CharacterBank today announced that its JRPG RUINSMAGUS is launching next week, coming to Quest 2 and PC VR headsets via Steam.
Update (June 29th, 2022): In a Japanese language tweet, CharacterBank today announced that Ruinsmagus is headed to Quest and SteamVR on Thursday, July 7th. Release in Japan is set for one day later, July 8th.
The studio has also thrown out links for both the Quest and SteamVR version so you can wishlist today. The original article follows below:
Image courtesy CharacterBank
Original Article (April 20, 2022): In RUINSMAGUS, you venture beneath the alleyways of Grand Amnis, a town that sits atop a vast labyrinth of ruins, long-forgotten by those above. In search of precious and powerful artifacts, you journey into the heart of the ruins and unravel the secrets of a lost age.
Starting out as a humble novice wizard, you learn more powerful spells on your path to becoming a ‘Magus’. In total, the studio says there are 14 unique types of magic available across three major categories: Charge Magic, Skill Magic, and Special Deadly Magic. The game also features nine armor, gauntlet, and shield types – and 13 items (including potions, injections, and grenades).
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Image courtesy CharacterBank
Image courtesy CharacterBank
Image courtesy CharacterBank
CharcterBank says the single-player adventure includes 26 quests, which feature the vocal talents of Naomi Ohzora, Ai Maeda, Eiji Takemoto, and more. In true JRPG fashion, RUINSMAGUS is being voiced entirely in Japanese, with optional English or Japanese subtitles.
In the new trailer, the studio says RUINSMAGUS is “coming soon,” (see update) which we hope is sooner than their last release window of “later this year.” Rebounding from an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign from last year, to bring the game to life the Kyoto-based studio inked a deal with Mastiff, an American publisher with offices in San Francisco and Tokyo.
Brenda Y. Lillis
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Sven Viking
The demo for this was very good but I wish it had a more interesting story, gameplay or metagame hook to really make you want to keep playing. Story, gameplay and presentation are all nice and polished but still just barely close enough to bland to keep me from caring about continuing, and some minor things about the presentation like frequently fading out during static story sequences acted to prevent me from feeling immersed.
Don’t let that stop you from checking it out, though — it’s still a good game well calculated to look good on Quest. I just feel like it could have been something special with a better hook.
Agreed, but I’m sure I still will have fun with it (gameplay in the demo was really good and the last boss made me work for it). And this needs to succeed so we can get bigger scope JRPGs later. As for an interesting metagame hook and story, Tale of Onogoro did deliver on that front (different genre though, puzzle/action adventure).
sfmike
An English language version would be a big help. Subtitles in VR are the worst.
You had your chance to support the kickstarter.
But I agree, it would help to have English voices for the Western audiences. Same for other languages too. But they aren’t free and VR is still a small market.
Going by the Steam demo, this game has a lot of polish and handles tutorials very well (unobstructive, floating in space to be referenced or ignored depending on if you need them). There is a good budget behind it (crowdfunding in Japan was successful) but not enough for an English dub.
Maybe they will add one later or in the next game. It depends on how well this will do.
David Mulder
Just because a product received part of it’s funding through prepaid preorders doesn’t really change how a product can and should be criticized. It’s just a business making a product and a bunch of gamers preordering the product. At the end of the day a deal breaking feature is missing at launch for a significant portion of the potential market. And yes, maybe they will be able to fix/improve their product, but judging a product at launch shouldn’t be criticized. Telling someone “well, you should’ve preordered, so it’s your fault/wishful thinking to point out that an important feature is missing” is just… odd. Imagine doing the same thing with any other product.
Regardless though, given the popularity of English (not my native language either), I think the criticism is particularly valid because they did have the money to get voice acting, but they decided to spend it on a language that has 8% of the speakers of English. I mean, given how rare English is in Japan I understand their decision completely, but that doesn’t make it any less valid of a criticism.
If the game would have done better in the English speaking market because there are more English speakers shouldn’t that have been reflected in the crowdfunding result? Crowdfunding both enables a product to be made and gauges interest. The market decided, it wanted the game made by Japanese devs in Japanese, English speakers didn’t care even with a smaller goal.
You are trying to make an opinion being worth more by claiming it is “valid criticism” (with mine supposedly not?), but facts are facts and you don’t get products out of thin air. If you can understand my argument (not even a criticism) then this discussion was worthwhile. A random person declaring “not buying because no English dub” is trivial and doesn’t change the fact. If they’d said: “I’d really like to play this but only if there is an English dub. Will buy if they add one.”, now that is a reason for the devs to listen to them.
The majority of the people on the planet will not buy your product. It is of no consequence. Only people who buy matter. If you’re not buying you’re just one of 7 billion people who don’t matter.
