Level-5 is a development studio near and dear to the hearts of gamers everywhere. As the current development team behind the latest Dragon Quest games, White Knight Chronicles, the entire Professor Layton series, as well as the criminally under-appreciated Dark Cloud series, Level-5 is one of the premier development studios in Japan.
Thus, it's actually kind of exciting to hear this bit of news. According to AndriaSang (via Gamasutra), Level-5 is looking to branch out of its native Japan to set up a branch in Southern California's Santa Monica this September. Named Level-5 International America, it is currently unknown if Level-5 will be setting up shop for game development or for localization, but the company has been planning to branch out of Japan for a while now, with a European branch still in the works for sometime in 2011. Either way, it means we can see a branching out of the company to roll out more of their own IPs and better reach the Western market.
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Contest:
3:00 AM on 06.03.2010 | 
And Dark Cloud 3(Dark Chronicle 2?) please.
I tend to hate it when Level 5 is left to their own devices, the only games by them that I've really ever enjoyed are when they were partnered with SE or Nintendo. I dunno, maybe they're just encouraged to put some soul in their games when they're partnered with those guys, but damn, those games just feel empty, boring and drab otherwise.
So I don't know how I feel about this.
Really, NIS and Atlus are pretty good for fast localization, so I don't know what opening a US studio would do for them unless they learned to work just as fast and maintained a similar level of quality. Good for people that need the work, though.
Did you like Rogue Galaxy? The Dark Cloud games didn't do much for me, either, but Rogue Galazy was the bee's knees.
Also, MORE LAYTON.
And then I heard the fanfare you get for solving a puzzle in the Layton games.