PlatinumGames / Clover Studio

[Foggle]

Granblue and Drakengard are fairly popular in Japan so I think both of those games will do well over there... jury's out for the west, though. Automata seems to be making a big splash with its demo, but internet forums aren't really the best way to gauge mainstream interest. I guess if SE ramp up the marketing a bit and it gets really good reviews it could end up being successful, though launching right next to Horizon: Zero Dawn is a mistake IMO. The Persona 5 delay might help quite a bit, though. I think a lot of western gamers and anime fans are at least interested in Granblue, so that might do well over here too, but there's no way to know for sure of course.

[Daikun]

They launched a Kickstarter to remaster The Wonderful 101 for modern consoles and far exceeded their goal.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/platinumgames/the-wonderful-101-remastered

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This is really good to know! I've wanted to play this game since it came out, but don't want to drop a couple hundred on a Wii U which is essentially already a dead console at this point. I can always use my brother's Switch so if it gets ported to that or the PS4 then I can definitely play it.

[Foggle]

They only needed to hit $500,000 for the PS4 version so it's definitely coming to that system! Already backed it day one - can't wait!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The Wonderful 101 has been quite the experience. It started out really obtuse and ultra frustrating on my first playthrough, and now that I'm halfway through Hard mode it's arguably the greatest game in Platinum's library albeit for a few really big pet peeves that I have with Hideki Kamiya's design choices.

Full disclosure, but like 90% of my first run consisted of Consolation Prizes and maybe occasionally as high as a Silver trophy rank. At this point Silver has become my baseline and I've managed a few Gold trophies but still no Platinums or Pure Platinums. You really have to work for those in this game and really master it's mechanics.

My main issue with this game is how it handles checkpoints, especially with insanely long boss fights, whereas it instead uses continues in an arcade style where you pick up right where you died. It's either continue without penalty (except to your score and mission rank, which is fair) or go back a really long way in some cases. This actually isn't too much of an issue in normal missions but is a big pain in the ass for the boss fight missions which are normally preceeded by a lengthy shoot-em-up style mini game that I'm usually horrible at since this game just isn't built for those kinds of mechanics.

That said, I kind of got over that upon looking at the game on it's own terms. I still kind of disagree with it as it sort of discourages people to get better at the game in a few ways, but if you're willing to put the time in and replay some longer segments, the experience is truly rewarding and arguably one of the best in the genre. I will still use at least one continue during boss fights since I don't want to repeat the mini games, but have gone without them on the regular missions. In that regard I think Matthewmatosis's review said it best: to think of this as the world's longest arcade game. In that regard, it is an arcade style experience with it's continue system in which you really have to get much better with your skills to clear a stage without using any continues. In that regard, your first playthrough is really like an extended tutorial.

At any rate, I will continue to go through this game up through it's hardest difficulty, and perhaps by the end of it I will have overcome that barrier in skill.

On another note, though, I just want to praise this game's sense of personality, and it has one of the most enjoyable stories in an action game since DMC3's, IMO.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I still love this game, but after my second time playing through Operation 006-B, I can say with certainty that the underwater shoot-em-up section is hot garbage. It is by far one of the worst designed pieces of gaming that I have ever played through in a Platinum game. I got another Consolation Prize for using four continues in that mission (all on that one section), because it's a poorly designed piece of shit. I have never been a fan of Hideki Kamiya shoehorning in this style of gameplay into his games simply because he's a fan of them. Taking inspiration from things you love is great, but in all brutal honesty Kamiya doesn't seem to get what makes a fun shoot-em-up or at least is bad at designing them. Even still, I can usually respect his creative intent and even if I don't like them, I will put up with them to get to the stuff that I like. And honestly, I don't mind any other such section in TW101 with that style of gameplay....except for this section. The perspective is awful, the way that damage can stack in a matter of a few seconds to kill you is terribly cheap design, and the whole thing feels artificially difficult. It's all of the worst aspects of Platinum's game design crammed into a single segment of gameplay.

Sorry for the rant, but I had to get that off my chest. This is still among the best character action games out there. That section just pisses me off, and it's not often that something is so badly designed that I just give up on it entirely and take the loss. This is one of those rare cases for me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Playing through the final mission of The Wonderful 101 on Hard mode without using any continues or any items is the first time in a long time that I had to overcome a significant enough challenge that my palms were literally sweating and I had to stand up off my seat at the end with how tense I was. There are no checkpoints in the boss missions, so if you screw up, you either have to use a continue and basically admit defeat (which neuters your rank but you get to pick up like nothing happened) or you have to suck it up and go back to the very beginning of the mission, which is sometimes over half an hour of content. In this case, I always spent the first 20-minutes or so on the first three phases of the boss fight, and then kept dying at the obligatory Kamiya flying escape mission section that all of his action games seem to have. Once I finally got the pattern for that down, I had two more phases of the final boss to complete, and died to the final phase and had to start over again from there. When I finally beat him, I had literally just a sliver of health left (one more hit would have done it), but man did it feel so gratifying to land that last hit and trigger the ending QTE and cutscenes. I ended up getting a Gold ranking on the mission, which in the grand scheme of things is nothing to brag about, but considering that I had gotten a Consolation Prize (the lowest ranking in the game) on that same mission on the Normal difficulty setting on my first playthrough, it was still a really rewarding feeling for me. That's the appeal of Platinum's games. Just getting through them to get through them is easy, but they make you want to get good at them. I would hardly call myself good at this game, but the sense of improvement is unrivaled by most other titles out there.