on PS3 and, after a year, on Vita. Now its remaster is playable on Steam, Switch, and PS4. Quite an atmospheric game. Give it a try, especially if you like crafting!
on PS3 and, after a year, on Vita. Now its remaster is playable on Steam, Switch, and PS4. Quite an atmospheric game. Give it a try, especially if you like crafting!
I’ve seen the anime series! It’s lovely, though I do kinda wish it were longer than just one cour so I’d have more time to spend with the characters. (My personal favorite is Linca, by the way.)
I wish the Atelier games were available in some DRM-free form on PC…
I’m not sure if Koei Tecmo are aware of GOG, unfortunately. But the Yakuza series and many other games from SEGA got into the GOG library recently and both Trails and Ys series have already been there for years, so here is to more publishers deciding to make their games DRM-free.
For whatever reason, it seems that Japanese publishers (and, to some extent, Japanese indie devs as well, considering that there are at least a few DLsite doujin releases with DRM) seem to be more inclined to use DRM, for whatever reason.
This has been particularly evident with Squenix releasing a bunch of western IPs on GOG but none of their domestic franchises, not even very old things like FF7 PC. Looking through the page you linked (which, amusingly, is in Russian, though changing the display language is trivial) seems to display the same pattern: I’m not too familiar with Sega’s IPs, but it seems Yakuza is the only Japanese franchise from them on GOG. Well there’s Streets of Rage 4, but I noticed that that’s a LizardCube/DotEmu production. Contrast being able to find Sonic games past and present on Steam.
I don’t know why this is the case. It’s possible that Japanese publishers are more concerned about piracy, but it’s also possible that other factors are at play, such as differences between how GOG and Steam do business in Japan/with Japanese publishers, and/or a general reluctance to release to more platforms (which was probably why many famous JRPGs didn’t release on PC for quite a while). I can speculate but I don’t actually know.
Koei Tecmo (of Atelier et al. fame) and Bandai Namco (of Tales et al. fame) are two very big players who seem to still be sitting recalcitrantly on the side of not going DRM-free.
On the other hand, Nihon Falcom is probably one of the most strongly DRM-free Japanese publishers/developers. Basically everything they have (within reason) has been released DRM-free – even when other games from the same publishers don’t go DRM-free. Like, the earlier Ys and Trails games were published by XSEED, which has also released a bunch of non-Falcom games on GOG (e.g. Heroland, Wizardry, Little King’s Story, Corpse Party), but later games have been published by NIS America (starting with Ys VIII and Trails of Cold Steel 3), and Tokyo Xanadu eX+ somehow ended up in Aksys’s hands, but despite no other Aksys games releasing on GOG and NISA’s GOG offerings being somewhat spotty, these games are all on GOG. Falcom makes great games and great music, and they’re also great on being consumer-friendly.
In a similar vein, there’s also Idea Factory and Compile Heart. I haven’t quite learned to distinguish the two of them, since I don’t play their games, but there’s a solid amount of their stuff that’s on GOG, most prominently the Neptunia franchise, but also other things like the Agarest franchise and the Mary Skelter and Dragon Star Varnir games. It’s not quite their whole catalogue (e.g. no Monster Monpiece), but they do at least have a pretty significant presence. Good on them.