All Entries Tagged With: "Atlus"

Zeno Clash Ultimate Edition is Now Available on Xbox Live For a Limited Time at a Discounted Price

One of the best things about buying games is when you can purchase them for a cheaper price than normal. Who doesn’t like a discount? For those of you who are Xbox Live Gold Members, you are being offered a discount on the Atlus first-person melee action adventure title, Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition, which can be purchased on Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft Points this whole week. This offer is only for a limited time, so be sure to grab yourself a copy today.

Atlus Absorbed by Parent Company

Persona developer Atlus, who is owned by the parent company Index Holdings, was today absorbed into that company via a merger. The approval process will be complete today, and, if things work out, it seems that Atlus, as a company, will no longer exist. This merger is designed to streamline their business model and more effectively align all of the company’s divisions.

If things are approved, this would go into effect on October 1, 2010, tentatively. The brand name “Atlus”, however, will remain around and on the games they currently have in development, which includes stuff as soon a Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City and stuff that is farther away, like Catherine and the rumored Persona 5.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a bit worried about this, but that is natural when a developer you like merges or changes business practices in some other way. It is likely nothing will change as far as the games we love go, but you never know.

More Details Emerge About Catherine

In Famitsu’s Xbox 360-specific spin-off magazine, Atlus revealed some new information about Team Persona’s upcoming action/horror title Catherine. I assume this will be exactly the same on the PS3 as it is for the Xbox 360, considering they’re just ports of each other, so here’s the deal. It appears that the game will last for approximately 20 hours, which may seem rather short to fans of the Persona titles (who are undoubtedly following the team’s work), but it will have multiple endings. As multiple endings are wont to do, this will extend the play time and add greatly to the game’s replayability.

There will also be several difficulty levels. While it isn’t known if choosing an easier difficulty will impact the story or game overall, besides how difficult it is to get through, if the Persona games are anything to go by, the difficulty will not affect the story in any way.

It seems during this Famitsu 360 interview, the team was asked about an HD Persona game, as well, which naturally was denied a comment. So, does denial mean they are actually working on one? Let’s hope so. I call today opposite day!

[Scrawl & NeoGAF]

Latest Etrian Odyssey III Video Talks Side Questing

Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City is an RPG. Sure, it’s a dungeon-crawler, build-your-own-map RPG, but it is still an RPG. That means it comes packed full of side quests, which you can partake in when you want to take a break from the main task at hand, which is exploring the huge labyrinth of areas beneith Armoroad. Naturally, side quests can be everything from the easy delivery quest to more challenging affairs, but they all tend to reward you with some fancy stuffs! Hit the jump to check out this latest, side-quest-extravaganza of a trailer.

Hi-Res Art of Catherine Characters

The two main characters from Atlus’ upcoming action/horror title Catherine have been seen before in the screen shots and the initial trailer. Today Atlus dropped some hi-res character artwork for the two main characters – Vincent and Catherine – which you can check out after the break. There isn’t too much more to say about this besides I want this game. Bad. Atlus, I’m begging you…localize it sooner rather than later.

Catherine’s Web Site Officially Opens

Last week we got a teaser of the site for Atlus’ new action/horror title Catherine, but today the site finally opened its doors fully. There isn’t a whole lot here at the moment, besides some nice shots of the title character, an HD version of the first trailer that was released last week, some basic game info and a few other odds and ends.

We’ll be keeping our eye on this one as the site is updated, since Catherine is looking to be one of the most unique upcoming games we’ve seen recently. Head on over there if you want to check it out as it stands right now.

Radiant Historia Receives its First Trailer

We’ve seen some screens of Atlus’ new RPG for the Nintendo DS, but haven’t seen any game play or, really, much anything else. That all changes today, as we’re presented with the first trailer for the title, which shows off some of the characters and describes the story (albeit in Japanese). It also rotates through many shots of the game later on in the video. So, take a peek and see if it tickles your fancy. It seems to me to be kind of a cross between Chrono Trigger (with the time travel element) and Radiata Stories (developed by the same team). The trailer is presented after the break for your viewing pleasure.

More Details, Screens and a Trailer Emerge of Team Persona’s Catherine

Yesterday we reported that a new title was in development at Atlus, from the same team that brought us the Persona games. That title is called Catherine, and it features a character that was actually in Persona 3 Portable. In that game, if you play the female protagonist, you can learn about Vincent’s nightmares. That whole idea is taken to the next level in Catherine.

Vincent is a lonely, middle-aged man who dreams of finding the perfect girl. He eventually does, and her name is Catherine. Big surprise there, huh? His daily life doesn’t seem to change very much initially after this meeting, but at night he begins to have horrible nightmares of him climbing an endless staircase. If he stops climbing, he’ll never wake up. You assume the role of this tortured soul, Vincent, and help him survive these terrors that he must live through at night. As was mentioned yesterday, there is a serious horror theme going on in this action/adventure title, as well as the typical craziness that comes out of the minds of the Persona team.

Along with their reveal of the game in the print magazine yesterday, Famitsu unleashed a set of screens from the title, which I’ve included below. What was also released was the game’s first trailer, which not surprisingly features some interesting imagery, to say the least. What do you all think about this new entry in Team Persona’s catalog?

Persona Team Has a New Game in the Works

Announced in Famitsu this week, the same team at Atlus that worked on the latest Persona titles seems to have a new game in the pipeline. This one is simply called Catherine, and is apparently an action/adventure title with a deep horror motif.

The main protagonist, Vincent, is plagued with nightmares each night, and eventually it is figured out that there is a connection between the dream world and the real world. His nightmares consist of him climbing an endless staircase. Once he reaches the top, his nightmares will end, but he can never seem to get there. Catherine comes into play in the real world, where the protagonist is charmed by her, except she’s a rather mysterious girl. My bet is that she has something to do with this bridge between the dream world and real world.

The director of the game, Katsura Hashino, mentioned in this Famitsu article that Team Persona wanted to take a risk and create an adult-themed game for a change, before they went and created a new RPG for current generation platforms. It seems to me much like a musical artists wanting to swap genres to try something new and express their creativity. Risks can only lead to great things either now, or down the road where future projects can be created from the experience of that risk. I’m completely on board with that.

This title is coming to both the PS3 and Xbox 360 fairly soon, as the fold-out poster in the magazine says “2010 Winter” (seen above). You can also check out the official Japanese site, to see if you can scrounge up any more details on this intriguing title. I’ve included a few more shots from the Famitsu reveal below the break.

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Bringing Tales to North America – A Conundrum

As an avid JRPG fan, I watch the news feverishly that comes out of my favorite Japanese developers. You see the results of that a lot if you keep up with the news on this site, because I feel some of these lesser-known titles could use all the press they can get, especially since some of them have the chance to come to Western regions via localization.

One of my favorite franchises, Namco-Bandai’s Tales series, has been mysteriously absent from the North American gaming scene for over two years now, which is an unusually long period of time for a gap in available franchise titles. The last game released over here was the Xbox 360 exclusive Tales of Vesperia. This is one of the games I originally bought an Xbox 360 to play (take note, Microsoft, someone outside of Japan actually buys your console to play JRPGs!). In fact, I consider it one of the best in the genre this generation.

Knights in the Nightmare PSP, A Release Date Has

Today Atlus announced, via the PlayStation blog, that the PSP port of Knights in the Nightmare has been given a release date, and that day is…October 19th. The game originally saw a release on the Nintendo DS, so what has been changed with this strategy RPG in this PSP iteration? The standard reply to this is better visuals, enhanced sounds and a nice, slick wide-screen presentation. But you know what else the DS version doesn’t get? An extra character! That’s right, the PSP version has a third, exclusive character.

If all that wrapped in a snazzy SRPG bundle from Atlus doesn’t persuade you to check this title out, I don’t know what will. Oh, wait, knowing a bit about the game might, since I’m pretty sure it flew under a lot of people’s radar the first time around. Here’s a blurb from the blog post I mentioned that describes the game pretty well.

“Knights in the Nightmare puts you in the role of a Wisp, awakened in an abandoned, long-forgotten church deep in the woods. You don’t have any memory of how you got there or why you were in a deep slumber in the first place, but you find yourself drawn toward a monster-infested castle. There, you witness sorrowful events from the past, memories of vanquished knights whose souls you re-awaken and whose abilities you take control of in order to confront the very forces of evil that took their lives. It’s a haunted, emotional narrative, one that gets better each time you play it (and considering playing as each of the game’s three playable characters lets you see the game’s events from a different perspective, you’ll have more than a bit of incentive to do so).”

So, there you have it!

These New Radiant Historia Screens Are…Tiny

Atlus’ upcoming time-traveling DS RPG Radiant Historia got some fancy new screens today. Just like the DS screen, these are rather…small. Too small for my liking, but hey, if you’re interested in the title you’re going to like what you get, right?

The screens after the break show off a couple of the characters, some dialog and some battle screens. To be honest, they fall short of awing me at the moment, but they are just a few screens, so let’s not pass judgement just yet. I like the little sprites, at least!