JRPG Revival Promised to North America, Europe

[Tom Goldman]

JRPG Revival Promised to North America, Europe

The upcoming titles that Japanese developer Imageepoch says will revive the JRPG are going global.

Imageepoch recently unveiled a new RPG publishing venture [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105615-Imageepoch-Unveils-New-Wave-of-JRPGs] that the company says will put the JRPG back into the world's good graces, but didn't confirm that it would be releasing any of its upcoming titles in North America or Europe. Thanks to an interview with Dengeki Online, Imageepoch has confirmed that its new JRPGs will indeed be coming overseas.

At a recent press conference, Imageepoch announced Final Promise Story, Black Rock Shooter: The Game, Chevalier Saga Tactics, and no less than five future projects including a collaboration with Sega. Dengeki asked Imageepoch CEO Ryoei Mikage if he planned to bring these games to regions other than Japan, and he said yes.

Imageepoch has decided to team-up with Nippon Ichi Software America (NISA) to release these and future titles in North America and Europe. NISA is known for various RPG series such as Atelier [http://www.amazon.com/Disgaea-3-Absence-Justice-Playstation/dp/B001C4C4KW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290881170&sr=8-1] games. Mikage chose NISA because of its success with Disgaea, which has sold 150,000-200,000 units in North America.

There wasn't any information given on release dates or which titles will make it overseas first, but Final Promise Story isn't hitting Japan until April 28, 2011, so there could be a solid wait until we get our hands on what Imageepoch has cooked up. The idea behind Imageepoch's "JRPG" publishing label is to convince gamers that the JRPG can break out of its conventions that they might be finding a bit old by this point, such as sometimes tedious random battling. There have been plenty of good RPGs to come out of Japan recently, but there's no denying that the JRPG is associated with a negative stigma it once wasn't.

I'm glad these new "JRPG" games are coming overseas, but I just hope they'll be able to find an audience. Final Promise Story and Black Rock Shooter are both for the PSP, which by next summer could be overtaken by a new Sony handheld [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105385-Rumor-PSP2-Images-Hit-the-Streets]. If they don't, Imageepoch at least still has the PS3/PC's Chevalier Saga Tactics and four mystery titles which NISA can handle in the future.

Source: Siliconera [http://www.siliconera.com/2010/11/26/nis-america-bringing-imageepochs-games-to-north-america-and-europe/]


Permalink

 

[xyrafhoan]

Black Rock Shooter wasn't received very well, so I can't imagine the game doing super well either. And the rest of the titles sound mediocre at best... this is a bit of a disappointment considering I *am* a fan of jRPGs and most of my game library is made up of them. I would be more excited if somehow Imageepoch and Nippon Ichi Software convinces Nintendo and MonolithSoft to bring Xenoblade across the pond.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Yay! I just got back into JRPGs again, so I'm very excited for any news about new ones.

This generation is bone-dry in the JRPG department, compared to the PS2 days. Man, those PS2 days were great. We had 3 Wild ARMs games (3,4,5), a handful of SMT games, Star Ocean 3, 3 Grandia games (2,3,Xtreme), 3 major FFs (X, X-2, XII), Dragon Quest 8, 2 Dark Clouds, 3(?) "Tales of" games...So much good stuff.

And I'm getting sick of the shallow combat systems WRPGs are heading towards...The plots are good, but the combat and stat management (my favorite parts of an RPG!) are being simplified to action game levels. The only one I've enjoyed lately is Dragon Age.

Atlus, do your part as usual, and localize "Catherine"!

 

[VondeVon]

Yeah, these titles sound pretty 'yawn'.

All I want is a visually gorgeous game with a deep, layered plot, clever and unique characters, minus the scifi and with a side order of creativity and freshness.

Is that so hard?

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Yeah, these titles sound pretty 'yawn'.

All I want is a visually gorgeous game with a deep, layered plot, clever and unique characters, minus the scifi and with a side order of creativity and freshness.

Is that so hard?

Dragon Quest 5's port for the DS has you covered, for all of that. Not 9.

9 isn't deep in the plot department, but 5 is.

 

[The Rascal King]

Hey bitches, what about us poor 360/Wii owners? I've been sucking on Square Enix's poisonous teat for years now.

 

[VondeVon]

Yeah, these titles sound pretty 'yawn'.

All I want is a visually gorgeous game with a deep, layered plot, clever and unique characters, minus the scifi and with a side order of creativity and freshness.

Is that so hard?

Dragon Quest 5's port for the DS has you covered, for all of that. Not 9.

9 isn't deep in the plot department, but 5 is.

Thanks for the rec!

I got DQVIII but I find the DBZ style graphics to be really ugly. I do hear so many good things, though, that Im trying to work through it - cure myself, as it were.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Yeah, these titles sound pretty 'yawn'.

All I want is a visually gorgeous game with a deep, layered plot, clever and unique characters, minus the scifi and with a side order of creativity and freshness.

Is that so hard?

Dragon Quest 5's port for the DS has you covered, for all of that. Not 9.

9 isn't deep in the plot department, but 5 is.

Thanks for the rec!

I got DQVIII but I find the DBZ style graphics to be really ugly. I do hear so many good things, though, that Im trying to work through it - cure myself, as it were.

I like cel-shading, and DBZ's style, so the game was gorgeous to me...but whatever. Different tastes, right? Well, it IS drawn by the man who made DBZ, Toriyama himself.

5 is sprite based, seeing as it's a port. 4's port is solid, too. Not as good of a plot as 5, but still better than 9 in that regard.

Together, they should easy hold you for 100+ hours.

There is DBZ style art in the booklet and box art, but don't let that scare you off. And a bit of it in character portraits.

 

[digital warrior]

Cant be any worse than ff13.

 

[xyrafhoan]

Black Rock Shooter wasn't received very well, so I can't imagine the game doing super well either.

The anime wasn't received very well (because it was awful), but the character, or rather the character design, was popular even without a story to go along with it. The game could still be good...although I kind of think a fluid action game like Bayonetta would make more sense for the characters. I guess they don't have those kinds of resources.

I only hope they have the liberty and wisdom to ignore the story from the horrible anime.

I don't know, most of my friends instantly declared Black Rock Shooter to be a ripoff of Vocaloid and then all interest in Black Rock Shooter, including their interest in the characters died off too, so now my DA inbox is back to being flooded with Vocaloid art again. That's why I'm quite skeptical about making a game off a property that was run off a cliff so soon. And Final Promise Story is such a generic Engrish name that is treading on the toes of Mistwalker's The Last Story. Chevalier Tactics looks okay, if the screenshots didn't make me pine for Final Fantasy Tactics instead. At this point I'm up for Disgaea 4 from NIS or any other number of NIS's more lighthearted, comedic titles.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Jrpgs are mired in crappy equipment, grinding gameplay, spastic level/skill pacing and worse.
It was not so bad mid to late 90s then everyone thought they could make a RPG and worse yet square thought they could just spam games and still make money.... well they might have spammed Jrpgs square might have made money from them but damn do they suck.....

 

[CapnRaccoon]

I generally avoid JRPGs unless good things are said about them (Or they're a dungeon crawler, love me some Dungeon Crawlin')
So I'm happy more titles are hitting our shores; Rune Factory 3 and ClaDun just received Western release too, so this is totally a good thing.

 

[Nocturnal Gentleman]

If these continue with the same turn based combat with insane amounts of grinding then I don't care. I've grown tired of JRPGs to be honest. Too many boring stories, too much crappy dialogue, too many animated scenes, too many annoying characters, to much tiresome gameplay and so on. There really isn't anything drawing me back anymore.

For every one JRPG with a whole like-able cast there are 50 more with characters you wish would die. Plus I don't like the art style for most of them. I liked persona games because the people look normal. Don't give me a deformed thing that whines or shrieks unless your game is nothing but creatures. Then I don't care.

 

[Stormz]

I've been wanting a new Jrpg for a while now. I miss the PS2 days when good ones were common. Maybe this will get me to buy a Ps3, who knows.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

See, to me, that sounds like a threat.

But that's just my tastes.

 

[Nurb]

I don't think the JRPG publishers are even able to the break away from the exact same formula that got people bored in the first place