In the first game, you are a sacred warrior born to save the world from the steady depletion of mana with the helps of various characters from the “Tales of” series. TOW RM2 looks to tighten up and further expand the story. Alfa System, developers of the first game and is wrapping up works on Phantasy Star Portable at the end of this month, will work on the sequel again. Producer Ryuuji Ohdate says TOW RM2 is an “RPG made for you” as the sequel is based largely on feedbacks provided by players of the first game.

As mentioned earlier, the total number of characters is going to be 50 this time, compared to only 19 in TOW RM. It should be 49+1 as noted by Ohdate, since you will be creating your own character at the beginning of the game. Character creation is heavily revamped, while there were only a few options in the first game, TOW RM2 lets you change a lot of stuff, including voices or how your character should pose after winning a battle.

A new job class featuring dual swords is added. Not sure if there will be more new job classes.

Namco also revealed an interesting players interaction feature that will allows them to upload/download characters from the official website. Free downloadable content like [COLOR=blue! important][COLOR=blue! important]equipments[/color][/color] is also being planned. Other details mentioned are story movies and enhanced [COLOR=blue! important][COLOR=blue! important]Mystic[/color][/color] Artes/Hi-Ougi attacks. A 5 man rock band who happens to be fans of the “Tales of” series, BACK-ON, will be performing the theme song of the game.

This is already a surprise announcement for me since Namco appears to have put all their efforts on the DS and Wii recently, but it really makes me feel like picking up TOW RM again. The new stuff revealed so far are more of “volume up” from the previous game but with more than six months to go before release, I’m sure there will be some new features announced along the way, most probably ad-hoc multiplayer modes.

The three screens revealed so far

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