Many companies in Japan have keiretsu style cross shareholding,
vertical keiretsu: with manufacturing industry largely comprises of parent company holding shares of their suppliers, distributors, etc, and in return those suppliers / distributors / sub companies hold some amount of shares of the parent company. These sort of shield them from market fluctuations.
horizontal keiretsu: when the relationships between companies are more horizontally sliced, e.g. you often see Mitsubishi UFJ, Mitsubishi Electronics, Mitsubishi Materials, etc.
These cross shareholding systems create a resistance towards hostile takeover, which have both its up and down sides, but at least it has resisted the likes of corporate raiders, e.g. Carl Icahn, where they acquire companies for asset stripping. Corporate raiders don’t create values for society, it’s to fatten payouts.
Sorry for the long reply, it’s just for other users to get a glimpse on why hostile takeover is extremely rare in Japan, and probably doubly so when it comes to foreign hostile takeover.
I’ve never finished FF9 on PS1 (my optical drive died), then I got distracted playing FF9 remaster a few years earlier. Finally decided to stream the game with a guide
The battle is slow, even with fast forward, the animation seems to be slower than FF8 or FF7
The fast forward in this remaster is not implemented as good as FF8 remaster’s.
It’s only either 1x or 4x speed
If you started the fast forward and forgot to turn it off before a cutscene, then the cutscene will play at 4x without any way to reset the speed.
Despite all that, I am enjoying the game, characters are likable. I’m currently at Disc 2, after the Clerya section
Resident Evil Remake
Again, I’m following a guide to get unlimited rocket launcher. I really dislike that 3 hour time limit. Or maybe I just really dislike time limit in games.
I’m not into survival horror, but I enjoy the shooting / action part of Resident Evil
So far, not enjoying it, since I’m just kiting zombies, skipping cutscenes, etc. My aim is to get unlimited ammo, then finally play both Chris and Jill sections without the ammo, and in some ways, inventory constraints.
Zero Escape series, since I replayed it recently, and managed to skip some steps. It’s a flowchart game, so developer’s foresight is kinda needed.
Metal Gear and anything by Hideo Kojima, I just found out while researching for this reply, that in Death Stranding since you can create pee grenade to damage BT, you can even pee on them directly.
Squeenix also had a kind of disappointing year between 2022 to 2023, with Babylon’s Fall failing, and Forspoken not doing great. The only big thing in the near future that’s announced is FF7 Rebirth, so I could see why shareholders don’t have much confidence in the company.
But I gotta admit, Square Enix of these past 2 years, have released tons of games that I want to play / enjoyed playing, albeit many of them are either remakes or smaller titles, e.g. Tactics Ogre Reborn, Chrono Cross Remastered, Octopath Traveler 2, Live a Live, Crisis Core, Paranormasight, FF Pixel Remaster, etc.
I hope this is just a stumble, and they will regain their footing, instead of them ended up getting acquired by large corporations.
I’ve only played TWEWY Final Remix on Switch recently. I find the control frustrating. Docked, it’s barely playable with joycon motion control, while undocked, it’s tiring, and my finger keeps obstructing the screen. The game also keeps interrupting you, very often when you moved between screens, and sometimes just halfway running, someone will just stop what you’re doing halfway for conversation that’s not that essential.
Now, this sequel has improved the gameplay part a lot. It still has problem with interruptions. But at least with proper controller support, this game is way better than its predecessor.
Immortality
This is very slow, not sure if I will eventually enjoy a 10 hour FMV mainly consists of clips not in proper order. Also, I prefer Her Story’s keyword search than this, because now I need to manually scrub the clips to the point of interests. So far I’m not enjoying the story as much, mainly because it’s about acting for now.
spoilerI know there’s some supernatural stuff in it
I can’t help but fantasize, what if the setting is sci-fi mystery, you scrub thru a number of CCTV, interviews, interrogations videos, about some weird alien / sci-fi murder. So far Immortality feels like a slog.
Just an update, finished NG++ of Armored Core 6. NG+ is NG but with slight variation of the mission, since there was branching paths. NG++ has way more unique content than NG+, and the end is satisfying. Final boss is tough, I needed a couple of attempts, and finally found my older loadout that works better against the boss.
I really enjoyed the game, especially since I am having Souls fatigue. Breaking down the game into missions ala Peacewalker makes the game more manageable, and maybe because it focuses so much on loadout, I find the game bit easier / less frustrating than say Elden Ring.
I finished NG of Armored Core 6, it’s a good game, and I like it a bit more than other Souls games, largely thanks to how speedy the mech movement is.
I’m going to do bit more NG+, restart Wattam, since I was distracted by some other games previously, and replaying AI The Somnium Files, since I can’t remember the story and bought the sequel on sale a few months ago.
Jeff is ex (old) Gamespot, ex Giantbomb, and the guy who got fired from Gamespot due to external pressure from Eidos after he gave Kane and Lynch a 6 out of 10.
There’s a site called mangadex that has scanlations translated in many different languages, you can use the filter on advanced search to narrow it down to manga translated to Spanish (ES) or Spanish (Latam)
It’s also quite a good way to learn foreign languages (open up chapters translated to English and other foreign languages and read them like a polyglot book)
It was originally developed by Acquire and published by Sony Music Entertainment.
Then Activision bought the rights from SME, and sold it to FromSoft afterwards.
FromSoft holds the IP today
but out of the 9 games released, they only developed 3 Tenchu games, and 2 of them were PSP ports.
so effectively FromSoft have only developed 1 Tenchu game.
Tenchu games were mostly developed by Acquire at first, and then K2 LLC
Acquire hasn’t done anything with Tenchu IP since 2009, and has been collaborating with other devs, making games like Octopath Traveler and Akiba Beat
meanwhile K2 LLC has been acquired by CAPCOM
I think it’s unlikely that we will get a another Tenchu entry with gameplay similar to older ones anymore.
If you want games with similar gameplay to Tenchu, then maybe you should watch Acquire’s outputs. They developed games like Kamiwaza and Shinobido that have stealth mechanics.
The image is a screenshot of my AC from Armored Core 6. It’s a reverse jointed AC, with the frame painted in purple and green similar to Evangelion’s Unit 01, while the weapons are painted in red, black, and gold
Here’s my current build:
Unit
Right arm: DF-GA-08 HU-BEN Gatling Gun
Left arm: Vvc-770LB Laser Blade
Right shoulder: Vvc-70VPM (vertical) Plasma Missile Launcher
Left shoulder: BML-G1/PO3VTC-08 Vertical Missile Launcher