Japaneses Role-Playing Games (JRPG) haven’t got too much success in the past few years. The reason for this can be the growing strength of other genres (yes, I mean the FPS), but the more probable reason is a recent streak of derivative and bad games. Even a franchise as big as Final Fantasy, the undisputed king of the genre, is somewhere in the bottom with the rest of the bad games for the past few years.
Atlus is a company that is still trying to bring back the JRPG genre and even made several attempts to renew it. A good exemple is the fascinating series called Persona (one of many versions of a series named Megami Tensei from 1987) that had great success on the old and beloved PS2; the PSP also enjoyed a few good games from this series. During 2012, unless the Apocalypse occurs, the Persona franchise will come back into our lives with 2 new titles: the first will be a remake of Persona 4 for the new and promising portable console, the PS Vita. The game will be called “Persona 4: The Golden” and it will contain a new character named Mary, new animations and sound affects, an online gaming support and more.
The second game, and the more intriguing one, is a 2D “beat-’em-up” game called “Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena”. The game will include characters from Persona, parts 3 & 4, and will be developed through cooperation with Arc Systems Works, the guys behind the awesome and crazy BlazBlue game.
The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena will be developed for the PS3 and the Xbox 360, and those who played BlazBlue and know the fascinating characters from Persona, know that we should expect one hell of an experience.
These kind of projects that improve game elements and develop new gaming styles for good old games, might pick up this beat down genre a little, at least until Square Enix will pull themselves together and give us a worthy continuation to Final Fantasy XIII. If they can’t, then maybe they should just make a remake of Final Fantasy 7 and be done with it.
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