No. ??

Atelier iris 2 
6.5/10

graphics: pretty much same as the 1st, gameplay: better than the 1st, music: pretty much same with than the 1st, characters: better than the 1st, story: MUCH better than the 1st

Overall: the 1st was horrible, I'm a player whose main focus and interest in rpgs is on the story+characters, and afterwhich comes the gameplay, so the 1st was really horrible for me. 2 is better, only by a margin, but at least apart from the "dungeons" and some dull story elements, everything else worked okay(poe is so cute ^.^  probably really because of his voice acting).

Summary

I'm stopping the translations of the Growlanser blog diary entries *tired + many other stuff to do*
so I'll provide a summary of what each consecutive entry is about. If anyone wishes to make a request for a full translation for any entry, ya know where to find me.

Look up earlier entry under the translation category for the site address.

Vol 8: Response to sale of Growlanser(looks like it sold pretty well), plus comments and opinions of the game seen on the net(some said the battle system is the best in the entire series), smoothness etc. And also about Anita's bust size+comments =D

Vol 9: About Growlanser 6 out and the character making session with hints(for those beginners who did not read my faq, one thing note worthy is what he said: skip the character making session to start with the strongest character stat...) as well as new game+

Vol 10: The worlds of Growlanser V and VI and their connection

Vol 11: Visit to Las vegas and I think more on Anita's three size again ~~__~~

Vol 12: Explanation on Yurry's character design and dressing in V and VI 

Vol 13: Explanation on Shuweizer's character design as well as paper drawings of other characters.

Vol 14: In-depth details on development process plus explanation on gameplay system

Vol 15:  Information about DHMO, totally not Growlanser related

Vol 16: Details on the movies in the game and also problems occuring with Irist in the soaring ship and Yurry's ending movie

Vol 17: Comments by the scenario writer for the game

Vol 18: Promotion and comments about Growlanser VI comic anthology (hey I want a copy of that)

Vol 19: Differences in time adjustments + movement speed etc for Zeon and Merk.

Vol 20: Admendments made to illustrations

Vol 21: About the series starting from I as srpgs, and the various elements(why they changed the battle style for the later games) with explanations+comparisons and so on

Vol 7

2007.06.19 Vol 7

[usual greetings+intro]

Finally, 2 days left till Grow 6 goes on sale.
It is a production done with much efforts, managing to put forth a fast paced playthrough, I'm both nervous and looking forward to it, wondering what kind of reviews/evaluations it will get. I've worked on many other games apart from Grow and #Lang, but I just can't settle down when a game is about to go on sale...

#it was written as ラ○グ, I may be wrong, but somehow it just reminds me of Langrisser(and since I have never read any articles about Langrisser before I wouldn't know the various representations), so I put Lang. It may be wrong so don't condemn me if it is. *nods head*

Anyway, how are the videos that were uploaded last week?
The protagonist's movements are faster than the previous, it may even feel a bit like an action game. On the other hand though, the movement speed of other units are slower, so it's definitely not as intense as an action game.

I'll want to listen to lots of opinions of Grow VI, so today I've prepared a secret weapon.
The picture below is that secret weapon: drawing papers signed by Urushihara sensei for use as presents. Requested for 5 pieces, and started work this afternoon, and when work finally ended at the evening, indeed new drawing papers are out.

Also, we have requested for drawings of the main character, Anita and Wendy before, therefore let's go with this 5 characters this time round.
For everyone who think "Ah, this is...!", please do write your opinions of Grow 6 to apply for them!
(Application campaign starts from June 20th)

Well then, until next time.

Vol 6

2007.06.12 Vol 6

Finally, Growlanser 6 is about to go on sale June 21st!
I'll explain one main difference from the previous Growlanser 5: the encounter battles.
Please watch the videos on the official site while reading this.

[Field Battle]
Look at the movie posted along with the entry. 

First is the field encounter battles. Focus on the meter under the protagonist's attack window!
Do you see that while there still remains the yellow gauge in the meter, the protagonist can move?
#The speed of decreasing is slowed down a little as compared to when standing stuck at one spot and not moving, but you can move him to occupy a better position, thus giving a great advantage!

#I never realized that until I read this. The decreasing speed is referring to the speed the ATW bar is decreasing. Interesting.

For the previous Growlanser V, even if you managed to break through past the side of enemies, so long as the character is being attacked by any enemy, you can't move him/her.
Using this style for Growlanser VI made playthrough easier.
Also, you can continue to control the protagonist even as the death of enemy is being shown, making battles speedy. But, so long as the attack window gauge still remains, you can't attack.

[Dungeon battle]
Look at the 2nd movie posted along with the entry. 

Next is the dungeon battles.
See how attack and ##light magic by allies no longer pauses the screen?
What occurs after the start is the Blast magic which belongs to medium magic, therefore the screen does pause for a little while, but ###aside from that the others don't. 

##Light as in simple/lower, not light/dark

###what he meant is still the same: light magic doesn't pause screen, I don't remember whether do blizzard and flare stall or not, but the strongest magic such as thunderstorm still has their movies, which can be set to be skipped via configuration screen, but the screen does pause. 

So how is it? It would be good if you will say that things have become smoother.
Still, what I recommend for the auto settings is to allow usage of healing magic, but limit usage of goods to none. With this, battles can be done with speedily and with ease by force, if you pay attention to the MP left. However, be careful of issuing characters to far off enemy groups, as being surrounded by large amounts of enemies is bad.

Also, the difficulty of event battles are increased slightly, so do not depend too much on auto settings, and try to manually command ally movements and actions for the finest battle strategy.
Anyway, there is an auto-save before event battles for this production, so if you did not get a satisfactory end result, you can restart from before the battle, making it real convenient.

That being so, did the movies successfully show how the atmosphere and style for the encounter battles will be like?

Well then, until next time.

Vol 5

2007.06.05 Vol 5

[Usual greetings]

Well, the date is drawing near for Grow VI to be on sale.
Various stores have announced the original special telephone card.
Those are really fascinating cards, therefore please do pre-order. m(_ _)m

By the way, #Urushihara sensei was requested with directions to draw [as colorful illustrations] the telephone cards, but some happenings occurred to the illustrations, and during atlus inspection, it's mild compared to what Urushihara sensei drew at first. You must be wondering what kind of illustration?
Actually, a part of the cloth for the upper body is transparent, and something can be seen in front of the chest. (laughs)
And that's pretty obvious.
If we can come up with excuses like "It is a shadow" or " It's a pattern", then fine. But no matter how we look at it, it's transparent...
Then we informed Urushihara sensei with "Indeed that is awkward." and asked for some amendments.
If we didn't ask for amendments, would there be lotsa pre-orders...?
well I wonder.....(laughs)

Lastly, thank you very much for the Q&A for the internet radio. We recorded the first some days ago, so it should be up soon. We will try as much as we can to answers as much questions as possible, therefore, please do listen to it. And if there are any other questions, please do send your mails.

Well then, until next time.

# 先生(sensei), but same as forms like 様,which can't really be translated properly and accurately into english unless the situation fits completely , therefore we see minute accidents like Doctor Randall/Doctor Fanille...you can use it for addressing doctors, masters, teachers, persons in higher positions than you etc in the Japanese language but really...I just hope somebody don't come up with Doctor Urushihara.

Vol 4

2007.05.29 Vol 4

[Usual greetings, intro and apologies for not writing an entry the week before(he updates the blog diary once every week) due to moving to iidabashi]

Thanks for all the questions regarding Grow 6 at the #atlus express.
I'm really happy that the amount of questions asked exceeded expectations.
For our side, it seems that recording is done around weekends thus it's scheduled to be made available before long.
If possible, we'd like to correspond to as much questions as possible.
Incidentally, this is the first time using internet radio, so I'm a bit nervous...
and worried if my voice will sound shaky.

#This is the link to the atlus express for G6: http://www.atlusnet.jp/express/0705/index.html which involves introduction of the Growlanser series as well as other miscellaneous information and conversations+ compilation before the game is published in Japan. Note the last few sentences of the introduction of the series - [To progress in event scenes does not require just reading the text and watching the movies, the battle scenes also play a big part, which is the most significant feature of the Growlanser series. And because of that, the genre of the Growlanser series becomes "Non-stop dramatic RPG"]. - Without doubt, the battle scenes they are talking about are the event/mission battles.

Alright, for this Grow 6 diary entry, I'll write about balance adjustments for the game.

During development, we put together events, confirm event actions and also do balance adjustments while making sure unnecessary messages and events can be skipped. I'm sure gamers would want to skip events they have seen straight before battles when they replay it. We as well, when we catch up to the schedule in the later parts of development,  wanting to save some time which would otherwise be wasted. (laughs)

The skip function cannot be implemented in Grow V due to many problems areas, having a hard time at it. Especially for the lo~ng lo~ng events, there are plenty of minute adjustments required for the timing and coordinates. Many tries to make changes and test to confirm and repeat, it's really tough...
(due to that, there's easily a lot of such situations for long events)

But, we managed to implement it in Grow 6 with no problems, making it really convenient. Therefore, it's not in the form of debug usage, but as a function.
It will serve to be very useful in replaying character making sessions and battles etc, therefore please do have a try at it.
##Oh, but because we enabled a simple save before event battles, it will be easy for replays...

##If I'm not wrong, this simple save he's talking about is the quick save which triggers automatically without notice before the start of any event battles. Therefore in Growlanser 6, so long as you do not reset the console, even if you accidentally got a game over in a mission battle, you can choose the continue function from the title screen which will load that quick save(which doesn't take up memory card space I believe) and you can restart the game from before the mission battle.

However, please pay attention not to skip events you have not seen. Be careful okay.

Well then, until next time next week. (^o^)/~~

Vol 3

2007.05.15 Vol 3

Some parts of this entry is somewhat "techinical", so I won't give any assurance those contents are totally accurate since I know almost nothing about such stuff...


[Greetings and so on]

The Grow VI official site is finally opened! (￣▽￣)〜♪ 
There's also a Q&A corner, so please send any questions. m(_ _)m

Well then, for this entry, we took a picture of a view in the development process.
This is the table of our planner(project personnel).

The picture is of the surroundings for Grow 6(PS2), but the game is created in this kind of environment: PC and monitor for PC. And we have what we call targets: PS2 equipment parts and a normal TV. In simple words, putting programs together using PC...
Activating programs which work like(with) the actual PS2 console using the targets, and making various adjustments. There are various targets for a console, for any type of console, the developing process is similar.

Writing such things suddenly reminded me of the past.
Long ago, around the time of creating the PC engine's CDROM, there's a big HDD we call gravestone. The HDD of that era has a capacity of only around 10M, and therefore require specially catered parts. And hearing that those are around 10 million, I remembered being shocked. 
Also, transferring master data to the hard maker is by the use of tape. Using around 3 of such, they are taken out after verify(confirming the data's stability) is completed. However, verifying frequently failed(copy failure), and how many times we tried to redo the copying...
Because of that, it took around 1 month to record for master submission. (laughs)
After that, technology advanced, and the development of PS began. Master submission is via CD, which is much more convenient than tape. Nevetheless, the CD burning ware during that time has low functionality, and during the process of burning CDs, much misses occured.
I remembered burning CDs when noises came from the fluorescent lamp and it was pitch black.
Furthermore, burning is in ratios, burning 1 piece including verifying requires 2 hours...(laughs)
Thinking back, the PC has advanced much, gradually making development processes of less hassles.

So, why are there targets on the planner's table? Well, the planner does not do balance adjustments only, but also inclusions of events. Delicate #quality upping and adding of events are also done by the planner in such an environment.

#increasing the quality

Especially for Grow 6, months after completion, there comes a period of quality upping by various persons. Getting requests from the staff and improving the events as well as adding sub events.

Because of this, the quality of the game changed drastically but...
this time round, it's not just the planner, the programmer and designer also spent much time at the end, that made me happy.
Through the quality upping period, I can sense the production becoming better, so even as continously ##staying back is tough, I am glad that it's all worthwhile.

##he wrote 泊まり, which is more of staying overnight at a certain place instead of just staying back
 
Right now, all development for Grow 6 has ended, but for the next time, I hope we will be able to come up with a fruitful production as well.

Well then, until next time.