For those of you who are here for the first time, it’s great to meet you all. For those of you who are back, welcome back. My name is Sakari “P,” and I’m the Director/Producer of Phantom Breaker: Omnia.
It feels as though I say this every time, but I apologize for taking so long to give you an update.
Today, I would like for you to take a look at some footage of the Story Mode. You may already know that Phantom Breaker: Omnia will feature stories from both Phantom Breaker and Phantom Breaker: Extra. However, I believe this is our first time revealing video footage of it.
In the original Phantom Breaker’s Story Mode, character illustrations were shown one by one at the center of the screen during dialogue. In Omnia, however, we’ve adjusted the screen composition to make it consistent with Extra’s screen composition. This may feel fresh for Japanese players who have been playing this title since long ago.
Speaking of Story Mode, Omnia will feature complete voice overs for two languages: Japanese and English. The text, however, has been localized into eight languages: Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Chinese (traditional and simplified).
We are currently in the LQA (language check) phase of the project, and the translation staff is hard at work polishing every detail of the localization.
The reason why I want to release Omnia on all four major platforms, as well as provide multilingual support, is because I want it to reach as many players as possible and for them to feel comfortable playing in their individual environments.
And of course, because this is a fighting game, online playability is an important aspect to consider. One might argue that it would be better to limit the number of platforms on which the game is released to make it easier for players to find each other, but I believe there are many who would also argue that fighting games are most enjoyable when played locally. As such, I think it’s equally important to give players the flexibility and choice of platforms when releasing the game.
Moreover, the Phantom Breaker IP is still a new challenger within the genre of fighting games. This series is still relatively unknown, considering it’s never been released outside of Japan (except Taiwan). It may not even be acknowledged as a legitimate fighting game in the eyes of prominent Japanese fighting game developers. Hence, we must not limit the player base by limiting platform availability.
My first priority is to catch the attention of as many people as possible, have them play the game, receive their feedback, and continue to improve upon the game, working towards a more perfect fighting game. To do this, I’m focusing on releasing Phantom Breaker: Omnia and promoting title familiarity so that we can begin to take the game to newer heights.
But with all that being said, it’s also true that the above mentioned principles are causing delays in development and the porting process has been more challenging than we anticipated. For now, I’m doing my best to put Phantom Breaker: Omnia into the hands of players as quickly as possible, though, technically our team is doing all the hard work, waiting is equally stressful.
On another note, we received a question regarding the battle footage we released on Twitter:
“The combo counter occasionally turns a red color. Is there a special meaning for this?”
This occurs when the attacking player lands a counter hit: an attack that hits the opponent while they are executing an action. This will turn the combo counter red, and the attacking player will receive buffs, like increased burst gauge charge rate, while the receiving player suffers debuffs, such as extended stagger time.
Please send more questions like this my way. I’m happy to answer them in the best way I can (though there are details about the game the staff won’t even tell me about).
That is all for today, everyone.
Until next time.