In 2003, Nippon Ichi basically reinvented the tactical role playing genre with the release of Disgaea. In truth, they had put our SRPGs before this like, Rhapsody and La Pucelle, but Disgaea hit the zeitgeist and really brought the company into its own on both sides of the Pacific. Now, seven years later, Nippon Ichi hopes to do the same thing with rougelikes, which are pretty much the LEAST favourite type of RPG. Why is this? I’m not sure, but it could have something to do with the fact they tend to be the most challenging type of RPG as well, with their randomly generated dungeons, characters having to start from level one each time they enter and a whole host of punishment heaped up on the gamer should they die inside the dungeon.

Now publishers keep bringing roguelikes over, but they rarely get critical acclaim or much in the way of sales. Square-Enix has tried with Chocobo’s Dungeon, Atlus has tried with Baroque and Izuna, Natsume has given us Adventures to Go (which let you keep your levels at least), and so on but they just don’t get over with RPG fans. In fact the only two I can think of that have been true successes are Azure Dreams, which was published by Konami back in the PSX era and later ported to the original Game Boy, and the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, which manages to be the standard bearer for the genre in terms of being financially lucrative and accepted by critics and gamers alike. Of course, Nintendo never did bring over the WiiWare Trilogy of PMD games, which means they weren’t successful ENOUGH for NoA’s liking.