Even though the game also got released on the PS Vita in Japan, when it came to the West, it only saw PS4 and PC releases. PS Vita users,. I Am Setsuna PS4, PS Vita, PC. Melancholy epic I Am Setsuna. Or simply that gaming has moved on from the 16-bit golden age — Setsuna's death march makes a strong argument for.

One year ago, we announced I am Setsuna at our E3 press conference. This year, on July 19, it comes to the west on PlayStation Store.I Am Setsuna’s gameplay is reminiscent of an old school JRPG. The subtle way the characters move, the music, and the battles evoke the games some of us grew up playing, but with a splash of novelty once you pick up the controller.I am Setsuna tells the tale of a land that has maintained peace with a fiend – once every decade, a sacrifice is offered to a fiend on the island.

However, one year, the fiend grows violent before the next sacrifice is due. Those living on the island are afraid and try to calm the fiend by offering a sacrifice — Setsuna — chosen because of her powers of enchantment. Setsuna must leave with her safeguards for the farthest land, where the ceremony of sacrifice will be held.Below is a list of interesting facts about I Am Setsuna that community manager Dan Seto and I have learned through the year. The creation of the game and the story behind its developer, Tokyo RPG Factory, was a discovery in it of itself!. I am Setsuna is known as “Ikenie To Yuki No Setsuna” in Japan. In Japanese Ikenie means sacrifice, Yuki means snow and Setsuna means sorrow.

The team felt that the word “Setsunai” feeling sorrow was a very heartfelt term in Japan, and it is one of the key themes of the game but obviously that word doesn’t have any meaning outside of Japan so the name of the game in the west was changed to I am Setsuna because of the character Setsuna’s role in the story. The word “Setsuna” also means “a moment in time” in Japanese. This ties into the momentum system in the game where you gain SP (Setsuna Points) by letting the momentum gauge fill once the ATB bar is full.

SP points can be used to add various bonus effects to a character’s attacks and techs. The characters leave trails in the snow as they run which slowly fill up again over time, covering their tracks.

You can try to write your name in the snow!. The game development studio behind I am Setsuna is called Tokyo RPG Factory and their goal is to carefully create RPG’s of yesteryear, merging the nostalgic elements from the 90’s with today’s technology. When hiring staff for Tokyo RPG Factory, applicants were not told that the studio was part of Square Enix. Yosuke Matsuda (CEO of Square Enix) wanted to hire people who were passionate about RPGs, rather than people who wanted to work for Square Enix. Tokyo RPG Factory is a micro studio of ten dedicated staff. A further 20 freelance staff make up the rest of the studio so it’s a small team like how games were created back in the day!.

Coincidentally, the director of I Am Setsuna (Atsushi Hashimoto) previously worked at Racjin and worked with Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi on a RPG called ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat. Atsushi Hashimoto stated in an interview that he wants people to reflect back on the game and remember the game as “An RPG of Snow”. He really wants to create a game that people can reflect back on that is impactful. Remembering the PlayStation and Super Nintendo era, the team crafted I am Setsuna by bringing rich story, music, simple turn based controls and gameplay mechanisms that include dungeon crawling, shopping in the cities and carefully upgrading your party, I am Setsuna allows those who grew up loving these elements to enjoy what they loved. This is a game that will strike deep emotion. The concept of I am Setsuna was written in September 2014, development began the following month and, by August 2015, an alpha version (in Japanese) was complete.

In the story, the main character Endir protects Setsuna as she journeys through the environments of snow and ice. There are also other characters that Setsuna will travel with and their names are Keel, Kuon, Yomi and Julion. The character design was done by toi8 — the team knew they wanted this character designer from the get go. Not only is he known by the current generation, his art style matches up nicely reflecting a melancholy spirit and heroic defeat that is visually striking. Previously he has worked on popular anime series Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Attack on Titan. The original soundtrack for the game features 2 discs, packed with over 70 tracks that solely utilizes the piano. The music was created by Tomoki Miyoshi who had his debut project on Soul Calibur V when he was 16 years old (he is now 22)!

The melodies are soft and reminiscent of a yearning for calmness except during battle. The soundtrack includes the piano performance by Randy Kerber, who has worked as a studio keyboardist on many Hollywood films including Forrest Gump and Titanic. Unless you have an item in the game called Mistone, you cannot escape from battles.We hope that you were able to learn something new about I am Setsuna — the game comes out July 19th!“Countless adventures captivated us when we were kids. Now, it’s time for us to return the favour with adventures of our own.” – Tokyo RPG Factory. Here’s their idea behind not bringing it to Vita here btw:“I think the focus was leaning more toward that sense of immersion, being able to jump into the world on a larger screen.

That’s one of the bigger elements that sort of drove that decision for the no Vita plan.Of course, there is the technical market aspect as well. Unfortunately the Vita market isn’t as large as the console and the PC-based market that’s the sort of direction the team decided that they wanted to take for the US release, was to rely on the players that are on the Steam platform as well.”– Game Director Atsushi HashimotoWhich is funny in comparison Square Enix RPG titles always sell the worst on PC (theoretically, all the numbers I got are from SteamSpy). Forza horizon 2 storm island pass 2019. The Vita has a healthy RPG market. Adding into the Vita push. I barely have time to game at home and if I do have time, I will spend it on games like Uncharted 4. I don’t even know if I can get 1 hours of gaming at home in a week, but I know that my transit to work every days will give me at least 5 hours of gaming a week and thus my Vita has become my most played gaming platform.

As much as I am interested in the game, if it isn’t on Vita, I will not purchase it. I got enough incomplete AAA games to worry about at home.Also, remote play is pointless for me when most of my gaming is done in the subway tunnels. Well part of the problem is Final Fantasy X/X-2 hasn’t sold even a million copies.Of that a LOT more people bought X stand-alone digitally than the X/X-2 Bundled.Army Corps did like 100k.Those aren’t numbers that scream “Yeah let’s do a physical, we do well enough in the U.S.

On Vita to justify the manufacturing costs. I’m sure if they did a kickstarter for it, everyone would attack them for not wanting to take a risk and there would be outrage, but as vocal as Vita fans are if they aren’t hitting 50-300k physical copies sold that’s not a justification to do more of them.So when Final Fantasy Worlds comes out you people better buy the crap out of it physically or else everything you say to them about the Vita version is just whiny. @juan I believe you misread somethinghe said he had a ps4.

So no, I don’t want people to buy stuff for a platform they don’t own, but I think that trying to send a message that you want more games by NOT buying games is a mistake.Let’s take a look at the reality here:SE doesn’t feel there’s enough of a market to debug/localize Vita games. This we can say with confidence. So they release PS4 games. If PS4 owners don’t buy these, what do you think the end result is going to be?

As a business, they’re going to come to the conclusion that PS4 owners in NA don’t want JRPGs so they just won’t localize any JRPGs at all.Obviously it’d be stupid to buy for a platform you don’t own. That’s absurd. But if you’re interested in the game and own the platform not buying the game because you want them to release it for a DIFFERENT platform sends totally the wrong message. Would buy for Vita at full price, would buy for PS4 at $10, would buy for PC if it came in a humble bundle for a few dollars.As to people saying things like SE previous Vita games sold like. physically they only really have themselves to blame.

Army Corps of Hell was crap, and nobody bought FFX physical because FFX-2 came digital either way. Why buy physical when one of the games is going to be digital anyways? I bought that first day btw, and I own most of SE’s PSP games.I just think this game fits nicely on Vita, yet instead they blow money on a PC port. PC is like the least JRPGy system ever.Whatever. I’ll save my money for something else.

Why would people buying more Vita games = more Vitas being sold? Are they buying an extra Vita every time they purchased a few games?Vitas owners do buy games. A lot of them. It had an attach rate of 10:1 and that was a few years back. I’m sure it’s even higher now. Even devs who released games on Vita were surprised at how well the games sold and urged other devs to release on Vita as well.Square Enix told fans they would consider a Vita release if there was enough demand for it, so that’s why we continue to show that demand. And it’s not port-begging when the game already exists on the platform.

Playing a game on a handheld offers a different experience than playing on a console. The game director feels this one will be more immersive on a large screen; looking at the screenshots on my computer vs my phone, I completely disagree.“I Am Setsuna’s gameplay is reminiscent of an old school JRPG. The subtle way the characters move, the music, and the battles evoke the games some of us grew up playing ”For me, this is both the appeal of the game and the reason I won’t be buying it. If SE would like to appeal to gamer’s sense of nostalgia as a selling point, they should understand that many of us grew up playing games like this on our Gameboys, so the small-screen experience will be what some of us are looking for or expect (especially when it is in fact on the Vita in Japan). This just doesn’t work for me as a PS4 game.I never bother saying anything when a game that could’ve been on Vita isn’t – it rarely matters to me when I have all of Sony’s consoles and a huge backlog already – but in this case, I Am Setsuna seems pretty good so I want to add my voice in support of those asking for a Vita release, especially since many gamers asking don’t own or can’t afford a PS4.

Setsuna will be releasing on the PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam. There is a Japanese PlayStation Vita version, but it's likely that the West won't be getting that version (sorry Vita fans). If you had the pleasure of playing games like Final Fantasy 1-6 and/or Chrono Trigger, then you probably have a good idea of what to expect from Setsuna.TRF is hoping to capture the luster of the JRPG golden age for a modern audience. Leading this task as director is Atsushi Hashimoto.

He has years of veteran working on multiple titles. With his vision, the studio aims to apply modern technology and sensibilities to craft a new classic.With a battle system like Chrono Trigger and taking narrative cues from what made JRPGs a blast years ago, Setsuna is looking to recapture that old charm and our hearts.