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A huge pile of ASH gameplay videos makes me a happy panda

Recommended Videos To my knowledge, the first Arcaic Sealed Heat footage appeared today, and did so with a bang. A trailer, Japanese TV spot, a CGI scene, and two gameplay videos have stormed the Internet, and ASH seems poised to make a strong contribution (maybe the strongest) to an already-solid DS RPG line-up (I’m looking […]

Joseph Leray
Joseph Leray
Sep 19, 2007 4:59 pm

Recommended Videos

To my knowledge, the first Arcaic Sealed Heat footage appeared today, and did so with a bang. A trailer, Japanese TV spot, a CGI scene, and two gameplay videos have stormed the Internet, and ASH seems poised to make a strong contribution (maybe the strongest) to an already-solid DS RPG line-up (I’m looking at you, FFIV and DQIX).

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: ASH looks amazing. The CGI is absolutely stellar, as is the real-time gameplay. It’s too early to tell, but ASH‘s production values are some of the best I’ve ever seen on the DS and seem to blow Final Fantasy IV DS‘s out of the graphical water. To boot, none of the characters are super-deformed, or even a little bit deformed.

The gameplay looks like a solid mix of traditional, turn-based RPG and tactics-style strategy. The trick seems to be to dole out Ability Points to members of your party, and then to confront an enemy. While the battles look like they could easily become time-consuming, at least they won’t be the monotonous “just push A until it’s over”-fest in which RPGs so often engage.

Blue Dragon may have gotten mixed reviews, but I’m excited to see what Sakaguchi-san and Mistwalker are up to. Seeing what they manage to squeeze out of the DS will be interesting, and even if ASH doesn’t revolutionize the portable RPG scene, I don’t see any reason why it won’t be rock solid. ASH drops in Japan on October 4, and if it doesn’t see a U.S. release, I may have to look into those Japanese 104 fliers I keep seeing around campus.

Oh, and here are some scans from Shonen Jump, for your perusing pleasure. Make the jump for more videos.

[Via GoNintendo and NeoGAF; TheGoldenDonut is huge in Japan] 

Japanese TV spot

CGI Dragon Confrontation scene — the suspense mounts! 

Battle Tactics gameplay

Unit Placement gameplay

Joseph Leray

Tags: DS Mistwalker Role-Playing Games

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