Reasons to be excited for the Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood Kickstarter

If you’ve been following RPG-related news, you can’t have failed to notice that the latest exciting new project on the horizon is the double-whammy of Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood. These two upcoming RPGs are spiritual successors to the Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts series respectively, and they’re being put together by many of the original staffers, including designers and musicians.

There’s a serious amount of design pedigree behind these two games, and so it’s unsurprising that at the time of writing, the Kickstarter has already smashed through its initial goal. Perhaps you’re still on the fence, though — or perhaps you’re unfamiliar with why these projects are a big deal. So let’s take a look at a selection of reasons to get excited for Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood!

Wild Arms was brilliant

If you’ve never played a Wild Arms game, they originated back in the PlayStation 1 era with a game that was a curious hybrid of turn-based RPG with Zelda-style exploration puzzles. Wild Arms’ dungeons were always much more than simply running through from one end to another while fending off random encounters; you’d have to make use of items to solve puzzles and find secrets along the way.

Not only that, but the early Wild Arms games also allowed you to name your own spells, which, believe me, never, ever gets old.

As the series progressed, the narratives became more ambitious, and the jump to the PlayStation 2 era allowed for a significant improvement in presentation, too, with the later Wild Arms games adopting a very appealing cel-shaded art style. Each game stood by itself, but the one constant was the interesting fusion of themes and aesthetics drawn from westerns, traditional fantasy and sci-fi. They are all fantastic adventures well worth your time today.

Shadow Hearts was also brilliant

Shadow Hearts was a series of RPGs heavily inspired by Gothic horror — but handled in such a way that there was something of a light-hearted approach to it all rather than keeping things permanently bleak and miserable. The result was an extremely memorable series of games that saw you battling your way across a post-World War I world, but also fending off demons from the underworld, fighting your way to the pinnacle of wrestling supremacy against a series of curry enthusiasts, collecting homoerotic pornography in order to obtain new clothes for a puppet, and plenty more besides.

Shadow Hearts could have easily gone off the rails into complete absurdity — and some argue that its third and final installment From the New World did just that to a certain extent — but for the most part, these are fondly regarded RPGs with very good reason. There really is nothing quite like them — and there has been nothing quite like them ever since… until now, that is.

Shade are involved

Shade, if you’re unfamiliar, are a development company made up of people who used to run Quintet, a widely beloved developer from the 16-bit era. If you don’t know Quintet’s name, you’re probably at least familiar with their work by reputation: they’re the genius creative minds behind Actraiser, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma.

Shade’s first work was the vastly underrated The Granstream Saga on PS1, which is a fantastic action RPG that deserves more love. They’ve been keeping relatively low-profile in more recent years, but otaku gamers will likely be familiar with their saucy titles Gun Gun Pixies and Bullet Girls Phantasia.

Shade’s games are always mechanically interesting and packed with interesting characters, so to hear that they’re involved with these new games is very exciting indeed.

Akari Kaeda is working on the music for Penny Blood

Akari Kaeda, if you’re unfamiliar, was responsible for the unusual but highly memorable soundtrack to Capcom’s Breath of Fire III, which featured an oddly “jazzy” soundtrack.

Given that Penny Blood is set in the roaring Twenties, their work is an ideal fit for the project — so besides the main bulk of the soundtrack being composed by Shadow Hearts’ composer Hirota Yoshitaka, you’ll be able to enjoy Kaeda’s distinctive sounds at various points in the game, too when the situation calls for a little more in the way of jazz. Nice.

The trailers look fab

I mean come on now. Look at this:

And this:

Both do a great job of highlighting the distinctive style of each project, with Armed Fantasia featuring a more obviously colourful “anime” style, with Penny Blood instead opting for a moody manga-esque look featuring pencil-style shading, lovely thick outlines and a muted colour palette.

The best thing about these trailers already looking good is that it provides plenty of evidence that the teams behind the two games are already working hard on them, and that they’re confident in their success. The Kickstarter, at this point, is more of a formality to gauge interest than anything else — but given the outpouring of support it’s received so far, it’s entirely possible that the scope of these games may well end up being even greater than originally intended.

We’ll have to wait and see, I guess — and quite a while, too, since the projects aren’t set for completion until 2025 at the earliest. If you’d like to throw your support behind the project — full disclosure: I have! — then hit up the campaign page here.

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