Aiming Inc., the developers behind anime-themed MMO Caravan Stories, will be bringing the title to the PS4 on September 10th.
Aiming Inc. was founded in May of 2011 with a staff who had experience creating triple-A titles such as Red Stone, Sengoku IXA and Three Kingdoms. From the start, the company's mission was to create fantastic RPGs under the free-to-play model, starting with their first title, Logres of Swords and Sorcery: Goddess of Ancient in December of 2013.
From there, they would go on to create Caravan Stories, Sengokutaiga, and Gestalt Odin, a crossover RPG developed for smartphones that would be published by Square Enix in October of 2018. Though Caravan Stories would be released in Japan for both PC and Android on November 29th 2017, the English version ran into difficulties which caused constant delays. Now, after almost two years of waiting, an English version of the game will finally be released for the PlayStation 4.
It's always good to see a company who wants to create great games without forcing their consumers to pay a large amount of money upfront. Given that many games flop these days, the free-to-play model may be the norm going forward, especially in the case of MMOs.
Information on the game's release can be found via an announcement trailer on Caravan Stories' official English YouTube channel. In the trailer, we get a good idea of just how vast the world of Caravan Stories is. Additionally, we are shown bits of combat which seem to resemble what has been commonplace in many great MMOs over the years. While the game has an art style that is typical of traditional Japanese animation, the level of detail in the game's environment and its buildings indicates that a lot of thought was placed into the immersion aspect of the game. Players will have the ability to choose between six races including Elf, Ork, Gessy, Human, Dwarf, and Lizardman, a race that is shown on the games website to be coming soon. Caravan Stories will become available worldwide on the PS 4 starting on September 10th.
While the trailer is short, it gives those interested in the series a good idea of what they can expect. Additionally, the fact that the company is continuing to expand upon Caravan Stories is a good sign for the future success of the game.
Delays happen and no company wants to experience them, but Aiming Inc. made the right decision with holding off until everything was right. Had they rushed the game, it's likely that those in the west would have passed it over and in turn, caused the company to lose out on the potential of future profits. Hopefully, the game does well and inspires other major MMO developers to follow the same free-to-play model in the future.