Masaya site updated

Well shit. Not only there’s gonna be a Langrisser game for 3DS, but there’s going to be an Assault Suit Leynos remake for the PS4. I guess this has been out for some time now, but hell if I’m following PS4 news. The original game was known as Target Earth in the West for the MegaDrive/Genesis, and the series is better known for its Super NES sequel Assault Suit Valken, or Cybernator. You know what Valken has in common with Langrisser outside the developers? The illustrator.

Awww yeah, that’s the stuff

The one thing that bothers me with the Leynos gameplay is that it looks a bit too similar to the original, and Leynos’ gameplay isn’t the best. Most of it has to do with the stage designs, but in proper hands this remake should be able to get around such problems. Promising is that the developer of Gunhound, Dracue, has their hands on it. Well, it’s not the fame that counts, but the end result.

If you check all games’ title section, you can see that they’ve released pretty much every Masaya game out there for the Wii VC and PSN. The Japanese PC games ever are listed under Project Egg.

But what we want to do now is to turn our eyes on the Langrisser site.

Nothing special is there, a generic background music and basic info proudly stating the past games of Langrisser, including Millennium, and how the series has sold 100 million copies as a whole, a thing that is not really to celebrate. We could call this New Langrisser based on the splash info, and it is more than clear that they want to have faith in this game and resurrect Langrisser for the new generation and further its place as one of games everyone knows.

If you want to make Langrisser more mainstream, the fanscervice designs would need to be made into something more practical.

Nothing too different from the previous systems is revealed at this point. Generals’ range of influence over troops, turn based fights and drama events depending on situations. Character Class system seems to return and player is able to influence the final result of the characters’ classes, as per Langrisser standard. I guess it’s needless to separately say that each class has advantages and disadvantages.

All in all, sounds like a standard Langrisser game. I honestly expected a lot more. Sure, we get the same three factions Langrisser Schwarz played around with; Light, here translated as Brightness for whatever reason, Imperial and Darkness. What we’re going to get is a three-way battle with the Church of Lushiris, which has built an army to rebel against the Imperial forces.

Imperials are naturally have a powerful military and have conquered most of the continent with their flying fortress, the Ark, which is a relic from an ancient civilization. The Imperials seems to have set railways too and govern many nations with their artillery trains. Sounds a bit generic, and I can’t say Langrisser hasn’t dabbled with ancient super technology before, but this all sounds a bit steampunk.

The Darkness are outcasts, people who do not stand with the Light or the Empire. They are persecuted people carry their own special powers. Prince of Darkness Bözel leads their way.

Well, it seems we’re either going to get Langrisser, the sword itself, back at some point and Alhazard could be carried by Bözel.

OUR HEROES; Erim, Aris (or is it Alice?), Toku and Rozaria

The four heroes we’ve seen. Or will get. There’s nothing much we can actually say about them outside that Toku’s katana looks really out of place. Erim looks like your generic everyday chemist/alchemic, or some sort of warrior-priest-in-training. Let me guess; she’s Aris’ little sister, and he finds the holy sword Excalibur and goes against the Imperial forces. Rozaria joins Toku with some fanservice design, but whatever reason only Aris has a look of slight overdesign. I’m sorry, I keep comparing the designs to Urushihara, which should not be done. Anyways, both Toku and Rozaria follwo the true and tested fanaservice route of armours, but I’d wish they had something else than low-cut panties, thou I fully embrace the thigh highs. Technically not too shabby at all, and as this is a reboot for Langrisser these characters and designs need to be taken as their own.

And because this is a reboot it is also completely applicable to make comparisons to the original Langrisser.

Whenever we get a gameplay trailer out, we’ll get some more coherent and information on how the game will look in motion. Few still pictures amount of absolutely nothing, thou I do have to say that it looks somewhat loyal to the general view of classic Langrisser. I expected to see some sort of trailer today, but alas, they didn’t want to make my yearly day any more special.

“How to ruin a series twice” Chapter Langrisser

I’ve been an avid Langrisser fan since I played Warsong on a Sega MegaDrive emulator back in the 1999 or so. I’ve tried to get into the series time and time again, until some years ago I just decided to jump in unprepared with my very little Japanese language. I was decently surprised that it served me rather well and the system of gameplay is rather easy to use and intuitive overall.
Langrisser is one of the few turn-based-strategy games with huge scale of battles. Only in the beginning of each game you control few units, as before the mid-game you’ll have dozens upon dozens of troops in your command. There is no other series that has such calibre in overall design and execution. It seeps through the game, even if it’s in a language most people can’t understand, and yet despite the language barrier it hits like a meteor.
Naturally, Langrisser is an acquired taste and won’t hit everybody who want flash and bloom over proper content. While TBS veterans will tear these games a new one on normal difficulty, Langrisser games do offer nice challenge, even more so due to language barrier.

To those who haven’t read upon Langrisser most likely know the series due to Satoshi Urushihara’s art in almost every game. The rockin’ tunes the games have should also be mentioned.

Above; Why do I love these fantasy rock themes so much?

Langrisser hasn’t been relevant since the millena changed. Langrisser had an awful Dreamcast game named Langrisser Millenium, which was void of Urushihara, good soundtrack and Langrisser game in general.
It was a Langrisser game in name only. Just like the upcoming Langrisser Schwarz.

This, my readers, is a horrible, horrible, horrible way to slay a game series into the ground. Langrisser Millenium was an outright bad game, but it tried to bring something good and it kinda had good character designs in spirit of the series. But this black sheep that’s ramming at us not only disregards everything but abandons everything that Langrisser is known about. Even the sword itself (Langrisser is the name of a weapon in the series) has been redesigned into some kind of homosexual fantasy toothpick so that 15-year old anime convention girls could start making a project during woodshop hours when their teacher didn’t let them do Magic Knight Rayearth armour. The world design is awful from ground up. It looks bland.

While I sound like a raving fanboy here, I assure you that this game will fail even if it has the Langrisser name, a name that has been tacked on to make more sales. Turning a game series that is well known as a classical strategy game into a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It seems that they’re trying to make a some sort of anime version of World of Warcraft. Whoever these Gamania people are, they’re doing a bad job. The list of games they’ve developer is filled of… well, lacklustre games that nobody heard of. The content of Langrisser Schwarz is nothing new. The music is from your stock fantasy tunes. The art direction is generic animu moebullshit you see in every corner these days.

I can’t see any redeeming values in here. If you compare what Langrisser Schwarz looks like to any previous Langrisser game (except Millenium) you will see that only the name is common between the main series and this game. I could do a comparison to the upcoming Persona fighting game, but the difference here is that Persona 4 The Fighting Game will most likely be pretty damn good, even if the series fans won’t like it. On the other hand, Persona games themselves are bastard children of Shin Megami Tensei games, so there’s no losses to any direction here any more. Oh I will get to Megami Tensei series some day, you just wait.
Langrisser Schwarz could’ve been good. Just like any modern game designer, they choose to ignore the audience and make a game that they wanted. They could’ve made a Langrisser game that would’ve used the best system from the games and refine it completely for a polished gameplay. The story is harder to tackle, as Langrissers’ stories (even if they are just walls of text) is rather well executed, and I believe that Schwarz will have your standard fantasy 3v3 plot with a twist or two at some point. I do believe a multiplayer Langrisser would be possible if done right. However, this isn’t the way to do it. First and foremost Langrisser game should be a Langrisser game, just like a Mario game should be a Mario game and nothing else. This isn’t Langrisser VI by any means, this is the second coming of Langrisser Millenium, if not something worse.

Now excuse me, I think I’ll boot my Sega Saturn and pop in Langrisser Dramatic Edition.