Introduction

About 3 months ago, I wrote about how Sony has grown more apathetic towards the Japanese market. With many key figures from Japan Studio leaving and Sony making Japanese developers censoring content that is not even that suggestive, one has to wonder if the company actually takes the Japanese market seriously.

God, that scene from TLOU2 is cursed.

In late February, Sony confirmed that Japan Studio would be shut down and resources would be re-allocated to Team Asobi for Astro's Playroom. At the start of this month, the last of Japan Studio's leadership, Puppeteer's director Gavin Moore, left effectively killing the studio. It's really sad to see this happen as Japan Studio yielded some pretty special games and unique IPs (and I don't use the word 'unique' that often).

Japan Studio's IPs

If you go back to the PS1 and PS2 days, Japan Studio developed and published some very good JRPGs. The biggest ones that I still remember fondly were The Legend of Dragoon and the Wild Arms series. True, they were overshadowed by the juggernauts like Final Fantasy VII through X, but I think they still hold up reasonably well to this day.

The Legend of Dragoon

There were also Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. These two games really pushed the boundaries in the PS2. While graphics aren't everything (in fact, I put graphics very low on my priority list), both games had very good stories and interesting gameplay. As a matter of fact, Shadow of the Colossus received a full-blown remake by Bluepoint Games and it sold extremely well.

Ico from the PS2 era.

Unfortunately, starting from the PS3 era, this is where Japan Studio's output began to falter. Some of that was the fault of the PS3's difficult CELL architecture, but the studio also suffered from mismanagement. For instance, The Last Guardian was originally announced for the PS3, but it was in limbo for nearly decade that it ended up on the PS4 instead.

Even then, there were a few gems. Japan Studio supervised the development of Demon's Souls which gathered a cult following before the genre took off under the Dark Souls series. In fact, Shuhei Yoshida regretted not giving Demon's Souls enough love that during the PS4 era, Japan Studio and FromSoftware collaborated again to make Bloodborne. Just last year, Demon's Souls was given the remake treatment from Bluepoint games and came out as a PS5 launch title.

I named some of Japan Studio's biggest IPs, but there were a bunch of lesser known games that remain close to my heart. These games were Puppeteer, Freedom Wars, and the Gravity Rush series.

Puppeteer was a very fun platformer and used a pretty unique artstyle. I liked how the game was presented as a show with a narrator describing what's going on as Kutaro treks through many dangers. The multiple heads and scissors mechanics were a nice twist to the platformer genre. What I don't understand was why it never received a remaster for the PS4. It launched during the PS3's twilight years and has been forgotten since then.

Puppeteer had a nice-looking artstyle with the gameplay to back it up, too.

Freedom Wars was a PS Vita game and is still stuck in Vita hell. While the story is extremely underwhelming, the Monster Hunter-like gameplay was the complete opposite of that. I had a lot of fun trying out different guns and swords, crafting the best weapons possible, and testing out different loadouts. Back when there were more players, I had a blast with the multiplayer.

Freedom Wars was among the most played games on my Vita next to Persona 4: Golden.

The Gravity Rush series is arguably my favorite of the bunch. I loved Kat's personality and how she just makes the best of the situation she's put in. Playing around with her gravity manipulation powers was a challenge at first, but I quickly got the hang of it and it's definitely something you don't see in other games. In Gravity Rush 2, especially, you get access to Jupiter and Lunar Styles which provides another wrinkle to the gameplay mechanics. And the musical score was phenomenal. It's too bad that Sony pretty much sent out the second game to die. Hardly any marketing was put into it and well, that was that.

Gravity Rush 2 had a very nice artstyle to go along with its unique gameplay mechanics and fantastic soundtrack.

Final Thoughts

It's quite a shame that Japan Studio is no more. While it was never a juggernaut that sold many multi-million sellers, they did develop and publish a bunch of compelling and unique experiences. Some of the blame can be put towards the studio. The long development time of The Last Guardian was ludicrous and outside of the memes, the Knack series was not good. However, Sony shares much of the blame, as well, for not giving Japan Studio much of a chance. Yeah, I'm still pretty salty about the company doing fuck all at promoting Gravity Rush 2.

I have already allocated more of my playing time towards PC and the Nintendo Switch. The PC platform, especially, has been getting more and more games that used to be exclusive to PlayStation platforms. For instance, SEGA released Persona 4: Golden on Steam after the game was stuck in Vita hell for a long time.

For my JRPG fix, I have been playing a lot of FALCOM's games. The Trails in the Sky series contains great storytelling, world building, and turn-based gameplay. On the more action-packed side, there is the Ys series. So while Sony is no longer interested in Japanese game development, let alone JRPGs, I've been able to find other developers who cater to my tastes.

Don't be fooled by its dated graphics. The Trails in the Sky series is a complete package.