Dec 2011 News

2011 has been a pretty good year for tactics games. It's encouraging to see indie developers continuing to give the genre a try, and if you're willing to import you can play some fairly big releases. Working on an end of year award post for the next few days.

This Gundam Guy post covers lots of gameplay details about SD Gundam G Generation 3D. I'd like to play this but I don't feel like shelling out for a Japanese 3DS at this time. Maybe when Fire Emblem 3DS is released. It's the only noteworthy tactics game this month that I'm aware of.

Super Robot Wars Masou Kishin II 10 minute trailer.

Info on the Vita Disgaea 3 port.

Atlus is localizing Gungnir for NA, estimated 6/12/2012. Here's some gameplay footage. It's a fairly generic SRPG. Hopefully I don't see too many copies in the bargain bin next year. Maybe they'll announce Blaze or Gloria Union next? Or maybe the PS3 Super Robot Wars.


A bizarre crossover SRPG titled Pokemon + Nobunaga’s Ambition was announced at Jump Festa in Japan for the DS. It's being developed by Tecmo Koei and Game Freak. Release in Spring 2012.

Nintendo has announced they'll be adding paid DLC to Fire Emblem 3DS. When combined with the 3DS region lock, I'm not sure if people living in NA will be able to access or pay for this DLC legitimately. If Fire Emblem 3DS is not localized, import gamers outside of Japan may not be able to access the paid DLC.

Some new Fire Emblem 3DS news. Official name is Fire Emblem: Awakening (or kakusei). It's an original entry in the series, not a remake. Free map system similar to Sacred Stones. Skill system "inherited from past FE games", namely Radiant Dawn where you can swap skills around. Release date April 19, 2012.

You can see the Nintendo livestream FE footage at this link. Skip to 34:25. It seems like they're making it more of a Sacred Stones RPG-like experience. Hopefully they keep the wide range of difficulty options from the previous FE, and a useful scoring system would be great to discourage grinding.

Nintendo is adding paid DLC to Fire Emblem: Awakening, a first for a Nintendo game. Given their previous history with the rainbow potion and growth drops in FE New Mystery of the Emblem, I wouldn't be surprised to see them charge for the same sort of "cheat" items. The rainbow potion and growth drops were free "cheat" items you could obtain just for connecting the game through wifi. They did make the game significantly easier, especially the rainbow potion. So downloadable "cheat" items already exist in a recent Fire Emblem, the only thing missing from them is the price tag.