Greetings, doods! I hope you’ve all been well! Chris King here, dropping by to let you know that our JRPG title, Mugen Souls, is set to release on PlayStation Network on Tuesday! I’d like to briefly go over some of the game’s awesome features and mechanics for those unfamiliar with the game, and will gladly answer any questions you might have for us! Let’s get started!

The story contains all the over-the-top humor and zaniness you’ve come to expect from NISA. You’ll enter a small galaxy in the universe containing seven worlds, shimmering in seven colors… These worlds exist and act independent of one another. This has allowed them to develop and nurture rich, unique cultures. Then one day, a decree was sent out… “I’m gonna make everything in each of these worlds bow to me!” What a bold statement! But by whom, you ask? None other than the multiple-personality-having, naively egotistical yet strangely adorable Chou-Chou! Your goal as Chou-Chou is to conquer the universe by uniting these seven worlds, and force everything and everyone to become your loyal peons! An undisputed God at her finest!

The gameplay system is a nice little mixture of turn-based and free movement on the battlefield. When you want to deal some hardcore damage, get ready for some zany fun! You can initiate group attacks, similar to the Disgaea series, where you might find yourself transported into army tanks and shower explosives all over the enemies. You might also find yourself merging with your teammates, forming an awesome character-windmill, slicing and dicing your enemy for some massive damage. The creativity of how you attack is in the palm of your hands! When you aren’t conquering worlds, you will be traveling the universe in your ship, known as the “G-Castle.” Be sure to level up your ship and gather plenty of peons – you’ll need them when you enter ship-to-ship combat battles!

In order to enslave enemies to become your peons, you must use the unique system mechanic known as “Moe Kill.” To perform this skill, you first must match your personality to your enemy. Once you’ve done that, you will need to use short phrases to coincide with the mood of the enemy. After successfully completing this a few times, the enemies will bow down as your new peons! More peons for the win, dood!

Another awesome feature is the “Mugen Field,” which operates very similarly to “Item World” in the Disgaea series. It consists of a dungeon with multiple floors, where you can level up your weapons to a hilarious degree. Take on enemies in a series of consecutive battles and earn tons of EXP! Get ready to grind out those levels to create the perfect Undisputed God of the Universe!

Aside from the Mugen Field, Mugen Souls contains several elements from the Disgaea series, including Disgaea artist Takehito Harada’s unique character art, as well as a soundtrack by Disgaea composer Tenpei Sato. Mugen Souls provides a refreshing JRPG experience, so definitely give it a try on PSN next week, dood!

Howdy, doods! I’m dropping by today to briefly talk about our upcoming RPG title Mugen Souls, developed by Idea Factory and Compile Heart. Mugen Souls is set to release next Tuesday, October 16th, so I’d like to go over a few of the game’s awesome features and game mechanics. Afterwards, I’ll recap a few of the announcements we made at Tokyo Game Show 2012 a few weeks back. Here we go!

Story-wise, in Mugen Souls you can expect the typical humor and zaniness you’ve come to expect from NIS America titles. You’ll enter a small galaxy in the universe containing seven worlds, shimmering in seven colors… These worlds exist and act independent of one another. This has allowed them to develop and nurture rich, unique cultures. One day, a decree was sent out… “I’m gonna make everything in each of these worlds bow to me!” This reckless statement came courtesy of the egotistical, yet strangely cute, “Chou-Chou.” As Chou-Chou, it’s your mission to travel to these seven worlds, conquer them, and make everything and everyone on them your peon! Worldly domination for the win, dood!

Mugen Souls plays out in a turn-based fashion and with free movement on the battlefield. For a visual reference, the free movement side of the battle system resembles that of Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 for PS3. When it comes time to do some damage, there are many ways to make it happen. Players can experience group attacks inspired by the Disgaea series, where once triggered you and your party, for instance, are suddenly transported into green army tanks and begin raining explosive rounds on your enemies. Or, you can merge with your teammates to form a giant spinning character windmill, which allows you to fly around all fancy-crazy while racking up a bunch of damage on your opponent. If that isn’t enough, you can always launch your enemies into the crystals set in each battle to watch them bounce around like pinballs, or if that still isn’t enough, you can launch them into the air and knock them around for even more damage! When you aren’t conquering worlds and making enemies into your peons, you will be on your ship, known as the “G Castle,” which serves as your transportation between worlds. While traveling, you will also encounter ship battles against enemies, so make sure you have plenty of peons to help out!

One of the most noteworthy and important mechanics of the game is called the “Moe Kill.” Essentially, in order to bolster your G Castle, you will be using the Moe Kill to enslave enemies into being your peons. It’s performed during battle against enemies, and the way you do it is by changing Chou-Chou’s personality to match that of the enemy. After that, depending on that enemy’s mood, you’ll have to use small phrases that coincide with their mood. Successfully doing this a few times should make enemies your peons! On top of the Moe Kill, another important game system is called the “Mugen Field.” If you’re familiar with Disgaea’s Item World, you should feel right at home. The Mugen Field is an area consisting of multiple “floors” where you go to level up your weapons to help aid in conquering worlds. Much like the Item World, the Mugen Field allows you also to unlock upgrades for your character and customization as you progress through it, and clearing it will challenge even the most hardcore RPG fans.

Again, we’re really excited and hopeful that everyone will enjoy this title! It has a lot of great elements from both the Disgaea series (Disgaea artist Takehito Harada provided the art for Mugen Souls, and Disgaea composer Tenpei Sato created the soundtrack) and from standard turn-based JRPGs in general, so definitely give it a try next week on October 16th, dood! Keep your eyes peeled for a lot of DLC also, as we have big plans for the near future!

Lastly, a quick blurb on some new announcements from Tokyo Game Show 2012! First off, we are happy to announce that we’ll be bringing Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory exclusively for PS3, to North America and Europe this spring! Also, we will be launching Generation of Chaos: Pandora’s Reflection for PSP (via PSN) in early 2013! Lastly, we are super happy to announce that we will be bringing Persona 4: Golden for PS Vita to Europe, dood! I’ll be back to touch more on all of this in the future.

That’s all for this time, thank you again for all your support! I’ll be back in a few months to chat, I promise, dood!

First off, I’m sure a lot of you are wondering about the origins of the name Legasista. Well, the name is derived from combining the words legacy and sister.

You see, the main character, Alto, is looking for a way to save his sister, who was turned into a crystal by a curse. He discovers that the artifact that can do it lies in a ruin called the Ivy Tower. While searching the tower, he meets Melize (an ancient weapon), Leina and Shout (a witch and another ancient weapon that was rebuilt from junk parts), Mimily (a dragon-human hybrid), and Volks (a justice-loving thief).

Now that we’ve covered some of the characters, let’s jump right into a few of the noteworthy game features. Legasista utilizes a roguelike dungeon-crawling action/survival RPG battle system. You make your way through dungeons floor by floor, killing monsters and grabbing loot. Beware the poison traps, though, as there are a full dozen different symptoms you can come down with! There’s also a Ran-geon (Random Dungeon) system where you can get better equipment drops and fight stronger enemies to level up faster, but the dungeons delve deeper and you have a higher risk of dying. However, dying isn’t all that bad. Sure, you lose all the equipment that you would’ve looted from that dungeon, but you still get to keep half of the experience you earned from fighting. And you can try again, only you’ll be slightly stronger this time!

One of the awesome points about the game is how much character customization is available. You can create your own characters by choosing their Name, Job, Personality, Voice, what they look like, and more. Once you create your character, you can head into Edit Mode to personalize them even more! You can also export your character’s graphic template, load it into your favorite image editing software on your computer, draw your character precisely how you want it to look, and then import it back into the game (digital photos are fair game too). You can even edit your weapons’ appearances! Not only that, you can trade your characters with your friends to spread the madness! Whew, I got a little excited there…

We’re definitely stoked for Legasista to launch tomorrow on PSN, and our European fans will be happy to know that Legasista will be available for download on PSN in Europe this Wednesday! With a ton of customization, loads of dungeons to crawl through, and awesome action-RPG elements, we really hope RPG fans all over the world will really enjoy what Legasista has to offer!

Before I leave today, I also wanted to provide everyone here on the PS.Blog with an exclusive battle trailer for our upcoming PS3 title Mugen Souls! Hitting store shelves soon, Mugen Souls is a turn-based RPG that touts the ability to do billions of points of damage, has tons of quirky characters bent on world dominance, and features the beautiful art of Takehito Harada (Disgaea series).

This trailer should help you get acquainted with the flow of battle, which plays out in a turn-based fashion and with free movement on the battlefield. Notice how you can knock your enemies around the battlefield like sentient pinballs to break item crystals and get extra items!? You’ll also see the awesome “Moe Kill” command in action, where Chou-Chou turns her enemies into subservient peons. Did we mention the gigantic spaceship battles!? We just did, dood! Thank you for reading and be on the lookout tomorrow on PSN, as Legasista will be available for purchase! We’ll be back in about a month to go a bit more in-depth on Mugen Souls! Later, doods!

We sat down with NIS America Producer Jack Niida to learn more about each of the new titles. Enjoy, and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Legasista for PS3 (PSN)

This post-apocalyptic 2D-styled dungeon crawler — NIS America is describing it as a “survival action-RPG” — takes place in a far-flung future where science has been forgotten and technology is treated with superstitious awe. The gameplay and concept will be familiar to fans of the ClaDun series, but Legasista ups the ante by enabling you to customize your weapon and skills, creating “thousands of attack combos.” This PS3-exclusive RPG is scheduled to release in August 2012 on PSN. Below, we discuss first details with NIS America Producer Jack Niida.

PlayStation.Blog: Legasista is set far in the future, after society has somehow forgotten the nuts and bolts of science. What kicks off the story?
Jack Niida, Producer: It’s set a couple of thousand years in the future, after the world mysteriously ends. A structure called the Tower of Ivy is the only remnant of the past, and is filled with artifacts from the high-tech civilization that has since vanished. The main character is an adventurer named Alto, and after his little sister becomes petrified by a curse, he heads to the Tower of Ivy to try to find a cure. Of course, along the way he’ll encounter enemies and rival adventurers, but little by little Alto will build a team and progress through the Tower.

PSB: So far, Legasista’s cast includes an android and, perhaps most intriguingly, an intelligent bean sprout. What’s their deal?
JN: NIS is always known for its weird, quirky characters and comedic elements, and Legasista is partly inspired by NIS games such as the Disgaea series. The bean sprouts are basically part of an experiment that was conducted ages ago…and they just kept evolving and growing as time went on. Now they have a mind of their own! They are a type of NPC that can help you, showing up in the storyline and leading you to a randomly generated dungeon within the Tower of Ivy. So you can focus on the main story, or explore as much as you want – and the rarest, best items are found on these bean sprout stages.

PSB: Poison and cursing also seems to be a big focus, with some poisons even helping you. How does that work?
JN: It can be a little confusing! There are different classes of poison and ailments that you can take on from enemy attacks or traps. You might get a different effect depending on the combination of poisons; some poisons might just kill you quickly, others might put you to sleep or make you take more damage. But some combinations can actually help you; one combination will cause you to hallucinate and see other traps or hidden objects you normally couldn’t see. So in some cases, you may want to deliberately poison yourself.

PSB: There’s also a big emphasis on creating custom characters, including the ability to import your own artwork…
JN: You can actually load up a painting program in the game and create your own artwork pixel-by-pixel, if you want to, and it’ll animate in the game. If you’re not a great artist, you can import images from your PS3’s hard drive and the game will morph the art into a character. A photo of an environment won’t work so well, but a simple cartoon-type image should work well. You can also edit existing photos using the painting program in the game.

Mugen Souls for PS3

Due out on Blu-ray Disc this fall, Mugen Souls is notable for combining NIS’s traditional turn-based combat with free-roaming movement (i.e. it’s not grid-based) and for enabling you to seduce enemy characters to your party using “moe kills”, resulting in some 1000 playable potential party members — and even more, if you create your own. The main character is also able to switch between seven different personalities, each with different strengths and weaknesses.

PSB: What’s the general concept of Mugen Souls? Why would I want to play it?
JN: If you’re a fan of strategy RPGs like Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, and Phantom Brave, Mugen Souls is a game you’ll want to pick up. The game itself is heavily inspired by other NIS properties; it uses a turn-based battle system that allows you to roam freely on the battlefield. That means it’s not grid-based, you can move wherever you want when it’s your turn.

It’s somewhat old school compared to real-time strategy games, but turn-based games have that chess game element — it gives you time to think. If you want to sit down and take your time, Mugen Souls is definitely the one. It’s also got an amazing list of characters and a lot of comedy.

PSB: The lead character seems interesting, especially since she has seven different personalities. What’s her story?
JN: The main character is a little girl, a demonic little brat who wants to take over the seven different universes in the game. She has seven different personalities, and every time she changes into a different personality, her appearance totally changes — think Sailor Moon and you’re not too far off. You can transform whenever you want, and her stats and the way she fights changes. Depending on your team, you may want to change personalities accordingly.

PSB: You can also enslave enemies. How do I know how to enslave different enemy types?
JN: Once you begin to weaken an enemy, you can charm them instead of killing them. If you see an enemy who may benefit you, there’s an option to make them a teammate. You do this by uttering a series of seductive phrases; if those phrases matches the enemy’s personality, they’ll get charmed and they’ll join your side. So against a more aggressive, hyper enemy, you might want to use softer, kinder, praising phrases. Other enemies prefer to be overpowered or dominated a little, so you can choose those phrases too.

The Witch and the Hundred Knights

From the team behind the Prinny games and the designer behind Disgaea and Phantom Brave comes this intriguing action-RPG set for Blu-ray release in early 2013. In a major departure to NIS’s RPG tradition, the game is set in a fully 3D environment and features real-time RPG combat. What’s more, the darker, mature presentation is a serious deviation from the silliness of Disgaea.

PSB: This game is a serious departure for NIS. Why make an action-RPG when the company’s legacy resides in more traditional JRPG design?
JN: NIS is definitely known for its RPGs and strategy RPGs, but our team wanted to try something new. Compared to a full-blown action game, an action-RPG is a smaller leap for us; NIS is always going to be known for our RPG expertise, so we didn’t want to hop into a first-person shooter or anything! It’s probably better to build on what we’re good at instead of doing something completely different. So that led to the premise of The Witch and the Hundred Knights.

But we wanted to make it unique, so rather than focusing on a single character or a traditional RPG party, why not have 100 units and see what we can do? So that’s where the 100 knights come from. They’re a bit like the T-1000, they don’t have a true body and can morph into anything they wish. You can morph a knight into a tesla coil to zap enemies, or into a weapon, or a shield, and other objects and characters. So that’s how the 100 knights help you.

PSB: The storyline premise sounds interesting. Can you touch on this war between the Swamp Witch and the Forest Witch?
JN: There are two witches that have been going at each other for hundreds of years. The Swamp Witch, who is seriously evil, decides to destroy the Forest Witch once and for all. She stumbles upon the remains of a legendary dark knight who died hundreds of years before, resurrects him and enslaves him. So the Swamp Witch is your master and you have to follow what she says.

PSB: Are there wrinkles in that story? Do you have to work for here, or can you turn against her?
JN: That’s all up to the player. You can be as evil as you want by pillaging villages and killing innocent NPCs, or try to help them and solve their problems. There are two different paths, and it’s all up to the player.

PSB: Is this part of a bigger push for NIS to try new and different things?
JN: Absolutely. We’re known for our RPGs, but there are a lot of gamers out there who love different styles of games. So we want to listen to what they’re saying and cater to these different audiences. Action-RPGs seems like a good place to start!

So, NIS fans — what’s the verdict? Sound off in the comments!