguelikes. I want DnD stats and full equipment for every part of my body, not just a sword that I'm afraid to bring with me because I'll die and lose what I spent building over seven runs. I want bigger and more varied maps with doors and chests and a lot more item types, I want to be able to choose my race and class, and I want to be able to learn spells. I want to have a world map and be able to go anywhere, not take a linear path from start to finish.
You just described Atlus' entire business model.
They know what they localize is always going to be niche, so they plan and promote accordingly. Persona 3 by their standards was a rousing success and I'm not even sure it broke 200k units sold.
U-hu, but Shiren sold 5000 copies last time.
A good fantasy Wii game has a lot less competition, though.
Yeesh... that is low...
Sporky's right though, another RPG on the DS, no matter how fun is up against stiff and popular competition.
The promotion for it was miserable too. I didn't even hear about it until a couple months ago, coupled with all of the reviews that vehemently rail against the entire genre handicapped it from the get-go.
That and the box art was ugly.
I have a really good feeling that Atlus will not fuck this up like Sega did.
While I'm not complaining myself since I tend to love their games, I always sit here and wonder how the hell atlus stays afloat. Their games, liked you said, pretty much define "niche".
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Sorry, I don't have image stored. Shiren the Wanderer is very, very hard roguelike that has been very popular in the Japan. There has been three games in the series, and only DS one has been localized. PA actually had pretty long thread dedicated to it.
It's part of the Mystery Dungeon series which includes Chocobo's Dungeon and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.
I would have much rather had this. Oh well, Atlus deserves as much of my money as they see fit.
However, unlike Pokemon Mystery Dungeon it doesn't suck.
It is, in fact, awesome.
Also to answer UncleSporky, while I can (sometimes) appreciate a big sprawling roguelike I love the tightness of Shiren, by paring down the options into sword, shield, herb, scroll, staff and jar I feel it paradoxically opens up more options as I never get 'lost' in the possibilities.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I bought Chocobo's Dungeon myself not expecting this to come stateside. It was disappointing after the awesomeness that was Shiren on DS. I love Atlus for having the balls to bring this over.
Also, anyone interested can still probably find copies of Shiren the Wanderer for DS in the bargain bins at Best Buy, I always see a few in there, last I saw it was 14.99. Its well worth it.
just curious where you got this number, as i don't believe i've ever seen any details on how much this sold, other than it was absurdly low.
It was leaked months ago on GAF. Probably in NPD thread.
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=17380®ion=All
Either this chart's wrong, or people on GAF don't understand what .48m means.
First, we are talking about US sales. Secondly, VGChartz pulls its numbers from its ass. They are not based on any real numbers, just on guesses.
Edit: to clarify and gush a little I'll just say that, in my opinion, Shiren the Wanderer for the DS did everything it set out to do perfectly. Then, just when you begin to fully understand its ins and outs, to appreciate the challenge of pitting your intellect, creativity and careful planning against fate itself, it reveals a "post-game" that eclipses what you had already assumed to be a very full and enjoyable (if excruciating at times) experience. 11/10.
Same. Much as I enjoy the DS game, if I had to sit down in front of a TV to play it I'd probably just grab one of the many free roguelikes available on the PC instead.
The chart is wrong. VGchartz is notorious for being way off with numbers that we don't get actual NPD/CT/GFK/MC numbers from.
In other words, when there's not reliable info out there available, they make up a number. A pure guess based on lots of speculation and estimation but still unfounded.
They are notorious for being way off because, if you actually compare their numbers for obscure software sales to NPD when NPD becomes available, they are often found to be off many times over. Sometimes they'll post 200k for a game that only sold 50k. Sometimes they'll post 100k for a game that sold 300k. Seriously it's that bad. They try to go back and correct their data afterwards but they've been found to overlook corrections many times.
The only times they're spot on is when there is actual publicized NPD data that can back it up. In other words, NPD data that you and I and anyone else who watches has access to. In other words still, if you cite sales, why not just cite NPD directly?
The answer is usually - because I can't find any NPD data on Game X! But VGchartz has a number!
That's the problem. If there's no NPD data available on it, publicly, then citing VGchartz is equivalent to citing some armchair analyst's best guess. Pure guesswork.
They're good for general console hardware historical data at best and nothing more. But even then, there are better sites that track and source straight from NPD without the taint of guesswork that's been edited and reedited.
VGchartz is terrible.
The worst part? Periodically VGchartz makes a claim about a game's sales. And then some unknowing gaming site picks up the number and publishes "zomg Game X sold # number copies!" And then the publisher is forced to waste time and resources making public statements correcting that idiocy. I know Capcom has had to do it and a few other publishers have had to as well.
damn vgchartz..
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Going back to Shiren 3 and Atlus, I'm of the mind that marketing can make or break a game's sales, as I'm sure a number of people are. I have high expectations that Atlus will do a better job promoting this title than Sega did with Shiren DS. Their faithful fanbase, paired with the fact that it's an RPG for the Wii will go a pretty long way, I think.
Same here except Shiren was awesome and Baroque was a terrible piece.
I'm in the same boat.
That's disappointing about Baroque, though I got Baroque for like $12, so no worries I guess. Still haven't tried it out yet, but I probably will at some point soon. I heard the graphics were absolutely miserable but all the rest of the reviews complained about was the difficulty (typical...). I did buy the ps2 version, which was rated slightly higher than the Wii version, though I doubt it makes much of a difference.
I enjoyed it quite a bit, actually. A good mix of item types and equipment with various augments, and it doesn't look that bad. There's a film grain filter applied that may make it look weird to some, I guess.
Graphics were ok but really bland. It's strange how the 3D graphics felt worse than the typical ascii/tile art of most rogue games.
The actual items were really boring and combat just felt tedious. I only spent $15 and ended up trading on Goozex for more than $15 worth of points, but I felt incredibly dissapointed at my first console (non ds) roguelike. Especially when you consider how great Shiren was (especially for a SNES game ported to the DS).
Because when VGchartz presents information, even though it's made up / guesstimated, people wind up going there to get numbers because no other numbers exist. Usually they do this innocently, not knowing that, indeed, VGchartz has pulled something out of their butts for many games. Vgchartz does it because they like the website traffic.
Now, not all of their games are waaaaay off base. You see, some of their guesstimations are based on existing NPD data that is released to the public on a monthly basis. But in such a case, anyone can get those actual NPD numbers with decent googling. If something shows up in NPD top 10 sales for a month, you can get a number for it from NPD, for example. For Europe, there's CT/GFK and for Japan there's MC. Japan is the easiest to get good info on because they release data every week. Europe is the hardest to get accurate data on. So really, the flimsiest data found on VGChartz usually involves their european numbers.
Because a lot of people don't know that it's so way, way off. When I say notorious, I'm talking about notorious among people that really follow the industry news reasonably closely. If someone doesn't really follow or care about industry sales/finances/etc., then in trying to find sales data for something they could easily fall into the trap of googling for it and winding up only with VGchartz.
I'm not sure where the Shiren 5k number came from. Probably first month NPD. The leaked NPD data I have on Shiren for the Nintendo DS is from January 2009, and it is at 18k for North America. There are a few of us around here that for some odd reason enjoy collecting tidbits of data like this when we can. Unfortunately there's no official NPD link I can give you.
Often we can snag NPD numbers from other sources that get it leaked from NPD, including sites like Gamasutra and sometimes news sources that squeeze it out of their NPD contacts. That's typically how we get numbers for games that don't hit top 10 npd, like MadWorld or GTA Chinatown, for example. We also sometimes get publishers/developers that come out and publicly state the sales for their games, either for better or worse. That's how we found out that De Blob had sold 700k+, for example.
If you want to see how bad VGChartz can be, read this article:
I think Atlus has a good following. Enough to get average Atlus sales for this. So I can see them pulling around or just under 50k sales for this game. Which is not atypical for atlus titles like this.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Awesome post! Great read, indeed.
Baroque was a great game. and also, my only successful thread in G&T hehe
Agreed. I'll have to take the time to fully read that article.
Re: Baroque, I decided against playing it right after putting down Shiren so I wouldn't compare the two as much, knowing how much I loved Shiren. I'm sure I still will, but hopefully not too much. I'm looking forward to starting it, the story/world sounds interesting to me and I like roguelikes, so... hopefully it doesn't disappoint.
Shiren DS was perfect in every way and one of my favorite games of all time. I am definitely looking forward to Shiren 3 for the Wii. Hopefully someone will pickup and localize the Shiren 2 DS remake as well.
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