Seven: Mallmorse's Cavalry Unit Preview

Namco recently announced its first title for the PlayStation 2, Seven: Mallmorse's Cavalry Unit. Seven is your typical fantasy RPG - you take control of a novice knight assigned to investigate the remote village of Mallmorse. What's not so typical is that, although it is in development for the PS2 and uses the DVD-ROM format, Seven features 2D hand-drawn pixel graphics instead of 3D polygonal graphics.

The story goes something like this: A long, long time ago, evil monsters ruled the land of Aclarind, and the human race was in a hopeless state. Along came two servants from the heavens who made it a point to help the poor humans. One servant picked seven heroes, and the other gave them seven weapons. So the seven heroes, armed with one weapon each, made it their personal goal to defeat the evil monsters - and they eventually succeeded. But that was a long time ago, and now that the people have forgotten about their horrible past, the time is right for the monsters - who have been steadily gathering their forces in the shadows - to strike.

The game features a rotational battle system where your party is placed in a 4x3 grid during battles.You can have up to seven characters in your party, and you can assign their places in the battle formation on the grid. The front row of the grid is for characters who are good at melee fighting, while the middle row allows for support characters to aid the attacks of the primary row. The back row is for characters who are more comfortable healing other players than actually attacking a monster. Additionally, you can also rotate your characters from their standard positions to new ones in mid-battle.

Not much else is known about Namco's PS2 RPG, but early screenshots promise an RPG adventure that is, at the very least, a little different from anything else out there. Look for it this winter in Japan.