If there's one game that I am super-excited about at the moment, it's Furyu's Legend of Legacy. In fact, it was my number one choice for our "Most Wanted of 2015" feature. I never thought I'd ever be this interested in a title from that studio, even with the pedigree we discussed a few columns back, but then I read the latest details in Famitsu. To wit, the battle system for this game includes the following features:

1. Characters can equip anything.
2. Equipped items (and their use in combat) determines stat increases after battle.
3. The player can switch between different attack formations, which in turn affects the characters' roles in battle
4. Techniques are learned in mid-battle, possibly heralded by an aura of glowing light.
5. Lower-tier attaks can lead to learning higher-tier attacks at varying rates of success.

Add all this up, and what do you get? Fans of a certain series should know. All of these features have appeared in one or more games of the SaGa series. The game even resembles a combination of the Super Famicom games and DS remakes in action. Here's a video to help us get reacquainted with the main cast and to see a lot more of the fighting side of things.

So let's see who we're working with in this game. Meurs (age 27), is a warrior who wields the power of the spirits (a major plot element in this game). He's not too shabby with that sword, either. Bianca (age unknown) is the game's semi-obligatory case of plot-induced amnesia. Liber (age 18) is the only definite teenager in the cast, and has come to the isle of Avalon in search of treasure. Garnet (age 20) is a young knight of the Church of Emilia who has followed a promise all the way to the mysterious island. Owen (age 36) is a bounty hunter who claims to be some sort of nobility, but no one's really sure where he's from. Eloise (age 24) is a curvy alchemist on a quest to perfect her potion of eternal youth and beauty. Finally, Filmia (age uncalculated) is the prince of the long-lost Frog Kingdom of Avalon. Apparently he's been asleep for an age or two.

Legend of Legacy is still due for release on January 22nd, and I have a pre-order slip in my wallet right now.

Want something odd to play? Last month I came across an item on 4Gamer called Slime no Yabou (Ambition of the Slimes), a tactical RPG for iOS and Android that takes some of the traditional RPG elements in a strange direction. The game centers on a band of slimes, those pathetic little excuses for monsters that exist largely to bankroll an aspiring hero's rise to power and glory. Well, it's their turn now, and they're mad as dreck. While they're every bit as weak as one might expect, they've picked up one weird trick — they can shove themselves down a human's throat and then ride the meatsack around for the rest of the battle.

One last oddity is that this game is actually available on American app stores, but only in Japanese. Searching around, I found a different Japanese stuff site that has a good English guide to the game already written up, so if you're interested in trying this one, you will have some support.

I can only hope that Altair Works decides to put out a 3DS downloadable version of this sometime. It looks fun.

Compile Heart is still trundling along, remaking its PS3 library for the Vita (and generally improving the games in the process). This month sees the release of Hyperdimension Neptunia RE;Birth 3 V Century, a hopeless mess of a name that combines the remake series moniker (complete with punctuation error) with the original game's V-for-Victory and adds on a pointless noun at the end for good measure. In any case, yes, this is a remake of Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, the slightly retro-themed third entry of the series that had the titular heroine sent to a parallel universe where the console wars were still set in the 1980s, and all the villains were based around in-jokes and actual legislation from that time period.

In this week's Famitsu Weekly, the magazine celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the PlayStation. As part of this, the Famitsu website did a survey of everyone's favorite titles from the four consoles and two portable gaming systems to bear the PS logo. Here are the results of this completely non-scientific (and almost certain to cause some arguments) poll.

#	Title	Publisher	Release Date	Platform
1	Final Fantasy VII	Square	1.31.97
2	Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G	Capcom	3.27.08
3	Final Fantasy X	Square	7.19.01
4	Final Fantasy XIII	Square Enix	12.17.09
5	Monster Hunter Portable 3rd	Capcom	12.1.10
7	Persona 4: The Golden	Atlus	6.14.2012
8	Dragon Quest VII: Warriors of Eden	Enix	8.26.2000
9	Monster Hunter Portable	Capcom	12.1.05
11	Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King	Square Enix	11.27.2004
13	Demon's Souls	From Software / SCE	2.5.09
16	Dark Souls	From Software	9.22.11
19	Final Fantasy IX	Square	7.7.00
19	Xenogears	Square	2.11.98
21	Kingdom Hearts	Square	3.28.02
22	Popolocrois Monogatari	SCE Japan	7.12.96
23	Final Fantasy VIII	Square	2.11.99
26	God Eater 2	Bandai-Namco	11.14.13
27	Freedom Wars	SCE Japan	10.28.14
29	Arc the Lad	SCE Japan	6.30.95
31	Sen no Kiseki	Falcom	9.26.13
31	Persona 4	Atlus	7.10.08
34	Monster Hunter Portable 2nd	Capcom	2.22.07
34	Phantasy Star Online 2	Sega	2.28.13
37	Wild ARMs	SCE Japan	12.20.96
37	Tales of Destiny	Namco	9.30.98
39	Valkyrie Profile	Enix	12.22.99
41	Yakuza	Sega	12.8.05
44	Wild ARMs 2nd Ignition	SCE Japan	9.2.99
44	Chrono Cross	Square	8.15.00
47	Legend of Mana	Square	7.15.99
47	Final Fantasy Tactics	Square	6.20.97
47	Destiny	SCE Japan	9.11.14

There are a few things to note. First, the fairly low numbers of a Famitsu online poll have led to a few ties, especially farther down the list:

1. Dragon Quest VIII is tied with Ridge Racer.
2. Final Fantasy IX and Xenogears are tied.
3. Final Fantasy VIII is tied with Metal Gear Solid V.
4. Freedom Wars is tied with the first Danganronpa game.
5. Sen no Kiseki and Persona 4 are in a three-way tie with Dokodemo Issho.
6. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd and Phantasy Star Online 2 are in a three-way tie with Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker.
7. Wild ARMs and Tales of Destiny are tied.
8. Yakuza is tied with (appropriately enough) Grand Theft Auto V.
9. Wild ARMs 2nd Ignition and Chrono Cross are in a confusing three-way with Hatsune Miku: Project Diva.
10. The very bottom of this Top 50 list is a four-way tie for 47th place, including Legend of Mana, Final Fantasy Tactics, Destiny, and Tekken. The magazine commentary notes that there must be a whole lot of Li'l Cactus fans out there — or at least thirty-eight, since that was the number needed to tie.
11. Finally, in the "Honorable Mentions" section, Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon came in at #102.

At the start of last month, Nintendo had another one of its big online presentations. While Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. and the remake of Majora's Mask rightly took a lot of the attention, there was another interesting item of note on the Japanese side of things.

Yes, Gust is doing a remake of Atelier Rorona for the 3DS, featuring a full graphical makeover into chibi-style for the characters. Just what else is different remains to be seen, but hopefully all the technical improvements from the New Rorona remake will carry over into this one.

There's been no word as to a release date, at least not beyond the vague "2015" of the Direct announcement, and there haven't been any other screenshots to look at either. Expect that to change in the coming months.

Well, this is officially the last column I will type up on my old computer. It had a fair run, but it's been showing its age for the past year or more. The wireless card self-destructed in September of 2013, the battery's got a life of about twenty minutes without the plug in, the N, R, and Q buttons sometimes forget to work, and the left-click button on the touch pad clicked its last click two weeks ago. My lovely, wonderful, amazing, loving, beautiful wife decided to buy me a new laptop for my combined Christmas and birthday present, and so I am moving on to my first experience with Windows 8 — whining, complaining, but resigned, because the only Windows 7 machine in the shop was more than twice the price.

And that's the news from Hi-no-Kuni,

Your man in Japan,

Gaijin Monogatari