NISA recently held their annual press event this past week to announce three titles that fans can expect to see this year. The three titles are Disgaea Dimensions 2: A Brighter Darkness, The Guided Fate Paradox and Toki to Towa aka Time and Eternity. 

First up is Disgaea Dimensions 2: A Brighter Darkness. It has been 10 years since the events of the first Disgaea. It also happens to be the 10 year anniversary of the game as well. DD2 reunites players with Overload Laharl, Prinny mistress Etna and fallen angel/sentai fan Flonne. Laharl finally becomes Overload of the Netherworld, but for some reason the citizens do not see him as Overlord. This angers him and he, along with Etna and Flonne, set out into the Netherworld to change the people’s mind. DD2 boast new improved customization options that will allow players who enjoy making their own units more control over their appearance, personality, weapons/gear and much more. Gameplay is refined from the last two installments of the series and has seen vast improvements to keep players fully engaged. These improvements extend to link attacks, the return of Item World and the Dark Assembly and characters being able to give each other stat boosts due to their infinity. Feature new to DD2 are as follows:

• The character creation system has been completely revamped to allow for the highest level of original character customization in series history! When you create a new character, you can now choose their personality type and color pattern in addition to their class! Personality characteristics affect base stats. Of course, there are tons of job classes to choose from!
• The new Master/Pupil system allows for skills to be transferred between characters. The player chooses the master and the pupil as well as which skills to learn! Benefits include new skills and higher weapon affinities for the pupil while the master gets a stat boost!
• In addition to being able to capture and train monsters, they can now be ridden and perform special attacks with the character riding them!
• The new weapon, the book, can be used as a melee weapon or to summon devastating creatures!

Disgaea Dimensions 2: A Brighter Darkness is set for a fall 2013 release on the PS3.

Next up will be the Rogue-like dungeon crawler, The God and the Fate Revolution Paradox now known as The Guided Fate Paradox. The game is being brought over to be spiritual successor to the PSP game ZHP: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman. Guided Fate Paradox has players take on the role of Renya Kagurazaka, a normal high school student who now has a chance to become God.

Along with becoming God, he also has been granted the power to fulfill people’s wishes through a machine called the Fate Revolution Circuit. With the help of one of the seven angels sent to help him, players will guide Renya through several randomly generate dungeons. Unlike other Rouge-likes, Guided Fate Paradox will allow players to increase Renya’s base stats permanently and will not be lost even if he dies in battle. In addition to that any items that he happens to pick up while traversing the dungeon, he’ll be able to equip them right away instead of waiting to exit. To get fans even more hyped for the game, all of the 2D art work was done by Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya creator Noizi Ito. The Guided Fate Paradox is also set to release this fall 2013 on the PS3.

The last game that NISA announced that they will be bringing over and that could be considered the higher profile game of the three is Toki to Towa now known as Time and Eternity. This game is being developed jointly by Namco Bandai and Imageepoch. The reason that Time and Eternity is causing so many people to talk about the game is that the game is the first true HD animation RPG. What does that mean? In most anime based games, the character models developers uses are either sprites as seen in Disgaea, or 3D model as seen in Hyperdymention Neptunia. With Time and Eternity everything from the backgrounds, enemy characters, NPCs and even the two heroines Toki and Towa are all drawn using cell animation. This is the same technique that is used in a majority of anime. In pervious reviews that used cell shading, I mentioned that they were so well done that it’s as if I’m playing the anime. In Time and Eternity’s case since the whole game is done in cell animation it is practically an anime itself.

The game stars Toki, a beautiful princess about to experience the best day of her life: getting married to her prince. But the wedding is interrupted as assassins crash the ceremony. This causes Toki to transform to Towa, a sprit that resides in her body. She and the royal guards fend the attackers off but it’s too late as they kill the prince. Toki and Towa now must travel back in time to days before the wedding to figure out who was the person who sent the assassins and try to prevent it from happening again. Time and Eternity is set for a summer 2013 release on the PS3.

Even with the looming arrival of the PS4, it seems that the PS3 still has a whole lot to offer before passing the torch to the next generation.