Selected from more than 20 options, Megane Kikuya’s final illustration for .hack//Link box art (click for larger view) is certainly a great piece of art. “I purposely picked deeper colors to point out the scale of this RPG. There are 11 characters in the illustration, four of them drawn in full body, this is the most time consuming work I have done in my life.” she says.

I’m hardly a big .hack fans but this title grabbed my attention for some reasons. The game is apparently the final episode in the series and will have our hero Tokio travel back in time to meet all the characters from the series and partner with more than 30 of them in the game for their adventure. The recent Weekly Famitsu (online version here) report look into its “Cross Over Events” and revealed a couple more characters. There is also an interview with series creator and CyberConnect2 boss Hiroshi Matsuyama, who says that while there will be manga and animes of the series in the future, this will be the last .hack game… unless .hack//Link “sold too well and someone order him to make a game”.

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Things are certainly not well between Zig and Faz (more here) in the latest Last Ranker trailer from Jump Festa 2010, which also showed some of the characters from the latest Weekly Famitsu report.

Pretty nice theme song there for Tokyo Mono Hara Shi: Karasu No Mori Gakuen Kitan, Atlus’ upcoming RPG for PSP (more info in this post). Game is set for Spring 2010 in Japan.

Given that Zig, the main character of Last Ranker, is ranked somewhere around 95,000 at the start of the game, there are plenty of opponents he has to take down before reaching the highest rank, so expect to see plenty of character intros in upcoming news of the RPG (my previous report here). The latest Weekly Famitsu report (no 480×270 screens yet unfortunately but the official website has been updated with these info) showed three more characters designed by Tatsuya Yoshikawa (Breath of Fire and Devil May Cry 4) and shared some info on how you rank up in the game.

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Based on Weekly Famitsu’s description (online version here), Tokyo Mono Hara Shi: Karasu No Mori Gakuen Kitan is set in a fantasy world and takes place inside a school that has long been associated with some kind of negative image. The development team comprises staff from both Persona and Kowloon Youma Gakuen Ki, another Adventure/RPG title like Tokyo Mono Hara Shi that I have never heard of actually. More info after the cut.

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One crucial change to Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida: 3D (aka Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman) is the abilities to upgrade your pickaxe, which will has some effects on your strategies to the tower defense style game. You can upgrade your tool using special orbs dropped by the heroes once you’ve kill them. And if you still have save data of previous games in your memory stick, you can unlock special pickaxe right before the game starts. Screens from the game after the jump, the release date is March 2010 in Japan.

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The next company to give its series the 3D fighting treatments is Falcom, who is set to announce Ys Vs Sora no Kiseki this week based on early leaks of the latest issue of DengekiPlayStation. As the title suggests, the game will features characters from two of the company most popular series, those confirmed so far appeared to be Adol, Dogi (screen with them in Ys Seven above) and Olha for Ys with Joshua, Tita and Estelle representing Sora no Kiseki. They will be featured in the story mode and up to four characters can join a battle. The game will come out sometime next year in Japan.

Falcom latest loves for PSP doesn’t ends there as the company also announce the port of Ys: The Oath in Felghana to our system next April. Hope both of them will come to US eventually but at this moment, I will be happy to see both Ys I&II Chronicles and Ys Seven get translated.

Two days before its Japanese release, Atlus and Sting show off Hexyz Force’s flashy Overkill attack with this gameplay video. Also posted a couple of story trailers after the jump. Game is looking great and seems to be fun enough, check out the updated screenshots gallery here.

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Really happy to see Fushigi no Dungeon Fuurai no Shiren 3 Portable being announced, I’m a big fans of the artworks being produced for the game and the idea that dying means all the way back to Level 1 sounds intriguing :) Chunsoft put up the official website of the dungeon crawler with some basic info and the new stuff that the PSP version is getting. They are six new original dungeons, online support (not quite sure what’s in there beside online ranking), readjusted game balance and data install for faster loading. The release date is January 28th in Japan.

Haven’t been able to do this for a while but the artworks in the two box arts above are too good to miss. Sting’s interesting looking RPG Hexyz Force will be out in two weeks’ time while Sega’s highly anticipated SRPG Senjou no Valkyria 2 (aka Valkyria Chronicles 2) will see battles again next January.