Song Summoner - Square Enix goes iPod

[Herr Matzat]

I just steped on this while browsing the iTunes Store. It is an RPG only for the iPod (5th Gen, Classic and the latest Nano)

The Download is a wooping 129 MB which promisses a solid amount for the standart game price of 5€. - The manual you get wen klicking on the game in iTunes is 14 Pages to Scroll down.

I´ll start test playing it now, as i know my iPod video it´s higly likely that you won´t be able to play long without the power pluged in.

Here is the press release.

July 7, 2008

SQUARE ENIX ANNOUNCES SONG SUMMONER : The Unsung Heroes, a Full-Scale Role-Playing Game for iPod, Now Available on iTunes

Los Angeles (July 7, 2008)

Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of Square Enix™ interactive entertainment products in North America, announced the release of SONG SUMMONER™: The Unsung Heroes, on sale at the iTunes® Store worldwide (www.itunes.com) and available for play in English and Japanese on the iPod nano with video, iPod classic and fifth generation iPod.

SONG SUMMONER: The Unsung Heroes is a Role-Playing Game that transforms your iPod® songs into powerful "Tune Troopers" that you can control in battle! As the protagonist Ziggy, you will embark on an epic journey to rescue your brother from the clutches of the Mechanical Militia! Intriguing characters, an epic story and a tactics-based battle system combine for a rich RPG experience previously only available on home and handheld game consoles.

SONG SUMMONER: The Unsung Heroes

Publisher: Square Enix, Inc.

Platform: iPod nano with video, iPod classic and fifth generation iPod

Genre: Role-Playing

Launch Date: July 8, 2008

Price: 4.99 USD (iTunes Store download)

STORY

From the days of old, Melodica was a land of music, a land of freedom. The people sang, played and danced to the music they so cherished. Until one day, they came — the Mechanoids, who enhanced their bodies with machinery. Those who were tempted by greed and power willingly gave away their souls for bodies of steel, forsaking their humanity to become cold, emotionless automatons. Now, they seek to destroy all that do not embrace their way of life.

But there is hope on the horizon. There are those who are fated to stand against the tyranny of the machines — the Superstars, who can turn sound into lethal weapons, and the Conductor, also known as the Song Summoner, who can summon powerful warriors born of music.

In their most desperate hour, Melodica awaits the arrival of their new Song Summoner...

FEATURES

Transform your iPod songs into "Tune Troopers" to combat the evil Mechanical Militia

Tune Trooper types and abilities are determined by the songs used to create them

Your Tune Troopers can be powered up even outside of the game--just by listening to the songs you used to create them!

Control Ziggy, a "Conductor" that creates warriors out of music, and guide him through his journey to save his brother Zero from the Mechanical Militia

Experience a turn-based tactics battle system, divided into player and enemy phases where each side takes turns maneuvering their forces

Deploy the right troopers at the right time, and use contraptions found on the map effectively to achieve victory in battle!

iPod Click Wheelallows players to play the game as easily as selecting music

Source (with screenshots)

http://www.square-enix.com/na/company/press/2008/0707/

Ok, first Testing.

I takes a while to load the game, i´ed say about 10 Seconds. The Grafiks are just like for other Tactical RPGs, nice 2D sprites and some cool high deteil drawings for now. The Music is on the usual Square standart.

Now the Ugly, i dident even make it towards the opening cutsceen untill my iPods batterie died. It was fully loaded before (i may have listend to 30-60 Minutes of music, but it was barly used) - so playing with the iPod Video seems to be a thing that will only work while having the power pluged in. To bad. - i don´t know about the iPod Nano or the iPod Classic... the Nano works with Flash memory only, that is said to save a ton of power while watching videos (my ipod video is dead after about 45-60 Minutes of Video Playback)

I´ll go back to realy play now. :->

Edited July 10, 2008 by Michael Matzat on a Plane

[Cactus Drags]

That sounds really interesting, although I wouldn't have thought the clickwheel would be ideal for anything other than the likes of Vortex or those trivia quiz games (Sonic is horrible on the ipod, that Harmonix one, Phase is pretty good though). I have an 80gb classic, I might grab it.

[Herr Matzat]

Oh, it plays realy well. It´s a bit strange becaus you are used to play tactical RPGs with a D-Pad but almost everything is working (and was optimised for) realy nice with the click weel.

Dunno about the story yet, it seems pritty genereic and fot now the amount of deepth seems to be restricted (not a lot of talk happening, nothing that you have not had in an RPG) - but i am only 3 battles in.

[Clawson]

What, your songs actually become playable characters in this?

[Herr Matzat]

Thats what they make it look like.

You select a song, or you let one be selected randomly, (the song actually plays and the cover gets shown if you have tagged one - besides that i had not yet have a song reappear in the game, but as noted, i am not that far in) and a character gets created.

I have no idea how much influence the song actually has on randomising the states. - There are 66 Characters and 3 Special ones (you can see the ones you collected in an option on the start screen) but i already had one twice and she had totally different states and potential.

When you stop playing and reenter the game the amount of times you played the songs that are conected with the characters you created gives you Points that "do something good" - if have no idea yet what that actualy will be.

[PkmnTrainerJ]

Fuck you Matzat. Now I know where £3.99 of my pay this month is going. It's like Monster Rancher (where CDs became your monsters) but on an iPod and by Squenix and the Ring System in the battle is like Secret Of Mana's.

Dang it.

[Guest Kou]

It's like the Monster Rancher of Strat RPGs.

[PkmnTrainerJ]

It's like the Monster Rancher of Strat RPGs.

Don't mention it again! It's like Beetlejuice. If you speak it's a third name again, I'll have to play it tomorrow, which means digging out my PS1 Monster Ranch regular memory card.

[Herr Matzat]

What about Barcode Battler?

[Guest Kou]

Monster Rancher, Monster Rancher, Monster Rancher.

But yeah I think Barcode Battler predated it and that was pretty cool too.

[Cactus Drags]

Song Summoner seems pretty sound so far, my only gripe is that there seems to be no rhyme nor reason as to how songs create a trooper. The conductor guy has asked for particular kinds of track too, like one with a seven in the title, or a long song, in which case I picked Reuben's Alpha Signal Seven and Coheed's IKSOSE:3 respectively, and then he was disappointed that I hadn't followed his guidance :/

Also, scrolling with the wheel seems a little sensitive, I keep flying through the menu rings, but that might jsut be me. The soundtrack and graphics are pretty impressive, and if you're a fan of the Square RPGs, you won't be disappointed by the style or battle system.

[Herr Matzat]

It´s relay fun to play. I have got a feeling that there should be 10-15 hours of playtime in this. (i bet if you know what to do you can rush it much quicker) - The world Map for now is at leas 2 Screens big, but i am guessing it will become 4-5 overall. (your character can "level up" 4 Times, it seems to happen by story progress and i just reached Map nr2 right after leveling up for the first time)

As for the story (minor spoils for the beginning, mostly a guss for what is comming)

Spoiler: Click here to view

You are a kid who's Brother "Zero" gets Kidnapped by Robots - while going to save him you meet a Robot with Emotions that has a lot of Zeros in his Registration Number so he is called Z.E.R.O. - I´ll bet my ass on the robots turning children into cyborgs and Z.E.R.O. being your brother.

There still issent much talking for now, it feels more like a thin red line to guide you from battle to battle. But maybe there is more to come, having Text besides the Pictures and Gameplay should take up almost no space besides the pictures and gameplay they already have anyway... so if they wanted to this still can have it.

But with that said i think it´s fun to play. The idea of only having 4 levels (each character can be leveled up via a training center which is pretty hard) is giving a bigger focus on the tactics than lets say Disgaea were you could just level in the Item Worlds and murder everything in the game.

Characters generated from Music only last a certain number of battles (if they die even less) - so you either pay a lot of money to keep them around or you constantly have everything mixed up and figure out new ways with new characters.

Dragsy is right, the click weel is kind of tricky sometimes, but i put at least some of the balme to this on us being used to playing games another way.

If you "level up" with your main Character you et access to more from Music generated Characters, so i guss you just can´t give your master the Hyper Power results he expects from the beginning.

The loading timesare quiet strange, they are not particular long - but they are everywere, in battles (loading animations,autosaving all the time) and it´s just different from what we know of other consoles (who obviously have RAM wich the iPod dossent)... i wuldend say it bad, they found a good solution for some of them, it´s just strange.

Edited July 11, 2008 by Michael Matzat on a Plane

[Herr Matzat]

Ha, i just beat the Rehearsal Mode on Hard and now have a Platinum Monk. To bad i cannot use him in training anymore... if only i had known i would have waited with the Platinum level... he kicks ARRSSSS

[Cactus Drags]

It´s relay fun to play. I have got a feeling that there should be 10-15 hours of playtime in this. (i bet if you know what to do you can rush it much quicker) - The world Map for now is at leas 2 Screens big, but i am guessing it will become 4-5 overall. (your character can "level up" 4 Times, it seems to happen by story progress and i just reached Map nr2 right after leveling up for the first time)

As for the story (minor spoils for the beginning, mostly a guss for what is comming)

Spoiler: Click here to view

You are a kid who's Brother "Zero" gets Kidnapped by Robots - while going to save him you meet a Robot with Emotions that has a lot of Zeros in his Registration Number so he is called Z.E.R.O. - I´ll bet my ass on the robots turning children into cyborgs and Z.E.R.O. being your brother.

There still issent much talking for now, it feels more like a thin red line to guide you from battle to battle. But maybe there is more to come, having Text besides the Pictures and Gameplay should take up almost no space besides the pictures and gameplay they already have anyway... so if they wanted to this still can have it.

But with that said i think it´s fun to play. The idea of only having 4 levels (each character can be leveled up via a training center which is pretty hard) is giving a bigger focus on the tactics than lets say Disgaea were you could just level in the Item Worlds and murder everything in the game.

Characters generated from Music only last a certain number of battles (if they die even less) - so you either pay a lot of money to keep them around or you constantly have everything mixed up and figure out new ways with new characters.

Dragsy is right, the click weel is kind of tricky sometimes, but i put at least some of the balme to this on us being used to playing games another way.

If you "level up" with your main Character you et access to more from Music generated Characters, so i guss you just can´t give your master the Hyper Power results he expects from the beginning.

The loading timesare quiet strange, they are not particular long - but they are everywere, in battles (loading animations,autosaving all the time) and it´s just different from what we know of other consoles (who obviously have RAM wich the iPod dossent)... i wuldend say it bad, they found a good solution for some of them, it´s just strange.

To be honest I wasn't expecting much, story-wise, I think they just thought of the concept and wanted to run with it.

Also, this thread should be earmarked as the first and quite possibly last time me and Matz ever agree on anything.

[Herr Matzat]

Oh well, the story is getting at least some more layers, let´s see what happens, maybe i am not as far in as i think (there is still tutorial stuff gong on, i just was taught how harmony ataks work, i have used them before but now i know why what works and what dossent)

I can now safely say that i fully expect at least 4 Screens of Worldmap.

I jsut read this on a blog

The game is actually a 126 MB download and 98.5 MB of that is the game's musictrack. It has roughly 2.5 consecutive hours of music all told.

To see it for yourself, make a copy of the .ipg file, change the extension to .zip, and extract it. You'll get 54 AAC tracks. About 12 are little fanfares for the beginnings and ends of battles and the like, but the rest are music.

Edited July 11, 2008 by Michael Matzat on a Plane