>>717871805
This is empty navel gazing that doesn't have any basis in reality, as much as it's a cool design detail nobody but a few hardcore SD fans really cares about the multiple character gimmick of SD3 just like nobody cares about the autistic intricacies of Legend, most people around don't replay the game and guess what? the vast majority of people who even finished the game to begin with did so with either Angela or Riesz rather than any of the other characters, go check the achievement rates and you'll see them tower over the rest of the cast with poor Kevin and Hawkeye being the least popular characters by a huge margin.
>but clearly graphics alone don't sell a game.
Nobody would have bought Trials if it looked like Adventures or SoM remake, just like nobody would have bought the RS2 remake if it didn't look the way it did.
Visions' problems are due to Trials not actually bringing in any real new blood to the series, most of the people who bought it fapped to Angela and Riesz and moved on because they had no actual interest in what Mana is about, with all its issues and troubled development Visions did nothing that wouldn't appeal to actual Mana fans, in fact it is really a huge love letter to the franchise as a whole, the uncomfortable truth is that Mana fans are a tiny minority and Trials' success was not at all representative of the actual userbase.
Same exact thing that happened with RS2R by the way, SF2R came out a couple of months after it and got ignored again, none of the other entries saw any significant increase in interest or discussion either because the vast majority who bought RS2R wasn't there to stay.
All long running JRPG series are suffering from this generational turn over and being unable to create new hardcore fans, Atelier also quickly destroyed itself trying to appeal to the Ryza crowd and some mystical "wider audience" unicorn rather than actual fans of the series.
