It came of at least something of a surprise when they suddenly dropped a short PV for a previously entirely unannounced and unteased PS4 iDOLM@STER game, Stella Stage, during the Sony TGS Press Conference event earlier today.

It’s pretty safe to say that the franchises first outing on PS4, last years iDOLM@STER Platinum Stars, was ultimately something of a disappointment. A lot about the games presentation was fantastic – a nice new visual make-over and a pleasant atmosphere inspired by the movies training camp made a pretty good first impression, and the 765Pro All Stars shows were fabulous – but in the end it was a game that felt like a whole lot of stick without any carrot. That is to say, there was almost zero sense of progression to it – aside from there being little in the way of a narrative thrust to it, and your idols progression simply boiled down to repeating things until their numbers increased. Costumes, infuriatingly, were locked behind random drops, with anything good being incredibly rare – unless you dropped actual money on a P-Drop, a consumable which temporarily improved your chances. Ultimately, it felt a lot like it had taken a few too many cues from mobile games, without providing the steady stream of the kind of content those games have that make it feel almost (almost) worthwhile to play. This was particularly bad given you could enjoy a better implementation of these things for free by pulling out your phone and playing Starlight Stage instead.
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That’s Tokyo Mirage Sessions “Sharp” FE, as in the musical notation – I’m just too lazy to figure out how to type that.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is that game that Nintendo initially announced as Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem (where “X” is “Cross”, in this case), the game theoretically mashing together Atlus’s flagship RPG branding with Intelligence Systems Fire Emblem series of strategy games. This, of course, set alight expectations of some dark, gritty psychologically fraught low-fantasy epic amongst those who claim Japanese RPGs are now “Too Anime” (which is pretty much just a catch-all for lazy criticism).

They should probably have known a little better.
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I suppose it’s probably long past the point where me actually saying something about One for All is productive or useful to anyone. It’s not really through a lack of playing it, mind you, more a combination of laziness and bad timing. Whilst I’d well prepared for the games launch back in May, booking time off work to play it, I ultimately decided that it’d be far more productive to spend that time on a last minute trip to Chicago to ogle real-life idols instead of cartoon ones. Missing that launch window really threw off my timing, though.

Still, though, four months, a Platinum trophy and the best part of eighty hours of play time later, I guess I should write at least something about it.
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From the Japanese Internet game (and soon anime) otaku phenomenon Kantai Collection (or KanColle, for those who dislike typing), as the starter furniture for your office. Someone has drawn an adorable cat over one of the oranges on the box.
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Those of you who have been looking up the list of shows for the upcoming anime season have probably noticed the inclusion of Go! Go! 575, the TV show in which best friends Azuki and Matcha (who go together like… green tea and red-bean buns, I guess) decide to form a Haiku club at their school. And also sing and dance, because that’s what you do these days. The show is based around SEGAs Project 575, a media-mix project that is mostly spearheaded by the two game titles, the iOS Utayomi 575 and, probably more significantly, the upcoming Vita game Utakumi 575.

They released a trial version of Utakumi on PSN yesterday. I’ve heard (but haven’t bothered to verify) that they’re limiting it to 200,000 downloads for some reason I can’t quite fathom, though I’ve seen no particular indication that they’ve hit that limit yet (I’ve seen nothing through their Twitter, at least). You might want to grab it promptly if you have a Vita and are *cough*in Japan*cough*, though.

I have, of course, downloaded and played through it several times already.
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