Tokitowa's Battle System Explained

[Andromeda]

Announced earlier this year, Tokitowa or Time and Eternity, has gathered a lot of attention for it's claim of being the first HD animation JRPG. What makes the game special is the fact that the characters are sprites, but have the quality of an anime. When looking at screenshots from in game, all of the characters are what you would expect to see from an anime. It is a huge visual leap from the traditional concept of sprites for a RPG, which most are used to seeing looking much like old 8 and 16 bits RPGs making use of the super deformed style.

In recent months, videos have shown more of the game in motion. The game world is still 3D, but all of the characters and enemies will be anime quality sprites along with all of the cutscenes being HD animation. However, even with seeing how the game runs, little more was known about the combat system.

New details about the combat system have come out to explain it. Attacks are mapped to the face buttons of the controller, which are customized from a menu out of combat. So it will have a similar feel to games like Valkyrie Profile and Trinity Universe, but also let the player choice was attacks go into the buttons. Additionally, as seen in videos, it is possible to dodge attacks. Dodging is a timed effort requiring the player to watch the enemies movements to know when to execute a dodge. It isn't said how dodging will be activated, but it is likely a button press.

When in combat the main character has two personalities or souls they've been saying. The different sides of her also have different specializations in combat. The red haired version is a ranged fighter making use of her rifle, while the blonde haired version is a close range fighter shown wielding a long knife. Other abilities and spells are also at her disposal.

Tokitowa has been talked about for a English release, but it is still unknown. Namco Bandai is publishing the game in Japan, who is known to release some of their products outside of Japan, but Imageepoch, the developer has a deal with NISA to publish their games in the US. And NISA is well known for publishing smaller JRPG titles. So between the two companies, the likelihood of a release is fairly high.