I am a big fans of CyberConnect2’s (they like to call themselves CC2 and worked on the Naruto and .hack games) works and their lovely character design has been a huge inspiration for me personally. After teasing it for so long, CC2 boss Hiroshi Matsuyama finally reveals the DS title that will celebrate the company’s 15th Anniversary. Solarobo (working title) is an ARPG that has been in the planning for 10 years and in production for 3 years with quite a few heavy weight collaborators behind. Matsuyama himself will the Executive Director, Takayuki Isobe the Director, Nobuteru Yuuki the character designer, Yoshitaka Taniguchi (of Super Robot Taisen fame) the robot designer and finally the opening movie is currently being made at Mad House.

Story

The story is said to be a mix of sadness and happiness that our character will goes through in this really expansive world that CC2 created. Sheparudo Republic is a nation made up of several floating islands and as you’d expect, its concept arts look amazing. Two races dominate the country, Inuhito (the Taiwan version of Famitsu translate it as Dog People) and Nekohito (the Cat People). Our hero Red Savarin is from Inuhito and he controls his Robo (the official name given to robots in the game) called Dahak-AZ103 to take on missions as a Hunter and earns rewards for his efforts.

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I didn’t pay much attention to Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days before, partly due to me not having a DS when the game was announced and as a result, didn’t follow any news about it at all. But thanks to it being heavily promoted in the recent issues of Weekly Famitsu, it kind of grow on me. The fact that it has been confirmed for a September release in US only raises my interest even further. Here’s the last interview the mag did for the game with director Tetsuya Nomura and assistant director Tomohiro Hasegawa (published in issue 6/5) where the duo highlights some of the cool stuff of the game.

According to Hasegawa, he always wanted Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days to be played in short chunks of time where players can slowly accumulate their game time. It’s also one of the main idea behind the title, where “Days” refer to the story progressing day by day.

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