I don't know. As I was talking with PyTom earlier, Tomo Kataoka has failed to disappoint me yet from any of his writings.
I saw the original Narcissu as a ground breaking experimental piece. With it, Kataoka explored whether fans prefered a story with our without voices, whether a work could be minimalistic but powerful, and what could be achieved with "limited" resources.
As much as we debated it in the other thread, Narcissu was made with "limited" resources in comparison of what Kataoka was capable of acquire. People claimed it had an awesome soundtrack, but 80% of that soundtrack was stolen from the NekoNeko Soft archives. The artwork was minimal, well he chose specifically not to seek someone who could provide a huge amount of artwork. And finally the voice acting was done by a VA friend of his.
He made his experimental piece and story, and his fans loved it beyond belief. It is the most successful piece stage-nana has made to date. It was translated (with permission) into four other languages within a matter of a month (sometimes even multiple times in one language). And finally, he had created characters his fans had become endeared too.
I think for Narci2, Kataoka wants to expand on his characters that were loved in Narcissu (well... Setsumi, since it was only her and the protagonist). He is not trying to make a ground breaking revolutionary work this time, he merely wants to expand the character he created within Narcissu that everyone fell in love with.
And to do this, he chose this time to approach it from a non-minimalistic POV. This time Narci2 has an all time star voice cast, Goto-P has committed to drawing a considerable amount of artwork for the title, he has a list of A class composers and the second most famous combo from I've Sound. But in exchange for all this he has in Narci2 that he didn't have in Narcissu, he sacrificed time... and a lot of it. Remember, Narci2 was supposed to come out (i think) around last summer. Its been so long that I even forgot the original release date goal. He is just this time not choosing to make the game from a minimalistic POV.
In fact, you could actually see Narci2 as an experiment of sorts. An experiment to see if the prologue of a game can be equally loved as the originally when it is told from a "professional" style of game. It will tell him which style is truly more popular, the "professional descriptive" game or the "artistic minimalistic" game that Narcissu was originally.
In that perspective, it was sort of like how Narcissu came as both a voiced and non voiced version, so Kataoka could "really" feel what people preferred. You can't compare a free doujin game to a commercial game in people's true preference of style because one requires the end user to inherently pay for it, and thus it becomes a comparison of apples and oranges. With Narci2, he would have a psuedo comparison point of apples to apples (yes, there is still some skew, but a bit less).
Narcissu Side 2nd may not be the ground breaking and revolutionary doujin that Narcissu was. But I doubt Kataoko's devotion and story telling skills will fail us now, and thus I truly believe it will be an enjoyable story, quite possible as enjoyable as the original. And thats fine with me, not every title has to break the mold to be entertaining and loved.
mikey wrote:With a different name and protagonist, I think it would be a fresh and deep story made with an all-star ensemble, from the makers of Narcissu. But the way it is now, using the Narcissu name, I just can't imagine it being anything than a disappointment in the end.
The game is using a different protagonist. You play as Setsumi (go female protagonists) this time and the protagonist from the original Narcissu is not in this prequel whatsoever.
. It just wouldn't be known at all. It'd be categorized as "adventure" or something else, very vague... because amateur games rarely get a category name of their own ^^;..