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Oct 25, 2017
34,958


From Microsoft, to THQ, to Nintendo, to Nexon, Matt goes over the insane journey of Itagaki's attempted magnum opus Devil's Third.

"Bats can not be a thing here"
 

litebrite

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
21,832
Devil's Third always looked like trash but possibly some good trash. Shame it couldn't be that either.
 

rawhide

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,003
That part about NOA's handling of the game is even sillier than was stated in that video--they'd pledged the game to XSEED but when online outlets started speculating that NOA wasn't going to publish the game (thereby creating the impression that there was a demand for it), NOA reacted by clawing the game back from XSEED and announcing they'd be publishing it in NA after all... and then when universally negative/mocking reports came in from Japan and Europe they promptly up about it and did the absolute bare minimum to acknowledge it in any way. XSEED was allegedly very unhappy about having the game unceremoniously snatched away from them, as the "Operation Rainfall" games they'd released did super well for them and they'd hoped this would do similarly, but they probably dodged a bullet in the end.

The irony is that the shitty Animal Crossing Amiibo game came out very soon after and reviewed even worse.

The multiplayer portion came out on PC twice, too--there was Devil's Third Online, which came out in several territories but never made it to an English release, and then a more recent rebranded, mega-f2p version called ROCKSHOT which hit Steam out of nowhere and disappeared after a few months.

Honestly, it wasn't that bad, especially considering all the shit it went through. Design-wise, it was so close to being great and it's very evident that a lot of stuff like the parkour had to be trimmed way back for the sake of shipping, or getting the game to run acceptably on Wii U, or whatever. Unfortunately, we'll never know what it could have been.

edit: Valhalla did make at least one other game, they did the Momotaro Dentetsu 3DS game that Nintendo licensed from Konami.
 
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Gold Arsene

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
30,757
This was one of the most bizarre paths for a game I've ever seen.

And it's going to die on the Wii U while Tokyo Mirage Sessions lived.(Note I love TMS it's just weird how these things play out.)
 

Man God

Member
Oct 25, 2017
38,378
This might have been a weird cult classic if only it had made it to Switch launch instead of the dying days.
 

criteriondog

I like the chili style
Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,286
These are really entertaining to watch! Thanks for this, I always wondered what happened to this game in dev.
 

Oregano

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,878
That part about NOA's handling of the game is even sillier than was stated in that video--they'd pledged the game to XSEED but when online outlets started speculating that NOA wasn't going to publish the game (thereby creating the impression that there was a demand for it), NOA reacted by clawing the game back from XSEED and announcing they'd be publishing it in NA after all... and then when universally negative/mocking reports came in from Japan and Europe they promptly up about it and did the absolute bare minimum to acknowledge it in any way. XSEED was allegedly very unhappy about having the game unceremoniously snatched away from them, as the "Operation Rainfall" games they'd released did super well for them and they'd hoped this would do similarly, but they probably dodged a bullet in the end.

The irony is that the shitty Animal Crossing Amiibo game came out very soon after and reviewed even worse.

The multiplayer portion came out on PC twice, too--there was Devil's Third Online, which came out in several territories but never made it to an English release, and then a more recent rebranded, mega-f2p version called ROCKSHOT which hit Steam out of nowhere and disappeared after a few months.

Honestly, it wasn't that bad, especially considering all the shit it went through. Design-wise, it was so close to being great and it's very evident that a lot of stuff like the parkour had to be trimmed way back for the sake of shipping, or getting the game to run acceptably on Wii U, or whatever. Unfortunately, we'll never know what it could have been.

edit: Valhalla did make at least one other game, they did the Momotaro Dentetsu 3DS game that Nintendo licensed from Konami.

There's a Valhalla offshoot called Soleil who developed a Boruto game and worked on Travis Strikes Again. They are presumably working on NMH3 as well.
 

-shadow-

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
I own the game, and the single player, while not great, was a blast. Absolutely ridiculous and had me laughing way more than it probably was meant to do.
And the online mode, that was seriously really great!
 
Oct 26, 2017
13,657
I would love to see this get at least one more crack on Switch as Rockshot rebranded back as Devil's Third, as the former was an UE4 remake, which as we know Switch is very compatible with. So I'd like to see that plus the single-player campaign get that UE4 remake treatment on Switch and see how it turns out. That's the most recommended outside of an outright ground-up reimagining of what Itagaki truly wanted to be, as I'd bet Switch is more than capable of realizing that vision, since it was conceived for PS3 and 360 after all.
 

Lagamorph

Wrong About Chicken
Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,355
I legitimately enjoyed the single player of Devil's Third. Far too much of the bashing came from people who didn't even play it.
 
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Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,770
Ibis Island
The game is solid enough, still surprised to this day all the 3/10's it got. It's much more akin to a 5-6 as there's nothing really unplayable about it.
 

Deleted member 16908

Oct 27, 2017
9,377
The game is solid enough, still surprised to this day all the 3/10's it got. It's much more akin to a 5-6 as there's nothing really unplayable about it.

Simply functioning does not warrant a 5 or a 6 in my opinion. If I buy a game I expect it to function. A 3 is a fair score.
 

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,770
Ibis Island
Simply functioning does not warrant a 5 or a 6 in my opinion. If I buy a game I expect it to function. A 3 is a fair score.

I dunno, 3/10 is typically in the "never play this" category and devils third is far from that. It's pretty akin to other shooters of the 360 area but with gun-kata in the mix. This doesn't even get into the unique MP it had before servers shut down.
 

Oregano

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,878
Remember than Devil's Third came out when reviews of Wii U games were all along the lines of "The game is good but it won't save the Wii U. 7/10"
 

Laserbeam

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,494
Canada
Gonna watch this later for sure, but I actually had quit a blast with the game when it came out.

It's wild in so many ways.
 

StarPhlox

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,429
Wisconsin
This is one of the dumber games I ever owned and I really enjoyed my play
through as well as the one that Matt and Liam did. I can definitely recommend that over downloading it on the Wii U lol
 

Zacmortar

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,383
The game is solid enough, still surprised to this day all the 3/10's it got. It's much more akin to a 5-6 as there's nothing really unplayable about it.
a buggy game is atleast entertaining

a boring game is never entertaining

Id sooner play Sonic 06 and all its bullshit 3 times over than ever touch Devil's Third again. Garbage is better than mediocrity imho.
 

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,770
Ibis Island
a buggy game is atleast entertaining

a boring game is never entertaining

Id sooner play Sonic 06 and all its bullshit 3 times over than ever touch Devil's Third again. Garbage is better than mediocrity imho.

Thats a bold take. Never would I equate DT to the levels of sonic 06. You can at least finish DT before all the loading is done in sonic 06 lol
 

Kyle Cross

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,483
Surprised he didn't mention that Devil's Third multiplayer came back a third time in the form of "RockShot", an early access free to play game on Steam back in June 2018... and was shut down 3 months later. It was put out by that Valhalla team who made the Naruto game.
 

DevilPuncher

"This guy are sick" and Aggressively Mediocre
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,775
Never played the game, but the SBF play through was a blast to watch.
 

Deleted member 35071

User requested account closure
Banned
Dec 1, 2017
1,656
i legit liked this game. The multiplayer was cool. The gameplay was 3rd person melee action until u would ADS and it would become an FPS. the story and characters were Kojima-esque.

Heck, when there was a recent thread about boss battles here. A devils third boss battle against the dude with the knives came to my mind. Because it was tough. But satisfying when i finally beat him
 

Com_Raven

Brand Manager
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
1,103
Europa
Listening to some of these quotes.......

What is Itagaki on?

This! I used to love him back in the OG Xbox days, when he was cocky and admittedly a jerk (especially towards Harada and Tekken), but still entertaining. But somewhere during Devil Third's Odyssey he sadly he went down the same path that a lot of old game dev heroes who are overtaken by new trends take, and suddenly everything was always everyone else's fault. Publisher uselss, press too unskilled to understand his game's genius etc. Nothing could ever be the fault og him, or his awesome game.

Always pretty sad to see people you once liked turn out that way.
 

Empyrean Cocytus

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
18,805
Upstate NY
Yeah, you know how I said in another thread that the Switch is the true successor to the Wii since all of the Wii U ports it has gotten have made the Wii U obsolete?

The Wii U can keep this one.
 

Garlador

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
14,131
Gamestop had a copy for under $30 once and I sort of wish I had bought it. The ebay market for the game is pretty high, given how limited support it got at release.
 

DrArchon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,485
I remember thinking how weird it was that Itagaki wasn't teaming up with Microsoft for his next game, but I never put 2 and 2 together and asked if Kinect might be the issue.

Great vid as always.
 

Conrad Link

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,685
New Zealand
Game was awesome fun, I just went through the whole thing slashing everything with my katana, never even used guns lol. Batshit insane cutscenes, characters and plot. I've always said if the game was released back in the N64 days it prolly would be fondly remembered in a MGS b-movie type of sense.
 

Chaos2Frozen

Member
Nov 3, 2017
28,128

Who knows how a Master Ninja thinks

D0C9NoKM_2a29xeBawlWUbhGXyT_NYtWiUIFXMxI0lk.jpg
 

Gold Arsene

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
30,757
I will say if this got a Switch port somehow I'd buy it. As rough as it looks it also looks like my kind of crazy.
 

fiendcode

Member
Oct 26, 2017
24,964
There's a Valhalla offshoot called Soleil who developed a Boruto game and worked on Travis Strikes Again. They are presumably working on NMH3 as well.
I think Soliel pretty much is what became of Valhalla's Japanese dev team after Itadaki fucked off to Italy. It's all headed by ex-Team Ninja vets from DOA1-4 and NG1-2.
 

Hailinel

Shamed a mod for a tag
Member
Oct 27, 2017
35,527
I will say if this got a Switch port somehow I'd buy it. As rough as it looks it also looks like my kind of crazy.
I'm one of the twenty people that bought it (digitally) on Wii U. If you go in knowing what to expect (a shlocky game with poor performance, writing, characters...well, poor everything), it's not a bad time because it may manage to exceed extremely low expectations.

The online was...it was online, at least. It was utterly bizarre to see the online component as fleshed out as it was, with all of the modes and options and side features, but there were so few people actually playing Devil's Third's online that 95% of what was on offer never actually did much of anything. If you weren't in the basic deathmatch lobby with the same twenty people also playing the game's online, you would have nothing to do, because there weren't enough people online to even begin filling the lobbies for those other modes.
 

Jimnymebob

Member
Oct 26, 2017
19,715
My problem with this game was that the aiming sensitivity was absolutely screwed no matter what setting you put it on, so I had to rely on mashing the aim button to auto-aim to a torso, because manually aiming was impossible.

I'm always up to play a "bad game", but the main gameplay mechanic just didn't function.
 

Piccoro

Member
Nov 20, 2017
7,122
I'm one of the twenty people that bought it (digitally) on Wii U. If you go in knowing what to expect (a shlocky game with poor performance, writing, characters...well, poor everything), it's not a bad time because it may manage to exceed extremely low expectations.

The online was...it was online, at least. It was utterly bizarre to see the online component as fleshed out as it was, with all of the modes and options and side features, but there were so few people actually playing Devil's Third's online that 95% of what was on offer never actually did much of anything. If you weren't in the basic deathmatch lobby with the same twenty people also playing the game's online, you would have nothing to do, because there weren't enough people online to even begin filling the lobbies for those other modes.
I actually bought the physical edition on day one! :p
I was going through a phase that I purchased any new game that came to the Wii U, plus I was hyped to play a new Itagaki game, and the main character looked cool in trailers.
Needless to say I was very disappointed with the game. Never got past the second level.
I also played a bit of MP and indeed it was much better than the SP campaign.

The video mentions at the end that the MP portion of the game got a release in South Korea, but it actually came to the West under the name RockShot: https://store.steampowered.com/app/653120/RockShot/
The servers closed shortly after.
 

justiceiro

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
6,664
one of the most hilarious episode of this series for sure, to the point that I kept rewinding the video to hear the delivery.

"They just needed to do something first: going out of business", LMAO.
 

Falique

Member
Oct 30, 2017
80
Devils Turd

Ahahahahahahahha get it?get it?

.....................

Im sorry dont hit me please
 
May 21, 2018
445

Kingpin Rogers

HILF
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
7,459
I've always thought devils third got a particularly harsh time. I played it shortly after it came out and it was decently fun. Certainly not as bad as everyone made out.
 

tulpa

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
3,878
Can I just say: I really enjoy Devil's Third. Yes, it's hugely flawed and feels unfinished. But the game is a blast to play, especially if you play it primarily as a melee hack and slash rather than a shooter.

Some very cool boss fights. I think it wasn't given a fair shake.
 

Deleted member 21709

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
23,310
Prefaced with 'Nintendo can do no wrong I swear!' and just glossing over WHAT Itagaki published during his partnership with Microsoft makes this seem like a hit piece more than anything.