According to Sony, Level 5's first HD RPG Shiro Kishi Monogatari (commonly referred to by English-speakers as White Knight Story or White Knight Chronicles) is set to (finally) release for PlayStation 3 in Japan during fiscal year 2008.
Okay, before you PS3 owners start jumping up and down with squeals of unrestrained joy (an RPG! an RPG! we finally have one!), understand that Fiscal Year 2008 actually goes until the end of March 2009. The fact that they announced it for "Fiscal 2008" and not just plain old "2008" leads us to believe that this release will be closer to the March 2009 side of the spectrum. Also, remember that there has been no news on an NA or EU release as of yet, and if the localization is left up to SCEA/SCEE (as it was with Rogue Galaxy), we may not see it on our shores for quite a bit longer than that.
However, for the RPG-starved PS3, this is definitely welcome news. Level 5's latest project was one of the first games announced for the PS3 back before launch in 2006, but has made very slow progress with even less press attention. So to know that the game is still coming out (and in the forseeable future, no less) is surely a sigh of relief for many PS3 owners wondering where the RPG love is.
I have always been a fan of Level 5's game design, and their gameplay is among some of the smoothest and most intuitive I've played (though their stories are often on the shallow side). Though the art style for Shiro Kishi Monogatari seems (to me, anyway) to be a step backwards (I preferredtheir cell-shaded work on Dark Cloud 2, DQVIII, and Rogue Galaxy to Shiro Kishi's odd take on photorealism), the game will most likely play quite nicely.
We'll keep our ears to the ground and keep you updated.
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