“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.