It wasn’t too long ago that Square Enix and Tokyo RPG Factory announced Lost Sphear. The game was showcased at E3 earlier this month, and Kotaku also conducted an interview with director Atsushi Hashimoto. Hashimoto discussed how the team is making improvements from I Am Setsuna, the game’s length, and having it on Switch.

Read on below for some comments from Hashimoto. Check out the full article on Kotaku here.

On letting players move in battle…

“We got a lot of feedback from people who played I Am Setsuna, and they said they were feeling a little limited by the fact [that they couldn’t move around]. We did a number of experiments, and then we decided to be able to move characters freely was the best approach.”

On how I Am Setsuna could be easy if you used some of the game-breaking combos…

“If you found a certain way of defeating enemies [in I Am Setsuna] you could keep repeating that one winning formula, and it could maybe get a little stale,” he said. “This time around, we give the enemies more depth to make them something you can really sink your teeth into. Rather than making them harder, give them more damage, we decided to make sure that you have to really think about how to beat each one separately.” They’ve also added more complexity to monster AI and put a cap on the number of items you can hold in this game, he said. “By adding a limit on that, it makes the player have to think a lot more about which ones to use.”

On more environment variety…

“For Lost Sphear, what you’ll see is a world that’s made up of different cultures. There’s a machine-based culture; there’s a magic-based culture. You’ll see how these cultures mix and track with each other, and that’s led to a much more varied world—there’s a lot more variation this time.”

On the game’s length…

“Originally we were aiming to make it the same length [as I Am Setsuna]. Ultimately it’s worked out to be a slightly longer game. It probably will take you about 30 hours.”

On the same graphical engine but doing things differently…

“We did a lot of experimentation to find out what would work well for this game and make it different than Setsuna. For Setsuna, we pretty much concentrated on those depictions of snow scenes… This time we got to branch out a lot more, work out how to best depict other things, give the right feel and impact. We really had to think very hard about how to do those other things as well, that maybe Setsuna couldn’t so much.”

On making the game for Switch…

“One big reason we wanted to put the game on Switch is that we like that it can fit into different gamers’ lifestyles and patterns, and they can find the best way of playing for them. The other thing is that the technical capabilities and specs of the Switch fit very well with the type of games we’re trying to make at Tokyo RPG Factory.”

On keeping some things secret…

“I really want to talk to you about all the details, but I can’t mention so much. There’s a lot of little things we’ve added. Even within different dungeons, there’s gonna be a lots of little changes.”

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