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XSEED Will Do What Nintenwon't, Agrees to Localize 'The Last Story' for North America

Mistwalker's Wii RPG will finally be coming to the U.S. this summer.

If you were one of the many Wii owners grousing loudly and frequently when it seemed as though Nintendo had no intention of bringing one of several highly regarded role-playing games for the system over to North America from Japan, your rage was likely soothed just a bit when the company finally agreed to just go ahead and put Xenoblade Chronicles out here this April, because you wouldn't shut up about it. That, however, still left Pandora's Tower and Mistwalker's The Last Story floating about in the unlocalized ether, perhaps never to be properly available in the States...

Your letter writing campaign paid off! Again!
Your letter writing campaign paid off! Again!

...Until today! During a largely 3DS-focused conference this morning, the company let slip that The Last Story would be coming to America, with localization courtesy of independent publisher XSEED Games.

XSEED obviously has a history of taking typically obscure Japanese games and bringing them to the North American market. In the case of The Last Story, they'll be handling all localization duties, and handling exclusive publishing duties in North America, courtesy of a special deal with Nintendo, who co-developed the title with Mistwalker.

No more specific release date than "this summer" has been announced, but that's still a hell of a lot better than the "probably never" we had to work with prior to this morning. While it doesn't sound likely that anyone will be picking up Pandora's Tower at this point, you've gotta figure two out of three headed to American shores is a vast improvement over the zero out of three we were staring at late last year, right?

Alex Navarro on Google+

77 Comments

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vortextk

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Edited By vortextk

Hilarious. That's all I freaking wanted last year, let someone else license the titles when nintendo was too damn stubborn to give a crap about doing anything with the games.

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destruktive

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Edited By destruktive

localize it? It's all ready in fucking English.

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel
@destruktive

localize it? It's all ready in fucking English.

British English, not American English.
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joshth

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Edited By joshth

This is great. Thanks XSEED!

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Ravenlight

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Edited By Ravenlight

Alex's articles always have the best titles.

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xyzygy

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Edited By xyzygy

@dagas said:

It's out in two days in Europe. Good that Americans will be able to play it as well. I don't know much about it though other than it's by Sakaguchi, but it's not like he's done much good in recent years.

Lost Odyssey was the only thing of great importance he's done and it was released in 2008... if you haven't played it, it's fantastic.

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Edited By korwin

Hmmmm... I might play this.

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slowbird

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Edited By slowbird

I love the title of this article.

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xpgamer7

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Edited By xpgamer7

I'm still wishing for Retro Game Challenge 2 to come out. One day...

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Edited By MildMolasses
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paulunga

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@xyzygy said:

@dagas said:

It's out in two days in Europe. Good that Americans will be able to play it as well. I don't know much about it though other than it's by Sakaguchi, but it's not like he's done much good in recent years.

Lost Odyssey was the only thing of great importance he's done and it was released in 2008... if you haven't played it, it's fantastic.

Uh, are you saying the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger and Xenogears are not "of importance" (whatever that means when you're talking about videogames)?

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Shady

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Edited By Shady

I'm surprised Nintendo gave up publishing rights for this game. They sure as hell didn't for Fatal Frame 4. Then again, this is a better deal.

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1337W422102

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Edited By 1337W422102

Fuck.  Year.

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apekatt

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Edited By apekatt

@Aleryn said:

YES! The game sounds GREAT for fans of Hironobu Sakaguchi-produced Final Fantasy and similar games. I just hope I can play it on a Classic Controller; waggle gets old past the 30 hour mark, heh.

You can play it with a Classic yep, no worries.

@MildMolasses said:

Woo. I just really hope this has more in common with Lost Odyssey and none with Blue Dragon

It has. To be frank, I think it has more in common with Vagrant Story (character design + environment look and feel) than with either of Mistwalkers two earlier games. Sure, the character design can come down to it not being Toriyama or whomever designed the Lost Odyssey characters, but rather Kimihiko Fujisaka (mostly known for Drakengard 1+2 ). He gives them that strange, European medieval look quite nicely. Having the voices actors be british/scottish with a lot of slang words enforces that mood very well. As far as I've understood, same localization company that did Xenoblade Chronicles.

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Sander

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Edited By Sander

Well duh.

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mewarmo990

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Edited By mewarmo990

Sounds like Nintendo will handle distribution while XSEED does localization. Anyway, happy to get some more mileage out of my rarely-played Wii.

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Edited By DeF

@MildMolasses said:

Woo. I just really hope this has more in common with Lost Odyssey and none with Blue Dragon

if you read the Iwata asks, it sounds more like it has nothing in common with anything he's done before. he seems to have tried something totally different this time.

action battle system with tactical planning beforehand, huge hub-town (with assassin's creed-style crowds) instead of overworld, characters that actually sound interesting ...

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sopachuco13

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Edited By sopachuco13

Buyin' it! I bought Xenoblade, but the British voices were grating. I still enjoyed it though.

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@DeF said:

@MildMolasses said:

Woo. I just really hope this has more in common with Lost Odyssey and none with Blue Dragon

if you read the Iwata asks, it sounds more like it has nothing in common with anything he's done before. he seems to have tried something totally different this time.

action battle system with tactical planning beforehand, huge hub-town (with assassin's creed-style crowds) instead of overworld, characters that actually sound interesting ...

You sound as though there has never been a Sakaguchi RPG with interesting charaters before.

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deactivated-592be1c2327fc

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Better buy these, because no one else will.... and they aren't going to localize any more niche JRPGs after the terrible sales.

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DeF

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Edited By DeF

@Hailinel said:

@DeF said:

@MildMolasses said:

Woo. I just really hope this has more in common with Lost Odyssey and none with Blue Dragon

if you read the Iwata asks, it sounds more like it has nothing in common with anything he's done before. he seems to have tried something totally different this time.

action battle system with tactical planning beforehand, huge hub-town (with assassin's creed-style crowds) instead of overworld, characters that actually sound interesting ...

You sound as though there has never been a Sakaguchi RPG with interesting charaters before.

I don't know too many Sakaguchi games (having only played FF 1, 2 and a third of 3 with 4, 5 and 6 still sitting on the shelf), I'm basing this strictly on stereotypes. What I basically mean that the short character blurbs I read in a magazine intrigued me a lot, which is a good thing. :)

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@DeF said:

@Hailinel said:

@DeF said:

@MildMolasses said:

Woo. I just really hope this has more in common with Lost Odyssey and none with Blue Dragon

if you read the Iwata asks, it sounds more like it has nothing in common with anything he's done before. he seems to have tried something totally different this time.

action battle system with tactical planning beforehand, huge hub-town (with assassin's creed-style crowds) instead of overworld, characters that actually sound interesting ...

You sound as though there has never been a Sakaguchi RPG with interesting charaters before.

I don't know too many Sakaguchi games (having only played FF 1, 2 and a third of 3 with 4, 5 and 6 still sitting on the shelf), I'm basing this strictly on stereotypes. What I basically mean that the short character blurbs I read in a magazine intrigued me a lot, which is a good thing. :)

Play Final Fantasy IV and VI, seriously.

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DeF

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Edited By DeF

@Hailinel said:

@DeF said:

@Hailinel said:

@DeF said:

@MildMolasses said:

Woo. I just really hope this has more in common with Lost Odyssey and none with Blue Dragon

if you read the Iwata asks, it sounds more like it has nothing in common with anything he's done before. he seems to have tried something totally different this time.

action battle system with tactical planning beforehand, huge hub-town (with assassin's creed-style crowds) instead of overworld, characters that actually sound interesting ...

You sound as though there has never been a Sakaguchi RPG with interesting charaters before.

I don't know too many Sakaguchi games (having only played FF 1, 2 and a third of 3 with 4, 5 and 6 still sitting on the shelf), I'm basing this strictly on stereotypes. What I basically mean that the short character blurbs I read in a magazine intrigued me a lot, which is a good thing. :)

Play Final Fantasy IV and VI, seriously.

I know ... I know ... I bought them years ago (GBA) but I had/have it set in my mind that I wanted to play them all chronologically which is why I'm stuck in III due to me being stupid and forgetting that the last save I used was a quick save which got deleted after I turned off the game because I died^^

My RPG priorities currently lie elsewhere (I just bought Baten Kaitos ... The Last Story should arrive next week and I still need to finish Xenoblade and get around to The Witcher 2 :D)

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Edited By xyzygy

@paulunga said:

@xyzygy said:

@dagas said:

It's out in two days in Europe. Good that Americans will be able to play it as well. I don't know much about it though other than it's by Sakaguchi, but it's not like he's done much good in recent years.

Lost Odyssey was the only thing of great importance he's done and it was released in 2008... if you haven't played it, it's fantastic.

Uh, are you saying the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger and Xenogears are not "of importance" (whatever that means when you're talking about videogames)?

No, I'm referring to the "in recent years" that dagas was talking about. Of course he was releasing amazing games from the late 80's to 2000/2001. Then he left Square, founded his own studio and released LO which was amazing... and sadly the only really great thing he's done since. Last Story will hopefully change that.

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Edited By Hailinel

Apparently, Gamestop has started taking in-store preorders for The Last Story with a release date of June 20th in their system, but the game isn't listed on their website yet. Listings for the game on Amazon only bring up the Japanese import version.

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Edited By paulunga

@xyzygy: Ah, okay, gotcha. Well, I'm not even sure Mistwalker did much in general other than Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. I think they did a game called "Shuffle Dungeon" for the DS and that's about it. Never played that one, though. And I agree with you on BD and LO, LO's quite possibly my favourite JRPG this generation.

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Edited By Hailinel

@paulunga said:

@xyzygy: Ah, okay, gotcha. Well, I'm not even sure Mistwalker did much in general other than Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. I think they did a game called "Shuffle Dungeon" for the DS and that's about it. Never played that one, though. And I agree with you on BD and LO, LO's quite possibly my favourite JRPG this generation.

They also produced a couple of handheld Blue Dragon offshoots and a Japan only DS game called ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat. The Last Story is the company's third major release for home consoles.

@Hailinel said:

Apparently, Gamestop has started taking in-store preorders for The Last Story with a release date of June 20th in their system, but the game isn't listed on their website yet. Listings for the game on Amazon only bring up the Japanese import version.

An update: as of now, Amazon is taking preorders for the game, so The Last Story will not be restricted to being a retailer-exclusive like Xenoblade is with Gamestop.