What's going on with Seinarukana - The Spirit of Eternity Sword 2?

[Mkilbride]

JAST USA is supposed to publish this. It has been fully translated for almost two years. It was supposed to be due out this month, but something weird happened...

 

It's not on JAST USA's website anymore. No mention of the sequel to Eein no Aselia is present, anywhere on their website.  Googling shows a blog post from March mentioning it being done and it would release soon, a Tweet said September after that, we're 2/3rds through of September and their website doesn't even have it showing up.

 

JAST USA has been incredibly slow with all their releases, they take fan translations that are 100% completed and perfectly usable, usually the QC already done, and for some reason take years to release them, usually with the excuse that the fan translation was nearly entirely useless and so they had to do it all over(Which frustates me, because all the fan translated VNs I've read are usually incredibly well done, you don't fan translate an entire novel in your spare time and do it lazily, it's a major undertaking.

 

I really wanted to play it, and it's weird because JAST USA usually has games up for pre-order months before release, this one supposedly has 10-11 days left to release and no mention, being fully translated 2 years ago...

[sanahtlig]

  Quote

Seinarukana —> Translation and coding finished, waiting on LE materials.

 

http://follow.jastusa.com/post/128544859416/game-progress (9/15/15)

 

JAST has some real marketing and communication issues, you're right.  See Decay's latest VNTS post for a well-written rant on the topic.

[TheFantasm]

Pushed back to some day in October would probably be a safe assumption at this point, sadly.

[BookwormOtaku]

  On 9/19/2015 at 9:39 PM, TheFantasm said:

Pushed back to some day in October would probably be a safe assumption at this point, sadly.

Seeing as there isn't even a preorder page for it anywhere, I think October is being optimistic

[TheFantasm]

  On 9/19/2015 at 9:55 PM, BookwormOtaku said:

Seeing as there isn't even a preorder page for it anywhere, I think October is being optimistic

[Crayten]

I wouldnt be suprised if they are so brilliant and release it at the same day as Tales of Zestiria.

[Mkilbride]

Haha...oh man, that'd be so terrible if they did it same day.

 

I just don't understand, 2 years ago if the fan translation had been released, we all could've played this by now...but...nope, JAST USA decided we were better off never playing it.

[kyrt]

  On 9/20/2015 at 12:09 AM, Crayten said:

I wouldnt be suprised if they are so brilliant and release it at the same day as Tales of Zestiria.

[Mkilbride]

Oh man, I posted here in hoping someone would prove me wrong and I somehow missed it and it was coming soon. Disappointing...I really loved the original.

[TheFantasm]

Quote from someone from JAST about Seinarukana:

 

" You probably saw the September date on a new outlet site like ANN, we had announced at AX that we were aiming for a September release. Sadly because we have been without a Graphic designer (hopefully he'll be back soon) and some problems in planning, we haven't been able to get the resources together for the LE edition yet. The game is undergoing testing while we wait on the decisions for the LE (tentatively done) so looking at 1-3 weeks for the Preorder (this just my estimate based on an optimistic pace) and 3-8 weeks for release (again just my guess based on what we have left to do). "

 

Welp.

[Maxel]

So, what do you guys think? December or January? First half of 2016?

What about Shiny Days, will we get it in November?

I think I should change my EST dates for Trample and Sumaga, to 2016 and 2017 :/

I was being too optimistic

You always have to add couple months in JAST's case.

Sekai isn't much better.

For now only trustworthy company is MG...

[Beato]

  On 9/19/2015 at 8:41 PM, Mkilbride said:

JAST USA has been incredibly slow with all their releases, they take fan translations that are 100% completed and perfectly usable, usually the QC already done, and for some reason take years to release them, usually with the excuse that the fan translation was nearly entirely useless and so they had to do it all over(Which frustates me, because all the fan translated VNs I've read are usually incredibly well done, you don't fan translate an entire novel in your spare time and do it lazily, it's a major undertaking.

 

Most fan-translations certainly aren't well done and even if they were there's still no guarantee that we'd have Seinarukana now. I get the frustration with companies picking up almost finished fan-tls (though I personally think official releases are good) but this wasn't the case with Seinarukana.

 

Seinarukana started as a fan-tl back in 2010. The translator was a guy named nighteye. Sometime between october 2010 and april 2011 nighteye disappeared. He was replaced by a guy named Renkosuke. Later the same year, in July 2011 JAST announced that they had licensed Seinarukana, the project was currently 30% translated, far from a completed translation. However sometime during 2012 Renkosuke also disappeared.

 

In february 2013 it was announced that a guy called Inskipp had been called in to replace him. It had also been decided that the old translation was going to be scrapped because of issues with the quality (nighteye's parts in particuliar were apparently pretty bad) and to improve the consistency. A short time afterwards Inskipp is replaced by Aroduc for some unspecified reason. Aroduc finishes his initial rough translation in august 2013. After that there was qc, editing and programming that needed to be done which would've taken a fair bit of time no matter what.

 

This isn't to say that Jast have handled this project well, they haven't and it almost certainly would have been released by now if say, Mangagamer was doing it. But there are actually tons of fan-tls that were way more finished than Seinarukana was when Jast picked it up that still were dropped or stalled. We have no idea if Aroduc would have picked up Seinarukana if he hadn't been hired by Jast. It probably would still have been sitting there, half-finished without a translator just like dozens of other fan-tls.

[kyrt]

Jast really needs to hire a good marketing adviser who actually goes out of their way to market the product...admittedly being an adult product company does make things a bit difficult but interviews, reviews, discussions on current progress, an actual time table for releases, proper marketing for specific titles (gameplay titles need a completely different type of marketing than most other visual novels), a better presence on steam, and the list continues for quite a bit with ways they could improve their marketing. 

 

If they could get Yumina or Aselia on Steam without the pron but have a patch or something to add it back in they'd sell really well. The problem is the cost. Games on Steam that sell well are cheap. People do not want to waste 40 dollars on a game they are simply trying out for the lulz of sorts. It's been said but a good way to release games at least via steam is via chapters, routes, or groups (at least for the regular visual novels). Price them reasonably (5-10 max) and let the word of mouth do the rest. Have the individual chapters cost a bit more on steam and make it so it's a nice discount buying it all together from the main website/j-list. There is a market for visual novels on steam they just have to try a few strategies which work. 

 

Jast also does not seem to mind youtube videos or streams of a number of their games so perhaps licensing a few smaller (non-nukige games) might work. Most youtube personalities or streamers simply don't have the time to check out a full game but by separating games into pieces they can check out parts of the game and if the initial reaction is good some might continue or at least give positive word of mouth. It might be good to license a few of these type of games simply for the extra funding so they can hire a bit more staff.

 

I'm a bit sad that Seinarukana is likely not going to release til December if lucky but not completely unexpected even with these few delays JAST has released more games this year than I can remember them doing for a long time if ever. It's a step in the right direction even if they take one step back for every two steps forward. 

[CeruleanGamer]

I'll be pessimistic and expect Seinarukana and Shiny Days to be Spring 2016 release. Heck, I think I am already being too nice.... 

[kyrt]

  On 9/25/2015 at 4:33 PM, CeruleanGamer said:

I'll be pessimistic and expect Seinarukana and Shiny Days to be Spring 2016 release. Heck, I think I am already being too nice.... 

Shiny Days is out now for download so a bit wrong.

[CeruleanGamer]

  On 9/25/2015 at 4:54 PM, kyrt said:

Shiny Days is out now for download so a bit wrong.

I thought it comes out on the 29th?

[kyrt]

  On 9/25/2015 at 5:10 PM, CeruleanGamer said:

I thought it comes out on the 29th?

The game gets shipped on the 29th the download was coming whenever it was ready. I received my download code this morning.

[delapropia]

People, does anybody knows anything about the date of release of this game? Because it was delayed at the last moment, and after that JAST decided to kept quiet about it. I have been searching for almost 2 days on Google with zero result.

 

For example, I red if im correct on Fuwanovel, that the game was expected to be delayed for at least 8 weeks. But that´s a fact? Or it was only a rumour?

 

Im sure that if someone enlightens this, everybody would be grateful with him/her.

[Decay]

No, JAST is not saying when the game will be released. There is no date to find so you can stop looking. For future reference, VNDB is all you need to consult. The data there is accurate >99% of the time. In this case you can see the release in the english section of releases has no date set, which means the english translation has no announced release date and it's anyone's guess as to when it will come out.

[Crayten]

It was supposed to come out in september and every tweet question about it was ignored so far so do the math.

[sanahtlig]

JAST will likely have a pre-order page up at least a month in advance.  If there's no pre-order page, the game isn't coming out.  That's a fairly safe rule of thumb.  But honestly given the issues with Shiny Days I expect they'll have their hands full.  Expect a release to happen later rather than sooner.

[delapropia]

Thanks for have taken your time to answer me.

 

Damn, Jast did everything wrong! First, saying the game will be released on X day. Then, the game was removed without telling us anything. Then, not saying when the game is going to be released after this EPIC failure. And last, not answering fan´s questions. Fuck you JAST.

[Decay]

They never gave a specific date, though...

[delapropia]

  On 9/29/2015 at 6:13 PM, Decay said:

They never gave a specific date, though...

In fact, they did. Im sure that I red an article on July that this fall( of course I mean USA´S fall ) Seinarukana 2 and other games of JAST were going to be released. It was because of this that I was aware for example of Shiny Days and its date of release.

[Decay]

But "fall" isn't a specific date at all and is actually really vague, and there are still like 10 weeks left in the season. Nothing was "removed" btw, since it was never put up for pre-order to begin with.

 

edit: The way you worded it made it sound like JAST announced a release date and then pulled the rug out from under everyone when that isn't what happened at all. That's what happened with Shiny Days...