There aren’t many Tactical RPGs out there on the market today. Other than Fire-Emblem and XCom , many of the great TRPG franchises have simply fallen off the face of the map. Luckily, Playdek and Yasumi Matsuno are looking to bring the genre back in force with their new Kickstarter project, Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians .
What’s that? You don’t know who Yasmui Matsuno is? Then you, sir, haven’t been keeping up with your tactical RPG history. Matsuno was the director for both Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story . Heralded as one of the masters of the Tactical RPG genre, Matsuno is looking to bring an entirely new TRPG experience to PC and mobile platforms.
Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians is one part Final Fantasy Tactics , one part SaGa Frontier 2 , but only in its time-scale. It takes place in the world of Rasfalia, a medical world torn by political conflict. Its focus is on a struggle called the Seventy-Seven Years War, which consumed nearly every kingdom in the world.
During the course of the game, players will take control of important figures of the Seventy-Seven Years War in different story based episodes. However, the time-span of each episode varies greatly. Some episodes only focus on a year of the story while others focus on several decades. You’ll get to see characters grow and change as you hop back and forth in the game’s timeline, altering the history of the world through the choices that you make.
The heroes of Unsung Story are called “the unsung ones” and their plot should be very familiar to anyone who played Final Fantasy Tactics . These are the heroes that were not featured in the history books. They were the key figures in Rafalia’s history that no one ever knew about and you will get to see the history of the land unfold through their eyes.
True to the Final Fantasy Tactics tradition, Unsung Story will have a deep and complex class system. Each unit in the game will have a base “profession” which they cannot change. Within each profession, however, are multiple classes. For example, Clergy can end up being passive healing priests, impressive battle clerics, or even frontline fighters with powerful buffs. Other examples of profession include Nobles, which have access to ornate and complicated weapons and armor; Pioneers, which are commoners that make up less complicated classes of your army; and the Estate class, which are highly educated craftsmen who can use their experience in the sciences to create technological weapons like crossbows and guns.
The Kickstarter has currently raised a little over $200,000 and they are looking to hit $600,000 in one month. There are a number of stretch goals planned, however, that will just make the game better. At $800,000 5 new scenarios will expand the story. At a million, the game will get 2 more classes and a New Game + mode. At higher levels of success, the game will be ported to the PS Vita and 3DS as well as PC and Mobile platforms. The final stretch goal rests at 3.2 million, at which point the team will release a Map Creator that will allow you to design your own levels for the game and share them over the internet.
For more information on Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians , head on over to the official Kickstarter page. If you are a fan of tactical RPGs, consider throwing at least $20 their way to secure yourself an early bird copy of the game. We will bring you more information on the release of Unsung Story as it becomes available.