NoOtherPersona
Smash Lord
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2018
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- 1,577
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Man I'm praying for adol he'd be dope he's one of my top five wants since he took Terry's spotSo since I'm bored and have some time, I thought I might write a decently in-depth post on why I think a Nihon Falcom rep is quite possibly one of the most under discussed characters at this point comparatively to how likely they are (kinda like SNK and Terry). It makes sense in the West because while their popularity is rising, they are still very niche. In JP, they are well known. Since they have a good bit of history/legacy allow me to go over why I think they are quite possibly one of the most important companies that are not present in any shape or form in terms of Smash. I'm not creating this post as a huge fanboy or anything (I've dabbled a bit in TLOH and the Ys series), but it's important to note how much they helped in setting the trends for the first role-playing games (similar to DQ and FF).
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So first things first:
What is Nihon Falcom?
Nihon Falcom is one of the oldest Japanese video game companies that specialize in creating role-playing games; they were founded in 1981. In comparison, Enix (responsible for Dragon Quest) was founded in 1975, while Square (responsible for Final Fantasy) was founded in 1986. While the other two companies exploded in popularity with the rise of the NES, and eventually merged together; Falcom never abandoned it's PC roots even as home consoles gained popularity and stuck almost exclusively to developing for PC until the rise of the PSP, when the switched over due to the severe decline in PC game sales in JP.
While a couple of their games made it to other consoles, the porting was almost always done by an external company.
What's special about Falcom is that during their 40 year history, they haven't really expanded that much. During the current day (where they are arguably at the peak of their popularity so far), they only have around 62 employees; in comparison SNK has nearly 164 and Platinum Games has 224. They've worked closely with bigger companies such as Sony, but they have never been bought out. Despite their legacy, they've remained a relatively small scale developer of A/AA JRPG's for nearly 40 years. They typically tend to release a game every year or so.
Since they have such a long history, a lot of known people actually got their start at Falcom.
The most notable ones are:
Tetsuya Takahashi: Creator of the Xeno franchise, and one of the founders of Monolith-Soft.
Makoto Shinkai: Mostly known for his work on movies such as Your Name and Weathering With You, but he actually got a job right out College at Falcom.
What is their impact/legacy?
While their series never really reached the popularity of series like FF and DQ; they helped set the template for RPGs.
Their known series are:
Dragon Slayer/Xanadu
Zwei
Ys
The Legend of Heroes
In particular:
Dragon Slayer was one of the first action rpg's and layed the foundations for the genre. Games like The Legend of Zelda followed the footsteps of this series. The series diverged into the Xanadu series with the last game being Tokyo Xanadu (2015).
I'm not that familiar with the Zwei series, so I can't really say much.
However, the Ys and The Legend of Heroes series are their flagship and most popular series.
The Ys series is one of the longest running RPG series and started in 1987. The games feature the story of Adol Christin; an adventurer who always ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time (or the opposite). Each game is fairly standalone, although direct sequels do exist. The series helped popularize mechanics such a regenerating health, although it did not create the mechanic in games; that honour goes to Hyldide. However, according to wikipedia (Not exactly the most reliable, I know) the Ys series was the second series to introduce regeneration as a mechanic. The series has sold around 5 million in total, and the head of Falcom states that sales of the series outside Japan are much higher inside Japan. Ys 8 on the switch was also a huge succes outside of Japan, and in total that game has sold over 500k. The latest game, YS IX released in September 2019.
The Legend of Heroes series, is Falcom's other lead series and it originally started out as a part of the Dragon Slayer series; but grew into it's on thing. The most well known games in this series are a part of the Trails subseries (Sky, Zero, Cold Steel); which started out in 2004. Unlike the Ys series, in which the games are fairly standalone; the Trails series is the telling of one continuous story in the continent of Zemuria. The series is not available on the switch in any way currently, but Cold Steel 3 is coming out on it in the next couple of months. Inside Japan, the Trails series is much bigger compared to the Ys series; however, both are extremely niche outside Japan. The latest game in the West is Cold Steel 3 which released in October of 2019, but in Japan the latest game is Cold Steel 4, which released in September 2018.
In terms of popularity (inside Japan), if we consider the S tier RPG series something like FF, DQ, and Pokemon; and A tier series like Persona, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, and Tales then the Trails series would be B tier in terms of popularity. They have enough of a following that they can keep on making the games at a comfortable profit, but there are more popular JRPG series out there. For comparisons sake, The Cold Steel games sell a similar amount to the Danganronpa games in Japan. The games actually also have a fairly decent Chinese following, due to it being one of the first JRPG series to actually have Chinese translations, which are usually done by Sony.
Impact in Music
Falcom was actually one of the first Japanese developers to bother with a internal sound team (known as team jdk). As a result, the quality of their music is surprisingly high despite the company not having many people. Below are some tracks from the Ys and Trails series. They were pioneers of early game music (although none of these tracks are from that earlier period).
Speaking of which, Falcom is pretty open to letting anyone use their music. Which means that if they get a rep, we may end up getting another 50 tracks or so.
Who would the character be?
Well since this already took so long, I'm going to majorly skimp on this section.
There are only 3 likely candidates for a Falcom rep, Adol Christin (Ys), Estelle Bright (Trails in the Sky), and Rean Schwarzer (Trails of Cold Steel).
Out of these three, I believe the most likely is Adol Christin; the other two simply do not have the same legacy as him. In fact, there's probably not that many characters period that could bring in the same history as Adol. As a character, I don't really think he would bring that much new exciting things to the table, I mean he is an "anime swordsman". But Terry was just another brawler, and Sakurai made him really unique, so I doubt that he'll struggle to come up with a moveset.
TL;DR:
I think considering any character DLC in Smash a "lock" is a huge waste of time. Even if you're one of the most iconic 3rd party characters out there, there's still a high chance you'll get passed up. That said, if we're discussing potential "legacy" picks like Terry and SNK; I think Falcom and Adol have a prett good shot, for reasons I've outlined above. This took me way longer then it should have, so I'm probably not going to edit it. Hopefully it turned out well enough.
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Now it's Ryu H. Master Chief Adol Travis Touchdown and someone from SMT
