''How did this happen?'' In the case of TWEWY NEO, Square always teased a sequel in the numerous ports of the original game, but the damn thing never came, and when it finally came, it was too late (same thing with the anime). The fandom (the target audience most likely to buy the game) was long gone. The fact that they barely advertised the game didn't help either. As a TWEWY fan since 2008 I didn't even know NEO was finally out until months after its release. EDIT: Yo, minutes after making this comment I found out that there is a Steam port from years ago. They didn't bother to properly advertise the goddamn game TWICE.
Nah it had absolutely nothing to do with the fandom. Because the fandom SHOWED UP pre-release and on to be the actual promotors and pushers for the game and its IP. It was square enix who infamously does 1 of 2 things with its IPs. 1. It OVER promotes them. To the point of routinely posting heavily plot and late game spoilers for cut scenes, game play and etc all over the trailers and marketing. Or, 2. the case of many not block buster names in squares catalogue, they get nothing. They barely show up in directs or showcases, there is no marketing the month leading up to release, there is hardly anything on release day, and the days following. This is exactly what happened with NEO TWEWY. And then, they attempted to make up for it by trying to do 1 a month or so after release spoiling major reveals and surprises in NEO's plot with their horrendous marketing attempts.
@@charlesedwinbooks oh they threw NEO:TWEWY under the bus HARD - Square Enix's marketing campaign for it in the west (where first game was the most popular btw) ended with ONE trailer in a March on Nintendo Direct AND THAT'S ALL. In June there LITERALLY were nothing to push it to forefront - Square Enix had NOTHING in that month... And they still chose to not market the only big title they are releasing at the end of the month. Even better they kept release so quiet - NO ONE FRICKIN' KNEW they announced EGS PC release in July in short message in Twitter with zero fanfare - even better 9 month later Steam release will happen with ZERO NOTIFICATION - heck, in Steam itself for owners of Steam port of the FIRST game there would be NO NOTIFICATION about second being released on the platform - that's HOW MUCH Square Enix DID NOT FRICKIN' CARE. Hilariously they actually had a marketing campaign in Japan... But TWEWY series were never popular there (ya know like X-box) so it didn't get any results (also releasing right beside a few big releases like FE3H spinoff didn't help)
The no steam port was a huge reason i didnt even try the game, i was interested in the game but im not willing to invest in a platform i would probably never open again, and by the time the steam port came, i lost interest
In my opinion NEO TWEWY wasn't nearly as good as TWEWY. Part of TWEWY's appeal in my opinion was the gimicky combat. Yes it worked best on the DS, but even the ports and the simplified partner controls had their charm. NEO for a large part reduced this to "press button". The story suffered as well. Where TWEWY used the reaper's game as a vehicle to explore the characters, NEO uses the characters to explore the Reaper's game. But the issue is that the Reaper's game isn't really all that interesting. Most of the things the game presents as mysteries are things that we already know (like what happens to those who lose). The fact that the winning team turned out to be reapers wasn't that big a twist either because in TWEWY, the final boss for each week was a reaper as well. And the new characters didn't really have much of a development either. (also who decided it was a good idea to give the main character a chin diaper? Talk about unappealing design. One that is, unlike Neku's headphones, completely irrelevant to the character's personality).
The studio behind Visions of Mana was not closed because of the game. It was closes because the owners wnated to step down from Japan, so they were only finishing the contract work. And Square-enix was happy enough with the game that they hired the game director some weeks after the game released.
The marketing being Neo: The World Ends With You made me sad. I put in 100+ hours into what was a very solid game and there was plenty in the game to enjoy!
NEO TWEWY is even more frustrating because despite releasing in July, it didn't get a trailer or spotlight in Square's very own E3 presentation in 2021 and only appeared for a frame in the at the end of the presentation.
@@UltimateGattai I won't call it 0 marketing. Yes the ads for it is easy not balls in the walls like how they market a final fantasy game. But again they market it by releasing the the switch port for the first game and made an anime for the first game so people don't necessarily have to play the first game and they can just watch the anime then play Neo Twewy. The trailers also created enough intrigue with the "who is the guy in the hood" mystery that people made videos on and created discourse within the niche. Most what affected it is not the lack of marketing but because of what other games that were released that year took most of people's attention
I guess it's to prevent spoilers, though the in-video title cards are still readable while scrubbing. Ultimately, proper tagging will probably help with discoverability.
You can send this text to Toshihiro Nagoshi, he was producer and executive manager of this game. His personal Playstation bias ruined also Valkyria Chronicles, and nearly Yakuza (he stuck both series only on Playstation, until Takaharu Terada and Masayoshi Yokoyama released these series from Sony prison with Valkyria Chronicles & Yakuza 0 PC ports). Oh wait ... he was kicked out from Sega. He maybe produced good games (Daytona USA, Super Monkey Ball, Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars 2019), but his leadership in business decisions as a CEO were always awful.
@@YouDonkeyfu Just my opinion but it was not a good game. Graphics were good, combat looks more fun on screen than it actually is and the rest of the game really sank it for me.
No wonder, they changed Valkyria Chronicles combat into ... Sonic ? It's considered as a worst game in series and called ,,abomination'' of original Sakura Wars, by Japanese fans. Without Ouji Hiroi, RED Company, and original developers probably it's impossible to capture magic of older games. Still this game could sell more, if would be released not only on PS4, and not in the same time with Final Fantasy VII Remake & Persona 5 Royal.
@@RoachyRoachandthefunkybunch maybe but I still wish I get to experience this franchise on PC , I always seem screenshot of this ip but since they are more or less console exclusive, I never get to play any of them
Non Final fantasy square enix game lack marketing and promotion..i see some respond like this " oh i don't know there is new star ocean game or mana games"
It's similar situation with every other japanese publisher in the West: Square Enix - aside of Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest (in Japan) 0 marketing and promotion Sega - aside of Sonic & Yakuza 0 marketing and promotion Atlus - aside of Persona/Metaphor & SMT V 0 marketing and promotion Bandai Namco - aside of Dark Souls, Tekken & Tales 0 marketing and promotion Koei Tecmo - aside of Soulslike games 0 marketing and promotion No investment in other series in the West (especially in marketing) is reason why those games are destined to flop outside Japan. More bigger marketing & budget get their main IP's, then is better chance for overshadowing and cannibalize series who don't had that luck being mainstream. Most of publishers don't want risk with new or dormant IP's and give them a not big budget. Or they risk on spend money on GaaS / mobile gachas, instead of more creative singleplayer games,
It isn't only Eastern publishers doing this. For example: Ubisoft: Prince of Persia was a flop. Potential Audience: There was a new Prince of Persia?! "publishers don't want risk with new or dormant IP's", as quoted by @@nr2676, is the real reason. In the case of Prince of Persia, the last title to have a Wikipedia article is 2010's Forgotten Sands. Activity between that and Lost Crown are re-releases, mobile shovelware, and tech demos. So basically after almost 15 years of no meaningful activity, suddenly a new title is dropped without fanfare. It sells poorly, further justifying focusing on semi-yearly releases of Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy shooters.
The fact that Square did no marketing whatsoever for the game and out of nowhere simply shadowdropped the game on Steam didn't help Neo: TWEWY at all. A pitty tho, The game is amazing!
This is the problem with modern posters on the internet. Most of them are all talk, not action. They said " I want turn-based game. I want a proper single-player game etc" and when the developers made these type of games for them, the first thing they did was not support/buy the game and they came out with a lot of excuses why they can't support the game.
THIS! So much this. Now when people say they want X game it just peeves me off. I saw this since the Nintendo DS era. The Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown amd Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope was my last straw. People griped how all Ubisoft games are the same and bland and then when we got some variety, people didn't support them and made all sorts of excuses.
I think these publishers expect games to sell too fast. I love these games and will buy them. But I also have a massive backlog and am unwilling to buy something just so it can sit there for months. Maybe I just need to start doing that though...
@@TumultuousMthey want them to sell fast since they Guage how well they are doing through an annual revenue check. And that the big suits need to revaluate their business model for the next year based on that annual revenue.
Neo: TWEWY was my favourite game of 2021. I had not got so sucked into a game like that for years. Frankly, there was not enough marketing for it, but I was so hyped for it I pre-ordered the thing.
It had enough marketing people just looked over it since they are more hyped about other games that year. Having an anime, the first game being ported for switch, being both neo and the Twewy switch port being in the direct plus the other interviews for the anime and game. Is not enough "marketing". Like that is more marketing compared to Octopath Traveler.
@@DoodWhoDraws Octopath Traveler was and still is a pretty well known game. I remember ads everywhere back then, with everyone and their grandmas suggesting people to play it, too.
neo the world ends with you is so incredible. its quite upsetting that square didnt market the game for shit, leaving it out to flounder. such irreverence for an excellent and unique game
NEO: TWEWY was amazing and I'm shocked it did so poorly. Simular with Sakura wars, I think the games theme around romance sadly put alot of people off. Also I know alot of people want play a game if it doesn't have English audio, so that may hinder some sales aswell.
Sakura Wars is mostly Visual Novel and Dating Sim, obscure genres outside of Japan. People in the West want to play a game, not only read for 90% of the game. Mediocre gameplay and lack of English dubb = dead on arrivall in USA. But still there is demand for those kind of games, but not on PS4. Switch and PC have many Visual Novel games. Most of people play those kind of games on portable devices, because they don't want have situation from ,,are you winning son'' meme.
@nr2676 yeah that makes sence, I rarely play my switch, only the exclusives, but I did notice it had alot more visual novels than PlayStation. Some of the games on this list are quite good games, some I personally can see why people wouldn't like them.
@@nr2676I really think it should have been a tbs game instead of action. It's strange to have an visual novel/action game with hardly any action. Plus it alienates fans of the previous games.
@ Probably low sales of Valkyria Chronicles 1&4 (games from same dev team, similar to old Sakura Wars gameplay wise - those games use improved version of combat system from SW3-5) + bait ,,America love action games, hates SRPG / turnbased'' (like Square Enix did with Final Fantasy XVI and Valkyrie Elysium, which was also not successful) or just Team Sonic incopentence, because they only developed Sonic in last 20 years, and copied paste Sonic gameplay to Sakura Wars. Or Nagoshi was just dumb, because RGG Studio advised Team Sonic to change gameplay in Sakura Wars into action. But the problem is Sega never had a experienced developer with action games in 3D, aside of maybe Yakuza. If they wanted change combat into musou, they should hire Omega Force from Koei Tecmo, because Team Sonic can't even make a decent Sonic in 3D since Adventure 1&2. But budget was probably very tight, so they go cheapest and laziest route like always.
It's because SE nowaday being so greedy over their what they wanted while the production has been significant reduce because of japan population. Want so high but not even repair their inside.
Well, greed... but also idiotic levels of production costs. Guys theres such a thing as TOO MUCH. FF7R2 is 160gb on pc, this is to much! Its 16gb ram baseline. Why? Games dont NEED to be this big and sparkly. They put too much effort in graphics but not nearly so much in story or gameplay.
FF16 was too much a deviation from its core audience, tried to attract action players while drifting farther from core fans. Ff7 rebirth has a number of problems - they spent way too much on open world collectable side quests that no one wanted. Way too much spent on things that are not core gameplay and drag the game down. Game is fine if you mostly ignore them but then you miss out on a lot of levels and items. Rebirth should have been more like remake - with a more focused story and fewer nonsense collectables. And forget trying to be open world, it's a negative selling point. Both games had issues with being PlayStation only, which killed their hype on PC. Rebirth wasn't even available on PS4, so a lot of the players who bought remake couldn't buy it. The conclusion is the same as a lot of major developers are seeing - they can't be blowing such big budgets on games that are not going to draw comparable audiences.
As a huge fan of the franchise Sakura Wars 2019 not being on Switch was absolute sabotage by Sega. The first new game in 14 years for a dormant franchise that was arguably SEGA's biggest in Japan in the mid 90s to early 2000s. It not being on the console dominanting Japan was such a bad idea.
Also that release date with Persona 5 Royal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Trials of Mana Remake, Resident Evil 3 Remake, Xenobalde Chronicles Definitive Edition in same month. Yes it was a sabotage, like Valkyria Chronicles 4 (same dev team) in the same week with Dragon Quest XI, and Monster Hunter World in Japan. This game should be multiplatform, not only PS4 ekslusive. Yes it was a sabotage. Thank you Toshihiro Nagoshi from RGG Studio, and Hideo Baba from Delight Works for destroying franchise.
Man I thought Sakura Wars was back in like 2015-16, it feels like I played that game soooooo long ago. I should find it and finish it since it's never coming to PC, I think I only got like half way.
@ Mods on PC could save this game, but Sega is so dumb. It sucks Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars and Skies of Arcadia dev team is so neglected in Team Sonic. Fans ask for YEARS about remasters of old games on PC, like with Valkyria Chronicles, but Sega still ignore them even when VC1 was ported 7 years after release date on PS3 and it was BIG success (sold like Yakuza 0, which is still best selling game in series). That's why i hate Sonic The Hedgehog. Fuck this franchise. Now this dev team is wasted for porting games like Persona 5 Royal and Hatsune Miku on PC, but they barely port own games. like VC4 in 2018. Why they don't port own games like Skies of Arcadia, Sakura Wars, Valkyria Chronicles, Shinobi PS2, but port Atlus and AM2 games is beyond my undertstanding. The only one games from their team available on all modern platforms are Valkyria Chronicles 1&4, that's all.
Sakura Wars deserved better, it's nature as a visual novel/JRPG hybrid franchise with focus on history, romance, theatre and friendship probably makes it harder to market towards more hardcore JRPG fans.
The fun thing is if you change Imperial Theater into generic High School, remove mechs, and add RPG elements, you will have basically Persona or Fire Emblem Three Houses.
Also most of western audience don't know what is even Takarazuka Revue, which series is heavily based on. If you don't know what it's Takarezuka Revue, you will think it's dumb harem game, but this series was always loosely accurate to history (like younger sister series Valkyria Chronicles), not only Japan, but also France & United States of America from 1920-1930. I guess it's way too much for American brains.
One of the biggest factors I find from talking to people that I know, that hurts JRGPs is the lack of an English Dub on a lot of games, and or how text-heavy the games are, and I can understand this. If a game is fully dubbed in English it opens it up to younger audiences that don't have great reading skills and people who have trouble reading text without wearing glasses etc. I know that is one reason that I will put off playing some games because I don't like having to wear my glasses for long periods of time to read the text on the TV, as it becomes really uncomfortable, for example, strategy games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Oger Tactics or JRPGs like the original FF7 are some of my favourite games but I don't play games like them much anymore because of how text-heavy they are and the lack of English dub to hear what is happening in the story.
Sadly TWEWY 2 released waaaaay to late they had the opportunity of a LIFETIME when twewy got into Kingdom Hearts thats where the fandom revived for a while and acquired more fans through it. THIS was the right moment for NEO to release but sadly it didn’t
I swear JRPGs are an odd genre. It's the most well known niche genre in gaming with a ton of the most passionate fans and some of the greatest games ever made. Yet it is not as mainstream as games like Fortnite. I ask HOW?!
I think most of the modern games on this list really come down to either cost or lack of advertising. I’ve wanted to play the Fuga games since I’ve heard great things, but $40 each is more than I’m willing to pay. Similar things for Baten Kaitos and Visions of Mana. Neo lacked good advertising, and Sakura Wars alienated Japanese fans with the gameplay change from tactical to real time.
Neo had enough advertising it probably is even more extensive than visions of mana. These two both have anime adaptation to build up to the game release. With Neo it has the advantage of the first game also being ported switch and then they also get featured on Nintendo direct. Then there were also interviews for the game and even for the anime. Neo got more than Visions. But then people just say Neo "lacked marketing", but they won't say the same thing to Visions when they have almost the same amount of marketing with only Neo having the advantage on featuring in Nintendo's exclusive marketing featurettes. Neo was more so of a case on releasing in mid year where people are hyped about other specific games so they looked over Neo in general. I also think Sega fumbled Sakura wars by not bringing it to other platforms. Like regardless if the gameplay alienated the og fans. It's multimedia approach to marketing the i.p was kinda a success since people vibes with the anime, the manga and it even got stage plays. Like it appeals to a wider audience just by the story and concept alone. So why did they only made the game release on one platform.
@@thephantombroadcast3050 Most are on sale regularly. I know for a fact Fuga gets a 50% sale every 2-3 months. And I would argue $25 for a game you're going to get a minimum of 28-hours out of is a fair price (as a fan I'd say full price is reasonable but I have to be realistic). I mean in an era when Steam and the Nintendo Store are FILLED with poorly made asset flips for $20 I'll gladly pay $25 for a game made with custom assets, good gameplay, art and beautiful music. I think this age of crappy asset flips being sold at a 95% discount has made us develop a view that we shouldn't buy something if it isn't on a drastic sale, even when 1000x more effort was put into it than the sludge that surrounds it.
Adults are the only ones who plays these games not kids! Or few kids. Modern children didn't know or experienced co sole gaming unlike the goldens days of console year 2000. Kids these days plays on mobile.
Earthbound is one of the most interesting case studies here. Despite the poor sales, it had an 'enormous' influence on the indie scene, including games like Undertale (which sold close to 10 million copies, from what I recall). It really is quite important in that regard, especially since it was the only officially localized game back then; the entire series sold less than 2 million units in Japan, so it wasn't a huge hit there either, but its influence really is outsized.
@@kidrobot. Yeah, but you don't see 'that' many Chrono Trigger or FF 6 clones, whereas Earthbound is copied 'all the time'. Every year there's something in that vein. I guess it just has that kind of appeal. To be fair, there's only as much you can do with 8-bit/16-bit JRPGs, so it is what it is.
The majority of the list suffers from 2 basic marketing sins> launching at full price at the same time / week/ month of other big releases Visions of Mana released at the same time as Wukong and was more expensive in basically all world market ( full price on ps store ) games on steam / gog / epic usually are 30 to 40% cheaper and that matters a LOT when peoples money are limited , like 60 or 70$ is not expensive to US and JP market , but it is for 5 billion potential buyers
every single game I own and heard of except for Fuga. Neo, Finallly a sequel which I pre-orded. Bought and got both Gamecube versions of Batien Kaitos online for pretty cheap with booklets. Jeanne D'Arc on psp was one my 1st psp games along with Legend of Heroes (another tactical rpg). Bought day one the new Mana game as well as the Granblue Fantasy rpg, to think it took forever to game to finally release! Every game aside Path of Radiance, Earthbound, and Fuga, I own. For Sakura Wars, I started out on So Long my Love on the wii and then got the ps4 game. I used to hunt obscure Jrpgs with my sibling whenever we shopped for games.
This is a really good list. I heard about Neo Twewy sales tanking which is kinda sad. I played it during launch but I grind too much and got burn out. When Fire Emblem engaga come out a lots of people know Ike but never played both of his game (too expensive and nobody own a gamecube and wii). But for me Fire Emblem Echoes Shadow of Valentia tanked the most eventho it's on the same console as Awakening and Fates. I saw Vision of Mana demo on steam but was not interested when i saw it's an action rpg. Aren't the series used to be turn-based.
Mana was always hack'n slash series, not turn based. It was something like Star Ocean for kids. The Sakura Wars series had always turn based SRPG combat (prototype to Valkyria Chronicles), not Mana series.
Fuga is actually doing pretty well for CC2's original IP releases. Outside of .hack back in the day they didn't really get that much over 100k sales each, but Fuga as a series so far passed 450k sales. I can see with the 3rd game and the upcoming physical release of all 3 getting the series to around 700k to 800k which is about as well as one of the sets of games from the .hack series did. I wish it was doing better, but since CC2 is pursing self publishing of their original games going forward renewed word of mouth about the quality, stories, and characters of their original games will probably help Fuga in the long run. I'm kind of hoping they can eventually get one of their original games/sets of games above 1 million in sales as it's a real shame that they get so heavily overshadowed by their anime games which are getting up to 8-12 million in sales for just one game. I'm also hoping they can bring .hack back as well since Fuga is a new entry in their more niche Little Tail bronx series, and .hack will probably have quite a bit more mainstream appeal. Hopefully Bandai will either support that series returning or let CC2 do a spiritual successor to it through their self publishing.
@@honeybutter8257 A remake would be sick too, playing on DS is charming and all, but the soundtrack and visuals are held back from their true potential at least somewhat.
The way Square Enix fumbled Neo TWEWY was infuriating. They barely promoted it at all, and when it finally released on steam, they released it the same day that Persona 5 Royal came to steam. Why they would be stupid enough to try to compete with p5 of all games is baffling.
Same Sega with Sakura Wars, when they released in same time with Persona 5 Royal and Final Fantasy VII Remake only on PS4 in 2020. At that time basically 90% of Jrpg fans played only those two games.
Every time a video mentions Sakura Wars, I think "this sounds great," then go to Steam, see it's not there, Google it, and re-discover "oh yeah, this is PS4-only..." I keep forgetting about the game, but it gets mentioned so many times that now it's etched into my brain as a game I'll probably never play. If this got a PC & Switch/Switch 2 release, I bet it would do way better. Speaking of no PC releases, Vanillaware games would be so popular on PC, yet they refuse to allow their games to be ported to the platform. No idea why, but it's a shame I can't play Unicorn Overlord on my preferred platform of choice.
Funnily enough I didn't finish NEO, VoM, and Divine Force. For NEO and VoM there were games that I wanted to play more and forgot to continue them (I like already halfway in both). Divine Force is just pain to play, I really like and finished the remake of second story tho.
A lot of the games in this video were from Square just dumping a bunch of games at the same time. It was very odd. But also, you are correct. Gotta tell people about the game if you expect people to buy it.
Low budget, and publisher dont want take a risk with advertising new / dormant IP's. Instead of that they risk spend that money on Gaas/mobile gacha games, like Sega did with Sakura Revolution, because if Gaas / mobile gacha will be a success it will be a lot more profitable for them than singleplayer game Sega spend 30m$ on that mobile game, which was much more money they spend on console game. Ofcourse this mobile game flopped.
"at less than 200k copies it probably didn't even make it's money back" with no marketing whatsoever and an obvious micro budget and paid for epic exclusivity I don't know about that lol
*5:08** FUGA mentioned : D it's probably already mentioned, but this is one of few low/mid budget, labors of love from CC2 that turned into a trilogy despite being very niche. the final game in the trilogy coming out soon : ) wish more people would give this wonderful game a chance.*
@adolcristin3526 I would totally love that. And if they do, I hope they overhaul the "combat". I think we are way past the grab-and-throw mechanic ^^; it would be a shame if the cool robots didn't do any more than that.
How did these happen? Well I have an idea on a few. TWEWY NEO: The game was barely advertized and the few trailers they made didn't really sell you on the story or gameplay in a way that mattered to non fans and even most fans weren't entirely sure what to make of it. They needed to really push the story and character aspects to get people interested in exploring the world. It also ... didn't help that rumors came out the English transaltion took a fair few creative liberties RIGHT when Western companies were starting to do the whole "SO what if we rewrite the dialogue? we write for the Modern Audience!" which probably really made western fans hesitate to pick it up at least until the rumors were clarified and it was ... not great but tolerable. Visions of Mana: This game had a BETTER advertisement push behind it but it's advertisement was still pretty mid and the other big issue I felt with it was that if you looked into the story, the first part is all about "We're going on a journey to be human sacrifices so the world doesn't die" ... That's ... kind of a downer objective to start the game off with. I imagine people weren't exactly tripping over themselves to complete this. Harvestella: From an outside perspective this game REALLY didn't demonstrate how the farming and JRPG aspects actually blended in a fun way. it just looked like Square Enix trying to make their own Rune Factory or Harvest Moon and people already had those games. It needed to sell something about itself that really stood out from the others. As for the rest the fact I've never even heard of most of them says a lot about their advertisement and sales.
Harvestella not selling as much as its concept, quality and story ambitions would otherwise imply is a recent TRAGEDY to gaming in my eyes. You can't even find info about the game beyond its post-launch window and bugfix update.
The early reviews on mana did not help plus the situation with the devs. Like they did not score the game low whatsoever but most of them discuss more so their negatives about the game. Like the reviews on the game months later were the most positive reviews about the game
Worst part of Star Ocean 6 was the text size that couldn’t be fixed… I’d stand right in front of my 55” 4k tv and started thinking I needed glasses. I did… but even after getting glasses I still could barely read it.
Very sad to see Visions of Mana on this list. Just finished it the other day and I absolutely loved it. It even made me fall in love with the franchise, whereas before I was just a SoM fan since I was a kid. Picking up Legend and Trials soon!
Def a couple on here I want to try/are in my backlog. I have harvestella and Neo the world ends with you currently, but I'm tied up playing Trails at the moment
Console days are over and the existence of mobile which most kids today will play more and the people who plays consoles are adults and kids today isn't familiar with this type of gaming.
To this day Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn are THE face of Fire Emblem and the absolute best of the series. I wish to go back to those days before it became a high school dating sim.
Sakura Wars: Yeah that's what happens when you don't cross release these days on a series that you've kept dormant and on a single platform for over 40 years
@@GASTBF I mean it's a long running error: The anime Sakura Wars never made it to the United States Its various games from different platforms never made it out of Japan until the PS2 one - which had some PRETTY BAD VA work And given the opportunity and time to rectify the problem, they didn't.
@@KaiTenSatsuma The anime _did_ make it over to the US (the first OVA and TV series, anyway). I can't really blame Sega for not porting over the first game--the true identities that got thrown around at the end of that one would have caused an uproar in the West--and without that first entry to build on, SW 5 was probably the next-best entry point for newcomers. Sadly, that one flopped.
@@KoyasamaSo Long My Love was released in US/EU on PS2 in 2010, like Valkyria Chronicles 2 in 2010 on PSP. At that time PS2 and PSP were retro consoles (dead platforms). Dead on arrival. It is like release brand new PS3 game on PS5 in 2025. Yes this game was also ported by NISA on Wii, but on Wii 99% jrpgs and VN games flopped, even Fire Emblem games, and game was 5 years outdated, because it was game from 2005, not 2010, where HD era started. Yakuza on PS2 and PS3 also flopped so hard outside of Japan, like So Long My Love. Yakuza started selling well in the West, because of Yakuza 0 and Steam port in 2015 + Baka Mitai meme. After that Sega started advertised this series also in the West, and look it sells now very well worldwide, because have a marketing and support from Sega America, like Sonic. Rest Sega IP's dont had that luck, like Valkyria Chronicles, even if VC1 PC port sold exactly like Yakuza 0 (1M copies), but after that Sega dropped the balls with terrible spinoff Valkyria Revolution, who tanked Valkyria Chronicles 4 sales.
Star Ocean The Divine Force selling less than the last game is depressing. Also i know a lot of people buying Fuga trilogy now all 3 coming out with physical copies
JRPGs have a stigma within the Western gaming crowds due to them being different from WRPGs and relying more on tactics than action, and that stigma started and continues to be heavily fed by gaming journalists who either don't understand the genre or have a vendetta against them. So usually they don't get much coverage in media or are covered in more of a negative light, especially because they take much longer to complete and require paying attention to the story, something journalists hate because they are always on a deadline for coverage and cannot take it slow to appreciate the story telling and gameplay mechanics. Radiant Dawn is an amazing Tactical JRPG, but aside from Nintendo barely marketing the darn thing, I saw almost ZERO coverage for the game during its release window! JRPGs rely heavily on mouth to mouth marketing in the West because of that, unfortunately, while SE tries to keep their JRPG household - Final Fantasy - as far away from the genre as they possibly can with each new release absolutely refusing to go back to turn based combat and the anime art style from FFVII's concept art and FFIX's amazing visuals! THAT is why JRPGs tend to flop, they already at a disadvantage for being JRPGs in the first place. On top of that you put bad marketing and poor release timing, bad translation, bad dub, refusal to allow the player to choose the Japanese language for text and/or voice (which would make even avid JRPG players like myself not want to play them), and there's your recipe for disaster. Edit: Of course Visions of Mana didn't sell jackshit! It's not on the Switch, which is the most successful console this generation, it's on the PS5, the console from the Japanese company that abandoned Japan! Say what you want about Steam being the largest platform, if you want a JRPG to be successful, it needs to be on the most sold CONSOLES of each generation! What are they going to achieve by being on Xbox, the console that normies play FIFA and CoD on?
the problem is that people really dont put the time to enjoy this type of games, since most of gamers wants is fast gameplay, amazing graphics, and coop, they dont care to much about story telling, character deveopment and different artstyle of how these past few years like realistic or medieval, this can be change if they makes the games people wants, all of this jrpg of the list are amazing and i recomend people to play them and even discover a new series like the mana series, amazing to its core and theres so many many games
@@kidrobot. Oh co-op in general? I'd also love to be in that universe. Practically no games have co-op these days either, so either way the statement is wrong lol
Visions of Mana should have released on switch and PS4. As for Star Ocean, It's hard to get excited for a series that had one amazing entry while every game after it only got worse. Star Ocean 4 was so ridiculously cringe with its anime character stereotypes that I was just done.
Beacuse most of the western audience rather play call of duty games or gta type games especially western culture is very different from Japan most players are male so cute games are not appealing to western audience unfortunately
I could see that maybe 15 years ago, but I hear so much "Western gaming is dead. Eastern games are so much better!" Asians games like Astro Bot, Wukong, and Metaphor dominated the last Game Awards.
Gravity Rush and its sequel might have been mentioned. They were both great JRPGs with a unique, quirky setting and story but flopped in terms of sales.
It sold 300k copies only on PS4, so sales were not that bad, but for Sony if X game dont sell in million copies = flop. And similarly like Sakura Wars it was released in same time with Persona 5, who basically overshadowed both games. If you release a game very close to: Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Persona, Monster Hunter, Tales, Nintendo games it always ends like that. If publisher release less known games in Spring, and Autumn, when ALWAYS are big budget AAA titles its basically suicide. If you ask normie which game which game he buy Final Fantasy VII Remake, Persona 5 Royal or Sakura Wars, 99% people tell you Persona 5 Royal or Final Fantasy VII Remake. And this annoying me, because big publisher always push own games in those months no matter of how niche / big franchise it's, because every big publisher at that time have a financial report.
It's a shame Square Enix is on this list a lot. They have been pumping out so many great games. It's a shame people only remember the few bad ones like that foam game and the marvel game.
Especially Sakura Wars 1-5. Generally all games from this developer are underrated (Shinobi, Streets of Rage, The House of The Dead, Phantasy Star, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Dragon Force, Deep Fear, Skies of Arcadia, 7th Dragon, Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars etc.). Sega simply sucks at marketing their games, especially in the West. The bad move from Sega was fusion this developer with Team Sonic, because Team Sonic don't have a idea how to advertise their games, and spend all money on Sonic marketing. Sonic Team just doesn't give a damn about them, they only care about Sonic. I would prefer them to be independent in CS3 R&D or as Overworks/Wow Entertainment as they were in 1998-2008 and 2008-2018 and working with 3rd party developers not Team Sonic, but since CS3 R&D is now PSO2 New Genesis Team, I guess not.
I think it is dumb to not make the Sakura Wars not available to cobsole when they went on a multimedia marketing route for it, with the anime, manga and stage play. Meaning it appealed to a rather wide variety of audience then the game being locked to one console fumbled the wide audience it captured.
CC2 still doesn't really have proper international distribution for their physical releases yet. Unlike their anime games where Bandai or Sega would handle all of that they're doing this all on their own. I'm at least happy they are doing a physical release and it is multilingual too. I will definitely be getting the collectors edition and the only barrier is the pretty high shipping cost that will come with importing these games.
Visions of Mana's studio closure was NOT because of poor sales/preorder numbers. It was NetEase pulling their investments from Japanese developers and they shutdown the studio.
@TheGamingShelf yeah, it sucked. They didn't even give them a CHANCE to succeed. NetEase pulled their investments from several Japanese studios and I believe shutdown a few others too. Visions of Mana was such a great game, one of the prettiest and most fun from last year.
Visions of Mana was a gorgeous, amazing game. It came out at a time where it competed against several high profile titles. I feel like it just got lost in the shuffle. As a side note, I completely disagree with all the reviewers who said the combat was clunky. I'm a stickler for action combat, and I thought the combat in VOM was solid. Maybe everyone is just too used to Soulslikes, that any combat that's different from that, they just don't understand.
I bought most of these games and I can confirm that they are great, I don't understand why some sold poorly except for those released on Gamecube, because the customer base wasn't that big.
Yeah, Fuga Melodies of Steel: 2 releasing pretty much a day before Tears of the Kingdom was set to release was very unfortunately timed. I'm sure it wasn't planned, considering Tears of the Kingdom had been delayed multiple times.
You're probably spot on about why Fuga hasn't sold well. I am Very Not Interested in playing a furry, and no amount of great gameplay will overcome that. And I suspect I am not unique in this regard.
I think that's an okay way to think since there are already too many games vying for our attention. You can't play everything so the more lines you draw the easier it is to pick what you actually want to play. I say keep skipping art directions you don't care for even if its critically acclaimed because for every one you skip, there is a game with an art direction you do like that you haven't played.
I think after years of playing stuff Parappa the Rapper, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper, Crash, and Hyper Light Drifter I can see past that and appreciate a good game for what it is. To each their own, but maybe thinking of them in those same contexts will alleviate your feelings towards it. If not, not the biggest deal. Aha enjoy what you enjoy.
The furry thing is dead on,but side scrolling games I don't play anymore either and FUGA looked to be a ton of that. For me it's Full 3d with open world or close to are my go-tos and anything else is just a step back for me.
As a kid, I really wanted to like Baten Kaitos. I would pick it up off of the shelf every time I went to look at games and really debate over it. And every time, I saw it was basically a card game and couldn't bring myself to do it. This hasn't changed as an adult. I still want to like it and other games like it, but I really cannot get into the deck building aspect. I'm glad it reached at least some people that were into it, because it still looks really cool.
Yeah, for example Skies of Arcadia or Panzer Dragoon Saga sold much worse than any of game from this list, and those games are masterpieces (96% - Panzer Dragoon Saga, 93% - Skies of Arcadia). But flopped due to release on dead platforms, and no marketing. Terrible business decision can kill even a great game, but great business decisions and huge marketing can sell even a mediocre game.
Great list Taylor, and I'd love to see some of these games get ports for the Nintendo Switch 2 myself, haha. I even mentioned Sakura Wars and Divine Force in my latest video! I definitely think that these games are heavily underrated and wished they sold better and got more attention.
Star Ocean - a series so inconsistent even it's own fans hardly defend it loudly lol 2 was peak but it was so long ago (excluding remake) you kinda expect mediocroty. Last Hope I did like because of some twists like alternate earth being blown up which still sit as memorable to me till this day. As for 6? If was decent but far from memorable to me from the story to the characters, nail those and graphics don't matter.
Is a great idea a remaster of FE Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, back in the day I couldn't find a copy anywhere in my country and now the games are too expensive to afford
Anytime I see a reddit thread and someone asks "should I play Harvestella?", loads of people come out of the woodwork to say how much they enjoyed it. Really hope it gets a 2nd chance.
I think the major issue is marketing.. If the headline is always “JRPGs are a thing but they’re niche” chances are they’ll be trouble selling.. I think Yoshi P spoke about this
The problem with Fuga is that it's a $20 game full price at best, but when it goes on sale it's never cheaper than $34.99. They need to read the room and realize an indie game like that cannot sell that high if they want more sales.
Sakura Wars hurts, but they did it to themselves. In an attempt to bring in new players, they alienated the few fans they had by completely changing how the game played compared to the rest of the series. The character designs also hurt it. They thought a "big name" (that hadn't been relevant for years, but I guess they tried to play off of the Bleach new anime) designer would bring in customers, and we just got generic designs. It's not what fans wanted, and it's too bland for getting in new people.
The main problem why this game failed is lack of Ouji Hiroi (Nagoshi rejected him), and RED Company. Instead of that, Sega hired a writer behind Girls und Panzer and Jiro Ishi (428 Shibuyia). Tite Kubo and rest of guest artists like Soejima, sucks compared to Kosuke Fujishima and Hidenori Matsubara from older games. They should hire Ikkyu Masa, a dude behind Sakura Wars manga. And prepare a brand new engine, because Hedgehog Engine 2 don't fit very well with anime games (PSO2 New Genesis runs on HE2, and faces looks like a dogshit).Yeah, this game wanted to be for everyone, but pleased no one. Definitely worst game in series. Sega fucked up with reboot. They should firstly remaster SW1-5 on ALL platforms in english. Let's hope we get something for 30th Anniversary in Japan.
So in regards to Sakura Wars, I feel it is a bit that some are not aware it has been a long running IP and just was shy to touch it. I got it because I have been a fan of the series since the 90s (and this one was still a great game), but when I spoke about it among some people in my group about it, some who will speak on how they love nostalgia and older content, they give me a blank look and ask if this is some new series before I show them that its been around since the mid 90s..
Yeah, Sega released this series 15 years too late outside of Japan. But they wanted release original games on Dreamcast (by Working Designs), PS2 and PSP, but Sony America BLOCKED localization Sakura Wars 1+2 on PSP and Sakura Wars PS2 Remake, because Sony called those games ..text novel'', and those two games were banned by Sony America along with Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner PSP version, because at that time Sony had bullshit requirements for releasing ports/remasters of PSP games (port/remaster MUST have at least 30% new content to be published in North America / Europe on PSP, otherwise instant ban. Sakura Wars 1+2 on PSP don't have new content, it's just 1:1 port from Saturn. That's why for exmaple Atlus added female route in Persona 3 Portable to meet Sony of America expectations. They also added bonus dungeon to Persona 2 and SMT Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, but Soul Hackers due to late release in 2012 was ported to Nintendo 3DS instead of Playstation Portable). Sakura Wars V: So Long My Love was localized by NISA too late, in 2010 on PS2, just like Valkyria Chronicles 2 in 2010 on PSP. PS2 and PSP were dead platforms in US/EU in 2010. Wii port helped bit, but this console it was not good for those kind of games, where even Fire Emblem flopped so hard. The PS4 game also don't help, because it was released only on one platform, and it is considered by fans as a worst game in series.
I found Visions of Mana to be very mediocre. The world is beautiful and the art is nice, but almost everything else was a negative for me. I'm convinced that the dev team who made that game have never played a game before. There are so many inconsiderate and inconvenient to the player designs. Fast travel is a hassle, all the side quests are kill x enemy or find x item and some of them require you to travel multiple continents. Hope you like pulling up the menus and loading screens a lot. Multiple times there will be cut scenes and then control is given back to the player, only for you to walk 5 or 10 paces to another cutscene. Sometimes the game will teleport you out of an area before you're done exploring after a cutscene, but other times when that would be convenient it makes you walk instead. The combat doesn't feel good, hitting the enemies doesn't feel weighty, your weapon is frequently too short to connect....this game is mid at best. If you are going to play it, I'd say stick to the main story and avoid all extras.
Poor quality of life features is sadly still a plague with Japanese JRPGs. I played Eiyuden Chronicles and could not deal with the constant start and stop of cutscenes and constantly taking control from the player. I LOVE cutscenes in games but the way these games constantly take control is frustrating. The reliance on messy menus is tiring too.
5:10 I mean, Fuga was more a return to the source for CyberConnect 2. The art style is basically Tail Concerto/Solatorobo, but sure the gameplay is different. :)
I'm always trying to recommend Fuga and Harvestella whenever i have the chance. Those game are amazing, at least we're going to get closure for Fuga with a third entry, and i admire how passionate is Cyberconnect2 about Fuga and the little tail bronx franchise (the other titles are some that i need to play someday); and last but not least, let's remember that Cyberconnect donated part of the sales of one of the games to children in need. I know Fuga's aesthetic can be well, uncomfortable due the furry stuff, but i can say the game doesn't do any weird fanservice and the kids act as kids.
Yep and Fuga has some not so subtle but at the same time vague references to .hack throughout it too. I'm hoping this means they might do a new .hack series or a spiritual successor to it in the near future.
Cyberconnect2 wants to make a new .Hack Project, but the problem is that Bandai Namco doesn't care about the series anymore and would rather milk SAO and Budget Fighters based off of Anime these days.
I have to thank you for making these videos, if not, people wouldn't know that these games did not meet sale expectations and might not be having a continuation of their series. Maybe people would buy more of these games after seeing your videos.
This is almost true for PoR, but not Radiant Dawn: - In Radiant Dawn, you may recruit characters otherwise inaccessible in a new game(Pelleas, Lehran) - In PoR, unless you were an FE vet or adamant over catching them all, your 1st playthrough would've probably seen you abandon Rolf, and Mist, while on a 2nd one, you can put in the effort. I know I did, back then (this was my very 1st FE) In general, since there's a plethora of characters, and no way to grind, I would assume the renewal of the experience in a NG relies mostly on choosing different spearheads for your army. It's quite impossible to have them all at a proper level. For the record, on my 2nd playthrough for both games, I made a point of making all my beorc units usable (laguz being nigh useless half the time wasn't my thing). I barely had enough for them alone.
@@nehylen5738 Maybe so. But arguably, the 2nd playthrough is still rather lacking content wise to fully justify a whole 2nd re-run when you've pretty much seen & experienced most of the stuff already the 1st time around. Sure not every FE can have stuff like Hector Mode, but still...
Calling visions a flop isn't accurate at all. It sold really well for the kind of game and series it was and SE scooped up most of the devs which i don't know if they would have had visions actually been a flop.
Hmm, one of these where I have actually played all of these. I have to admit, some of them turned out not to be my thing, or weren't actually engaging enough for a second playthru, but I don't think any of these are BAD per say, some of them just have issues of design or even marketing that just kind of sucks the fun out of them. NEO:WEWY is just...well, it's a sub series that's all about style over substance. While there's plenty of customization to be had in the game, it has a severe problem trying to do anything with that, especially due to how the design of some enemies basically is counter to strategies that earlier enemies wanted you to use, which SEEMS like a good idea on paper, but easily frustrates. Visions of Mana just had a bad time. It's sad, but I think it was just too expensive to really make its money back, as while it's a good game, the 'Of Mana' series has never been the gang buster it could be. Worse, it looks 'kiddie' for lack of a better word, and there simply aren't as many adults buying for their children, and in a market where 'kid' games even in RPGs tend to be cheap cash grabs(looking at you KEMCO), it just kinda flopped down and never got up again. Sakura Wars was just...a LOT. But sadly, it's big thing is the visual novel elements, and while those are good, they kinda have 'right' answers to almost every question, which leads to the idea of save scumming, or worse, looking up what to say, especially in a series that has, in at least two entries, needed you to play 'pitch perfect' to get the good/golden ending. The gameplay is also kinda lame...sorry but it IS. It pads itself via making you repeat the same fights with different partners, but since they add only a bit to the game's overall feel it doesn't make the experience different enough. Worse, it IS a hack and slash with RPG elements, when it was advertised as more of an RPG this time. Jeanne d'Arc. No opinion honestly. I did play it, but I have to admit, nothing in it stuck to me, which is kind of a damning indictment in and of itself. Fuga. I still hate that they didn't do a combined PS4/PS5 version, AND that saves from PS4 do not port to the PS5 version of 2...that is a VERY personal gripe about my upgrading between the two, and having to buy the first game, so it could convert my save, then go forward. Beyond that, it is a series with a unique look, but I think that worked against it. It is NOT a children's story, but it is a story about kids, despite their situation, and like Visions, kind of fell into that trap. Doesn't help that I saw zero ads for the first one, only the sequel. Batan Kaitos. I know others liked this one, but I hated it after a while. The characters have real issues that are addressed in very...saturday morning cartoon ways, until suddenly they're not, and the story feels like it has some twists JUST to have them. The prequel did more, but it WAS a prequel, and thus, could actually change anything of the future story, and was kind of hemmed in by it, even if its story is better written, and they ironed out the card gameplay, which was kind of...not quite there in the first one. Star Ocean...the fact that the remake of Star Ocean 2 sold better than this one by more than an order of magnitude is disappointing. And for once, there WERE ads for both of them. I saw them on the PS Story back when they were coming out, and PSPlus even did a huge push, making all the games free for a bit on their premium level so you could play those when the Remake came out. Honestly, I will say, I think 2 was the better game, but some of that is the story of SO6 was TERRIBLY paced, and a lot of reviewers pointed that out. It takes over 10 hours of gameplay to get to any kind of point, and several scenes setup obvious plot points, that then take dozens of hours to pay off. Worse, when things start happening, they happen all at once, so it feels rushed. Harvestella. As stated, it ran poorly on switch. Like, absolutely awfully, and the gameplay just didn't give enough to it to make keeping going worth it. FE: path of radiance. Good idea for a game, but it is one of the most SET games in the series. There are no extra battles, tons of optional recruits, but you get ONE chance at any of them. Heck, NG+ mode did nothing other than giving you an item for some characters that changed their stats around just a bit, not even stronger, just different, and not even that much. It was a game that only begrudgingly wanted you to play it, which is a shame as it had a story to tell. Earthbound...I have nothing to say about it, it's a fantastic game, marketed all wrong overseas, and thus it sold poorly in the only entry to even TRY to get to other markets, despite fans showing love for the franchise over the years.
My first Star Ocean was The Last Hope. Prior to this game i liked trophy hunting in games. Last hope killed in me any fun that came from that. And since then i just skip EVERY star ocean game that comes out. A thought for developers to not go crazy with trophies.
I could go on for hours about Fuga and the story behind it. It's borderline tragic how devoted CC2 is to the Little Tail Bronx universe (of which the Fuga games are just the most recent entry). Producing the game at a known deficit. members from other teams putting in unpaid work hours in their off time, members literally traveling to meet the press (usually on their off time as well) in person to try and get gaming publications to cover it and just so much more. They want this to be a thing so badly, and it deserves it, but the wider community simply won't accept it because of the "furry" art style.
That's not necessarily true. At launch, demand could be low but then years later the collector's market goes wild because people realize the game is good and there weren't very many copies printed.
There are so many more games out there, but we don't have any more time, perhaps less time, to play them. We literally don't have time to play them all.
''How did this happen?''
In the case of TWEWY NEO, Square always teased a sequel in the numerous ports of the original game, but the damn thing never came, and when it finally came, it was too late (same thing with the anime). The fandom (the target audience most likely to buy the game) was long gone.
The fact that they barely advertised the game didn't help either. As a TWEWY fan since 2008 I didn't even know NEO was finally out until months after its release.
EDIT: Yo, minutes after making this comment I found out that there is a Steam port from years ago. They didn't bother to properly advertise the goddamn game TWICE.
For real. Honestly square has really lost their buzz these days.
Nah it had absolutely nothing to do with the fandom. Because the fandom SHOWED UP pre-release and on to be the actual promotors and pushers for the game and its IP.
It was square enix who infamously does 1 of 2 things with its IPs.
1. It OVER promotes them. To the point of routinely posting heavily plot and late game spoilers for cut scenes, game play and etc all over the trailers and marketing.
Or,
2. the case of many not block buster names in squares catalogue, they get nothing. They barely show up in directs or showcases, there is no marketing the month leading up to release, there is hardly anything on release day, and the days following. This is exactly what happened with NEO TWEWY. And then, they attempted to make up for it by trying to do 1 a month or so after release spoiling major reveals and surprises in NEO's plot with their horrendous marketing attempts.
@@charlesedwinbooks oh they threw NEO:TWEWY under the bus HARD - Square Enix's marketing campaign for it in the west (where first game was the most popular btw) ended with ONE trailer in a March on Nintendo Direct AND THAT'S ALL.
In June there LITERALLY were nothing to push it to forefront - Square Enix had NOTHING in that month... And they still chose to not market the only big title they are releasing at the end of the month.
Even better they kept release so quiet - NO ONE FRICKIN' KNEW they announced EGS PC release in July in short message in Twitter with zero fanfare - even better 9 month later Steam release will happen with ZERO NOTIFICATION - heck, in Steam itself for owners of Steam port of the FIRST game there would be NO NOTIFICATION about second being released on the platform - that's HOW MUCH Square Enix DID NOT FRICKIN' CARE.
Hilariously they actually had a marketing campaign in Japan... But TWEWY series were never popular there (ya know like X-box) so it didn't get any results (also releasing right beside a few big releases like FE3H spinoff didn't help)
The no steam port was a huge reason i didnt even try the game, i was interested in the game but im not willing to invest in a platform i would probably never open again, and by the time the steam port came, i lost interest
In my opinion NEO TWEWY wasn't nearly as good as TWEWY. Part of TWEWY's appeal in my opinion was the gimicky combat. Yes it worked best on the DS, but even the ports and the simplified partner controls had their charm. NEO for a large part reduced this to "press button". The story suffered as well. Where TWEWY used the reaper's game as a vehicle to explore the characters, NEO uses the characters to explore the Reaper's game. But the issue is that the Reaper's game isn't really all that interesting. Most of the things the game presents as mysteries are things that we already know (like what happens to those who lose). The fact that the winning team turned out to be reapers wasn't that big a twist either because in TWEWY, the final boss for each week was a reaper as well. And the new characters didn't really have much of a development either. (also who decided it was a good idea to give the main character a chin diaper? Talk about unappealing design. One that is, unlike Neku's headphones, completely irrelevant to the character's personality).
The studio behind Visions of Mana was not closed because of the game. It was closes because the owners wnated to step down from Japan, so they were only finishing the contract work. And Square-enix was happy enough with the game that they hired the game director some weeks after the game released.
Yes, they were actually being closed while the game was still being made, forcing the remaining few people to rush it out.
Didn’t know this game even came out 😮
Oh good. I was worried that this was t end of Mana games.
The marketing being Neo: The World Ends With You made me sad. I put in 100+ hours into what was a very solid game and there was plenty in the game to enjoy!
NEO TWEWY is even more frustrating because despite releasing in July, it didn't get a trailer or spotlight in Square's very own E3 presentation in 2021 and only appeared for a frame in the at the end of the presentation.
Exactly, it had 0 marketing, I was more shocked when it came out, there was zero ads or fanfare.
@@UltimateGattai I won't call it 0 marketing.
Yes the ads for it is easy not balls in the walls like how they market a final fantasy game.
But again they market it by releasing the the switch port for the first game and made an anime for the first game so people don't necessarily have to play the first game and they can just watch the anime then play Neo Twewy.
The trailers also created enough intrigue with the "who is the guy in the hood" mystery that people made videos on and created discourse within the niche.
Most what affected it is not the lack of marketing but because of what other games that were released that year took most of people's attention
Please put the tiles of the games in the timestamps. Using numbers isn't going to help them....
I guess it's to prevent spoilers, though the in-video title cards are still readable while scrubbing. Ultimately, proper tagging will probably help with discoverability.
content creators want us to watch all of them :D
If Sakura Wars wasn't a PS4 exclusive, it would've sold MUCH better
You can send this text to Toshihiro Nagoshi, he was producer and executive manager of this game. His personal Playstation bias ruined also Valkyria Chronicles, and nearly Yakuza (he stuck both series only on Playstation, until Takaharu Terada and Masayoshi Yokoyama released these series from Sony prison with Valkyria Chronicles & Yakuza 0 PC ports). Oh wait ... he was kicked out from Sega. He maybe produced good games (Daytona USA, Super Monkey Ball, Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars 2019), but his leadership in business decisions as a CEO were always awful.
Ya, I wish that I can buy this on PC
@@YouDonkeyfu Just my opinion but it was not a good game. Graphics were good, combat looks more fun on screen than it actually is and the rest of the game really sank it for me.
No wonder, they changed Valkyria Chronicles combat into ... Sonic ? It's considered as a worst game in series and called ,,abomination'' of original Sakura Wars, by Japanese fans. Without Ouji Hiroi, RED Company, and original developers probably it's impossible to capture magic of older games. Still this game could sell more, if would be released not only on PS4, and not in the same time with Final Fantasy VII Remake & Persona 5 Royal.
@@RoachyRoachandthefunkybunch maybe but I still wish I get to experience this franchise on PC , I always seem screenshot of this ip but since they are more or less console exclusive, I never get to play any of them
Non Final fantasy square enix game lack marketing and promotion..i see some respond like this " oh i don't know there is new star ocean game or mana games"
It's similar situation with every other japanese publisher in the West:
Square Enix - aside of Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest (in Japan) 0 marketing and promotion
Sega - aside of Sonic & Yakuza 0 marketing and promotion
Atlus - aside of Persona/Metaphor & SMT V 0 marketing and promotion
Bandai Namco - aside of Dark Souls, Tekken & Tales 0 marketing and promotion
Koei Tecmo - aside of Soulslike games 0 marketing and promotion
No investment in other series in the West (especially in marketing) is reason why those games are destined to flop outside Japan. More bigger marketing & budget get their main IP's, then is better chance for overshadowing and cannibalize series who don't had that luck being mainstream. Most of publishers don't want risk with new or dormant IP's and give them a not big budget. Or they risk on spend money on GaaS / mobile gachas, instead of more creative singleplayer games,
@@nr2676 add kingdom hearts to square enix too since the franchise is one of their biggest
@crystalpeaches7825 yes but Kingdom Hearts is dormant franchise, so i dont count
It isn't only Eastern publishers doing this. For example:
Ubisoft: Prince of Persia was a flop.
Potential Audience: There was a new Prince of Persia?!
"publishers don't want risk with new or dormant IP's", as quoted by @@nr2676, is the real reason. In the case of Prince of Persia, the last title to have a Wikipedia article is 2010's Forgotten Sands. Activity between that and Lost Crown are re-releases, mobile shovelware, and tech demos. So basically after almost 15 years of no meaningful activity, suddenly a new title is dropped without fanfare. It sells poorly, further justifying focusing on semi-yearly releases of Assassin's Creed and Tom Clancy shooters.
The fact that Square did no marketing whatsoever for the game and out of nowhere simply shadowdropped the game on Steam didn't help Neo: TWEWY at all.
A pitty tho, The game is amazing!
The World Ends with You NEO is amazing. Great game. It's a crime that square botched it's marketing so badly.
They released Steam port with Persona 5 Royal Steam port. Dead on Arrival.
This is the problem with modern posters on the internet. Most of them are all talk, not action. They said " I want turn-based game. I want a proper single-player game etc" and when the developers made these type of games for them, the first thing they did was not support/buy the game and they came out with a lot of excuses why they can't support the game.
THIS! So much this. Now when people say they want X game it just peeves me off. I saw this since the Nintendo DS era.
The Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown amd Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope was my last straw. People griped how all Ubisoft games are the same and bland and then when we got some variety, people didn't support them and made all sorts of excuses.
You're just mistaking Real Life with The Internet.
I think these publishers expect games to sell too fast. I love these games and will buy them. But I also have a massive backlog and am unwilling to buy something just so it can sit there for months. Maybe I just need to start doing that though...
@@TumultuousMthey want them to sell fast since they Guage how well they are doing through an annual revenue check.
And that the big suits need to revaluate their business model for the next year based on that annual revenue.
And then they go play gacha games and spend hundred over the months because they said "no time for long rpg"
Neo: TWEWY was my favourite game of 2021. I had not got so sucked into a game like that for years. Frankly, there was not enough marketing for it, but I was so hyped for it I pre-ordered the thing.
It had enough marketing people just looked over it since they are more hyped about other games that year.
Having an anime, the first game being ported for switch, being both neo and the Twewy switch port being in the direct plus the other interviews for the anime and game.
Is not enough "marketing". Like that is more marketing compared to Octopath Traveler.
@@DoodWhoDraws Octopath Traveler was and still is a pretty well known game. I remember ads everywhere back then, with everyone and their grandmas suggesting people to play it, too.
neo the world ends with you is so incredible. its quite upsetting that square didnt market the game for shit, leaving it out to flounder. such irreverence for an excellent and unique game
NEO twewy was tragic due to its very poor marketing. The fact ballan wonderland got more marketing then it is embarrassing and disappointing
Or Babilons Fall and Forspoken
NEO: TWEWY was amazing and I'm shocked it did so poorly.
Simular with Sakura wars, I think the games theme around romance sadly put alot of people off. Also I know alot of people want play a game if it doesn't have English audio, so that may hinder some sales aswell.
Sakura Wars is mostly Visual Novel and Dating Sim, obscure genres outside of Japan. People in the West want to play a game, not only read for 90% of the game. Mediocre gameplay and lack of English dubb = dead on arrivall in USA. But still there is demand for those kind of games, but not on PS4. Switch and PC have many Visual Novel games. Most of people play those kind of games on portable devices, because they don't want have situation from ,,are you winning son'' meme.
@nr2676 yeah that makes sence, I rarely play my switch, only the exclusives, but I did notice it had alot more visual novels than PlayStation.
Some of the games on this list are quite good games, some I personally can see why people wouldn't like them.
@@nr2676I really think it should have been a tbs game instead of action. It's strange to have an visual novel/action game with hardly any action. Plus it alienates fans of the previous games.
@ Probably low sales of Valkyria Chronicles 1&4 (games from same dev team, similar to old Sakura Wars gameplay wise - those games use improved version of combat system from SW3-5) + bait ,,America love action games, hates SRPG / turnbased'' (like Square Enix did with Final Fantasy XVI and Valkyrie Elysium, which was also not successful) or just Team Sonic incopentence, because they only developed Sonic in last 20 years, and copied paste Sonic gameplay to Sakura Wars. Or Nagoshi was just dumb, because RGG Studio advised Team Sonic to change gameplay in Sakura Wars into action. But the problem is Sega never had a experienced developer with action games in 3D, aside of maybe Yakuza. If they wanted change combat into musou, they should hire Omega Force from Koei Tecmo, because Team Sonic can't even make a decent Sonic in 3D since Adventure 1&2. But budget was probably very tight, so they go cheapest and laziest route like always.
Grandia PFP (at the time of this comment) ?
Person of taste and culture.
Not even Final Fantasy lives up to SE expectations anymore
So sad :/
It's because SE nowaday being so greedy over their what they wanted while the production has been significant reduce because of japan population.
Want so high but not even repair their inside.
Well, greed... but also idiotic levels of production costs. Guys theres such a thing as TOO MUCH. FF7R2 is 160gb on pc, this is to much! Its 16gb ram baseline. Why? Games dont NEED to be this big and sparkly. They put too much effort in graphics but not nearly so much in story or gameplay.
FF16 was too much a deviation from its core audience, tried to attract action players while drifting farther from core fans.
Ff7 rebirth has a number of problems - they spent way too much on open world collectable side quests that no one wanted. Way too much spent on things that are not core gameplay and drag the game down. Game is fine if you mostly ignore them but then you miss out on a lot of levels and items.
Rebirth should have been more like remake - with a more focused story and fewer nonsense collectables. And forget trying to be open world, it's a negative selling point.
Both games had issues with being PlayStation only, which killed their hype on PC. Rebirth wasn't even available on PS4, so a lot of the players who bought remake couldn't buy it.
The conclusion is the same as a lot of major developers are seeing - they can't be blowing such big budgets on games that are not going to draw comparable audiences.
As a huge fan of the franchise Sakura Wars 2019 not being on Switch was absolute sabotage by Sega. The first new game in 14 years for a dormant franchise that was arguably SEGA's biggest in Japan in the mid 90s to early 2000s. It not being on the console dominanting Japan was such a bad idea.
Right!? I’ll never understand why they didn’t port it.
Also that release date with Persona 5 Royal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Trials of Mana Remake, Resident Evil 3 Remake, Xenobalde Chronicles Definitive Edition in same month. Yes it was a sabotage, like Valkyria Chronicles 4 (same dev team) in the same week with Dragon Quest XI, and Monster Hunter World in Japan. This game should be multiplatform, not only PS4 ekslusive. Yes it was a sabotage. Thank you Toshihiro Nagoshi from RGG Studio, and Hideo Baba from Delight Works for destroying franchise.
Man I thought Sakura Wars was back in like 2015-16, it feels like I played that game soooooo long ago. I should find it and finish it since it's never coming to PC, I think I only got like half way.
@ Mods on PC could save this game, but Sega is so dumb. It sucks Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars and Skies of Arcadia dev team is so neglected in Team Sonic. Fans ask for YEARS about remasters of old games on PC, like with Valkyria Chronicles, but Sega still ignore them even when VC1 was ported 7 years after release date on PS3 and it was BIG success (sold like Yakuza 0, which is still best selling game in series). That's why i hate Sonic The Hedgehog. Fuck this franchise. Now this dev team is wasted for porting games like Persona 5 Royal and Hatsune Miku on PC, but they barely port own games. like VC4 in 2018. Why they don't port own games like Skies of Arcadia, Sakura Wars, Valkyria Chronicles, Shinobi PS2, but port Atlus and AM2 games is beyond my undertstanding. The only one games from their team available on all modern platforms are Valkyria Chronicles 1&4, that's all.
I thought the same with 13 sentinals on release, thank god years later came to switch but too damn late.
Sakura Wars deserved better, it's nature as a visual novel/JRPG hybrid franchise with focus on history, romance, theatre and friendship probably makes it harder to market towards more hardcore JRPG fans.
The fun thing is if you change Imperial Theater into generic High School, remove mechs, and add RPG elements, you will have basically Persona or Fire Emblem Three Houses.
Also most of western audience don't know what is even Takarazuka Revue, which series is heavily based on. If you don't know what it's Takarezuka Revue, you will think it's dumb harem game, but this series was always loosely accurate to history (like younger sister series Valkyria Chronicles), not only Japan, but also France & United States of America from 1920-1930. I guess it's way too much for American brains.
NEO failing makes me want to cry. That game is fantastic!
One of the biggest factors I find from talking to people that I know, that hurts JRGPs is the lack of an English Dub on a lot of games, and or how text-heavy the games are, and I can understand this. If a game is fully dubbed in English it opens it up to younger audiences that don't have great reading skills and people who have trouble reading text without wearing glasses etc. I know that is one reason that I will put off playing some games because I don't like having to wear my glasses for long periods of time to read the text on the TV, as it becomes really uncomfortable, for example, strategy games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Oger Tactics or JRPGs like the original FF7 are some of my favourite games but I don't play games like them much anymore because of how text-heavy they are and the lack of English dub to hear what is happening in the story.
Sadly TWEWY 2 released waaaaay to late they had the opportunity of a LIFETIME when twewy got into Kingdom Hearts thats where the fandom revived for a while and acquired more fans through it. THIS was the right moment for NEO to release but sadly it didn’t
A lot of these had poor marketing...
If any at all!
I swear JRPGs are an odd genre. It's the most well known niche genre in gaming with a ton of the most passionate fans and some of the greatest games ever made. Yet it is not as mainstream as games like Fortnite. I ask HOW?!
I guess Fortnite is easier to pick and play than 60+ hour games that sometimes don't show their true potential until you played 10 or 20 hours.
"online gaming" is simply a different beast.
Being able to play with others simply just offers a more general.
I think most of the modern games on this list really come down to either cost or lack of advertising. I’ve wanted to play the Fuga games since I’ve heard great things, but $40 each is more than I’m willing to pay. Similar things for Baten Kaitos and Visions of Mana. Neo lacked good advertising, and Sakura Wars alienated Japanese fans with the gameplay change from tactical to real time.
Neo had enough advertising it probably is even more extensive than visions of mana.
These two both have anime adaptation to build up to the game release.
With Neo it has the advantage of the first game also being ported switch and then they also get featured on Nintendo direct.
Then there were also interviews for the game and even for the anime.
Neo got more than Visions.
But then people just say Neo "lacked marketing", but they won't say the same thing to Visions when they have almost the same amount of marketing with only Neo having the advantage on featuring in Nintendo's exclusive marketing featurettes.
Neo was more so of a case on releasing in mid year where people are hyped about other specific games so they looked over Neo in general.
I also think Sega fumbled Sakura wars by not bringing it to other platforms. Like regardless if the gameplay alienated the og fans.
It's multimedia approach to marketing the i.p was kinda a success since people vibes with the anime, the manga and it even got stage plays.
Like it appeals to a wider audience just by the story and concept alone. So why did they only made the game release on one platform.
@@thephantombroadcast3050 Most are on sale regularly. I know for a fact Fuga gets a 50% sale every 2-3 months. And I would argue $25 for a game you're going to get a minimum of 28-hours out of is a fair price (as a fan I'd say full price is reasonable but I have to be realistic). I mean in an era when Steam and the Nintendo Store are FILLED with poorly made asset flips for $20 I'll gladly pay $25 for a game made with custom assets, good gameplay, art and beautiful music. I think this age of crappy asset flips being sold at a 95% discount has made us develop a view that we shouldn't buy something if it isn't on a drastic sale, even when 1000x more effort was put into it than the sludge that surrounds it.
Poor baten and WEWY... loved them as a kid when I only had nintendo consoles. Have great nostalgia for them still
Usually Many people not aware this games exist because not enough publications
Adults are the only ones who plays these games not kids! Or few kids. Modern children didn't know or experienced co sole gaming unlike the goldens days of console year 2000. Kids these days plays on mobile.
Almost half of the list is modern Square Enix. Oof!
Oof indeed >_
Neo twewy is my favorite game of all time, Its such a damn shame no one knows about it
Earthbound is one of the most interesting case studies here. Despite the poor sales, it had an 'enormous' influence on the indie scene, including games like Undertale (which sold close to 10 million copies, from what I recall). It really is quite important in that regard, especially since it was the only officially localized game back then; the entire series sold less than 2 million units in Japan, so it wasn't a huge hit there either, but its influence really is outsized.
indies are always copying classic rpgs because its the easiest to do
@@kidrobot. Yeah, but you don't see 'that' many Chrono Trigger or FF 6 clones, whereas Earthbound is copied 'all the time'. Every year there's something in that vein. I guess it just has that kind of appeal. To be fair, there's only as much you can do with 8-bit/16-bit JRPGs, so it is what it is.
The majority of the list suffers from 2 basic marketing sins> launching at full price at the same time / week/ month of other big releases
Visions of Mana released at the same time as Wukong and was more expensive in basically all world market ( full price on ps store )
games on steam / gog / epic usually are 30 to 40% cheaper and that matters a LOT when peoples money are limited , like 60 or 70$ is not expensive to US and JP market , but it is for 5 billion potential buyers
I played Neo TWEWY last year
It was a really good game but yeah i didn't even know that was a thing until recently, never saw any kind of marketing
**adds the mentioned game titles to his Backloggery wishlist for future acquirement**
every single game I own and heard of except for Fuga.
Neo, Finallly a sequel which I pre-orded. Bought and got both Gamecube versions of Batien Kaitos online for pretty cheap with booklets. Jeanne D'Arc on psp was one my 1st psp games along with Legend of Heroes (another tactical rpg). Bought day one the new Mana game as well as the Granblue Fantasy rpg, to think it took forever to game to finally release!
Every game aside Path of Radiance, Earthbound, and Fuga, I own.
For Sakura Wars, I started out on So Long my Love on the wii and then got the ps4 game. I used to hunt obscure Jrpgs with my sibling whenever we shopped for games.
This is a really good list.
I heard about Neo Twewy sales tanking which is kinda sad. I played it during launch but I grind too much and got burn out.
When Fire Emblem engaga come out a lots of people know Ike but never played both of his game (too expensive and nobody own a gamecube and wii). But for me Fire Emblem Echoes Shadow of Valentia tanked the most eventho it's on the same console as Awakening and Fates.
I saw Vision of Mana demo on steam but was not interested when i saw it's an action rpg. Aren't the series used to be turn-based.
Mana was always hack'n slash series, not turn based. It was something like Star Ocean for kids. The Sakura Wars series had always turn based SRPG combat (prototype to Valkyria Chronicles), not Mana series.
Fuga is actually doing pretty well for CC2's original IP releases. Outside of .hack back in the day they didn't really get that much over 100k sales each, but Fuga as a series so far passed 450k sales. I can see with the 3rd game and the upcoming physical release of all 3 getting the series to around 700k to 800k which is about as well as one of the sets of games from the .hack series did. I wish it was doing better, but since CC2 is pursing self publishing of their original games going forward renewed word of mouth about the quality, stories, and characters of their original games will probably help Fuga in the long run.
I'm kind of hoping they can eventually get one of their original games/sets of games above 1 million in sales as it's a real shame that they get so heavily overshadowed by their anime games which are getting up to 8-12 million in sales for just one game. I'm also hoping they can bring .hack back as well since Fuga is a new entry in their more niche Little Tail bronx series, and .hack will probably have quite a bit more mainstream appeal. Hopefully Bandai will either support that series returning or let CC2 do a spiritual successor to it through their self publishing.
Man i want a solatorobo sequel...
@@honeybutter8257 A remake would be sick too, playing on DS is charming and all, but the soundtrack and visuals are held back from their true potential at least somewhat.
The way Square Enix fumbled Neo TWEWY was infuriating. They barely promoted it at all, and when it finally released on steam, they released it the same day that Persona 5 Royal came to steam. Why they would be stupid enough to try to compete with p5 of all games is baffling.
Same Sega with Sakura Wars, when they released in same time with Persona 5 Royal and Final Fantasy VII Remake only on PS4 in 2020. At that time basically 90% of Jrpg fans played only those two games.
Every time a video mentions Sakura Wars, I think "this sounds great," then go to Steam, see it's not there, Google it, and re-discover "oh yeah, this is PS4-only..."
I keep forgetting about the game, but it gets mentioned so many times that now it's etched into my brain as a game I'll probably never play.
If this got a PC & Switch/Switch 2 release, I bet it would do way better. Speaking of no PC releases, Vanillaware games would be so popular on PC, yet they refuse to allow their games to be ported to the platform.
No idea why, but it's a shame I can't play Unicorn Overlord on my preferred platform of choice.
You can always emulate it
Funnily enough I didn't finish NEO, VoM, and Divine Force. For NEO and VoM there were games that I wanted to play more and forgot to continue them (I like already halfway in both). Divine Force is just pain to play, I really like and finished the remake of second story tho.
I never understand why they don't bother advertising their games. Every game you make, you ought to give it a certain level of advertising
A lot of the games in this video were from Square just dumping a bunch of games at the same time. It was very odd. But also, you are correct. Gotta tell people about the game if you expect people to buy it.
Low budget, and publisher dont want take a risk with advertising new / dormant IP's. Instead of that they risk spend that money on Gaas/mobile gacha games, like Sega did with Sakura Revolution, because if Gaas / mobile gacha will be a success it will be a lot more profitable for them than singleplayer game Sega spend 30m$ on that mobile game, which was much more money they spend on console game. Ofcourse this mobile game flopped.
"at less than 200k copies it probably didn't even make it's money back"
with no marketing whatsoever and an obvious micro budget and paid for epic exclusivity I don't know about that lol
*5:08** FUGA mentioned : D it's probably already mentioned, but this is one of few low/mid budget, labors of love from CC2 that turned into a trilogy despite being very niche. the final game in the trilogy coming out soon : ) wish more people would give this wonderful game a chance.*
I hope Solatorobo should be remake too
@adolcristin3526 I would totally love that. And if they do, I hope they overhaul the "combat". I think we are way past the grab-and-throw mechanic ^^; it would be a shame if the cool robots didn't do any more than that.
fuga is good games, i have play 1 & 2 and the third game will came out this year too
How did these happen? Well I have an idea on a few.
TWEWY NEO: The game was barely advertized and the few trailers they made didn't really sell you on the story or gameplay in a way that mattered to non fans and even most fans weren't entirely sure what to make of it. They needed to really push the story and character aspects to get people interested in exploring the world. It also ... didn't help that rumors came out the English transaltion took a fair few creative liberties RIGHT when Western companies were starting to do the whole "SO what if we rewrite the dialogue? we write for the Modern Audience!" which probably really made western fans hesitate to pick it up at least until the rumors were clarified and it was ... not great but tolerable.
Visions of Mana: This game had a BETTER advertisement push behind it but it's advertisement was still pretty mid and the other big issue I felt with it was that if you looked into the story, the first part is all about "We're going on a journey to be human sacrifices so the world doesn't die" ... That's ... kind of a downer objective to start the game off with. I imagine people weren't exactly tripping over themselves to complete this.
Harvestella: From an outside perspective this game REALLY didn't demonstrate how the farming and JRPG aspects actually blended in a fun way. it just looked like Square Enix trying to make their own Rune Factory or Harvest Moon and people already had those games. It needed to sell something about itself that really stood out from the others.
As for the rest the fact I've never even heard of most of them says a lot about their advertisement and sales.
Harvestella not selling as much as its concept, quality and story ambitions would otherwise imply is a recent TRAGEDY to gaming in my eyes. You can't even find info about the game beyond its post-launch window and bugfix update.
CyberConnect2's Fuga mentioned.❤
Do hope it won't be the last. Surprised
that there hasn't been a review for the
first two Fuga games on this channel.
And the third game is coming out in May this year, too!
Fuga 1-2 were both great !
Rip visions of mana😢
The early reviews on mana did not help plus the situation with the devs.
Like they did not score the game low whatsoever but most of them discuss more so their negatives about the game.
Like the reviews on the game months later were the most positive reviews about the game
@DoodWhoDraws i completely agree it's a very solid game
Reviewers wanted Goat-status very solid entry but said indeed
Visions of mana is an absolute gem, It's RPG comfort food with great music and some gorgeous environments to explore.
Worst part of Star Ocean 6 was the text size that couldn’t be fixed… I’d stand right in front of my 55” 4k tv and started thinking I needed glasses. I did… but even after getting glasses I still could barely read it.
Very sad to see Visions of Mana on this list. Just finished it the other day and I absolutely loved it. It even made me fall in love with the franchise, whereas before I was just a SoM fan since I was a kid. Picking up Legend and Trials soon!
Harvestella deserved better, it really did.
Def a couple on here I want to try/are in my backlog. I have harvestella and Neo the world ends with you currently, but I'm tied up playing Trails at the moment
Square’s mistake was waiting too long to create a sequel for TWEWY. Plus the new gameplay didn’t really click with me personally… not sure why
nah, not time-wise
Console days are over and the existence of mobile which most kids today will play more and the people who plays consoles are adults and kids today isn't familiar with this type of gaming.
What about "Diofield Chronicle"?
Good call!
Loved it 😊
To this day Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn are THE face of Fire Emblem and the absolute best of the series. I wish to go back to those days before it became a high school dating sim.
Sakura Wars: Yeah that's what happens when you don't cross release these days on a series that you've kept dormant and on a single platform for over 40 years
dumbest decision sega could have made. it's really sad they never rectified it by porting on switch and pc
@@GASTBF I mean it's a long running error:
The anime Sakura Wars never made it to the United States
Its various games from different platforms never made it out of Japan until the PS2 one - which had some PRETTY BAD VA work
And given the opportunity and time to rectify the problem, they didn't.
@@KaiTenSatsuma The anime _did_ make it over to the US (the first OVA and TV series, anyway). I can't really blame Sega for not porting over the first game--the true identities that got thrown around at the end of that one would have caused an uproar in the West--and without that first entry to build on, SW 5 was probably the next-best entry point for newcomers. Sadly, that one flopped.
@@KoyasamaSo Long My Love was released in US/EU on PS2 in 2010, like Valkyria Chronicles 2 in 2010 on PSP. At that time PS2 and PSP were retro consoles (dead platforms). Dead on arrival. It is like release brand new PS3 game on PS5 in 2025. Yes this game was also ported by NISA on Wii, but on Wii 99% jrpgs and VN games flopped, even Fire Emblem games, and game was 5 years outdated, because it was game from 2005, not 2010, where HD era started. Yakuza on PS2 and PS3 also flopped so hard outside of Japan, like So Long My Love. Yakuza started selling well in the West, because of Yakuza 0 and Steam port in 2015 + Baka Mitai meme. After that Sega started advertised this series also in the West, and look it sells now very well worldwide, because have a marketing and support from Sega America, like Sonic. Rest Sega IP's dont had that luck, like Valkyria Chronicles, even if VC1 PC port sold exactly like Yakuza 0 (1M copies), but after that Sega dropped the balls with terrible spinoff Valkyria Revolution, who tanked Valkyria Chronicles 4 sales.
Earthbound bombed in the US due to its horrible marketing.
Star Ocean The Divine Force selling less than the last game is depressing. Also i know a lot of people buying Fuga trilogy now all 3 coming out with physical copies
I was expecting the Diofield Chronicle to be on this list. Have you played it?
Its awesome 🎉🎉
@ yeah it’s too bad it failed.
JRPGs have a stigma within the Western gaming crowds due to them being different from WRPGs and relying more on tactics than action, and that stigma started and continues to be heavily fed by gaming journalists who either don't understand the genre or have a vendetta against them. So usually they don't get much coverage in media or are covered in more of a negative light, especially because they take much longer to complete and require paying attention to the story, something journalists hate because they are always on a deadline for coverage and cannot take it slow to appreciate the story telling and gameplay mechanics.
Radiant Dawn is an amazing Tactical JRPG, but aside from Nintendo barely marketing the darn thing, I saw almost ZERO coverage for the game during its release window!
JRPGs rely heavily on mouth to mouth marketing in the West because of that, unfortunately, while SE tries to keep their JRPG household - Final Fantasy - as far away from the genre as they possibly can with each new release absolutely refusing to go back to turn based combat and the anime art style from FFVII's concept art and FFIX's amazing visuals!
THAT is why JRPGs tend to flop, they already at a disadvantage for being JRPGs in the first place. On top of that you put bad marketing and poor release timing, bad translation, bad dub, refusal to allow the player to choose the Japanese language for text and/or voice (which would make even avid JRPG players like myself not want to play them), and there's your recipe for disaster.
Edit: Of course Visions of Mana didn't sell jackshit! It's not on the Switch, which is the most successful console this generation, it's on the PS5, the console from the Japanese company that abandoned Japan! Say what you want about Steam being the largest platform, if you want a JRPG to be successful, it needs to be on the most sold CONSOLES of each generation! What are they going to achieve by being on Xbox, the console that normies play FIFA and CoD on?
the problem is that people really dont put the time to enjoy this type of games, since most of gamers wants is fast gameplay, amazing graphics, and coop, they dont care to much about story telling, character deveopment and different artstyle of how these past few years like realistic or medieval, this can be change if they makes the games people wants, all of this jrpg of the list are amazing and i recomend people to play them and even discover a new series like the mana series, amazing to its core and theres so many many games
most dont
Co-op? I'd love to know what universe you're in where co-op is so popular. And can I move there? There's like three JRPGs with co-op where I'm at.
@@SamoyedSagas what the heck are you talking about? they meant co-op in general, not for rpgs
@@kidrobot. Oh co-op in general? I'd also love to be in that universe. Practically no games have co-op these days either, so either way the statement is wrong lol
@SamoyedSagas not really. but nice try
Crazy how I seem to be a flop buyer. I own almost every game on this list
Same haha.
Visions of Mana should have released on switch and PS4.
As for Star Ocean, It's hard to get excited for a series that had one amazing entry while every game after it only got worse. Star Ocean 4 was so ridiculously cringe with its anime character stereotypes that I was just done.
Beacuse most of the western audience rather play call of duty games or gta type games especially western culture is very different from Japan most players are male so cute games are not appealing to western audience unfortunately
I could see that maybe 15 years ago, but I hear so much "Western gaming is dead. Eastern games are so much better!"
Asians games like Astro Bot, Wukong, and Metaphor dominated the last Game Awards.
Gravity Rush and its sequel might have been mentioned. They were both great JRPGs with a unique, quirky setting and story but flopped in terms of sales.
It sold 300k copies only on PS4, so sales were not that bad, but for Sony if X game dont sell in million copies = flop. And similarly like Sakura Wars it was released in same time with Persona 5, who basically overshadowed both games. If you release a game very close to: Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Persona, Monster Hunter, Tales, Nintendo games it always ends like that. If publisher release less known games in Spring, and Autumn, when ALWAYS are big budget AAA titles its basically suicide. If you ask normie which game which game he buy Final Fantasy VII Remake, Persona 5 Royal or Sakura Wars, 99% people tell you Persona 5 Royal or Final Fantasy VII Remake. And this annoying me, because big publisher always push own games in those months no matter of how niche / big franchise it's, because every big publisher at that time have a financial report.
It's a shame Square Enix is on this list a lot. They have been pumping out so many great games. It's a shame people only remember the few bad ones like that foam game and the marvel game.
Sakura Wars is so underrated
Especially Sakura Wars 1-5. Generally all games from this developer are underrated (Shinobi, Streets of Rage, The House of The Dead, Phantasy Star, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Dragon Force, Deep Fear, Skies of Arcadia, 7th Dragon, Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars etc.). Sega simply sucks at marketing their games, especially in the West. The bad move from Sega was fusion this developer with Team Sonic, because Team Sonic don't have a idea how to advertise their games, and spend all money on Sonic marketing. Sonic Team just doesn't give a damn about them, they only care about Sonic. I would prefer them to be independent in CS3 R&D or as Overworks/Wow Entertainment as they were in 1998-2008 and 2008-2018 and working with 3rd party developers not Team Sonic, but since CS3 R&D is now PSO2 New Genesis Team, I guess not.
I think it is dumb to not make the Sakura Wars not available to cobsole when they went on a multimedia marketing route for it, with the anime, manga and stage play.
Meaning it appealed to a rather wide variety of audience then the game being locked to one console fumbled the wide audience it captured.
Fuga should release a physical trilogy in the West for switch. I know a japanese copy is coming but the physical trilogy would sell amazing here too.
CC2 still doesn't really have proper international distribution for their physical releases yet. Unlike their anime games where Bandai or Sega would handle all of that they're doing this all on their own. I'm at least happy they are doing a physical release and it is multilingual too. I will definitely be getting the collectors edition and the only barrier is the pretty high shipping cost that will come with importing these games.
Visions of Mana's studio closure was NOT because of poor sales/preorder numbers. It was NetEase pulling their investments from Japanese developers and they shutdown the studio.
Oh interesting! I didn't know that. Sad :/
@TheGamingShelf yeah, it sucked. They didn't even give them a CHANCE to succeed. NetEase pulled their investments from several Japanese studios and I believe shutdown a few others too. Visions of Mana was such a great game, one of the prettiest and most fun from last year.
Visions of Mana was a gorgeous, amazing game. It came out at a time where it competed against several high profile titles. I feel like it just got lost in the shuffle.
As a side note, I completely disagree with all the reviewers who said the combat was clunky. I'm a stickler for action combat, and I thought the combat in VOM was solid. Maybe everyone is just too used to Soulslikes, that any combat that's different from that, they just don't understand.
I bought most of these games and I can confirm that they are great, I don't understand why some sold poorly except for those released on Gamecube, because the customer base wasn't that big.
No marketing + bad release date (in same time with big titles)
Yeah, Fuga Melodies of Steel: 2 releasing pretty much a day before Tears of the Kingdom was set to release was very unfortunately timed. I'm sure it wasn't planned, considering Tears of the Kingdom had been delayed multiple times.
You're probably spot on about why Fuga hasn't sold well. I am Very Not Interested in playing a furry, and no amount of great gameplay will overcome that. And I suspect I am not unique in this regard.
Fair enough! I think a lot of people feel that way.
I agree, but I ignored my feelings about being furry, and was rewarded with some games I loved.
I think that's an okay way to think since there are already too many games vying for our attention. You can't play everything so the more lines you draw the easier it is to pick what you actually want to play.
I say keep skipping art directions you don't care for even if its critically acclaimed because for every one you skip, there is a game with an art direction you do like that you haven't played.
I think after years of playing stuff Parappa the Rapper, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper, Crash, and Hyper Light Drifter I can see past that and appreciate a good game for what it is. To each their own, but maybe thinking of them in those same contexts will alleviate your feelings towards it. If not, not the biggest deal. Aha enjoy what you enjoy.
The furry thing is dead on,but side scrolling games I don't play anymore either and FUGA looked to be a ton of that. For me it's Full 3d with open world or close to are my go-tos and anything else is just a step back for me.
As a kid, I really wanted to like Baten Kaitos. I would pick it up off of the shelf every time I went to look at games and really debate over it. And every time, I saw it was basically a card game and couldn't bring myself to do it. This hasn't changed as an adult. I still want to like it and other games like it, but I really cannot get into the deck building aspect. I'm glad it reached at least some people that were into it, because it still looks really cool.
I would say sales doesnt always equiels how good a game is
Yeah, for example Skies of Arcadia or Panzer Dragoon Saga sold much worse than any of game from this list, and those games are masterpieces (96% - Panzer Dragoon Saga, 93% - Skies of Arcadia). But flopped due to release on dead platforms, and no marketing. Terrible business decision can kill even a great game, but great business decisions and huge marketing can sell even a mediocre game.
I would say most of the time it doesn't. Which is pretty sad :/
Great list Taylor, and I'd love to see some of these games get ports for the Nintendo Switch 2 myself, haha. I even mentioned Sakura Wars and Divine Force in my latest video! I definitely think that these games are heavily underrated and wished they sold better and got more attention.
Would be amazing! I'd love to play Sakura Wars portably.
Star Ocean - a series so inconsistent even it's own fans hardly defend it loudly lol
2 was peak but it was so long ago (excluding remake) you kinda expect mediocroty. Last Hope I did like because of some twists like alternate earth being blown up which still sit as memorable to me till this day. As for 6? If was decent but far from memorable to me from the story to the characters, nail those and graphics don't matter.
Is a great idea a remaster of FE Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, back in the day I couldn't find a copy anywhere in my country and now the games are too expensive to afford
Harvestella stands a chance of coming back evantually imo. World of mouth will help more people understand why its such a hidden gem.
Yeah, I really hope so. I had a great time with the game.
I need a sequel, theres are some plot points that can be expanded and closed.
Out of all the games that SE shotgunned out at that time, Harvestella deserves a bit more love.
Anytime I see a reddit thread and someone asks "should I play Harvestella?", loads of people come out of the woodwork to say how much they enjoyed it. Really hope it gets a 2nd chance.
I think the major issue is marketing.. If the headline is always “JRPGs are a thing but they’re niche” chances are they’ll be trouble selling.. I think Yoshi P spoke about this
The problem with Fuga is that it's a $20 game full price at best, but when it goes on sale it's never cheaper than $34.99. They need to read the room and realize an indie game like that cannot sell that high if they want more sales.
7:50
Props to the character designer for drawing her with his left hand.
Who designed her? Dennis Reynolds???
Sakura Wars hurts, but they did it to themselves. In an attempt to bring in new players, they alienated the few fans they had by completely changing how the game played compared to the rest of the series. The character designs also hurt it. They thought a "big name" (that hadn't been relevant for years, but I guess they tried to play off of the Bleach new anime) designer would bring in customers, and we just got generic designs. It's not what fans wanted, and it's too bland for getting in new people.
The main problem why this game failed is lack of Ouji Hiroi (Nagoshi rejected him), and RED Company. Instead of that, Sega hired a writer behind Girls und Panzer and Jiro Ishi (428 Shibuyia). Tite Kubo and rest of guest artists like Soejima, sucks compared to Kosuke Fujishima and Hidenori Matsubara from older games. They should hire Ikkyu Masa, a dude behind Sakura Wars manga. And prepare a brand new engine, because Hedgehog Engine 2 don't fit very well with anime games (PSO2 New Genesis runs on HE2, and faces looks like a dogshit).Yeah, this game wanted to be for everyone, but pleased no one. Definitely worst game in series. Sega fucked up with reboot. They should firstly remaster SW1-5 on ALL platforms in english. Let's hope we get something for 30th Anniversary in Japan.
Mana games have "baby" vibes, like they were made for babies. I hate the way the characters talk and the narrator.
Tbf that series is infamous for having "questionable at best" English dubs, with Japanese voice acting being far superior
So in regards to Sakura Wars, I feel it is a bit that some are not aware it has been a long running IP and just was shy to touch it. I got it because I have been a fan of the series since the 90s (and this one was still a great game), but when I spoke about it among some people in my group about it, some who will speak on how they love nostalgia and older content, they give me a blank look and ask if this is some new series before I show them that its been around since the mid 90s..
Yeah, Sega released this series 15 years too late outside of Japan. But they wanted release original games on Dreamcast (by Working Designs), PS2 and PSP, but Sony America BLOCKED localization Sakura Wars 1+2 on PSP and Sakura Wars PS2 Remake, because Sony called those games ..text novel'', and those two games were banned by Sony America along with Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner PSP version, because at that time Sony had bullshit requirements for releasing ports/remasters of PSP games (port/remaster MUST have at least 30% new content to be published in North America / Europe on PSP, otherwise instant ban. Sakura Wars 1+2 on PSP don't have new content, it's just 1:1 port from Saturn. That's why for exmaple Atlus added female route in Persona 3 Portable to meet Sony of America expectations. They also added bonus dungeon to Persona 2 and SMT Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, but Soul Hackers due to late release in 2012 was ported to Nintendo 3DS instead of Playstation Portable). Sakura Wars V: So Long My Love was localized by NISA too late, in 2010 on PS2, just like Valkyria Chronicles 2 in 2010 on PSP. PS2 and PSP were dead platforms in US/EU in 2010. Wii port helped bit, but this console it was not good for those kind of games, where even Fire Emblem flopped so hard. The PS4 game also don't help, because it was released only on one platform, and it is considered by fans as a worst game in series.
I found Visions of Mana to be very mediocre. The world is beautiful and the art is nice, but almost everything else was a negative for me. I'm convinced that the dev team who made that game have never played a game before. There are so many inconsiderate and inconvenient to the player designs. Fast travel is a hassle, all the side quests are kill x enemy or find x item and some of them require you to travel multiple continents. Hope you like pulling up the menus and loading screens a lot. Multiple times there will be cut scenes and then control is given back to the player, only for you to walk 5 or 10 paces to another cutscene. Sometimes the game will teleport you out of an area before you're done exploring after a cutscene, but other times when that would be convenient it makes you walk instead. The combat doesn't feel good, hitting the enemies doesn't feel weighty, your weapon is frequently too short to connect....this game is mid at best. If you are going to play it, I'd say stick to the main story and avoid all extras.
Poor quality of life features is sadly still a plague with Japanese JRPGs.
I played Eiyuden Chronicles and could not deal with the constant start and stop of cutscenes and constantly taking control from the player. I LOVE cutscenes in games but the way these games constantly take control is frustrating. The reliance on messy menus is tiring too.
Visions Of Mana was such a good time, loved every moment of playing it. Jean D'Arc is on my to play list for the future.
5:10 I mean, Fuga was more a return to the source for CyberConnect 2. The art style is basically Tail Concerto/Solatorobo, but sure the gameplay is different. :)
Switch dominated the console sales in Japan so much that I don't think Japanese orientated games not on Switch had a fair chance.
I'm always trying to recommend Fuga and Harvestella whenever i have the chance. Those game are amazing, at least we're going to get closure for Fuga with a third entry, and i admire how passionate is Cyberconnect2 about Fuga and the little tail bronx franchise (the other titles are some that i need to play someday); and last but not least, let's remember that Cyberconnect donated part of the sales of one of the games to children in need.
I know Fuga's aesthetic can be well, uncomfortable due the furry stuff, but i can say the game doesn't do any weird fanservice and the kids act as kids.
Btw CyberConnect2 is also well known for being the devs of the entire Dot Hack series.
And Asura's wrath.
@axel88er19 that I didn't know
Yep and Fuga has some not so subtle but at the same time vague references to .hack throughout it too. I'm hoping this means they might do a new .hack series or a spiritual successor to it in the near future.
Cyberconnect2 wants to make a new .Hack Project, but the problem is that Bandai Namco doesn't care about the series anymore and would rather milk SAO and Budget Fighters based off of Anime these days.
@doodlebugfour7070 that's just super lame. bandai is also focusing on the Tales series as well.
I have to thank you for making these videos, if not, people wouldn't know that these games did not meet sale expectations and might not be having a continuation of their series. Maybe people would buy more of these games after seeing your videos.
Another thing missing for the Gamecube Fire Emblems were "Replayability". Not much secrets, alternate Routes or even expandable Paired Endings.
This is almost true for PoR, but not Radiant Dawn:
- In Radiant Dawn, you may recruit characters otherwise inaccessible in a new game(Pelleas, Lehran)
- In PoR, unless you were an FE vet or adamant over catching them all, your 1st playthrough would've probably seen you abandon Rolf, and Mist, while on a 2nd one, you can put in the effort. I know I did, back then (this was my very 1st FE)
In general, since there's a plethora of characters, and no way to grind, I would assume the renewal of the experience in a NG relies mostly on choosing different spearheads for your army. It's quite impossible to have them all at a proper level.
For the record, on my 2nd playthrough for both games, I made a point of making all my beorc units usable (laguz being nigh useless half the time wasn't my thing). I barely had enough for them alone.
@@nehylen5738 Maybe so. But arguably, the 2nd playthrough is still rather lacking content wise to fully justify a whole 2nd re-run when you've pretty much seen & experienced most of the stuff already the 1st time around.
Sure not every FE can have stuff like Hector Mode, but still...
I'm one of those criminals who didn't play a single game shown in this video. Oops?
Calling visions a flop isn't accurate at all. It sold really well for the kind of game and series it was and SE scooped up most of the devs which i don't know if they would have had visions actually been a flop.
Oh they got most of the team? I thought it was just the director. That’s amazing to hear if so!
Hmm, one of these where I have actually played all of these. I have to admit, some of them turned out not to be my thing, or weren't actually engaging enough for a second playthru, but I don't think any of these are BAD per say, some of them just have issues of design or even marketing that just kind of sucks the fun out of them.
NEO:WEWY is just...well, it's a sub series that's all about style over substance. While there's plenty of customization to be had in the game, it has a severe problem trying to do anything with that, especially due to how the design of some enemies basically is counter to strategies that earlier enemies wanted you to use, which SEEMS like a good idea on paper, but easily frustrates.
Visions of Mana just had a bad time. It's sad, but I think it was just too expensive to really make its money back, as while it's a good game, the 'Of Mana' series has never been the gang buster it could be. Worse, it looks 'kiddie' for lack of a better word, and there simply aren't as many adults buying for their children, and in a market where 'kid' games even in RPGs tend to be cheap cash grabs(looking at you KEMCO), it just kinda flopped down and never got up again.
Sakura Wars was just...a LOT. But sadly, it's big thing is the visual novel elements, and while those are good, they kinda have 'right' answers to almost every question, which leads to the idea of save scumming, or worse, looking up what to say, especially in a series that has, in at least two entries, needed you to play 'pitch perfect' to get the good/golden ending. The gameplay is also kinda lame...sorry but it IS. It pads itself via making you repeat the same fights with different partners, but since they add only a bit to the game's overall feel it doesn't make the experience different enough. Worse, it IS a hack and slash with RPG elements, when it was advertised as more of an RPG this time.
Jeanne d'Arc. No opinion honestly. I did play it, but I have to admit, nothing in it stuck to me, which is kind of a damning indictment in and of itself.
Fuga. I still hate that they didn't do a combined PS4/PS5 version, AND that saves from PS4 do not port to the PS5 version of 2...that is a VERY personal gripe about my upgrading between the two, and having to buy the first game, so it could convert my save, then go forward. Beyond that, it is a series with a unique look, but I think that worked against it. It is NOT a children's story, but it is a story about kids, despite their situation, and like Visions, kind of fell into that trap. Doesn't help that I saw zero ads for the first one, only the sequel.
Batan Kaitos. I know others liked this one, but I hated it after a while. The characters have real issues that are addressed in very...saturday morning cartoon ways, until suddenly they're not, and the story feels like it has some twists JUST to have them. The prequel did more, but it WAS a prequel, and thus, could actually change anything of the future story, and was kind of hemmed in by it, even if its story is better written, and they ironed out the card gameplay, which was kind of...not quite there in the first one.
Star Ocean...the fact that the remake of Star Ocean 2 sold better than this one by more than an order of magnitude is disappointing. And for once, there WERE ads for both of them. I saw them on the PS Story back when they were coming out, and PSPlus even did a huge push, making all the games free for a bit on their premium level so you could play those when the Remake came out. Honestly, I will say, I think 2 was the better game, but some of that is the story of SO6 was TERRIBLY paced, and a lot of reviewers pointed that out. It takes over 10 hours of gameplay to get to any kind of point, and several scenes setup obvious plot points, that then take dozens of hours to pay off. Worse, when things start happening, they happen all at once, so it feels rushed.
Harvestella. As stated, it ran poorly on switch. Like, absolutely awfully, and the gameplay just didn't give enough to it to make keeping going worth it.
FE: path of radiance. Good idea for a game, but it is one of the most SET games in the series. There are no extra battles, tons of optional recruits, but you get ONE chance at any of them. Heck, NG+ mode did nothing other than giving you an item for some characters that changed their stats around just a bit, not even stronger, just different, and not even that much. It was a game that only begrudgingly wanted you to play it, which is a shame as it had a story to tell.
Earthbound...I have nothing to say about it, it's a fantastic game, marketed all wrong overseas, and thus it sold poorly in the only entry to even TRY to get to other markets, despite fans showing love for the franchise over the years.
My first Star Ocean was The Last Hope. Prior to this game i liked trophy hunting in games. Last hope killed in me any fun that came from that. And since then i just skip EVERY star ocean game that comes out. A thought for developers to not go crazy with trophies.
I remember being interested in several of these games, but they were overpriced at launch and then dropped off my radar.
I could go on for hours about Fuga and the story behind it. It's borderline tragic how devoted CC2 is to the Little Tail Bronx universe (of which the Fuga games are just the most recent entry). Producing the game at a known deficit. members from other teams putting in unpaid work hours in their off time, members literally traveling to meet the press (usually on their off time as well) in person to try and get gaming publications to cover it and just so much more. They want this to be a thing so badly, and it deserves it, but the wider community simply won't accept it because of the "furry" art style.
I think the problem with Divine Force is that story was so barebones that it wasnt even there. And JRPGs are made or broke by the story.
If a copy of Fire Emblem Path of Radiance costs 200 dollars on Ebay, lack of demand is clearly not the reason for poor sales.
That's not necessarily true. At launch, demand could be low but then years later the collector's market goes wild because people realize the game is good and there weren't very many copies printed.
There are so many more games out there, but we don't have any more time, perhaps less time, to play them. We literally don't have time to play them all.