So that means Valkyria Chronicles 3 is getting localized, right?
No, of course not. That would be silly.
Instead, Project X Zone, the very Japanese collaborative 3DS project between Namco, Capcom and Sega is going to see a release everywhere outside of Japan this summer under Namco's publishing. This is only marginally less silly, but less silly is less silly regardless. Of course, given Nintendo's unfriendliness to importers, this is basically the only way we would be able to play this game over here outside of buying a Japanese 3DS, so it's a victory all around. I admit, prior to tonight I really didn't pay any attention whatsoever to news of the game since I had imagined its chances for a release outside of Japan were quite low, especially with Sega's involvement and especially especially because of Sega's characters from games which will never be officially released outside of Japan, but Namco apparently wants to make a splash in the whole publishing scene, I suppose. A PR splash, that is, because let's face it - Project X Zone is going to be a niche title at best. Best to accept that up front.
So what -is- Project X Zone aside from a really weird title that will hopefully(?) be updated for the localized release? I...am not quite sure, really. It's very much one of those games that I suppose you are just supposed to know about since nobody really seems to want to explain what it is. After some digging, however, I did suss up a bit of a clue to its nature. Apparently it is a sort of Strategy RPG game with Action RPG elements for the times where you initiate battle on the board tiles. And when I say it is a sort of Strategy RPG with Action RPG elements, I think I am supposed to switch that, saying that it is an Action RPG with Strategy RPG elements, since it seems fairly light on that and really focuses on the times where you actually fight, as pictured above. It seems to be an ultra-damage, get your ridiculous number blinders on type of affair if I'm hearing right, so that's certainly a thing.
Oh, it's also a cross-over game, which is probably worth mentioning even though you have probably figured that out by now. Characters from a multitude of Sega, Namco and Capcom franchises are going to be involved in all sorts of ways, totaling to over 200 characters from all involved, including a few original characters here and there. The bulk of the rosters will be featured on the field as playable characters, most of them in the battling pairs that you navigate around the map for that portion of the gameplay, though some of them are single combatants, some are simply support characters (or NPCs, I imagine) and some, actually, are probably enemy characters that are in the world solely for you to have someone to fight other than 'original' things. Probably. I mean, I cheated a bit and looked at the Wiki Page for the game because I really want some goddamn information now, but I'm not sure what to think.
Notably, the game will see characters from both Valkyria Chronicles 3 in Kurt, Riela and Imca, and the first one in Selvaria Bles, as well as all three protagonists from Resonance of Fate to rep Sega's franchises. (Yes, there's plenty of others, but I only really care about those ones.) Capcom brings the usual suspects in Mega Man X (who they still trot out every now and then, see?) and Zero, Dante from Devil May Cry (classic Dante, though it really doesn't matter) and a handful of Street Fighter characters, not to mention some Darkstalkers and Ghosts N' Goblins characters to remind everyone of the older stuff. Namco, not to be outdone, is throwing in a few Tekken characters, not to mention characters from .Hack, Tales of Vesperia and friggin' Xenosaga, which takes the third place of 'series from which there are characters that I care about' after perusing the whole list of the confirmed cast. I loves me some Xenosaga...as long as it's the first and third episode. Jenseits von Gut und Böse never happened as far as I'm concerned, throwing it into a surprisingly large category of 'series where the second game is utter shit'.
Speaking of bad games, we should be careful not to get ahead of ourselves in the whole excitement department here. Opinions opinions and all that, but in my digging, I did not find super glowing remarks about the game....or even kind of sparkly remarks about it. It should be noted that the game was worked on by a developer named Banpresto who you probably have not heard of since their main claim to fame is the Super Robot Wars franchise....which has seen precisely three releases in Not-Japan (under the banner of Super Robot Taisen) thanks to Atlus. Monolith Soft, who had their hands in the Xeno- games (including Xenoblade Chronicles) has also been attached to the title, but I'm not sure it's Monolith Soft proper (possibly like a B team) and I doubt their involvement was very major. It seems like a Banpresto project through and through which...might not be the best thing one could say about it.
Still, perhaps I'm wrong. There really isn't a whole lot of chatter about the game on the internet, which is slightly worrisome in terms of how well it will actually do, so it's entirely possible that the people yelling about it are the vocal minority that comes out of the woodwork to complain about everything and anything. We'll all have a chance to find out the truth behind the quality of the game come this Summer, and, if only because Sega is attached, I do genuinely hope that it does at least decently. I know there's no real way to tell any one single of the three companies "I am buying this because of you," which is a little unfortunate, because if we could I would consider it just to tell Sega that I want VC3 -that badly-. Even though they don't care about that. And they don't care that I've been playing Binary Domain and I absolutely goddamn love it and I will sing its praises from the rooftops one of these nights like I have done with the Yakuza games so many nights here. So there you have it - a story that doesn't even have that much to do with Sega, and yet I still find a reason to say it.
Goddamnit Sega.
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