First Looks// Resonance of Fate

With each character’s turn, you can move a certain distance to set yourself up for an attack or defence. Much like Valkyrie Profile’s battle system, whilst you’re moving around, the enemy can do so as well to prepare for the worst.

In terms of that enemy, green health bars act as shields that the enemies hold and which, when depleted, turn blue indicating that they are weaker to your assaults.

As your characters land attacks, you get a build up of red points at the bottom of the screen. Once you’ve got a specific amount of them, you can perform Special Attacks that involve the craziest Matrix-esque gun-toting moves seen in an RPG yet. You simply select a path to take, watch your character perform acrobatics like the circus depends on it, and press the attack button at the right times to deal the most damage.

With both random-battle, 2D world map exploring, and 3D dungeon-crawling (with no random battles, I’m told) it looks like Resonance of Fate won’t be short of action. The graphics that I’ve seen are quite impressive, with the mechanical world featuring all manner of intricate locations and backgrounds involving intriguing steel contraptions and landmarks.

It’s certainly a unique style and angle for a JRPG to take – and certainly not a direction Tri-Ace would have taken with publisher Square Enix, whom most of their games have been released by. But why team up with SEGA, particularly since Square Enix has recently spoken of trying to appeal more to Western markets as well? Suguro-san explained that SEGA’s rooting in the West is perhaps a better fit for Resonance of Fate, while another reason is that SEGA is more receptive to new RPG ideas.

Seems like the collaboration is going well, and underneath all the brown copper hues and the cowboy-style gun holsters lies an RPG with mechanics that JRPG fanatics can enjoy as well. Let’s hope the game can be approachable for Westerners in terms of storyline and gameplay, as well as style and design.