Ask game creator Shoji Masuda what he thinks about Ore no Shikabane o Koete Yuke being one of the most popular RPGs available for the PS3’s PlayStation Archives service, and he’s characteristically modest. “I think it’s because the gameplay is easy to follow and there’s a lot of randomness to it that allows for repeat play,” he told Famitsu magazine in an interview published this week. “The fact that it’s only 600 yen probably has a lot to do with it as well, but I think the way dedicated players exchange information on the game over the net is a big part of it too.”
Shikabane, a cult PS1 release in Japan that features a family of warriors fighting a demon and curse he’s placed upon them over multiple generations, is due to receive a PSP remake later this year. One of the most obvious enhancements is a completely new graphic package that takes the original’s PS1-era visuals and gives them an abstract Japanese feel reminiscent of Okami. “I figured this was the way we could modernize the graphics while retaining the feel of the game,” Masuda commented. “It’s not as if this game requires us to be cutting-edge with the graphic technology. I’m not against being as advanced as necessary, but with this game, we’re going with what works and what we need.”
In Shikabane, your samurai family (the members of which are cursed to live out their entire lives in two years’ time) must forge pacts with the assorted gods and deities of Japanese mythology to keep the bloodline alive and raise the next generation of fighters — i.e., the leveled-up members of your next party. In addition to allowing players to “breed” their party members via ad-hoc mode, the PSP remake will revise this god system to be a bit kinder to players. “There are more gods to work with this time around,” said Masuda. “One complaint we get a lot is that a player sometimes really likes a certain god, but he or she isn’t the best one to use in order to strengthen the party. To deal with that, the gods now have levels which can be raised if you use them repeatedly. You can also use ad-hoc mode to make children with other players, and overall there’s a lot more variation to raising generations of fighters now.”
