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Sukeban Games, the developer best known for the charming and poignant 2016 game VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender in Actionhas announcement a new game. Titled .45 Parabellum Bloodhound: Active Time Cyberpunk ActionThe new project is an atmospheric, retro-inspired adventure, drawing heavily on Square’s cult classic PS1 game from 1998. Parasitic Eve. That last part is really all I needed to hear to get excited, and from what Sukeban has shown, it looks like it’s going to be awesome.
First of all, what exactly is it? .45 Parebellum Bloodhound Luckily, Sukeban shared a short pitch as part of the announcement.
You play as Reila Mikazuchi, a fallen mercenary whose glory days are long gone. In a last ditch attempt to regain control of life, she decides to take back the upper hand, only to realize that the real enemy is not in front of her weapon.
The game takes place in very atmospheric environments, peppered with hand-planned encounters. You will travel the game world in search of hidden secrets and chat with unique characters. Not to mention the cool boss fights at the end of each level.
This sounds pretty fantastic to me! I’m really excited by the sense of intrigue this short pitch evokes. The few screenshots and clips from the game also show off these atmospheric environments, all of which have a sort of dilapidated industrial look. Sukeban also suggests that development on the game is well underway, with five of its seven planned chapters already playable from start to finish.
The most interesting part of .45 Parabellum Bloodhound This is certainly its subtitle: Real-time active action in cyberpunk. This clearly recalls VA-11 HALL-Aits own subtitle, itself an ode to Metal Gear Solidbut it also gives us an idea of how the new game will play. “Active Time Action” may remind you of Final Fantasy’s iconic ATB (or Active Time Battle) system, but the action part of .45 Parabellum BloodhoundThe ‘s subtitle can, again, be traced back to this Square release, Parasitic Eve.
Square Enix’s 1998 horror RPG was developed by much of the Final Fantasy team (including series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, FF7 character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and FF4 (lead designer Takashi Tokita) and released just a year later Final Fantasy 7 has blown minds around the world. Set in modern-day New York City and featuring an unsettling atmosphere where you eliminate genetic horrors with guns, Parasitic Eve leaned more toward real-time action than Square’s other RPG offerings, but it retained a connection to the classic ATB system. Fight in Parasitic Eve lets you run around a small arena dodging attacks while an ATB meter fills up, at which point you can pause and execute attacks or other commands. It’s a fascinating mix of real-time and turn-based systems that gives the game a fast-paced yet strategic feel. The system would be iterated on in the 2000s Wandering story and is at the heart of .45 Parabellum Bloodhoundas shown in short combat clips on Sukeban’s announcement blog. You can even see Parasite Eve’s familiar sphere-shaped grid in action when the game’s protagonist fires a pistol at an enemy.
According to Sukeban, this is roughly where the comparisons with Parasitic Eve end. I’m not entirely sure what that means, and Sukeban remains cryptic in the announcement, saying they’ll “talk about it another time.” Still, based on the announcement blog alone, it seems to me that the comparisons to Parasite Eve go beyond just the combat system. Visually, .45 Parabellum Bloodhound appears to be a PS1-inspired game with low-poly character models and fixed camera angles. Perhaps Sukeban is simply saying that we shouldn’t expect the game to feature the same horror elements that fans of Parasitic Eve love. In any case, you should definitely go play Parasitic Eve If you haven’t done it yet, it’s worth it!
There is currently no release date for .45 Parabellum Bloodhound. Sukeban simply says that the game will be released “when it’s finished,” though the team hopes that release will happen sooner rather than later, and had originally planned to announce the game once development was complete. However, the reality of selling an indie game has become much more difficult since VA-11 HALL-A “It’s not 2016 anymore,” the developers write, “so if we want this game to have a chance, we need to start now and rack up those wishlists and all that.”