JRPGs have been getting a bit of a resurgence in popularity lately. Several months ago, we saw NostalgICO aiming to take on the action-RPG genre with Cryamore. Now, a new development studio named Disastercake is ready to make its own JRPG in the form of Soul Saga.
Soul Saga is a 3D turn-based JRPG being made for PC, Mac and Linux. The game is inspired by Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, and Persona. The combat draws a lot from the battle system from Final Fantasy X but includes some puzzle elements to make it a bit more strategic. For instance, some enemies have strong shields that will block attacks. In that case, you’ll need to use a kind of technique that can smash it. If the shield is on fire, then you need to use a water-based attack to put it out and then smash it. If the shield is made of steel, the enemy is susceptible to electric attacks.
In addition to all that, each character has their own kind of energy meter in addition to HP and MP that function differently between each character. Mithos has a Focus meter that powers up his attacks into more powerful versions once activated. Elise has a Gadgets meter that has to be restocked if it runs too low.
On top of that, the art is just beautiful. There is lots of eye-popping color in every single screenshot. The character art looks really nice, which is made even nicer when changed into 3D models. And my god, don’t even get me started on the background art!
The sound design is just as good. Anime fans will probably recognize the voices behind Mithos and Elise as Todd Haberkorn (Natsu from Fairy Tail, Ling Yao from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Sergeant Frog) and Kira Buckland (Bloody Marie from Skullgirls, Chou-Chou from Mugen Souls, Kuroyukihime from Accel World), respectively. As for the soundtrack, it will be done by Aivi Tran, who is also currently working on the soundtrack for Cryamore. In addition, the theme song was written by Terry Chandler, a Japanese composer on YouTube who writes really good original Vocaloid tracks.
The Kickstarter campaign for Soul Saga is currently at over $20,000 out of its $60,000 as of this writing. Reward tiers start from a downloadable copy of the game ($15), an set of high-quality wallpapers ($20), access to the closed beta ($30), the soundtrack ($35), a PDF of the instruction booklet ($50), a physical copy of Soul Saga ($70), an art book ($80), a figurine of Elise ($150), being able to name an item in the game ($350), creating your own NPC ($500) and more.
Soul Saga will be coming to PC, Mac, and Linux at an estimated release date of sometime in July of 2014. You can help support the game by donating to its Kickstarter and voting for it on Greenlight.
