He's actually credited under "Scenario" though, which is more than, say, Hiroi Ohji was with the original games. Also, my issues with the game are at teh fundamental "story structure" level (i.e. the way it's written as if it was for an action game with a single critical path heavily focused on Sakura Amamiya and precious little about the other characters rather than as a gal game with some action bits bolted on. The male protaganist having so many more lines than any female heroine shows this off pretty well, I think)
And my fundamental point still stands, the "writer of 428" didn't work on this game.
The budget stuff really needs to be highlighted though. I refuse to believe that Sega spent any real money on the game, the complete lack of content vs just about any other game in the series is painful. I can only hope that this means that the sales will be enough to get another game where they course correct (including decent treatment of the original games cast)
No, actually Oji Hiroi is credited as a writer too, not just director.Now of course I can't compare the 2 of them (Hiroi and Ishii) because I don't know
how much involved each one was on the writing.
As for the story structure I can of course respect your opinion but to me the structure of the story was the same as the previous games to the point where it might feel a little bit too safe sometimes.
The real differences are that 1) they've thrown some sports anime stuff inside to attract newer fans, which it didn't bother me tbh, I like tournament arcs in anime
so it felt ok to me.
And 2)the budget indeed was small, I agree on that, so the game's story was smaller compared to some of the previous games but not by a lot and honestly
you can say the same thing about other Sega franchises, especially the ones that struggle sales-wise.
Sega is not the giant that once was that could spend millions of dollars in games like Shenmue.
Could the game have a bigger budget?Well..yes of course and I would welcome that with open arms but the game didn't sell well
and I don't think that more budget would have helped in that department, which means a sequel would have been even more difficult than it is now.
I hope in the sequel, if we ever get one, Sega listens to the feedback and improves some of this game's mishaps (better combat, more voiced lines, more places to exlore, more minigames) but if one of them is to ditch Jiro Ishhi I just don't agree...that's it.
