Their kickstarter project isn’t even launched yet, but you don’t need to pull out your crystal ball to know that these two new J-RPGs will be heavily funded. With the talents of two veterans of the genre on the bill, Matsuzo Machida (Shadow Hearts) and Akifumi Kaneko (Wild Arms), we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that these new licenses are as exciting as those from which they are inspired.
Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts, two niche monuments
Much less known than Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, these two series have nevertheless marked several generations of players thanks to their original universes. and which have not been exploited since by the Japanese RPG genre. Wild Arms offers a western atmosphere and a turn-based gameplay that has evolved throughout the episodes, to end up with something more tactical. For Shadow Hearts, itself heir to Koudelka, we are more in the Europe of the 1920s, with a pronounced gloomy atmosphere, but the license especially stood out thanks to its second episode, Covenant, which added a layer of absurd humor to the scenario. Its game system was based on “the wheel of judgment” and its many segments to customize in order to chain ever longer combos.
Revivals of the PS1/PS2 era continue
So it’s great news to see the creators of these two quality franchises back in business hand in hand, with a Kickstarter project set to launch shortly. On one side we have Armed Fantasia, heir to Wild Arms and on the other Penny Blood, heir to Shadow Hearts. Each of these two projects involve developers who have already worked on the “parent” licenses of these new games, of which we obviously hope a lot. Remember that the creators of Suikoden also used Kickstarter to launch Eiyuden Chronicles, another heir to a cult Japanese role-playing game saga dating from the 32-bit period.