As promised in his previous blog post, Kaga has unveiled the first trailer for his new free indie game, Vestaria Saga: The Seven Sacred Rings, developed using the SRPG Studio software.

This “trailer” is actually a 30 minute-long video that showcases the game’s progress and features, and spans the first three chapters of the game (not in their entirety though).

According to Kaga, the project is currently 10% complete, although he’s still uncertain if it will reach completion. But from the look of things, he and his team of 15 volunteers are trying their best.

The video begins with the Prologue, where in typical Fire Emblem fashion, the protagonist, Zeid, is ordered by his brother, Zechs, to flee the nation before an impending invasion from an overpowering empire.

Unfortunately, unruly bandits have taken advantage of the mass panic to wreak havoc and Zeid’s party must cut a righteous path through these dastardly villains to reach the safety of the harbour.

Though the premise is cliched (and the basis of most Fire Emblem stories), it seems a lot of effort has been put into the story-telling and world-building, especially with the world map narrations between each chapter.

For the playable characters, we have Zeid (Lord; pictured above), Atolfis (Meleda Princess), Troy (Knight), Banasel (Guard Knight) and Brody (Guard Knight) during the Prologue.

Characters stats span the standard Fire Emblem spectrum, from HP, Strength, Magic to Movement. In addition, characters have an “Usage Level” stat, which is basically “Weapon Level”.

The Weapon Level stat last appeared in TearRing Saga; as in that game, characters can only wield weapons if their Weapon Level is equal to or higher than the weapon’s (and, of course, if their class allows it).

Like in Kaga’s most recent game, Berwick Saga, each character appears to have their unique combination of skills, which sets them apart as units. For example, Troy’s Adept and Axe Evasion and Banasel’s Wrath.

In fact, many of the skills are based off Berwick Saga and Fire Emblem–and this is most apparent with Zech’s skillset of Vantage, Adept, Fatal Counter, Paragon, Authority III and Nihil.

(By the way, you don’t control Zechs sadly; he is a Level 18 Paladin in the first chapter after all.)

The gameplay itself looks to be basically “Berwick Saga with Fire Emblem’s engine”. This is evidenced by the Berwick-style complex maps and myriad mid-battle events to keep players on their toes.

Most importantly perhaps, Kaga appears to be holding true to his values of creating a suspenseful strategy experience, as there is permanent death and no mid-battle saves, only the option to suspend.

Curiously, there are a lot of houses on the map, which (typical to Fire Emblem) you can visit to receive insight into the game’s world or explanations on the game’s mechanics, as well as Delius (money).

Some key mechanics we learn:

Effective weapons multiply the weapon’s Might by 1.5 Agility = Speed – (Weapon’s Weight – Strength / 2 ) >= 0. Avoid = Agility x2. Characters double attack if their Agility is 3 or more points higher than the enemy’s. 1 point of Skill adds 3 to Hit Rate and 1 to Critical rate. Critical or “Fatal” hits multiple damage by 2. Critical/Fatal Rate is reduced by the opponent’s Luck.

Even stranger, the NPCs start breaking the fourth way with their gameplay tips, like recommending players to use a USB Game Pad for maximum enjoyment.

(I’m unsure if this text is simply for the trailer or if it’ll be in the actual game… Probably the former though!)

Soon after visiting all the houses, Zeid and company safely escape to the harbour and the Prologue comes to its conclusion. At which point a massive imperial battalion has caught up to Zechs… Yikes!

With Zechs’s fate left to our imagination, the game transitions to the (rather epic) world map narration, dictating the fall of Meleda by the empire’s hands and Zeid’s escape to neighbouring Venecia.

The remaining 20 minutes of the video outlines the general flow of the next two chapters, but to honest there isn’t much new to gleam from it. Maybe I’ll look into it when I have some more spare time…

For now though, it serves as a taster of (hopefully) things to come!

(An amusing observation: in an update to his previous blog post, Kaga seems baffled as to why his blog suddenly received hundreds of thousands of hits after he posted his project. Hmm, I wonder…)