Got a few hundred free hours this March? That’s good, because you’re gonna need all of them. As any good RPG fan knows, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII will be launching March 9. Role-playing game fans see this long awaited epic as poised to either reinvigorate the JRPG with its graphics and battle system or ruin it with its seemingly “on-rails” linearity. But either way, we know FFXIII is going to sell a lot of copies this March.
However unlike a certain shooter which released last fall and forced most of its competition to move their games into 2010, FFXIII seems to be attracting its competition like moths to a flame. Now Sega has announced that their own RPG, Resonance of Fate, will join the already RPG-packed month of March, launching on March 16.
Developed by tri-Ace, the makers of Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile, Resonance of Fate certainly has an excellent pedigree. The story takes place in a future Earth where much of the world has been rendered uninhabitable by a strange poison. The only safe place for humanity to live is a massive tower, which also happens to be infested with monsters created by a malfunction of one of the tower’s machines (…and you thought times were tough in present day Earth). The players take the role of a band of bounty hunters who are tasked with battling their way up the tower to solve the riddle behind the malfunctioning machine.
Resonance of Fate’s most unique feature at this point seems to be its intense – and reportedly complicated – battle system which involves both real-time movement and turn-based combat, where even the most basic of attacks are accompanied by cinematic shots of your character jumping and flipping, action movie style, to line up their shot.
As alluded to earlier, Final Fantasy XIII isn’t the only other RPG Resonance of Fate will have to go up against this March. RoF will also face stiff competition from Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, the Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening expansion pack, Sega’s other sci-fi RPG Infinite Space and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, just to name a few.
So if you find yourself with nothing to do after marathoning FFXIII don’t forget about Resonance of Fate or any of the other RPGs that will also be competing for your attention this March.
[Via: Joystiq]
I have all of those games on pre order – except FFXIII.
I still haven’t gotten around to any FF since 7. The plan is to make XII my next one in that series, since it caused such a division.
Resonance of Fate looks like it has enough things to set it apart from the pack to make me move it up on my list of RPGs.