In 2015, the 20th anniversary of the legendary Japanese RPG "Legends" series, Bandai Namco released its commemorative work Tales of Zestiria in 2013, continuing the tradition of the "Legends" series, which was officially defined as "an RPG that makes passion shine on the world". Since the previous game "Infinite Legends 2" has received a lot of controversy, many players hope that the series producer Racecourse Heroes can turn the tide through "TOZ" and prove to the world that the "Legend Series" can break through the bottleneck and show a fresh image - as a result, the game has unsurprisingly brought a lot of incredible topics, well, negative...
"Shi Dazhuang" and his friends - watching the infinitely beautiful "Legend of Love"
As a commemorative work for the 20th anniversary of the "Legends" series, and as a turnaround work after the series returned to mediocrity for a long time, "Legend of Love" has been highly valued by Bandai Namco, and has adopted four original artists to design characters for the first time - at the end of 2013, the Hero of the Racecourse officially announced "Legend of Love" at the "Legend" series press conference, and immediately announced the two important characters of the work - the male protagonist Shi Lei and the female character Alyssa. Among them, Alyssa has been recognized by fans with her excellent character design, which not only makes "Legend of Love" an important work that players look forward to, but also makes the not-so-famous painter Daigo Okumura the focus of attention.
Alyssa's character is very popular
While the iron was hot, Bandai Namco launched an OVA anime as a precursor to explaining the unique worldview before the game was released, and the young Shi Lei came to the human world as a "mentor", met the young girl Alyssa during the journey, and then the two began their adventure. Although this OVA animation is not brilliant, it clearly expounds the world view of this work: the Celestial Clan has been worshipped by the Terrans since ancient times, and since the Terrans cannot visually detect the Celestial Clan, the mentor guides mankind as a messenger connecting the Celestial Clan and humanity, and assumes the responsibility of fighting evil. Because this worldview is unique in all the "Legends" series to date, under the blessing of the standard king of "teenager meets girl", coupled with the multi-faceted action of the official slogan of "the strongest script in history", players' expectations for "TOZ" are quite high.
Note that no matter how much publicity is carried out, the official publicity is centered on "Alyssa is the heroine"
In the following year or so, "TOZ" was steadily promoted according to the established plan, including a series of news such as new characters, battles, and PVs, which were innovated everywhere and recognized by most players. In terms of human design, in addition to Slay and Alyssa, Mikurio (Mibao), Lyra, Iwamoto Minoru's design of Edna (with a face of blood), Zaveda, etc. have all been recognized by players, and relatively speaking, the female character Luo Jie designed by Kosuke Fujishima has been questioned about the decline in human standards, but it is harmless compared with the high quality of other elements.
If it really goes according to the player's wishes...
On January 22, 2015, "Legend of Love" was released as a PS3 exclusive game under the expectations of many players, bearing the name of the 20th anniversary of the legendary RPG series, plus the previous publicity offensive, so that the game sold more than 330,000 excellent results in the first week. However, it is such a popular work that pushes the "Legends" series and the hero of the producer Racecourse into the pit of doom.
To be fair, the production level, game worldview and game system of "TOZ" are indeed worthy of the name of the 20th anniversary of the work, under the setting of the male protagonist Shi Lei's "mentor" identity, the series' traditional "LMBS" battle system has been re-evolved, and the mentor and auxiliary mentor's subordinates can "god-dependent" with the Celestial Clan, that is, they can be strengthened, which makes the combat strategy stronger, and thanks to the excellent human design, the series's characteristic skit dialogue becomes more interesting, such as Edna with a black belly." The scene of flirting with "simple "Mickey" is very impressive.
It is undeniable that looking at the system alone is a pretty good "legend" work
However, a week after the game was released, it received a large number of bad reviews from players due to the official extreme death behavior.
Since 2013, Bandai Namco's promotion of the game has always been centered on the interaction between the mentor Shi Lei and Alyssa, in the minds of players, The setting that Shi Lei is the male protagonist and Alyssa is the female lead has been deeply rooted, but not long after the game, Alyssa actually proposed to leave the team permanently because of her lack of ability, and instead, Luo Jie, who had been questioned about the decline in the standard of human design, replaced Alyssa as a fixed member of the team. What is even more unacceptable to the player is that because Luo Jie's own spiritual ability is very strong in the setting, the evaluation of Shi Lei's companions who welcomed Luo Jie to join the team is that "Luo Jie can understand Shi Lei, can see the same things as Shi Lei, and is a real companion" - in other words, the incompetent Alyssa is not a companion.
For the depiction of the two female characters, "TOZ" handles it quite poorly
This plot is very unfriendly to players who have always regarded Alyssa as the heroine, especially when it has been promoted for more than a year on the basis of defaulting to Alyssa as the heroine, which is unacceptable to the player. Since then, "True Partner" has become a slogan for players to mock the heroes of the horse farm and "Legend of Love", and Luo Jie has also been deeply affected by it and has become the target of the player's attack.
A large number of bad reviews poured in, the production team's countermeasure is to launch a 1300 yen Alyssa plot DLC, and in order to compensate the players the DLC can be downloaded for a limited time, the result of this move has attracted the disgust of more players - the original to become a real partner needs to spend money" Remarks immediately appeared, more intolerable is that this plot dominated by Alyssa is just a dog-tailed sable "post-day talk" after the story, Alyssa's performance in the plot is a completely unaware "outsider" At the beginning of the DLC plot, Alyssa and Luo Jie quarreled and then smoked each other's faces, which really caused a lot of player discomfort.
The two heroines in the DLC pinch each other a bit inexplicably
In the end, even spending money does not become a "real companion".
The heroine fraud incident reduced the reputation of "Hot Legend" to the extreme, and the incident quickly fermented, causing the price of the game to collapse, and second-hand traders even refused to buy "TOZ". The "Legend of Love" program, which was originally scheduled to be broadcast live on February 20, was directly cut, and the hero of the racecourse disappeared from the player's field of vision like a human evaporation, which also made the player's condemnation become louder and louder, and even affected Luo Jie and voice actor Komatsu Unkeko.
Voice actress Komatsu Mikiko thanked fans at the event in support of the hot legend
Because of the delay in no one to explain the heroine fraud incident, let a player speculate that because of Fujishima Kosuke's status in the painter's world, Luo Jie was forcibly counterattacked to become the protagonist, and even some players also pointed the spearhead at Komatsu Unkiko, saying that his relationship with the hero of the horse farm made Luo Jie counterattack, which made Komatsu Unkiko receive a lot of negative attacks in that year, and even at the "Legend Festival" that year, Komatsu Unkiko was excited to kneel twice to thank him because of the applause of some players, and after getting up, he was already in tears.
Deeper down, Luo Jie and XiaoSong Wei Kezi are both victims of lying guns
Aoi Chino (Alyssa voice actress) sighed at the Legend Festival, "Can the voice actors of the "Legend of love" group join the "Legend" family" make many players sad and regretful, but the rhythm of "TOZ" death has not stopped. In May 2015, at the Taipei Video Game Show, the hero of the racecourse stood up in a voice of doubt and explained: "The Legend of Love" has not introduced Alyssa as a "heroine" since the beginning of the announcement, and the introduction of the characters is only in the order of appearance. This kind of strong wording not only failed to get the player's understanding, but caused more questions - in the mobile game "Legend of the Starry Night", Alyssa's introduction has always been "the heroine of "Hot Legend", and the official introduction was secretly replaced after the horse farm hero explained, this embarrassing situation made more players believe that "Hot Legend" is just a semi-finished product of rushing work, which is extremely irresponsible to players.
The introduction of "TOZ Heroine" was replaced by "TOZ Appearance"...
What is more embarrassing is that the hero of the racecourse said on the front foot of the Taipei Video Game Show that "whether to release the PS4 version is under study", Bandai Namco's back foot announced that "TOZ" officially ported PS4 and PC platforms during E3, adding fuel to the events that are fermenting, and when the player got the transplanted version of "TOZ", he also found that because of copyright problems, the opening song of the game was replaced by a pure music version without lyrics, which was really a bit of a cry.
"Legend of Love" came to an abrupt end amid a wave of doubts, Bandai Namco announced that the prequel to "TOZ", "Berserk Legend", began to be developed, and although the hero of the racecourse was promoted to "chief producer", the real producer at this time has been replaced by Yasuhiro Kamiya. In view of the players' lingering condemnation of the hero of the racecourse, the hero of the racecourse left in October 2016 and joined Square Enix.
Say goodbye to the Racecourse Heroes and Legends series
In order to promote "Berserk Legend" and also to save the reputation of the "Legend" series, Bandai spent a lot of money to invite the "UFOtable Society" to produce two seasons of the animation "Hot Legend theX", the animation re-told the story of "Legend of Passion", and also specially interspersed with the story of two episodes of "Berserk Legend", from the production effect of the animation, it is known that in order to save the reputation, Bandai spent a lot of money this time, and the animation fully demonstrated what is called "sufficient funding" regardless of the level of painting or the particle effect.
"TOZ the X" not only burned the funds, but also gave Alyssa status...
The plot in the animation is a complete change, removing a large number of plots that have nothing to do with the main line, directly elevating Alyssa to the same status as Luo Jie, and even surpassing Luo Jie in various aspects such as ability. In terms of the performance of ShenYihua, the animation also designed a special image for Alyssa, which has the momentum to completely negate the game plot and re-describe the story.
And this "Hot Legend theX" did make the reputation of the work get a certain reversal, although there are some "overcorrected" noise, but most of the audience is still affirmative of this, but also directly let "Berserk Legends" be successfully released.
Without the animation, Berserker Legends doesn't know what it will end up with
The degree of death of the "Legend of Love" event is comparable to the animation industry's "endless August", and now the "TOZ" event has been more than 5 years away, although Bandai has made up for it by throwing money, but it can not prevent the "Legend" series from reaching the bottom of the fact, players have not been able to play the original "Legend" work for a long time, and when it will be able to reverse the decline is still unknown.