Not impressed.
Maybe you'll disagree with me, though. Take a look and judge for yourself:
Ninokuni: The Another World
The first, and in my opinion, most promising of the announcements is Ninokuni: The Another World (Ninokuni literally means "Two Countries" or "The Country of Two," but appears to be the actual proper name of the world the game takes place in).
The game is being developed in collaboration with the famous anime production group, Studio Ghibli (if you've never heard of them, hit yourself), and focuses on the theme of "the connection between people." The player will take the role of an apparently nameless young boy as he travels throughout the land of Ninokuni.
Ninokuni: The Another World will be available on Nintendo DS sometime next year.
Inazuma Eleven 2
The least surprising of the 4 announcements (and one I totally called), Inazuma Eleven 2 is a follow-up to the recently released Soccer RPG on Nintendo DS.
I haven't seen a scan for this one yet, but there is reportedly a new Alien Team to face off against. Woo.
More details as I learn them.
Danboru Senki
The third announcement, Danboru Senki (lit. Cardboard Tactics) seems to focus on a more contemporary setting, and takes cues from SNES classic Robotrek, allowing the player to build custom robots for battle called LBX.
Danboru Senki will be available sometime next year on PSP.
Correction: I misread the Japanese title as 戦記 rather than 戦機 (the difference between a war history and a war strategy).
Ushiro
The fourth and final announcement from Level 5, Ushiro (lit. Behind) is described as a Horror RPG set in modern Japan. The scans are hard to read, but it seems that the player will take the role of Reiichirou Ushiro (a made-up Japanese name that plays on words). Reiichirou is a death god, or something of that nature, who can possess and steal the souls of others. He has some kind of relationship with Nanako Nishizaki, a 16 year old school girl who can see spirits.
Again, the scans are terrible to read, so I don't have all of the details at the moment, but I'll let you know when I do.
Ushiro is set to be released sometime next year on PSP.
So, there you have it.
Level 5 teased us all that they would be making "shocking" announcements this week, but unless they have something else to announce, I am officially not-shocked. The games all look pretty cool for handheld titles, but in a day and age when every developer and their grandmother are announcing 2 new DS games a week, I fail to see how this is anything special.
Of the 4, the Studio Ghibli collaboration, Ninokuni, certainly seems like the most promising.
I suppose it is nice to see Level 5 come into their own as a publisher, and I know that everyone has to start somewhere, but would it really have killed them to work on one console title?
Maybe you're stoked. If you are, let me know in the comments so maybe I can get over feeling so underwhelmed.
3 comments:
Agree that Ninokumi seems the most promising. Too bad that Studio Ghibli's not lending their expertise to a big-budget home console title where the art could really shine... but I guess we have Valkyrie of the Battlefield for that.
Yeah, it's interesting that Studio Ghibli is getting involved at all. I heard that Miyazaki doesn't care much for video games. Then again, I doubt he's working on this game himself...
And Valkyria Chronicles isn't a collaboration with Studio Ghibli. Unless I missed something somewhere?
No, Valkyria isn't a Ghibli collab, just extremely evocative of their style IMO, both in character design and in the alternate-Europe setting that's straight out of Kiki's Delivery Service. So much so that I personally think it must have been an intentional homage, though I don't think any of the game's designers have confirmed that.
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