This year at Anime Expo, Atlus has a packed panel to discuss four of their upcoming games: Luminous Arc, Growlanser: Heritage of War, Riviera: The Promised Land (PSP remake) and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Most of the stuff we’ve covered before but there were a few nuggets of information to share.
There is a brand new dungeon in the PSP version Riviera: The Promised Land specifically for North America. It is based on a boss fight in the game and Sting made it into a full area to explore. Riviera will also have a dual language track, English and Japanese.
Growlanser: Heritage of War is Growlanser V, but it uses an enhanced game engine that makes it run smoother. The engine change also means the version localized by Atlus USA has smarter enemies than the original Japanese release. Instead of toning the difficulty down Atlus USA opted for the tougher difficulty. Growlanser: Heritage of War has dating sim elements where you can build relationships with other characters and anime cutscenes.
During the Q&A session about Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, questions came up about Persona 3: Fes. One attendee asked if elements from Persona 3: Fes were in the US version of Persona 3. Yu Namba, the project lead explained, “We started this project way before we learned they were working on Fes.” While the team did consider adding elements of Persona 3: Fes into the game there was not enough time to put them in. Right after that question someone asked if Persona 3: Fes would get released and here’s the answer, “we can't say anything right now. We have to discuss it a little more. There is a possibility, of course, that it will be released. I just don't know.” Is this a hopeful sign? Maybe, but it was also explained that the amount of extra content in Persona 3: Fes is about 70% of Persona 3, which means a lot of localization work needs to be put into the project.
