Following the previous article detailing Gust’s time travel-themed new RPG, Chronos Materia, Famitsu has released more information about the game’s story, characters, and gameplay. The game is supposed to be an exploration-based RPG featuring charming characters and an “Eternity Cycle System”, which makes choices and progress from previous plays useable.
Chronos Materia takes place in a world engulfed with nature, where humanity and civilization are nonexistent. Suddenly, however, some people from another world are mysteriously brought into this one, and their fates entrusted in the repeating concept of time.
Here is the cast, from left to right:
Iris is a girl with a generous heart and personality, who grew accustomed with alchemy to help people, and strives for more knowledge. She does have another side in her that lacks self-confidence, and complains about her comrades who let their guards down. She is voiced by Yuuka Aisaka.
Thyme is someone who has a heart for adventure, and uses intuition over reason; demonstrating leadership in exploring and combat, but occasionally forgetting to look at future outcomes. She likes to setting herself in motion and tends to glance at reckless people. She also happens to have a romantic mask at hand. Thyme is voiced by Tomoyo Nakamura.
Primula is a girl of determined personality. Her behavior is cool and self-confident with a strong sense of purpose, but she has a fearful and obstinate side as well. She is voiced by Yoshiko Ikuta, whose roles include Yukina Sonogi from Night Raid 1931, and Yukina Kashiwagi from Penguindrum.
Shion is an indecisive boy with a tender demeanor, who’s poor at seeing people’s real motives, and cannot change frivolous attitudes. But he is calm, and has strong analyzing skills that makes him a great bargainer. He is voiced by Shigeru Fukumachi.
For the gameplay, you use the Eternity Cycle System to utilise choices and progresses from previous plays. From coming into the nature-laden world, you acquire all memories and experiences from the property and time period. You can go back at any time to defeat monsters you haven’t defeated before, and combine items to make stronger weapons; and thanks to the Eternity Cycle System, you can keep doing this until the moment they abandon the world.
This system also allows for new areas to open under completing certain conditions; for example, players can set back time after a tree sets ablaze to defend it from ever burning, thus creating new paths to explore. From left to right, you can see the incident in the present, a soluble scenario in the past, and an outcome for the future.
As far as the battle system is concerned, not much can be said at the moment, other than it will have a lot of monsters and unavoidable battles. The combat by itself will be designed in a way that will not be tiring, and will feature plenty of animations and illustrations that will be easy on the eyes.
Here are the rest of the screenshots, featuring battle and exploration images:
Chronos Materia is announced for the Playstation Vita, and is slated to release in Japan on September 26.
Thank you Will Whitehurst for the translation.
