There’s not much that can get me excited about playing a new JRPG; it takes the sort of constant acclaim for a title like The World Ends With You for me to even start the game up. But Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli applying all its trademark style to a game for the Nintendo DS? Yeah, that’ll do. The video below doesn’t show much gameplay (and is in Japanese, sourced as it is from the Tokyo Game Show) but I don’t even care, because, well, just look at it. I can even overlook the ‘drawing spells’ interface that I didn’t much like in the last Castlevania game for the DS.
Ni no Kuni (The Another World) follows a 13-year old boy who causes the death of his mother. Led into a parallel world by a fairy with a bizarre spellbook, the boy embarks upon a quest to save his mum. The game is set for a 2009 Japanese release (no US date is currently set) and is being developed by Level 5, the company behind Professor Layton and the Curious Village.