Okay, gave the long interview a good read. I'll translate some interesting details.
- The game is supposed to be more realistic and serious, hence the requirement for pre-rendered movies, sprites, and voice.
- The game's theme and tone are very different from Blue Dragon.
- It's a mix of RPG commands and Simulation RPG strategy maps. You form teams of up to 3 characters with a leader, and it's represented as a single unit on the map. You can have up to 5 teams at the same time later.
- When you engage enemies on the battlefield, instead of a one-to-one attack like in a normal strategy game, it switches to a team battle encounter like a RPG, menu driven.
- As it is a strategy RPG, everything is governed by Action Points. AP is shared between an entire team, not individual characters.
- There are two types of characters - main characters and ash warriors. Only main characters who are actual living beings and story characters can be team leaders.
- Ash warriors are considered as troops in your army which can level up and gain skills. When you're satisfied with their development you can then absorb them into a main character to transfer the powers. Absorbed ash warriors are lost forever.
- First 2 Gigabit DS rom. They really need the space.
- Like any other strategy RPG, there will be field skills that you can use on the battlefield itself, as well as support magic that allows one team to boost the stats of another team, etc.
- Mistwalker seems to actually be developing the entire game themselves this time. Release date is definitely within 2007 in Japan.
