Perhaps in defense against criticisms leveled at Valhalla Knights 2, Doh Whang, from XSEED Games blogged about their efforts to make their game more US-friendly. He mentioned that they "were worried that the pacing was a bit too slow for the US audience," and implemented some short-notice changes. Not everything they wanted got in but here's the stuff that did:

• Escape Cards were made available in the third dungeon rather than the fifth, thus allowing the players at least to return to town and save more quickly.
• Increased amount of gold awarded in certain treasure chests.
• Increased amount of EXP gained from battles by 10% to allow for faster leveling up
• Slashed the number of monsters for the hunting quests by 30% so that the player could progress through the quests (and consequently the story) much quicker.

I can see how much improved the US version was from the original... that said, the grind tolerance of the Asian market continues to astound me. Apparently VK 2 did rather well over there with Japanese sales close to 35,000 in the first week alone.

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Related Valhalla Knights 2 Articles:

• Valhalla Knights 2 online versus and co-op gameplay videos
• Doh Whang provides Localization 101 for Valhalla Knights 2