Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Level-5 Showcase Announced for November 29 (with Professor Layton News Confirmed)

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Nov 102023
 

Following yesterday’s announcement that Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time has been delayed to 2024, Level-5 announced Level-5 Vision 2023 II for November 29.

The first Level-5 Vision online event was back in March, when we got a few more details about the upcoming lineup of games they’d announced earlier in the year, most of which had 2023 release windows.

Now we’re here, nearly at the end of 2023, and none of them are out yet.

I have to say, it’s made me a little nervous. When Level-5 came out swinging in that fateful Nintendo Direct with three new announcements, it felt like their triumphant return after such a long period of silence. Then most of the year passed without any of those games even getting release dates.

Level-5 Vision 2023 II should help with that. Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, DecaPolice, Fantasy Life i, Megaton Musashi Wired, and Professor Layton and the New World of Steam will all be featured. According to the Fantasy Life i delay announcement, release dates will be announced for at least it and Inazuma Eleven.

Since only a single month of 2023 will be left by that point, I’ll be surprised if Inazuma Eleven, DecaPolice, and Megaton Musashi all still have 2023 release dates, but who knows?

Meanwhile, the official Professor Layton account also confirmed that new footage from Professor Layton and the New World of Steam will be shown.

Professor Layton is likely the farthest out of all these titles. While the others were given 2023 release windows, it never was, with a presumed 2024 release window instead. If the other games are being delayed to 2024, that makes me worry that Professor Layton could be pushed to 2025. But again, we’ll just have to wait for Level-5 Vision 2023 II to see what Level-5 has to share with us.

The live stream will take place at 9 PM JST, which is 4 AM PT / 7 AM ET, so I doubt I’ll watch it live. Either way, though, I’ll be eager to see the new Professor Layton footage and potential release dates for their other games. Are you planning to watch?

Sympathy Kiss is Coming Out on February 27 (Why Would I Expect Anything Else)

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Nov 082023
 

Back at Anime Expo, Idea Factory announced two new otome localizations: My Next Life As a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! – Pirates of the Disturbance and Sympathy Kiss.

Ironically, I commented in that post on how My Next Life As a Villainess’s winter 2023 release window (which turned out to be November 28) added yet another game I was interested in to the second half of this year. Little did I know early 2024 would soon be even more packed…

Yesterday, Idea Factory announced that Sympathy Kiss will be out on February 27, 2024 and also revealed the Limited Edition.

It’s a pretty fantastic Limited Edition, too. Not only does it come with a collector’s box, trading card, soundtrack, drama CD, and a hardcover art book, which are fairly standard Limited Edition contents for IFI, but it also has a notebook, a tumbler, paper tabs, sticky notes, and a memo pad.

That’s a lot of stuff! I guess they’re going all in on the office worker theme!

(The Villainess Limited Edition feels almost barebones in comparison.)

Idea Factory raised the bar for Limited Editions in my eyes a while ago, and this latest one has kept that going.

While I have mixed feelings on Sympathy Kiss having an eyeless protagonist design, I’ll probably go for this. I’m interested enough in the game for such a nice Limited Edition to grab my attention. However, this makes my early 2024 gaming predicament even more dire than it was already!

For whatever reason, every developer releasing a game I’m excited for seems to have decided the roughly month-long span between the end of January and the end of February is when their game should come out. Just take a look:

  • January 25 – Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy (which I wasn’t going to replay until I heard people speculating that what if the unlockable art for beating all three games teases a new entry)
  • January 26 – Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
  • February 1 – Granblue Fantasy: Relink
  • February 2 – Persona 3 Reload
  • February 15 – Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II
  • February 27 – Sympathy Kiss
  • February 29 – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

This will be one of those times where a game that would otherwise have been an immediate buy, like Granblue Fantasy: Relink, will have to be pushed aside in favor of the games I’ve prioritized ahead of it. Even if I had all the free time I could want, there’s no way I’d manage to play all of those in such a short span of time.

(And there’s still weeks in February that could be filled up with more games! At this point, I wouldn’t even be surprised, just sadly laugh while staring at my backlog.)

With the addition of Sympathy Kiss, my game priorities for February 2024 have yet another contender. Are you planning to pick it up?

Let’s Talk About the Kingdom Hearts Missing Link Trailer

 Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Nov 062023
 

Last week while we were finishing up our Halloween celebration, Kingdom Hearts Missing Link finally made another appearance.

We haven’t talked about the upcoming mobile game Missing Link since last December, when the key art was revealed.

All year long, Missing Link has been… well, missing. But not anymore!

After the Twitter account was updated on October 26, a new trailer followed on October 30 with a 2024 release window, along with the announcement of a closed beta test for the United Kingdom and Australia.

My first takeaway from this trailer is that Missing Link is beautiful. It looks like it should be a console game. This also looks like the explorable Scala ad Caelum I’ve been hoping for ever since Kingdom Hearts III.

Meanwhile, I’m still somewhat puzzled about how this game will actually play. We can see action RPG combat in the trailer, and the “character pieces imbued with powers” look like how the gacha aspect will factor into the gameplay, as they appear to provide different types of attacks. But the GPS part is still unclear.

Missing Link is a “GPS Action RPG,” which would make me think of something like Pokémon Go, but then the trailer says you can “travel the world without stepping outside.” So it seems like it uses real-world map data, but you can still play from home.

Story-wise, I’m not sure what to make of it either. Based on everything we know, Missing Link takes place in between KHUX and Dark Road. The end of the trailer describes it as “the blank era, one that will eventually be forgotten,” which is certainly interesting.

I’m curious about Missing Link’s story, but I don’t have a good track record with mobile games. I still haven’t played Ever Crisis since the last time we discussed it. Missing Link sure is beautiful, though.

Are you interested in Kingdom Hearts Missing Link?

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