Solatorobo: Red the Hunter E3 Preview

While at E3 this year, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jimmy Soga from XSeed games to talk about their just-announced title Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, an action-RPG for the Nintendo DS, developed by CyberConnect2 (makers of, among other things, the .Hack series).  Billed as the spiritual successor of Tail Concerto, Solatorobo features a world inhabited primarily by creatures that look like dogs and cats, whom ride mech-like Robos.  The story follows Red Savarin, who rides Dahak, his Robo companion.

The game itself takes place on the floating islands of the Shepherd Republic, with the population being split among races which appear to be the aforementioned cats and dogs, with the islands themselves floating over a sea of plasma.  Red and his little sister, Chocolat Gelato make their living by doing odd jobs for various people.  While on one of their errands, the ship Red is on is attacked and begins to crash-land, which is where he meets  Elh Melizee, a catgirl.  The three of them then work to uncover the mystery of a medal which Red finds while on his current errand.

Solatorobo features a story which takes place in a prologue and two acts, which are each separated into approximately twenty to thirty ‘episodes’, similar to an anime story would be.  The game is estimated to take approximately twenty hours, with over seventy quests and a number of mini-games consisting of an arena, a fishing game, and an air-race which supports up to four players in local mode.  While the game itself features no use of the DS’s touch screen, it does have very solid controls which are rather easy to pick up.  The artwork is very bright and cheery and the music is by the same composer of the .Hack games which is most definitely a plus.  On top of all of this, for fans of the original Tail Concerto, characters from that game as well as others will show up throughout the game.

While the DS itself may be on the way out, XSeed has made certain to give it a solid sendoff with the release of Solatorobo this fall.

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