Back in 2013, Japanese High Fantasy novel, anime, and manga series Record of Lodoss War emerged from the past to meet gamers with plenty of nostalgia in MMORPG form. The MMO, titled Record of Lodoss War Online, entered alpha testing stage and was quickly scrapped, with little word from its developer L & K Logic Korea on the project’s development. Now, two years later, Lodoss Online has emerged once more with an early 2016 release date.
Producer Shinji Goda and brand manager Hitoshi Kato allegedly revealed these plans in an interview last Friday, alongside the revival of the game’s official website. L & K Logic Korea, developers of Red Stone Online, will be developing Lodoss Online, and GameOn will be publishing the game. Lodoss Online will present the game world from an isometric perspective, and players will be able to choose from a variety of hero classes from the original series, including Esquires (knights) and Oracles (healers). So far, the game seems to be Japan and Korea-only, though no official statement has been made on any other foreign localization efforts.
The game will be taking place in the setting of the Grey Witch arc, which encompasses the original novel series’ second book, the manga’s first volume, and the first halves of both the OVA (original video animation) and the TV show. Fan favorites from this chapter of the series – the knight Parn, the high elf shaman Deedlit, the Oracle Etoh, and others – will make an appearance as NPCs in the game.
Record of Lodoss War first began as a series of Fantasy novels by Ryo Mizuno, which ran from 1988 to 1993. The setting, characters, and themes of the novels were based off of a setting called Forcelia that he created for a Japanese tabletop RPG template called Sword World RPG, which itself was created in 1986 by Group SNE. Mizuno later adapted his Lodoss novels to a popular manga series. Overseas Lodoss fans were first exposed to the series with the OVA, which originally ran from 1990-1991. Though the OVA is only loosely based on the original novels, its traditional High Fantasy environments and (for the time) stunning animation entranced many. Lodoss also underwent a TV adaptation in 1998 that is more faithful to the novels, but is often chastised by fans for its low animation values.
Along with other tabletop modules of the time and video game series like Enix’s 1986 classic Dragon Quest, Lodoss was among the progenitors of Fantasy as a popular genre in Japan. As Fantasy exploded both in Japan and overseas, Lodoss was crowded out of the spotlight, though it received a steady trickle of spinoff shows and light novels throughout the past decade.
Lodoss Online isn’t the series’ first foray into the gaming world. Lodoss saw several adaptations to Super Famicom and home computer platforms in Japan during the early 90s, and even received the Sega Dreamcast treatment in 2000 with a game that resembled both the Baldur’s Gate series and Diablo in its isometric gameplay. An online card game themed around Lodoss also spawned in 2012, but was only released in Japan. It’s a wonder that the Lodoss universe never underwent the MMORPG treatment during the genre’s rise over the last decade, but many fans are undoubtedly glad one even exists at all.
Fan reactions to the gameplay itself, however, have been mixed, with many complaining that the game’s animations and combat appear outdated.
Regardless of whether or not the game itself looks questionable, it’s reassuring to see such a classic series still get love today, especially amidst the sea of Fantasy-themed manga and anime that flood Japan’s markets. Much of that new manga and anime likely would not exist if it weren’t for Lodoss, after all. Fans would do best to keep an eye and an elfin ear out for further updates to the series in the coming years, whether in anime or video game form.