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AtomSummon Night: Twin Age simplified for America?
Not too long ago, I picked up a copy of Atlus' recently released DS RPG, Summon Night: Twin Age. The first time I went into my item menu, I noticed that I had 50 high-level HP recovery items, along with the same number of high-level PP recovery items. While this struck me as odd, considering I never picked up any of said items, I didn't really think much of it.
Later, while browsing messageboards for the game, I noticed that others had discovered not only the items, but also the fact that the two main characters both start out with a high-level skill that they shouldn't have at level one. Interestingly, it turns out that these skills and items were not present at the beginning of the Japanese release of the game. In the Japanese version, you start out with an empty inventory and no skills at all.
This leaves me to wonder why Atlus decided to make the beginning of the game easier for US audiences? It seems a bit strange to me, especially since the recent trend has been for US versions of games to get more/harder difficulty settings as opposed to their Japanese counterparts.
Readers, what do you think?
Images courtesy of Atlus.
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11 Responses to “Summon Night: Twin Age simplified for America?”
June 17th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I’m actually playing this game for review purposes. I was having trouble until I futzed around and discovered that I needed to upgrade skills and put them on my menu before I could use them. If one of the happy anime characters had explained this more clearly early in the game, I never would’ve needed fifty thousand banana yoghurts.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
The tutorial girl in the first (only?) shop does explain the command palette, but I know what you mean. There IS a steeper curve with regards to all the options and menus you can fiddle with
June 17th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
What do you guys think of the game - is it worth picking up? I made it a couple hours into Soma Bringer before my inability to read Japanese (and the interminable dialog boxes) got overwhelming, but I’m still in the mood for some DS dungeon hacking.
June 17th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I think so. It really is a high quality dungeon hack…the music and graphics are really good and the gameplay is surprisingly fluid (coming from a guy who normally doesn’t like style driven gameplay). I actually enjoy doing the stylus input combos
June 17th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Well, it’s a game for kids. What do you expect? They just don’t know how to play challenging games these days.
June 17th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
this game has nothing on the GBA titles, which were awesome. the dumbed down difficulty doesn’t help… at least give us the option!
June 17th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Wow, that’s a pretty surprising move coming from the publisher that likes to rape us with Shin Megami Tensei and Etrian Odyssey.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Atlus is a localizer, all their coding is done by the original team. Considering on their message board they claimed the game was the same as the Japanese version, the only think I can think of is the Japanese developers either decided they needed to make the game easier for Americans or sent them a different version then the final Japanese version.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:58 am
@EvilAkito: I second that. the amount of times Etrian Odessey punished me for carelessly walking five steps to far is painfully high x__X
June 18th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
speaking of etrian odessey, did anybody notice the highest attack sword in this game?
*SPOILERS*
the Stag Slayer for dispatching FOEs
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June 17th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Yeah… I was the one that posted that on the Atlus forums. I really don’t like the move. I am all for easing the player into the game, but this basically removes all difficulty in that the bosses die in seconds.
I am still having fun with the game and I hear it does get harder later. I hope the spike in difficulty is enough to make up for the beginning.