Soul Saga – A JRPG That Could Be Coming To The Vita, PS4, and Wii U With Your Help!
Okay, you got me, it’s a Kickstarter project. But this is a game I really want to play on my Vita, admittable, it won’t be playable untill next year, but without your help it won’t be playable on the Vita/PS4 at all!
But before I start this article, you have to listen to its theme song – it’s a rockin’!
The game is a JRPG inspired by the likes of the PS1’s Final Fantasy, Breath Of Fire, Suidoken, and Persona.
The game, Soul Saga: Episode 1 will feature a beastly 20 hours of gameplay – to which more episodes will follow, probably quite some time apart if each game, or ‘episode’ will be 20 hours in length. (Unless it’s just the first episode that will be that long)
Now the point of me blogging on this is because I’m a bit selfish….. I really want this game to be on the Vita/ PS4. If you pledge $15 towards the project you get codes for your console. Which I have donated. 🙂
Obviously, putting a game on a console is expensive. The purchase of devkits, the porting the code, etc. So he has planted the ports to consoles in stretch goal territory (which means if you exceed your planned goal, which is $60k, then anything goal above is a ‘stretch goal’)
I was in contact with the creator of the project, Mike Gale, and I asked him a few questions. Obviously, being me, I wanted to know what engine it is running on.
He replied with
I am making this game on the Unity Game Engine.
Unity makes Game development fun. You no longer have to be a rocket scientist and spend years toiling away making an engine that someone else has probably made better before. It’s a new age now with the doors Unity is opening up not just for helping make games faster, but porting to so many different systems! I couldn’t do all of this porting if Unity didn’t support it!
Further in, I asked what language it is being programmed in – and it is the infamous C#, our favourite! I guess….
After those few technical (ish) questions, I asked him why a JRPG, rather than an action, or any other genre. He simply said
JRPGs are every form of media in one beautifully orchestrated piece of art. I really wanted to try my hand at creating a love letter to those classics that filled my childhood with such amazing memories.
Yes, okay, another question, I asked him if there were any cool gameplay mechanics that I haven’t read up on yet ( I’ll divulge into that in a sec)
He explained:
There will be environmental puzzles kind of like a lite version of Zelda. So you can hack bushes, dig, etc! Maybe that could also be akin to Pokemon!
Just like the games such as Chrono Trigger, he plans to make characters follow you, rather than dissapear in games like Final Fantasy.
The Characters
If you watched the video above, it shows some of the characters, but 2 of them ‘present’ the project, I guess. Anyway, if you didn’t their names are
Mithos, and Elise. This is Mithos description, according to the project’s page:
Mithos is an optimistic young man with a love for adventure. His life dream is to become the strongest Guild Master in the world, a title currently held by his late father.
Mithos loves his mother, but hates his dad. This attitude has evolved from years of Mithos’ father always being away for work, and him also being used as a measuring stick for Mithos by his teachers and peers.
About 10 years ago, Mithos’ father took his Guild down to the surface of Oterra to destroy the King of the Dragons so that the people of Medonia could once again live in their ancient home world. Even though Mithos’ father lead the strongest and most influential Guild in history, none of them have been seen since they left.
This year, Mithos graduates from his University, and is ready to finally take the steps towards his dream. Determined to earn the title of “World’s Strongest Guild Master” for himself, Mithos has joined the race to save Medonia. Except he’s not looking for a cure for the islands; he has his eyes set on doing the one thing his dad couldn’t: killing the King of the Dragons. But to have a chance he’ll need a lot of strong allies, so that’s why he’s starting a guild… right now!
So his dad is dead, he likes adventures, he is graduating from university the place they live is known as Medonia (awesome, original name) And he wants to kill the King of dragons, the one his dad died trying to do.
Now on to the lovely looking Elise. Pretty cool design she’s got going.
This is her description on the Project page:
Elise is a passionate inventor and talented engineer with the dream to become the best mechanic in Medonia. She likes to point out that she’s also the cutest mechanic in Medonia, which is true considering that it’s a male dominated profession. She’s been friends with Mithos since they were children. Even though they’ve been together their whole lives, Elise still finds it irritating that Mithos is absolutely terrible when it comes to machines. She has a very strict policy of treating machines like equals, not as simple tools, and tends to get a little violent around people who don’t follow the same mentality. Elise is reluctant to follow Mithos on his insanely dangerous adventure, but she struggles with her secret love for him. Will she really let Mithos face the World Eater alone?
Elise is an inventor and a talented engineer (Like me! Well forget the talented part…) Mithos and her have been friends since they were children, Mithos is terrible with machines Elise doesn’t like Mithos’ adventure, but she secretly loves him, how can she let him attempt to kill the World Eater alone?
Now on to the characters we didn’t see much of, named Max, and Taro.
Here’s what our good ol’ mate Mike has to say about Max:
Max is a burly, worker-class robot with the most advanced artificial intelligence ever developed. Though his AI is unique, its usefulness is dampened by the fact he portrays the maturity level of a young child. He sometimes tends to be on the shy side, but will jump to Elise’s aid at the slightest sense of danger. He looks up to Mithos as a role model and hopes to one day be as brave as him. Max is constantly hunted by a notorious bounty hunter group for reasons he refuses to reveal to his friends. Why is the bounty on Max so large, and for how long can Mithos and Elise keep their robot friend safe?
He is a robot, if you didn’t guess, his AI is similar to a child’s. He is a bit shy, and he see’s Mithos as a role model. He is hunted by bounty hunters, but no-one knows why because he won’t tell anyone. I sense random encounters in parts of the story where you fight the bounty hunters. ‘ for how long can Mithos and Elise keep their robot friend safe?’
And the awesome character who I think I’ll love the most, called Taro – A bunny/human thing which looks pretty cool (Their breed is known as the Toki)
Taro? Well he’s description goes a little like this:
Taro is a Toki shaman with an even stronger urge for adventure than Mithos. Taro’s unique wings and horns are the result of a stunted Ink mutation he incurred while protecting his village. The mutation has caused Taro to have a split personality that sometimes turns him into a blood thirsty killer. Taro’s transformations are getting more frequent, but he still has enough control not to hurt his friends… for now.
He is a Toki, a shaman, loves adventure and has a split personality that randomly turns him into a bloodthirsty killer… wait what?!?!
It seems that these will be the 4 characters in your party – Tradition to classic JRPG’s
There’s one more character I want to introduce to you if you’re not interested yet….
Garen.
He is the bad guy 😮
Garen is the tyrannical leader of one of the strongest guilds in Medonia. He currently holds a seat on the World Council, Medonia’s official body of government. He also possesses the unique power to control the monstrous Inkheart. His goal is to find a way to control the World Eater and its Dragon Brood so he can rule the world. When he first learns of Mithos’ goal to destroy the World Eater he sees him as no more than a naive boy, but as Mithos shows potential he begins to take violent action to prevent him from reaching the World Eater.
He is a tyranical leader of one of the strongest guilds in Medonia. He wants to find a way to control the World Eater so he can rule the world, but we don’t want that!
And this is the dragon brood – The Dragon Brood were once gods of medonia – but after the invention of machine they were exiled to caves, and mutated into nastier dragons. Oh noes!
Here’s a few pictures of what gameplay footage looks like:
The battle elements are similar to Chrono Trigger, but the enemies will have challenging elements like if one has a sheild, you must use the smashing technique to break it down.
There hasn’t been a full gameplay demo yet but Mike is planning to release an Alpha video for us all to view 🙂
I would continue, but I have a feeling I’ve rambled on too much, if you fancy reading more, view his Kickstarter page HERE
Oh, and pledge reqards include the likes of Art books, Elise figurines, T-shirts, Soundtracks Playing Cards and Beta access!
The best thing happened at work today, one of the doors in the sports centre is locked, to which you need to go around the long way to get to the sports hall. Today, an old lady tried to get through these doors (but obviously failed), I told her it is constantly locked, I don’t know why. So she went round the long way, and me, being a happy-chappy, trying to make people laugh, get on peoples good sides said ‘hello again! 🙂 ‘ to which she replied ‘Great to see you too.’ in the most sternest and unimpresed voice I have ever heard. I felt a mixture between silent laughter and that feeling when you’re told off. But yeah, when she was gone I did LOL.
I wanted to donate but it put me through Amazon payments, which means I need a credit card. Can’t I do it via paypal?
No, unfortunately 🙁
But you can always use someone else’s – transfer the paypal money to your bank, then theirs, to pay for it
thats is quite a bit of hassle though…
Some kickstarters recommend to use “mywirecard” as an alternative. I have never used their service though.
They’re only 3k away from meeting the Vita stretch goal.
I think I will help them meet this goal.
Wow, one of the extra goals is to add airship combat..
Did anyone remember Skies of Arcardia and started to drool at the prospect of airship combat :O?
an adventurer, an inventor and a robot? um i don’t know how to break it to you minimur, but this Is chronotrigger. not that I’m complaining though.… i Love chronotrigger! i just hope this project is lawsuit proof!
the screen shots look beautiful btw
You got a point, maybe there is some kind of magus later in the game too lol
This is gonna look beautiful on the Vita screen 😀
I know 😀
For a mere $150 you can hot glue your very own figurine.
Elise reminds me of Roll from Megaman. Maybe it’s the hat. o_O
Can’t believe I didn’t see this on kickstarter earlier, thanks for blogging about it, I might have missed it otherwise. Pledged my $15 for the game 😀
still got western vibes though
Damn! The $60000 goal has already been reached!
I will definitely be watching this project!
This game looks like torchlight
Cool. Looks good so far. Any chance for this to be on android? I mean more fodder for my life companion XD
I tend not to like such games (made by people I haven’t really heard of…ever)Note that I do support free development,but everything I have tried so far left me with a bitter taste,one way or another.
This one though smells good.Mostly getting nostalgia feels.
Cannot back it now,for I tend to only use paysafe cards or direct payment.
Paysafecard? I’m with you, I hate paypal, bitcoins, moneybookers… they all seem fishy.