The thing is, I do not consider $60 a premium price for singleplayer offline games in this day and age...I consider it a bargain, in the sense that these games are already a niche product (even moreso in the case of JRPGs). I get that $60 is steep compared to typical sale prices of PC games, and also that not all $60 PC games contain the same amount of content.

It is up to personal preferences as to what one is willing to pay for the game, of course. My mentality is that I would be willing to pay upwards of $100 for games like Witcher 3 as I want games like this to keep being made. This is counterbalanced by the fact I would NOT be willing to pay a single cent for games with DRM, games forcing a client, games focused around online-multiplayer. Interestingly, I don't see myself paying $100 for newer JRPGs but I think $60 is fine.

As for offline and online, you and I simply disagree. I want that stuff out,out,out of singleplayer games altogether unless we are talking local couch multiplayer or maybe LAN multiplayer at most. Resources that go to multiplayer could instead be used towards singleplayer. Along similar lines, this is why I mentioned preferring text-based dialogue over voice-acting...with finite resources, one has to pick and choose.

Absolutely. Comparing production values to other games priced at around $60 is only half of the story. Mainstream games can expect sales numbers that are orders of magnitude bigger than that of less popular titles. $60 gets you far if you can move 10 million copies within the first 24 hours of release (GTA V). It doesn't get you that far if you, like most independent games released on Steam for instance, struggle to sell 5,000 copies.

And it's not getting better. I've seen number crunchers figure out that indie game sales on Steam are dropping by 50% every year.

We, on the other hand, might agree pretty much :) I don't get the allure of online multiplayer. In my experience, in 9 out of 10 games you get matched with people that are either (a) much better than you because they spent way more time playing the game (playing online games sucks as someone who doesn't tend to get around to playing games immediately after release), (b) much too weak to be fun to play against, (c) annoying teenagers who care more about being obnoxious than playing the game, (d) cheaters, or (e) non-existent because you're the only one playing. Apart from the first Unreal Tournament and Dark Age of Camelot, all my online gaming experiences have been boring and miserable. Playing against people you know and that are next to you, now that is fun competition. Be it hotseat, splitscreen, or LAN, although nobody seems to make games for any of these three anymore :/

So question - how close is this game to something like Persona? I understand the combat is JRPG real time action (as opposed to turnbased Persona) but is the gameplay "loop" sort of similar? Balancing living in the real world / relationships / mundane stuff vs. engaging in the alternate world?

Curious about how the game plays - I've never heard of these before, and I'm not *as* big a fan of real time in my JRPGs (never really got into the Tales series) but if this one has some Persona like vibes I might be interested at some point.

looks good this game

Oh, I agree, I think a game like Witcher 3 would absolutely be worth 100+ Dollars/Euros, for the value it provides. Like I said, I think it's fair to pay higher prices for high quality games, and I'll gladly support good game studios, so they can keep creating such games. But that said, games like Witcher 3 are exceptions, not the norm. Arguably most of the big games out there don't provide enough value to deserve even a 60 Dollar price tag.

I think you have a one-sided view on that: Resources used for multiplayer features could be used for single-player content, yes. However, in reality, it is much more likely that such online features actually bring in extra resources for the development of a game, because multiplayer gaming makes a game much more attractive to the average gamer. I've personally never cared much about any of the online functionality in the Souls series, in example, but I'm aware that many gamers do, and that the series wouldn't be as successful, or possibly wouldn't exist, if From Software hadn't introduced their unique online elements back with Demon's Souls on the PS3. I don't see a problem, as long as the online features are an optional addition to the solo game, and don't lessen the experience in any way. ( And yes, I'm aware that many publishers -do- try to force the online features on their customers, and create broken, bare-bones singleplayer modes. I wouldn't buy such games either, so we agree there. )

True, but most independent games also have a tiny fraction of the production costs of a GTA game, and don't spend millions on advertising. They're in a completely different league, basically.

Yep, that's what I was trying to point out. "Get far" is as in, what is likely to be the budget a project has available for development and promotion. My comment was in reply to other commenters basically saying: this indie is overpriced at $60, because that's as much as the price of GTA V, which has much better production values. As you say, it's not comparable; you can't ignore the factor of potential sales numbers.

Thank you gog.com

Word. If you mean the typical AAA slop, I could not possibly agree more! :)

Maybe so. My understanding of the Souls series is that the online is considered crucial to the game experience albeit technically optional. This delves into subjectivity of how much online is too invasive to a person. I assume I find its existence in games more invasive than you do, generally speaking.

Regardless, I think many games could exist fine even without their multiplayer. The trick is appealing to a dedicated niche market, in this case, a market which is okay with the lack of multiplayer. In fact, some games may do even better by embracing niches than by adding multiplayer (consider for instance JRPGs or visual novels).

That said, I don't even think offline gamers are "niche" at this point, per se. There is a huge audience for epic singleplayer games out there. For financial reasons and reasons of control (DRM), companies have really been pushing the online multiplayer angle for a long time now. They undoubtedly hate that Skyrim was such a success when they were ready to bury singleplayer games and dance on the graves. And, yet, there have been precious few games in that Skyrim vein since. Oh but they did not tarry in releasing an Online version!

It's not "crucial" in any objective sense. I'd even go so far and say that it may diminish the experience on a first playthrough. I mostly see the online features as a way to add replay value, for those who are into it. I played all of the old Souls games on PS3 and didn't even have any online access there, yet it quickly became one of my all time favorite video games series. It's only crucial to someone who loves PVP fights etc., but you're not missing any of the actual game content by playing offline. People also claim that Diablo ( II ) was always about the PVP and online gaming, and used that to justify Diablo III's always-online DRM, yet I never played any Diablo online and still enjoyed them ( enjoyed the first and second game, anyway ). On the other hand, I don't feel like Diablo 2's online features somehow lessened my singleplayer experience. It's only a problem once publishers start to enforce an online requirement, like they did with Diablo 3.

Yep, publishers love online features and multiplayer gaming, because it gives them an excuse for all kinds of DRM and data mining. I suspect that's the main reason for "features" such as achievements, online leaderboards etc., because they generally require players to be online and logged into some client.

I agree on the $60 as a reasonable price to pay, i would fork that out if i really like a game, but..... we have lousy Euros now and i grew up with guilders so i will always compare them to Euros aslong as i live and thats why i will never fork out 60 EU, no way i will ever pay 60 Euros even if i became gazillionaire.

Many news games tbh are not my type of game . even if i was not restricted in playing 3d or fps,)motions and all that) i'd still not buy them, i might buy some 2d actiongames (which i dont buy now for same reasons: motions and many flashes/special effects filling the screens).

It's all too expensive and imho many games are not worth a pricetag of > 24.99 euros
best price would be between 9.99 and 14.99 and maybe just maybe 19.99 if i really like the game.

Extreme minimum system req. are also reason i (have) to skip many games, most of them look simple but have extreme systemrequirements ( and there are too many unity games( wintermute/visonaire and more poor klik and play to create a game tools around they use to make games) ( extremely bad performance if you don't own the latest hardware.)

I can still buy more casualgames but they are getting worse by the month and expensive aswell so they might become obsolete aswell leavcing no more games to buy which has one benefit: saving loads of cash .

Anyway let's hope the developers wakeup and start developing some decent games again like the did in the early years (jagged alliance classics ,commandos classic, fallout classicsage of empire clasic, baldurs gate classic and all other original classic ( no remakes or HD versions) games

I like both kinds of games. The thing for me is: I play online games primarily with friends. Due to time constraints one single multiplayer game lasts us a really long time. On the other hand I can always buy 20 more singleplayer games for the backlog and know that I will play them eventually. I still play through Zelda III once a year.

Companies who can afford at least decent netcode will keep trying to push multiplayer "options" on their customers. Some will be legitimate improvements to the games, some will be shady EA shenanigans like the always online Sim City feature that did nothing (other than to provide another form of DRM) or the loot boxes in Shadow of War, which is essentially a singleplayer game by design. While those features were/will be removed eventually, there will seemingly always be a flock of gamers and grandmothers ready to buy such games at launch. Despite this I have hopes that customers will learn their lesson eventually...
Pre-order is still around after No Mans Sky burned millions of customers, but I would be surprised if all of those people still kept pre-ordering video games as if nothing had happened.

having trouble playing this in fullscreen. it shows attachment and then crashes.

A number of things could cause that. Have you tried restarting your computer?

I don't agree with the general consensus in this thread that this Tokyo Xanadu eX+ game's price, or any game's price, should be tied to the quality of its production values.

99% of AAA games with high production values are utter garbage, yet they cost $60+ USD.

Falcom games have something vital that those games do not: heart & soul. Falcom devs actually put effort & energy & self-respect & tender-loving-care into their games, which results in them becoming a unique & fulfilling experience. Likewise, Falcom does not keep copying & pasting the same stale old derivative crap and releasing a barely-new version of that crap every single year, as is now standard practice for the publishers of the big mainstream AAA games which are garbage.

A lot of people cite Witcher 3 as an example of why Tokyo Xanadu eX is over-priced. The problem is, Witcher 3 is a cherry-picked example which is citing the exception rather than the rule. Almost every $60 USD game is way below the par of Witcher 3, yet they still sell like hotcakes. And Tokyo Xanadu eX is of much higher quality than those 99% of comparably-priced games, even though its graphics can't compete with them.

Furthermore, there's also the added cost of translating the Falcom game, which results in more mouths to feed (i.e. the people who work at the translation company). So comparing the cost of a translated Japanese game to non-translated Western games is not an apples to apples comparison.

As for the DLCs of games like Tokyo Xanadu eX+, initially I was against it on principle, but then I reflected on it more, and now I'm not.

Because I look at it this way: for people who buy this game (or others like it) when it's on deep discount (i.e. like it is in this current Winter Sale), they are getting an insanely good bargain. IMO the sale price is so low as to be possibly unfair to the devs & translators, who have done a lot of hard work in exchange for a very small profit per copy sold.

But the DLC is a way to make up for that a bit, by giving back some money to the devs which they well-deserve for making a high quality & original game. In other words, even though the DLC is over-priced if one is looking at it from the perspective of a standalone product being sold strictly on its technical merits, that concept becomes much more murky if one instead takes a holistic view of the overall value of the combination of the DLCs and the base game product.

If everyone takes the position that these types of games must be ultra-low priced as their MSRP even when they are not on sale, and/or that they must not have any kind of superfluous DLCs, then that's probably going to result in future games of this kind no longer being released in the West at all. It's gamers who lose out under that scenario, much more than do the developers, who will continue selling a lot of these great games in Japan to customers who realize that graphical fidelity usually has little to no relation to whether or not a game is good, or how high of a price it should fetch.