7th Dragon 2020-II: More Japan-only PSP role-playing from Sega

Sega just announced 7th Dragon 2020-II in this week's issue of Famitsu magazine, the third in an RPG series that's had the misfortune never to leave the shores of Japan. (This despite the involvement of Phantasy Star creator Rieko Kodama, game-music maestro Yuzo Koshiro, and the RPG-making fiends at Imageepoch handling development.)

The PSP (not Vita) game picks up where 2011's 7th Dragon 2020 (above) left off. It's the year 2021 now, and once again Tokyo is being ravaged by assorted types of dragons. It's the job of the Murakumo beast-hunter group to deal with this, and you control a party of fighters as they go through a Monster Hunter-ish set of fields and battles against huge monsters.

Despite the hard-SF plot, the game features cutesy big-head anime characters and is designed to be fairly approachable to newbies. 2020-II is largely the same in gameplay as its predecessor, but the Famitsu preview contained some info on the game's expanded character customization, including 40 different voice sets to give your party members. A new character class was also divulged, the "idol" job that allows members to use their high charisma to "order" their friends to perform tasks during battle.

The game, which Sega pinned at 70 percent complete, is due out next spring in Japan.