Vestaria Saga release date confirmed: September 21st

Our lord and savior Shouzou Kaga has built a new website for the upcoming release of his SRPG Studio project, Vestaria Saga.

At the top of the website is a banner confirming the release date of Vestaria Saga: September 21st. Kaga had previously set this date as “Summer 2016”, noting that September 21st would be Kaga’s self-imposed deadline in a recent blog post while leaving open the possibility that it could still be released sooner.

VincentASM over at Serenes Forest has a great synopsis of the website, which details the core gameplay mechanics of Vestaria Saga.

Interesting tidbits abound, including the expansion of the traditional “Pure Water” effect into multiple positive status effects. There is a +5 Def, and a +3 to combat stats status in addition to the standard +5 Res, with the boost decreasing by 1 each turn. Additionally, there is a temporary +1 move boost status and a 5 turn HP recovery status that heals a unit by 5 HP at the start of each turn. New negative status effects also appear with the Numbness/Paralysis statuses, which disable a unit’s ability to use weapons and items for varying lengths of time (1 turn for the former, 3 turns for the latter).

The website also breaks down the game’s weapon types, which includes the somewhat questionable design decision of the “female-only sword” weapon type. What, the men in this game are just too macho to use a certain type of sword? And how exactly is any type of sword “feminine”, anyways? Kaga has also chosen to keep the “weapon level” stat (renamed “Proficiency”) instead of the weapon ranks mechanic popularized in FE4/5. Vestaria Saga also includes the fan-favorite mechanic of having multiple types of magic (whyyyyy, IS, whyyyyy do you insist on having a stat that basically exists for exactly one type of offensive weapon?): Spirit Magic, which represents the traditional Anima trio of Wind/Fire/Thunder, Holy Magic, and Dark Magic. Longbows have a whopping 3-7 attack range.

Battle calculations and commands should be standard fare to the experienced Fire Emblem player. The biggest surprise is the return of the critical mechanic from FE4, with “fatal attacks” being locked to a character and weapon-based skill.

Overall, it looks to be an interesting experience with the hallmarks of Kaga’s original designs still intact. One month until the release–all aboard the hype train!

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please give them different utilities from each other please give them different utilities from each other please give them different utilities from each other please give them different utilities from each other please give them different utilities from each other

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My design decisions are finally vindicated by motherfucking Kaga himself.

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Huh, I’m a big fan of the Wlvl stat because I love exploiting the fuck out of it, but I thought Kaga changed back to different weapon levels like FE5 circa Berwick, and I HATE that he made criting a skill again, but if crits have Berwick esque effects, it’s prolly a good thing. I’ll prolly still prefer Fates, 6, 7, and 3 to this, but I am genuinely hyped for this.

My first thought when reading female swords was FE3’s Lady Sword. Did Kaga literally make the Lady Sword multiple types of weapons. Part of me is concerned that females can’t use the other sword types at all tho

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Different strokes for different folks bro, you really enjoy FE4, my thoughts on the game are similar to your’s on Fates.

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I know. I’m just being silly. It’s all chill, bruh.

P.S. FE4 is unbalanced as fuck. The gameplay is too repetitive. The difficulty is too polarized by holy weapons.

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Keeping my hype down until a translation patch comes out tbh. I wish I could read moonrunes.

And my favorite is 8 so I dunno what to feel about those features except declaim “typical Kaga” lol.

Ah, it’s all chill for me too, I just really wanted to say different strokes for different folks fsr, and FE4 was a game I knew you liked that I’m mixed towards myself.

P.S: since you pointed out FE4’s problems, I’ll point out Fates’, the story is shite, the children are shoehorned in, and the whole setup screams “This is an experiment game”

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I do enjoy FE4, one of my favorites despite the obvious flaws. Part of that is just due to nostalgia–when I was young, our family had a janky old computer that was incapable of emulating SNES games. I used to spend weekends at my grandparents’ house playing FE4/5 whenever I could, because they had a computer that could actually run SNES9x. Fond memories, definitely. It was also the first “Japan-only era” game that I played. I loved the sense of scale that the large maps gave to the game, but in retrospect all of those turns spent moving units into the next area are certainly tedious. It’s a problem that could’ve been easily solved with some sort of “set waypoint for units to auto-move to” command (like the Order function from FE9/10). The game hasn’t aged terribly well, but I’ll always remember the joy of playing the shit out of FE4 as a youngster, hours-long maps and all–and the map themes are straight up some of the best music in the series, period.

Plus, the plot. OMG, the plot. To this day, I’ll never understand how Kaga got family-friendly Nintendo to publish a game that featured inadvertant incest, ritual child sacrifice, and slavery as core plot points. It’s fucking awesome, and the plot handled itself with a degree of maturity and seriousness that seems to be completely absent from modern FE games. The way that descendants of the original crusaders wound up on opposite sides of the second holy war enriched the dynamics of the story (and yeezus, those fights between holy weapon wielders were legit). It even ended with one or two of those bloodlines being apparently wiped out. And Sigurd? Sigurd was Ned Stark before Game of Thrones was cool.

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How in the world is that a good idea?
Spoiler: it isn’t.

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Funny because FE4 and AGOT were both released in 1996.