GBA Classic Yggdra Union Is Coming To Switch Next Month

It’s aesthetically a bit of a mismatch of styles, which seems to be a recurrent theme with porting some of the older pixelated games to modern consoles. I know some of the Dragon Quest games suffered from some uneven visuals, in particular.

Even games that have updated their visuals a bit more consistently often lose some of the charm of the pixel art that the original games were grounded in. I can’t be the only one to think that the Switch version of Phoenix Wright and TWEWY have lost something in the ‘upgrade’ between consoles. Crisp pixel art done well can be pretty timeless, so it takes a lot to upgrade it to something that doesn’t look like a generic flash animation.

Anyway, maybe I’m being too negative and off topic here. I don’t even know a huge amount about the game. Did anyone play the original on GBA?

Yggdra Union, how can I forget it?
The Puyo Puyo of TRPGs, buy it cause it looks like a fun, cute, lovely time, run away in tears and stop playing cause it's a merciless game on a mission to torture anyone daring to play it.

...okay, maybe I'm exagerating, but YU hides a crazy hard tactic game behind those huge (even for anime standards) moe eyes.

The red knight guy that goes last in the character intros has a very familiar sounding voice but I cannot place it. Game looks pretty awesome, but that voice is really bugging me.

Never heard of the series before but I want it. I want it so much.

A brilliant game that looks all nice and cute until it slams you with its brutal strategy gameplay. This is not for the faint of heart or mind.

Oh I really enjoyed this game on the GBA. Quite challenging. Do I remember (there were a lot of SRPGs on GBA) that in this one, a ton depended on exact positioning, because units attacked in different directions?

@Maxz It's basically a mix of styles indeed. I'd say that if you put Advance Wars, a jRPG and a card-based game in a blender, together with a rather steep learning curve, then you'll get Yggdra Union.

As others have said, it looks cute, but it is damn hard. But not in a bad way, because it's still an entertaining game. Just don't expect the game to hold your hand or comfort you when it beats you into the ground in the later levels...

All kidding aside, if you like these types of games, I'd definitely keep an eye on this one, if I were you.

I was curious about the game so I bought it couple of years ago. I played the first two missions or so and got distracted by something else. Never came back to it. Wasn't expecting it on a modern console. I would've waited if I'd known.

So excited for this. I’ll hold of on the jpn version for now but I do hope this comes west.

Cool, can think of at least a dozen gba games I'd love to see move to the switch.

Got it on PSP & GBA but never played it.

Also made me remember Knights in the Nightmare on DS. That had quite the soundtrack.

So many great JRPGs and such in the DS era, I really gotta go back and play so many of the old ones I had. Makes being unable to take the train a real annoyance.

@Stu13 I looked into it and, if I'm not mistaken, the voice actor is named Hiroaki Miura, so you can look up his credits if it keeps bugging you.

@sdelfin thanks, friend! It must be from him being Cielo in digital Devil Saga but I don't think that I'd have put that together if you hadn't given me his name.

Minor correction here but Evolution Worlds on Gamecube was not a sequel, per se, but an abbreviated port of both Dreamcast games put together (with a lot of cuts and worse load times, unfortunately).

As for Yggdra, I really don't see this coming to the West unfortunately. The PSP port of the game was taken down from PSN a while back "for good reason" according to an Atlus rep, implying that there are some major rightsholder issues. I'd love to see it, but the recent iOS port didn't get an English localization either (despite being available on the NA App Store in full Japanese), which you'd think would be a no-brainer. Hope I'm wrong.

Love all the Sting games, but I already have them on Vita, which still features a superior screen (esp. for games like this) and a smaller form factor. Might get still it though, not sure yet. I'd love a port of Knights in the Nightmare with stylus support, that game was just rad on DS, but then again ... I could just play it on my 3DS, I guess.

No English support for the Japanese release.

I'd be 1,000,000% in favor of getting lots of GBA era ports/collections.

Fire Emblem GBA collection
Pokemon GBA collection
Advance Wars 1+2 port (that was a thing, both games on one cartridge in Japan)
Harvest Moon GBA collection

Other potentially nostalgic games for me:
Zoids Legacy
DBZ Legacy of Goku games

What? I can dream! I know how unlikely any of that is but I can dream!

Half of the Dept. Heaven series was never even translated in the first place, so it seems unlikely even for this port to see a localisation. All of them are great games, though, very unique gameplay. Outside of Yggdra Unison, which was a reimagining of Yggdra Union only released on the DS in Japan, they're all available on the PSP (and Vita) if you want to give them a go. That being said, Knights in the Nightmare definitely plays better on the DS because it's much easier to control with a stylus.

Sting probably not going to into the SNES parts of their catalog.
I think their first game was cute-em-up Flying Hero: Bugyuru's Big Adventure.
And Jetsons: Invasion of the Planet Pirates (which got retooled with a different IP in Japan a year later).
I'd guess their first RPG was Treasure Hunter G (doesn't seem like an impossibility to re-release, given how much Square-Enix likes to re-release old games, maybe give that game an official localization like they did the Romancing SaGa games).

I hope we also get Riviera: The Promised Land, Knights in the Nightmare, Treasure Hunter G, Baroque, Evolution World, and Yggdra Unison soon too.