cjmelendez_
Sad news, children of Heavenly Host Elementary: today 5BP has announced that Corpse Party: Blood Drive, the PlayStation sequel to the PSP’s Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, will be arriving later than expected. The Japanese publisher has announced that Blood Drive will miss its 2013 release window and be pushed into 2014. No further details were given on why the game has been delayed, but let’s imagine that it’s to make the game as best as it can be.
This delay of course only reflects Japan as it’s the only territory that the game has been announced for. Corpse Party: Blood Covered and Corpse Party: Book of Shadows‘ North American and European publisher XSEED Games have yet to confirm whether they will be publishing the final chapter of the Heavenly Host trilogy in English speaking territories – they should do that soon so that I can sleep better (or worse) at night.
Along with the delay news comes info that I don’t recall seeing when the game was first announced. It is said that Blood Drive will see the return of the adventure gameplay from Blood Covered. That means an isometric view with cute sprites instead of the visual novel style that Book of Shadows adopted. This is excellent news. As much as I enjoyed Book of Shadows for its story, I appreciated the first game’s gameplay much more. Having that return, and on the Vita no less, sounds fantastic. All that remains is for a few confirmations regarding localizations of Blood Drive and Corpse Party 2 and I’ll be a happy camper.
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Update: It seems like XSEED Games shares my enthusiasm in seeing Blood Drive being localized. In a funny exchange on Twitter, the publisher wrote “I hope we get a chance to! I had sooooo much fun translating our two PSP releases; it would be amazing!” When asked whether fans should make some noise to get desire for a release noticed, they responded with “Don’t think that’ll be necessary. Believe me, we’ll be looking into this one!” How’s that for some excitement?
Hopefully XSEED can nab a deal for localization soon so we won’t have to wait a year or more after the game’s launch in Japan. Sachiko is not one to be left waiting.
