This Week in Games

Sony State of Play: Phantom Blade Zero, Also, The Return of Kingdom Hearts and Princess Maker

Welcome back, folks! I've been trying to do more stuff that doesn't involve sitting in front of my computer. This does mean reading some of the manga in my backlog. Long story short: I really like The Demons Are Planning Something Good!. I've been a huge fan of Gashigashi's art since I first saw him do the cover art for Freedom Planet, so a whole manga with his stuff is just catnip for me. Also, it's funny. I should tackle my Zelda manga next...

Disney Unveils Kingdom Hearts 4 Footage

There was a lot of Kingdom Hearts news over the week! Sadly, a major piece of it is tragic. You've likely heard of Hayden Panettiere's untimely death by now. Hayden got her start on a number of Disney projects early in her life, like A Bug's Life and Disney's Dinosaur. What really entrenched her in people's hearts was her performance as Kairi in the original Kingdom Hearts. The resulting outpouring of condolences has come not just from longtime Kingdom Hearts fans but also from talents, including current Kairi voice actor Alyson Stoner. This is a tragic blow for the community, and a shadow that'll loom over the rest of the games for sure.

In happier news, we had some major updates on Kingdom Hearts 4 at last week's D23 conference. This included footage of a new stage in Kingdom Hearts, based on Coco. So of course, Sora's done up in some sugar-skull-esque "Day of the Dead" makeup and palling around with Miguel and Héctor. A lot of people have wisely pointed out that Sora being in the Mexican underworld opened the door for Donald and Goofy looking for him—tragically, in the wrong underworld, as they're asking Hades (from Hercules) for help. The accusations of Kingdom Hearts 4 being a stealth Final Fantasy Versus XIII aren't dead yet, either, but I say let Nomura have it. He's earned it.

If folks expect me to have a sage input on Coco or the like in Kingdom Hearts 4, I sadly can't offer any. Being Puerto Rican, we don't celebrate Day of the Dead. Coco's got a fantastic art style, at least, so the Coco world is going to look fabulous. (Maybe one of these days, someone will get me drunk and I'll go on a tirade about Encanto; I have Colombian ancestry and my Colombian dad reared us on Gabriel García Márquez, I've got my bona fides!)

The other landmine is that we're getting an actual Kingdom Hearts series. Hey, it only took the franchise 25 years!

This is a tricky subject, so bear with me, but I struggle to see a world where this show is good. And not because I think Kingdom Hearts is "too confusing" or anything dumb like that. I'd actually stake my personal well-being on Kingdom Hearts being perfectly sensible and logical if you engage with it and aren't just reading Wiki-summaries. A lot of hay is made over how deep and vital lore is in every single Kingdom Hearts game and how this renders the games completely impenetrable, but even as someone who's only taken part in Kingdom Hearts second-hand... it all still makes sense? It's about a trio of friends wanting to stay friends together, even as their lives and the realities of life pull them apart. Pretty typical YA stuff, even before you get to Hunk-ules or the sect of key-wielding magic swordsmen who protect the sanctity of people's souls. This stuff isn't as complicated to explain as Crisis on Infinite Earths, is what I'm saying, especially if you practice the Joe Dirt philosophy of "Don't pay attention to the wrong part of the story."

The real problem I see with the series is that modern production styles are working against it. See, this has to tie into the games at large, so the problem won't be lore making the series "confusing"—the problem is the lore overtaking the entire story at large. Kingdom Hearts has allowed people to embrace new characters for years because they're all fairly simple folks with big emotions—emotions that make them easy to identify with. (And then there's Axel, but Axel's a little lion cub who's never done anything wrong in his life.) A Kingdom Hearts anime has to pull double duty in being an entry into a prestigious series that "justifies its own existence," as it were. And on top of that, it's also going to be where a lot of the lore originally written for the cancelled Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link mobile game ends up being used.

I think it's possible to make a good Kingdom Hearts spin-off, but you have to let it breathe. Kingdom Hearts fans love the manga, after all (especially with the manga giving Kairi actual stuff to do). But if you ask me, the ideal time and way to make a Kingdom Hearts show was in 2001 when the original game released. Honestly, the cancelled proposal from Seth Kearsley was probably a best-case scenario for a Kingdom Hearts show. Would it be weird and contradictory to the original game's lore? Probably. Would the games have to introduce a convoluted scheme to make it canon, like show-Sora secretly being a data-clone? Most likely. But—this is the kicker—it probably would've been very, very fun.

The Kingdom Hearts series doesn't have a release date, but Tetsuya Nomura has solidified that Kingdom Hearts 4 is definitely releasing in 2027.

Sony State of Play: Phantom Blade Zero

We had a State of Play from Sony this week. In a curious twist, it was held on a Monday. Most of the time, these streams get hosted on a Tuesday. But I'm not complaining; it made covering the stream a bit easier. What certainly wasn't easy was Sony's chat on YouTube. State of Play chats are already rough to follow along with during the best of times. Lots of people will complain about any game getting announced that isn't their darling (at this point, it seems to be some kind of Bloodborne revival). This time, Sony got a taste of the old single-issue chat spam. Unlike Nintendo, theirs had nothing to do with pricing; everyone's singular issue this State of Play was regarding physical media. The chant from folks was, NO DISK, NO BUY.

Sony announced their decision to end all manufacturing and distribution of physical media by 2028 back in July of this summer. Never mind the tacit implication that the PS6 will be a digital-only console; the decision has gone over with consumers about as well as a wet fart in a filled elevator. The decision has been universally reviled by everyone short of a very small minority who claim that an all-digital future might make games cheaper—which few people are taking at face value. And really, why would anyone? About the only people charging less for digital copies are Nintendo, and even then it's only a US$10 discount. While the situation is a bit more complicated than I have room to reiterate all of the ways this policy bites (we already did back in July), suffice to say that it's a horrid mix of mandatory DRM, a lack of options for cheaper games for the consumer, and doubling-down on impermanence for your digital copies since nothing is stopping Sony from reaching into your library and removing titles. Unfortunately, to quote Kurt Vonnegut, the effect of the vociferous opposition on behalf of the gaming community has been like a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high. Sony has doubled down on the decision to continue with their diskless future, regardless of the backlash, and the best the community can do is a one-week "blackout" later this August. Yeah, just a week. They can't miss Insomniac's Wolverine, after all.

I've seen a lot of people state that this decision on Sony's behalf has pushed them away from buying a PlayStation 6, if and when that launches. That's an extremely valid move, especially since it's very likely a PS6 will retail in the US$1000 range. There's no way it wouldn't, with the way things are going. There are a lot of people who will choose a PlayStation for the brand's internal cachet, but how many folks are willing to spend a grand on a console just as a flex remains to be seen.

Anyway, the State of Play started by revealing beloved actor Donnie Yen is involved with Phantom Blade Zero, both as a motion capture actor for Mo Yuen and as a "creative consultant." Yen was pleased to introduce Phantom Blade Zero's unique wuxia-inspired aesthetic, which they're calling "kungfupunk." But, begging your forgiveness... I don't see the "punk." In fact, I'm not even sure I see anything unique here. While I do think it's unfair to simply handwave all of the recent Chinese games that have broken mainstream around the world for just being wuxia-inspired settings, that is an allegation they're not dodging anytime soon. And sure: plenty of American or European games have bog-standard European high-fantasy settings (The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher), and plenty of Japanese games go for a fantastical feudal Japan look (Beast of Reincarnation, Ni-Oh); these aren't the end-all, be-all. The Japanese FromSoftware made the Souls games, which do not look anything like the setting of Dragon Age. BioWare's Jade Empire looks nothing like Xenogears' Ignas. CAPCOM released Onimusha and Okami, and both games are set in fantastical versions of ancient Japan, but they also look and play nothing alike. Not every Japanese game is the story of Momotaro or the Shinsengumi. Gun to my head, Phantom Blade Zero's sizzle reel is indistinguishable from Wo Long or Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. (And one of those games isn't even from a Chinese studio!) Lots of muddy grey textures, lots of imposing enemies, lots of motion-blur. (Getting good screenshots of this game in action was a nightmare; everything turns into smears.)

I struggle with this sentiment a lot, because I remember the 2000s. I remember when people were dismissing the entire Japanese game industry off-hand because "Japanese games are all the same." And being someone who was actually playing Japanese games in the 2000s, I hated that, because I could tell you plenty about the differences between Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga and Evergrace and Wild Arms: Alter F. And I don't want to repeat those same prejudices, especially since I know for a fact the folks at S-Game are no less passionate than any other game developer out there. But when Creative Director Soulframe Liang gushes about how the 30+ weapons in Phantom Blade Zero are "inspired by martial folklore, cinematic legacy and ancient traditions," I don't think, "Wow, what a rich tapestry of references they're pulling from!" I just think, "Okay, so combat is like Black Myth Wukong and Wuchang."

Now, to be fair to Phantom Blade Zero, they did feature weapons with some unique functionality. There were a pair of dual swords with both close-range and long-range functionality, with the long-range sword flying around you. Absolutely the kind of weapon you'd dream about after watching Pili or Thunderbolt Fantasy. So I don't mean to imply every weapon is a rip-off. A lot of the weapons look genuinely exciting, and the added convenience of being able to refund all of your upgrade investments into a weapon at a moment's notice in order to experiment with other weapons is a bit of quality-of-life that should be mandatory in action games. Maybe don't phrase your combat in ways that try to make it seem novel that flammable enemies can be exploded, but at the very least: S-Game wants their weapons to feel very, very cool. And my misgivings over "kungfupunk" aside: they have that down pat.

A noted feature is "66 Days Mode," tying into the game's plotline of protagonist Zero being sustained by an artificial heart. Translation: there's a Hard mode where you have 66 lives, and once you lose all your lives, it's permadeath—game over, start your run all over again. I feel like having a life counter is novel in today's day and age, considering how long the philosophy of "game overs are a failure of game design" has been in vogue. There are also the usual haptic feedback responses, so the Dual Sense's responsive shoulder buttons are getting some use (this is one of my favorite underutilized features). We also got a nice sizzle reel of a boss fight against a procession of lion dancers. It's admittedly awesome; the music is, without any reservation, kickass. Someone tell that to the S-Game guys, in as many words. They wanted you to fight a lion procession, and they wanted you to remember this one. Conflicted as I feel, I respect and applaud that energy. Whether that same energy will apply for the rest of Phantom Blade Zero, I don't know. Maybe someday we'll get one of these games with an actual saturated color palette. Phantom Blade Zero releases on the PlayStation 5 this October 29, and it's a PS5 exclusive... except it's not, because the small text also clarifies that it'll release on PC later on, and other consoles after a year. Sony's definition of "console exclusive" is weird.

New Princess Maker Game Coming Out of Early Access

Man, the remnants of Gainax have been twitching a bit lately, haven't they? For the second time this month, a gaming franchise attached to Gainax is showing signs of life. After about a year in Early Access, Princess Maker: Children of Revelation is releasing to the public—the first Princess Maker game in 18 years! That's a whole lifespan of a Princess Maker protagonist!

Princess Maker is one of Gainax's more beloved gaming franchises, a simulation series where players raise a child of destiny. By encouraging her to take part in specific lessons or part-time jobs, her stats and morality develop. Similarly, we can take our child adventuring where she'll beat up baddies and maybe fall in love with a dragon-boy or so. Once our character is of age, the total of your decisions is brought to you and your daughter goes off into her adult life, either thanking you for taking good care of her or scorning you for having her work at a seedy bar after school.

It's been a long road for Children of Destiny, and not just because of the time gap between it and the last numbered Princess Maker. On the one hand, Children of Destiny reuses an older daughter: Karen. Created for Princess Maker Q and slated for an earlier iteration of Princess Maker 4, Karen's numbered game was eventually cancelled due to series creator and artist Takami Akai falling ill. Hence, Karen's Princess Maker 4 is referred to as Princess Maker 4 Original, while a new "official" Princess Maker 4 was released on PS2 later on in 2005.

While Princess Maker: Children of Destiny is made by Korean studio GEAR2 and not Gainax, Takame Akai is still involved and lending their artistic prowess. There's also a neat New Game+ system implemented wherein "Fate Cards" collected from attaining previous endings can be used to boost your stats in a new run.

Princess Maker: Children of Destiny releases this September 30. With any luck, it might get a console release afterwards.

Let's wrap up with some quick tidbits:

That'll do it for this week, I think. Don't have anywhere else to put this, but: Comiket was this past weekend, and it was as big as ever apparently. If there's something I want to leave with folks this weekend, it's the encouragement to create something. Creativity isn't something you lack: it's a part of who we are as people, and even if you don't share anything you make, it's good for the soul to try and make something. I'd like to encourage my readers to try something this weekend; write something, try an instrument, maybe follow the recipe on a box of Betty Crocker cake mix or something. Or, y'know, assemble that model kit that's collecting dust in your closet. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.

This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing Japanese RPGs, eating popcorn, watching VTuber content, and watching tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.