Erste englsiche Infos zu Yggdrasil Labyrinth (NDS)
First up this week, Famitsu has a scoop on the upcoming Atlus dungeon crawler for the Nintendo DS titled Yggdrasil Labyrinth. The game was showcased behind closed doors at Atlus' booth during E3 earlier this year, but as it had not been officially announced at that time, coverage was quickly embargoed by the company. With little information to go on and no media at all, Atlus fans were left wondering what the game could be. Now finally the game is officially revealed, and it doesn't look disappointing in the least.
Yggdrasil Labyrinth is a 3D dungeon crawler with a first person view, much like the classic Eye of the Beholder series. The game's planning design and directing duties are being handled by Kazuya Niinou, who previously directed Atlus' offbeat sci-fi driven medical surgery game Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Switching from an action medical game to a slower paced dungeon crawler doesn't seem to faze him at all though, and the game is looking to be a real winner for fans of the genre.
Like any good dungeon crawler, the game features a character creation system where the player creates a character from a total of nine different classes. The character's growth will be managed via a point systems to boost statistics as the character levels up. The game uses a party system as well, so up to five characters can venture into the dungeons together at a time. The player is allowed to create a total of twenty different characters to use as he sees fit. The theme of the gameplay is said to be "immersion" as you go deeper into the dungeons and reap the rewards. To this end, the game utilizes both DS screens with a user-friendly map on the touch screen which can be managed and edited by the player to his own preference.
Another interesting system revealed is the f.o.e. system. There are extremely strong enemies that roam the dungeons known as f.o.e. They are not limited to one per floor, and they move as the player moves, step by step. They will react and engage the player's party based on sight or sound, and the longer you spend on a floor in the dungeon, the higher the chance of being engaged by a f.o.e. I suppose the intention is to keep the player on his toes and to bring back the tension of good old dungeon crawlers.
Aiding the development of the game is what Kazuya calls his "best choice" of main staff. In charge of the story and worldview design is Shigeo Kobayashi, scenario writer of Devil Summoner PS2 and Princess Crown. The character designer is Yuuji Himukai, who handles the character designs and illustrations for the Japanese novel series The Yoshinaga Family Gargoyle. The monster designs are being illustrated by Shin Nagasawa, a freelance artist who previously handled monster designs for Bahamut Lagoon as well as Final Fantasy IX at Squaresoft. Finally taking charge of the musical score of the game will be famed composer Yuzo Koshiro, of Streets of Rage and Ys fame.
Currently Yggdrasil Labyrinth is only 60% complete, and scheduled for a Fall 2006 release in Japan. As the game was showcased in E3 behind closed doors, it can be safely assumed that Atlus USA has every intention of bringing this over to western shores as well.
