Final Fantasy Creator is Developing Terra Battle 2, Announces a Spinoff

Mistwalker's 2014 mobile game Terra Battle was actually a pretty interesting little mobile game that came out around the time I just started learning about Japanese developed mobile games. Although I didn't keep up with Terra Battle in the long run, the game must have done well enough for itself since Mistwalker announced two new games in the Terra franchise: Terra Battle 2 and Terra Wars.

The original Terra Battle featured a tile-based strategy battle mechanic that forced players to move their party characters around a tile-based field for combat. The press release for Terra Battle 2 says that the studio intends on keeping the "highly-praised core battle mechanics" for Terra Battle 2, but bringing "a completely different game-play experience." Players will now be able to travel alongside companions, which I'm not sure exactly what that means. Players will also be able to strategically place their units before the start of a battle, which is a feature that really should be in all strategy RPGs.

The trailer Mistwalker released is mostly cinematic so it's unclear how these new gameplay changes will play out. Mistwalker does promise a more emotional story, and that is actually evident in the above video.

Mistwalker also announced a spin-off titled, Terra Wars, for both mobile and PC. Terra Wars will be co-developed by Mistwalker and Arzest, another Japanese video game developer led by Naoto Ohshima, character designer of Sonic the Hedgehog. Terra Wars will feature characters from Terra Battle, but will be animated in "a unique claymation technique," which I would really like to see in action.

Mistwalker is led by Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is probably most famous for creating the Final Fantasy series. Mistwalker previously developed Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360 and The Last Story for the Wii.