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Kadokawa Games Studio’s first fully-internal title, the unnaturally titled strategic RPG NAtURAL DOCtRINE (Ok, that’s the last time we’re spelling it that way) was recently announced, but information has been scarce since. We know the main protagonist is Jeff. and one of its core concepts is large numbers of allies and foes on the field at once.
Perhaps the stream of info will start here. Anime studio Ufotable’s first set of character designs are being shown off in the trailer above with Jeff, Vasilica and Anca. The video seems to hint that the two woman are somehow close to Jeff–interspaced fast cut shots of one or the other girl in Jeff’s arms. Could they be your romantic interest in the game?
The video also shows off a fight against an earth golem of some sort, with various characters fighting from entirely separate areas. What looks like Vasilica is slicing and dicing at the golem’s joints while a mage blasts the golem with a beam of blue laser light. There’s also shots of destructible terrain, such as when a minotaur crashes into a wall and demolishes it, which gives interesting promise to the possibility of hidden areas to discover or new routes to explore mid-battle.
Poring through screenshots and perusing the video reveals lots more characters that have yet to be formally announced. We’re just guessing at this point, but based on how the screenshots look, the top row shows the turn for characters, which might have a combat system that comes in set turn blocks: Each larger white arrows indicating breaks between each group. The left side will display commands during battle. Your guess is as good as ours what the red and blue balls mean on the right.
Natural Doctrine will be released for PlayStation 4 in Japan on February 22nd, 2014. It will also be available as a PSN download for the PlayStation 3 and Vita on the same day.
