Sega Announces Seventh Dragon for Nintendo DS

9/28/2008

Recently Sega and the creative forces behind Etrian Odyssey have announced a new Nintendo DS title scheduled to be released in Japan sometime next year. The game is called 7th Dragon, and features some of the damn cutest sprites I have seen in all my years of vidya gaming:

The game tales place in a world called Eden, where dragons rule, and man’s only hope for survival is to rid the earth of them. The player is able to assemble a team for the very purpose of doing battle with the dragons. There are a variety of job classes, each with 4 different sprites to choose from. The ones known about so far are the classics: Mage, Princess, Rogue, Knight, Samurai, Fighter, and Healer.

Character maintenance will be extremely similar to Etrian Odyssey in terms of jobclasses, selecting and learning skills etc. Likewise the battles are still turn-based and dungeon crawling is the name of the game.

Sega has released the following “impression movie”:

I couldn’t help but laugh a bit at all the adorable sprites acting all serious in the movie. Still my interest has definately been peaked in the game. I was able to pull some screenshots of the game off of Famitsu’s website:

I am guessing that all of these screenshots are of the DS’s bottom screen, since there are times where it looks like a selection can be made using the stylus. Unlike Etrian Odyssey, the player’s characters will be visible both while traversing the world, and during battle. Personally I think this is a nice upgrade, especially since I put a lot of thought into arranging my team.

Some fans of the classic quality of Etrian Odyssey may be a bit disappointed, but I believe 7th Dragon will be on par with the series. Japanese gamers will be able to slay hoards of dragons Spring of 2009. In the meantime you can check out the game’s official website here. If you are interested in looking at more screenshots of the game you can find those here.