Nintendo's Next Mobile Game Is A JRPG Called Dragalia Lost

I'd prefer not to play anything on mobile, but I might nab this. I'd prefer it be an actual purchase over a microtransaction-riddled mess, though.

Not smart. Not smart at all. This has "generic low-budget Square Enix JRPG" written all over it. These sorts of games are a dime a dozen, and it will struggle to set itself apart as a Nintendo title, especially on the mobile circuit. If I hadn't looked closer, I would have thought this to be a $10 indie game for the Switch.

It may enjoy some success in Japan, but it will bomb elsewhere (if it were to be localised for international release). Nintendo would have been smarter to release a game like this on Switch instead where there would be a more vocal and enthusiastic audience for this type of game.

I hope it gets localized. I want to give this one a try.

Nintendo: “We made millions, yet are still very unhappy with our mobile efforts”
Also Nintendo: releases another game

Meh mobile...he's says that until you see what here's bought on switch

Mobile games, barf.

I saw this advert ages ago

@sillygostly This is made by Cygames, not Nintendo. They are basically the publisher. Cygames made Granblue Fantasy wich is apparently one of the best mobile JRPGs, so let's wait and see before calling it a "generic low-budget Square Enix JRPG".

Pretty sure I saw this days ago btw

I thought I read that this was confirmed for Western release, just after it's released in Asia.

Installed granblue fantasy a year or so ago to see what all the fuss was about, it's interface was archaic because it was several years old already, but what was there as a game was impressive compared to other mobile JRPGs

Practice shows that even being released out of Japan doesn't guarantee much on Google Play whose release maps can cherrypick even neighbouring countries sharing some of the languages in use. Miitomo (no, GP doesn't seem to remove discontinued apps) and Super Mario Run still make the extent of Nintendo's mobile products where I live.

Otherwise, always nice to see a JRPG under Nintendo banner. I've tried Shadowverse as well and didn't go further solely because I don't have time and interest for multiple CCGs on my phone nowadays (Valkyrie Crusade is pretty much the only one I still keep at hand), but what I saw looked pretty solid. I'm curious what Dragalia Lost will have to offer.

Wouldn't it be nice, just once, if the female protagonist didn't have massive breasts and the male protagonist had an unfeasibly large package? Just to spread the objectification around a little....

Loving the chibi art!

Mobile....boo hiss

@RichardZ To give Squenix some credit, I don't think their mobile RPGs are particularly low-budget. Some of the ports are excellent (TWEWY, Rom SaGa 2 and FFIX, for example), and they used to make some effort with original IP (Chaos Rings trilogy). Where Squenix falls down is with the "fan service" social RPGs, which are essentially gacha machines to make people spend thousands of gil (insert native currency here) to get a blue-haired version of Cloud or Yuna or whatever. The fact this Cygames game is an original effort, rather than a cash-in on existing IP, gives me hope that it could be, well, at least decent.

There must be 8 different art styles in that 1 minute trailer. The dragons are straight out of Puzzles & Dragons, chibi characters are old school JRPG, pic of everyone a more modern take, and it looks a lot like Level's 5 never Westernized b/c it bombed Wonder Flick.

And if they do bring it west they need to change the music a bit. I like Jpop, but that music was giving my ears cavities.

Hard to tell what the actual game is from that, but it could work. Or fail like Wonder Flick and Monster Hunter Stories.

I'm intrigued ,and will keep my eye on this. Still could be a nice idea to try more original ips out on mobile. And if a success make a better version for the switch or 3ds

Thanks but no thanks. Looks way to generic, even for a mobile effort, with little to nothing to set itself apart successfully. I'm not in general opposed to jRPGs going for a bland'ish anime look & feel, but more often than not, the resulting games are really just mediocre - like the vast majority of the Tales games. They are not bad, but they are not great either (though honestly, the only one I for one could really stomach in its entirety was Symphonia, seeing as the games tend to be huge time eaters).

To put it a different way, personally when I think classic jRPGs, I think about games like Xenogears, FF VI/VII, Suikoden II, Vagrant Story, Chrono Trigger, Persona/SMT and a whole bunch of others after that. Outside of maybe at times Chonro Trigger, none of these were shooting for that generic fantasy-shonen'esque tone or even look (as far as that was even possible to achieve back then).

I guess what I'm saying is that this feels like a waste. When you are not willing to experiment - even only as mentioned in terms of tone and look - with a mobile title like this, the question has to be asked, when and under what circumstances will you be willing to experiment, and by extenstion take risks? Honestly, seeing this trailer makes me once again realize how much of a small miracle it actually is, that a game like Octopath Traveler is even happening, on the Switch no less!

I don't care cause it is not for 3DS or switch

@rjejr
Oh, Wonder FlickR !
I almost forgot that Cancelled games on consoles since year 2014.

@Anti-Matter I had forgotten about it as well until I saw this trailer and it reminded me of it. I was really looking forward to the game when Level 5 announced it years ago, I'm a big fan of Level 5 games, some of my favorites, but then they canceled it before it made it to the West.

@rjejr
Well, at least The Snack World Trejares Gold might have English version in the future.
And also Yokai Watch 4.

Btw, why did the game (Dragalia) has Chinese texts ?
Made in China ??

Honestly this looks like every Nintendo DS RPG ever, only probably with microtransactions. Pass.

@Lizuka
High five! xD

@sillygostly I disagree, Granblue Fantasy is more of a traditional SNES-style RPG than most indie RPGs being released, so I'd say Cygames knows what it's doing. It's also popular enough outside of Japan to have an official English release.

Don't know how it plays but it looks pretty good visually/aesthetically.

@Ralek85 to be fair, the audience for a mobile JRPG isn't exactly going to be the core JRPG crowd. What a JRPG fan is looking for in terms of differentiation and unique aesthetics, content etc, is why they're not playing mobile games to begin with.

A quick and light game that can be played in a few minutes at a time without feeling like you're missing anything getting in and out of the groove is going to have to be bland and shallow. But that's what mobile has to be. I think if Nintendo can apply Nintendo charm to, not make the game an excellent RPG by console RPG fan standards, but to make it a great MOBILE game for what mobile players want but still feel like they're getting some kind of RPG experience, it's a win. At least for Japanese mobile RPG players......

Personally even Sushido looks better than this despite, on the surface, that looking more like a mobile title than this does.

Would have liked more realistic proportions on the characters (that is, not chibi). But it doesn't matter as I don't game on my phone. Still, mobile gaming sure has come a long way, it seems.

It doesn’t look bad... I just hope that it’s not a micro transaction mess, haha.

The low-poly chibi art is pretty cute.

@sillygostly I think it's smart they are broadening thier mobile portfolio. Publsihing has got to be a lower risk investment than developing, and they don't risk diluting thier brand as bad on mobile, becuase it's a cesspool of a market.

Game looks awful, but I don't think it's a bad move at all.

@NEStalgia I think that smartphones these days are so powerful that the only thing really limiting "mobile gams" is the controls. Incidentally, that is an area of no concern for most (albeit not all and any) so-called jRPGs, as these tend to be slow-paced, even methodical games, often even relying on a turn-based system, whether it really does not matter at all where you use a physical input for commands or a touch-screen (at least if the menus are done appropriately). Hence ... well, I would play the next FFVI if everything that was "mobile game" about it, was its controls.

If its a microtransaction-riddled mess, with gameplay lacking any depth and the story being limited to a intro sequence ... well, then I am not going to play it, but it won't matter whether the game is on mobile or something else.

It's a shame then that the industry itself seems in general to have little to no regard for "mobile games" as products, that could merit effort. Still, it is worth remembering that this no a god given law. It's a terrible state of affairs, that exist by design.

@Ralek85 The phones may be powerful, but they also eat batteries like crazy, and their use model is mostly about very brief periods of interaction. The controls limit them, but also the intent of use by the players using them. That's the part that separates successful mobile game devs from the not so successful: Understanding the usage pattern.

Though even for menu driven RPGs, touch interfaces, to me, feel clunky. The buttons have to be big enough to hit, limiting the usable screen real estate considerably, and also limiting the number of available options. But a dedicated player can work around that easy enough. SMT and Persona turned mobile would mechanically be fine, but trying to play it as a mobile game would just be clunky. It takes too much focus and continuity of thought that most mobile use cases don't allow.

Not to mention Switch gets more playtime for most games than even the $1k flagship phones. It's just so different in practice even where on paper it's similar. I'm not so sure it's a state of affairs by design so much as by target audience desire. I'll play FE: Heroes from time to time on my phone....I wouldn't touch it on Switch if it were available. Similarly I'll play Octopath plenty on Switch.....but I wouldn't touch it on mobile if it were available. The hardware kind of defines how you expect to use it.

Of course at large, mobile is now seen as a casino with chibi characters where only free games with constant nickel and diming have any chance of success which is the greater problem.

Woah, little man transformed into a dragon . . . or a stegosaurus?!?!

@NEStalgia To be fair though, battery life - while certainly a pertinent issue - affects all portable devices, including the Switch.

I see your point, I really do, but I wonder how many "gamers" do have a smartphone? You said, you wouldn't play the like of even Octopath Traveler on a smartphone (/tablet I presume), but I for one don't agree with that. In fact, there are mobile games I spend a fair amount of time with, way beyond short-bursts sessions when wait for the bus or something like that. It's just that these are far and few between. I regularly play games like The Quest and Wayward Souls on my phone. The latter even being an ARPG, instead of turn-based. The control schemes work fine, maybe the games would be even better with haptic controls, but then again, every mobile experience is by definition a compromise vis-a-vis an ideal setup - even the Switch, albeit to a lesser degree than ever before.

So, would I play Octopath Traveler or say Pesona 5 on a mobile device? If it's a good port, with an intelligent control scheme (you don't have to rely on virtual buttons und menus, Wayward Souls for instane has a pretty good, I guess you could call it, gesture or swipe-based system in place, that works fine for its purposes), then I'd definitely be interested, absolutely. Will ever gamer feel the same? No, definitely not. Will it be as big as biggest F2P games on IOS/Android? No, 100% not, but at the same time, there can only be so many F2P titans around as well. I feel that market is hardly undersaturated as it is right now, while the market serving "core" gamers, if you will, is hardly existent at all. That market quite literally breaks down to few dozen games per year, that are even worth mentioning.

In short, I think much of that is not about intent of usage, its about perception, and perceptions can be changed. It's a long and painstaking process, as we all know, but its not impossible. That is not to say, that there is not a huge chunck of the audience, that is not at all interested in this type of content, as there certainly is, but so what? If I look at the box office, one could think that a movie like War for the Planet of the Apes should not exist. Despite its marketing, its everything but a big flashy action-porn movie, and its certainly not a romantic comedy or b-movie'esque gore fest, and obviously not a superhero movie as well. Did it make a billion dollars? No, no it didn't and given what it is, it probably couldn't, because it did not serve the intent of the majority of movie-goers these days, but it turned out to be one of the best films in the genre in a long time, and also let's not forget, that it made it's money back and then still some.

I get that its not the same, but to argue that a market does not exist, when hardly ever anyone really tried to service that particular market, is kinda insane to me. No one knew that superhero movies were a thing people really liked to pay for. In fact, for a while it seemed that superhero movies where a surefire way to fail miserably, but then Sam Raimi and Chris Nolan came around, laying the ground and then proving, that these movies could be critical success, they could be record-breaking commercial success, they could be award-season success, and ultimately turn into the hottest gigs in town.

We simply don't know what people are willing to do on their phones, because know ever foster an environment and provided appropriate content to test what can be done. I wager that a fair bit could be done, if there ever was a concerted effort - something that has never happened even once, and something that - admittedly - looks incredibly unlike to ever happen going forward. It's still a shame because much of the public perception about videogames is either formed by CandyCrush Saga or Doom ... although both of these are hardly representative of the medium, and where it stands today.

That goes double, if one considers the conotations that both games carry, one being akin to mindless murder mahcines, and the other to mindless time wasters. I do think Nintendo has the right idea in trying to use mobile games to push their "core" content further into the mainstream. But as far as e.g. FE Heroes goes ... I agree, I wouldn't play that on the Switch, and I do not think that their attempts so far were really successfully, neither in commerical nor artistic terms. They haven't figured out how to translate complex material to a small screen with limited controls and a tendency for peacemeal engagments.

That does not mean, that it cannot be done, or that it could not possibly turn out to be a worthwhile experience. Plus, this task is obviously not just up to Nintendo. What about Square, Ubisoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and dozen others? To me it seems that the prevailing mindset here, is a defeatist one. Nothing good ever came outta something like that though.

Gotta fill that Smash 5 roster somehow.

I like the 2d style, but not the 3D style.

I recommend you guys play Shadowverse!

I'd be more interested in a Shadowverse port to Switch from Cygames. I'm yearning for one of the following on Switch: Pokemon TCGO, Hearthstone or now Shadowverse knowing that Nintendo has a stake in Cygames.

I don't know about the game, but the guy on the top right at 0:40 looks like a gender-bent Zelda

I see nothing of Nintendo in this game.

Many people will try it, i'm sure. And if it's gacha based, Money will rain regardless.

@RichardZ You say that, but then I look up a trailer and see it's also being made with Platinum Games.....

THEN I look up their company products page... https://www.cygames.co.jp/en/

and these games scream low-budget Mobile games. Certainly not up to what people think when they think of a quality Nintendo product. Granblue Fantasy looks impressive mostly likely because of Platinum Games, not the other way around.

This certainly isn't a bad studio, but they don't deserve the praise you are giving them.

I expect to see the main character in the next Smash Bros

@FlameRunnerFast no, i ment the mobile Granblue Fantasy mobile game. Not the PS4 spinoff