Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

My favorite will probably always be Destiny of an Emperor II. When I heard that it was being translated so long ago, I actually contacted Wildbill via ICQ to inquire about it. That was such a long time ago. But other than that, SSMS-I, SSMS-II, and Lennus II are my favorites. Shiki Eiyuuden will most likely join those.


Heh... yeah, I got really far behind. Also, I'm just slow, in general. lol

I'm not surprised to learn your reactions to SSMS-II. For about three years, as soon as I cleared the first encounter with the Jocque circus during my first draft, back when I was the sole translator before Gerb joined our team, I felt SSMS-II would end up being very "special". In my opinion, Nintendo made a huge mistake not porting both SSMS's to the West!

As for Shiji... Well, Hausen and I are putting it together with the depth and character development that I would have liked to have accomplished with DoaE-II. Shiji is a typical turn-based RPG with only your party fighting - not whole armies clashing with auto-melee settings available, as in both DoaE's - but the Shiji story is amazingly detailed in character interactions.

As for movies, I mentioned the "Emperor and Assassin" on the Shiji board. For DoaE-II lovers, I recommend a flick entitled "The Battle of Red Cliffs". Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, Guan Yu, Zhuge Liang, and many other Ro3K figures are prominently featured. It's a 2-DVD set that runs about 3 hours. It covers just a small fraction of what the DoaE-II story spans, but "Red Cliffs" is well worth a watch.

Speaking of SSMS-II secrets, did any of you discover what you could gain on those ice floes BEFORE they disappeared? Get up to them when you have the means, and you could garner a large number of VERY special items if you're set up with a certain character that has the correct battle skill to bag some very slippery opponents!

Okay, huge question...

If we decide to release SSMS-II to the general public, what needs to be done besides the rest of your testing phases, plus a few assembly fixes of menus by Bongo`, the Jocque graphic conversions, and the ending Kana graphic conversions?

I'm being kind of slow too, with the Japanese studies and a computer programming training course that I'm starting next week (bad timing for this course to begin, with the Japanese finals a month away, but it was not by my hand to decide when this course was starting, hehe). Right now I've just arrived to the part where you can build your town.

Nevertheless, I'll keep sending any typo, bug or whatever I find, if you're ok with it Mariusb got in touch with me and told me which characters he has used the less during his playthrough, so I'll try to use them the most, so as to do my playthrough as much different as possible.

As for this game in general, back when I played with SSMS-I I noticed that the SSMS franchise oozes charisma and is one of these games where you can see the developers have put a lot of attention to detail, storytelling and characters and lots of care to do a superb product. SSMS-II in particular seems to be very well regarded by Japanese gamers, who consider it a classic. There's always someone commenting "natsukashii..." in most videos of the Japanese version of SSMS-II I've seen, hehehe.

SSMS-II, in my opinion, is up to the greatest jrpgs of the late snes years, rivaling with FFVI, Chrono Trigger and Tales of Phantasia. I'm sure it would be considered an instant classic had it been released in the West, but I understand that, due to the playstation 1 being already in the market and most players already moving to it, it would have been a financial risk to do so (also, I recall rpgs not being as popular as they are today, until FFVII opened that pandora's box on the West. I also remember reading somewhere that Earthbound was a big flop in the US).

Just remember that you can change the Order - the 2nd character seems to be the main speaker generally, so with savestates you can normally test 3 versions of a given dialogue in one go, to make things go smoother (a lot can still be missed due to the nature of the game, but that's another thing). It would be good to look some more into the item/system effects - I wanted to do that mostly at the end, with all the spells/items available - because there's surely some issues there too.

There are. I just reported some. Also, I'll let you guys know when I get far enough to choose a party.

We're not on a schedule or in a race here, so how you three go about the task is up y'all. My only "rule" is you don't neglect more important things... family, job, education... you know how I'm wired! You three stepped forward - so, really - the fate of this patch is sort of in your hands right now. Otherwise, the much buggier version that was just sitting there gathering dust mere weeks ago was gonna keep gathering more small particles of procrastination.

Yep, SSMS-I was a frolic that captured the right RPG juices, and it led the way. In the sequel, the devs got everything right - side-quests, balance, story, the whole enchilada! BTW, if I don't induce burn-out, I think you who have time will enjoy the two Arethas, too.

This would be pretty interesting too, especially considering how popular Arethas were in Japan! But, as they say, first things first - that is to say, SSMS-II and Shiki a bit later down the road (I'm guessing not TOO far into the future!) I like 3x3 as a series also, so even if the game is average all things considered, I'm sure I'd find some enjoyment in it. Anyhow, things are surely looking up.

Aretha 2 was so good I played through the whole thing in Japanese about a year ago, and that was despite not understanding much anything of what was happening! That playthrough was an experience... the game just flows so nicely. First things first - SSMS-2, SHL... the Arethas will be pretty fantastic once their time comes.

Aretha 1 used an "imuse" type of music flow system, an intriguing detail in a SFC game. I haven't played much of it, but its translation will be a great boon surely.

Kurisu had less than kind words for 3x3, but a game doesn't have to be perfect to be enjoyable. We'll see in time.

That sounds really awesome actually! I've only checked some non-spoilery articles and gameplay videos about them, and they sure look pretty interesting. I believe that kurisu also mentioned Benkei Gaiden and Jungle Wars 2 being pretty decent in that early SFC period, even if they're not groundbreaking in any way.

Ohhh I hope we see it! DDs work is just too good!