Somehow, SEGA and Square Enix are now bouncing oddball JRPGs off one another. Square Enix’s announcement of the The Last Remnant remaster last week has been met by SEGA with a remaster of its own cult-favorite, Resonance of Fate.
SEGA has confirmed that the game will be getting an HD/4K makeover, and it will be heading to both the PlayStation 4 and PC through Steam next month on Oct. 18.
Resonance of Fate is a strange JRPG from Star Ocean developer tri-Ace that takes John Woo-style gunplay, recasts the leading roles of Wild ARMs with realistic character models, and sets it to a city in the clouds sci-fi setting. Three characters meet and cooperate as a band of mercenaries, living out the last days of their lives before the city comes crashing down.
If you’ve never seen this game in action… well, just watch the announcement trailer.
The previous console generation isn’t exactly known for its hardcore JRPGs. Most that came out for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 crashed upon release and aren’t really worth remember like the Super Nintendo’s, PlayStation’s, or PlayStation 2’s legendary libraries.
However, with the hindsight and context of the AAA market overtaking the industry and Japan’s iconic studios struggling to meet the necessary resources for HD gaming, it wouldn’t be wrong to suggest that we were in a different mindset ten years ago. The Last Remnant and Resonance of Fate being tapped for such high profile remasters hint that maybe it’s time to go back and see if any of these other games, like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, or… ugh… Infinite Undiscovery are worth a mention in the grand history of the genre.
Either way, at least we get these two cult hits all over again. Resonance of Fate will be on Steam and PlayStation 4 next month, and the only way I could be happier is if it was coming to the Switch.
