Two bits of happy news today: NIS America have announced that they will be releasing "Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days" (Disgaea 2 Portable for PSP), and "Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love" (Sakura Taisen 5 on PS2 and ported to wii) in America.
This is good news!
Well, apart from that NIS America have released some pretty bad localisations recently; adding bugs that weren't there (in the case of Ar Tonelico 2 it is game-breaking). But, we have to be optimistic!
Sakura Taisen news source
Disgaea 2 Portable news source
I've wanted to play a localised Sakura Taisen game for quite a few years now. I've tried playing games 1-3 raw, and with the helpful translation guides on gameFAQs, but I found it very difficult to find the bit I'm up to and read quickly enough on the website to catch up with the LIPS system... but I didn't want to read ahead because that carries too much risk of spoilers (or at least stopping the impact of comedy options)... so it was a bit halting, that way.
My favourite thing about the series has been the songs and stage shows; I've got the huge box set of CDs that contains (just about) all the songs for the first few games, some game OSTs, some drama CDs, some of the live performance DVDs... though nothing for the 5th game; only really for the first three / four.
Tanaka Kouhei is a great composer, and most of the seiyuu are pretty good singers, or at least very entertaining performers. :D
And Disgaea 2 Portable? Well, I thought the portable version of Disgaea was a lot better than the PS2 version, mainly because of the "sleep" function the game has (handy in item worlds!), but also because of the various enhancements and Etna mode.
Disgaea 2 has gameplay enhancements from Disgaea 3 (which I have stopped myself from beginning until I own a PS3 for my self), and Akutare mode. Well, it's Axel mode now because it's NIS America, but... got to look on the bright side! It's being released in English, hooray!
