During the 32nd Yurutto Nippon Ichi stream, Nippon Ichi Software revealed for the first time some live gameplay forDestiny Connect, upcoming turn-based RPG with robots and time travel.
We got to seeDestiny Connect’s title screen, the opening movie and a bit of the game’s introduction. As we already reported,Destiny Connect’s story starts on the last day of 1999, with protagonist Sherry about to participate at the end of the millennium festival in Clockney, her industrial hometown with a gear motif. Everyone’s enjoying themselves when time suddenly stops and Sherry is attacked by weird robots. As she finds refuge in her father’s study, she discovers Isaac, a robot capable of time travel. Together with her friends, Sherry travels in time to try and prevent the time stop phenomenon.
The gameplay sequence also shows the game’s main menu and the first battle of the game, which acts as a tutorial, brought in a really cool way: Sherry’s watching a movie on TV, and that movie’s protagonist, which was already revealed to play an important part in the story, starts a battle. That movie is shown every year in the game’s world and is basically theCastle in the SkyofDestiny Connect’s world. In Japan, either before the end of the year or right after, Studio Ghibli’sCastle in the Skyis shown on TV, and every year it breaks Twitter records as everyone in Japan tweets “バルス” during the movie’s climax.
Destiny Connect’s 3D art direction is great, though I admit it might not be for everyone. Nippon Ichi Software’s President Sohei Niikawa, present on stream, also jokingly said Nippon Ichi Software didn’t do many full 3D games in the past, so most people might not even realizeDestiny Connectis a Nippon Ichi Software game when seeing it. Nippon Ichi Software does entertainment, and one of the basics of entertainment is being able to surprise people, hecen why games likeDestiny Connectexists.
I’m looking forward toDestiny Connectas I really want to know if it’ll manage to be as good as Game Director Yoshihiko Toda wants it to be. Back when the game was first announced in Famitsu, Toda said he’d likeDestiny Connectto connect with 30+ years old people of his era. Toda wants Destiny Connect to be a good Snes RPG but made with current technology and with 3D graphics. Multiple games these past years have claimed to hold similar or even bigger ambitions, and yet completely failed in my opinion, fromI am SetsunatoOctopath Traveler, so I hopeDestiny Connectwon’t suffer the same fate. You can read aboutDestiny Connect’s story and characters along with Toda’s comments inthe story covering the game’s announcement.
Destiny Connectwas supposed to launch at the end of February, but the gamegot slightly delayed.You can check the game’sfirst trailer and screenshots,and here’s the firstfull-length trailer, showing parts of the story and battles.We’ve alsocovered the detailson the characters Sherry will meet in the past, which includes a younger version of her mom, and how to customize Isaac the robot.
Destiny Connectwasn’t announced in the west for now but NIS America should definitely bring it over. Niikawa mentioned how they tried to makeDestiny Connect’s character design similar to a Disney movie, instead of going for Japanese-looking characters, so that way, more people around the world can relate to Sherry. He jokingly added that maybe they should have made a 3D anime instead of a game, something a game company president shouldn’t be saying.
You can findDestiny Connect’s gameplay in the video below, from 1:24:05. to 1:36:20.
Destiny Connectlaunches for PlayStation 4 and Switch in Japan on March 14.
