Two Massive JRPG Cancellations
For my fellow diehard JRPG fans, two old names might bring back very fond memories. Wild Arms is one of the greatest JRPGs on the original PlayStation which was unfortunately overshadowed by the beast that would be Final Fantasy VII which released around the same time. If you’re a fan of the anime Trigun, you’ll probably like Wild Arms; the game blends sci-fi elements with wild west elements. The music is phenomenal too, and it boasts my favorite intro cutscene in any game ever.
The other old name is Shadow Hearts, a PS2 gothic horror JRPG that feels like one of the last vestiges of the PS1 era of the genre. And that makes sense too since Shadow Hearts is a spiritual successor to Koudelka, a PS1 gothic horror JRPG.
In 2022, Akifumi Kaneko, the creator of Wild Arms and Matsuzo Machida, creator of Shadow Hearts, teamed up for a very unusual cause. The duo decided to do a joint Kickstarter. One Kickstarter would seemingly fund two spiritual successors to their cult Japanese Role-Playing games.
In 2024, Machida and his team filed a lawsuit against the organizers of the Kickstarter Dangen Entertainment for not properly distributing the money they got from supporters. I could never find out what this actually meant because the parties involved have been relatively silent. I’m not sure if Armed Fantasia got most of the money, or if Dangen quietly stuffed their pockets and tried to run away from the situation.
Armed Fantasia was able to find a publisher with 505 Games, which is owned by Digital Bros. Sadly, today on September 24th, Digital Bros has announced that Armed Fantasia will no longer be in development. This leaves Penny Blood in an unknown situation and Armed Fantasia officially cancelled. The dual Kickstarter will forever be known as a catastrophic failure for my fellow JRPG-nerds.
There seems to be this sad trend where former lead developers who once ran legendary game series try to revive it with a Kickstarter for spiritual succesor and meet failure. Keiji Inafune with Mighty No. 9. Yoshitaka Murayama (rest in peace) with Eiyuden Chronicle. Playtonic Games with Yooka-Laylee. And now these two most recent cases. To be fair, Yooka-Laylee has its fans (me) and so does Eiyuden Chronicle. Luckily Koji Igarashi has overcome this trend with his Bloodstained series.
I truly do hope for the best for the team behind Armed Fantasia. I think the concept of a dual Kickstarter was far too ambitious. Not only were these old cult classic games in a niche genre, but the games seemed to be going for a large scope. Full 3D graphics with appealing art styles don’t come cheap. Maybe they could’ve spread the money further if they went for a 2.5D style like Eiyuden Chronicle. But it still doesn’t excuse the strange happenings with Dangen Entertainment. Nonetheless, it seems like the teams behind both games were passionate and largely comprised of people who worked on the original games. It’s sad to see that passion crushed underneath the weighty boot of the modern games industry.
