New from Studio Saizensen

[CyanideBlizzard]

I hope you've all been taking great care.  There's been a bit of news on the Saizensen front over the past few months, and I wanted to share some of that with you.

MilkChan

An arcade game utilizing the ALL . Net P-ras MULTI system from Sega, MilkChan is a single player platformer that's all about reaching point A to B with a formula that might be a bit familiar to those of us here.

MilkChan hit back in July, and it sounds like there's been several competitions according to the website.  There's also no immediate plans for a PC or console release, or any that I could find during my brief search.  Though, I'd imagine there's going to be something in the works down the road given Saizensen's history.  MilkChan looks really charming, and super fun.  Plus, with an emphasis on quickest completion time?  It'll be no Umihara Kawase replacement, but certainly should conjure up just as much fun.

and then there's Buccanyar.

Saizensen has really been venturing into experimental territories as a company.  With Myastere, a metroidvania styled game, to Buccanyar which is described to be a "naval tower offense game".




Gematsu wrote up a very lengthy piece on it that I won't waste your time recycling, but it certainly appears to be their big release for 2023 (as the game is currently slated for a Spring 2023 release).  I've always been mixed on Saizensen's quality with 3D modeling, but Buccanyar seems to be going all in to, hopefully, change that.  I don't think Buccanyar is going to wow anyone with its visuals, but it certainly seems to be the most ambitious title they've done to date.  Especially considering that the game is touting
 

•   An exploration adventure and sea battle game set in an oceanic world.
•   Three protagonists (heroines) and their crew of evolved cats set out on an adventure aboard their own ships.
•   Explore unknown areas of the sea and engage in battle to open new routes while customizing and upgrading your ship.
•   Combine a wealth of parts to build a unique ship all your own.
•   A mysterious "god," monsters, unique pirates, and more appear in this epic story about the mysteries of the world.

and you can entirely see why I say this looks to be the most ambitious project they've worked on.

You can see some video of it in action here.

This kind of stuff is my jam, so I'm hopeful that Buccanyar will be just as much fun as it sounds.  It looks to have an arcade-y feel to it, and a bit floaty with how the ships manuever, but it's hard to speak on the quality of the final product.  I'm optimistic for good things, and to be better translated than their previous endeavor.

[Alc]

Cool, thanks for taking the time to post this. I ought to subscribe to them on Twitter or something, I never seem to hear of their stuff outside of this forum.

I have to say that nothing here strikes me as a change of pace - it seems like the same MO as the last few games; namely, top-notch 2D art, but with 3D art that seems like programmer art, like prototype placeholders. Which would be fine, except the games themselves are almost entirely spent in 3D!

Also, it looks better in motion (in that Twitter vid) than it does in the still images they've provided... why the hell would you put out screenshots showing the worst moments of your game? It's really baffling.

Anyway, I'll buy both of them, when they let me.

[KawaseFan]

Been chipping away at Buccanyar over the past couple of weeks - I wouldn't say the English translation is Myastere level of bad on average, but it's certainly had its moments...

[Alc]

Looks like they're using machine translation again, to cut costs. This bothers me quite a bit; I could forgive it once, but I don't really feel like repeatedly funding a company that evidently gives so few fucks about foreigner enjoyment of their games. I'm pretty confident that Japanese players would be fuming if a Western dev just shat out a machine translation for Japanese players, so I don't know why they think it's ok in reverse.

Translation aside, how is Buccanyar as a game, anyway?

[KawaseFan]

Sorry for the late reply.

Yeah, the less-than-ideal translation quality is annoying - especially since I don't remember Umihara BaZooKa and Cotton Rock 'n' Roll having any similar issues - and it did at some points make it hard for me to follow what was happening in the story.

Other than that, I thought the game was good - admittedly not of a genre that I normally play, so I might not be the best person to judge its quality - but I certainly don't regret getting it. Three different weapon sets can be equipped on your ship and switched during battle, meaning you could have sets that are tailored towards attacking other ships, subs, or aerial enemies, or take a more balanced or defensive approach, and I definitely enjoyed having that flexibility. Money is pretty easy to come by (provided you keep up with the side quests) so you won't have too many issues upgrading your ship - some might consider the easy money a negative, but I'd much prefer that to having to grind cat surveys for more money, which would've gotten boring pretty quickly.

I (playing the PS4 version) did have performance issues at some points. There weren't too many, though, and they mostly happened later in the game, there were a couple of boss battles that had a fair bit going on. And speaking of boss battles, the final boss seemed much harder than the rest of the game (which was otherwise not super easy, but also not particularly hard), and I'm pretty sure I didn't defeat it how I was supposed to - but I got it done, so, whatever.