Dragon's Crown finally gets a firm release date in Japan

It's hard to believe that Vanillaware's Dragon's Crown was announced nearly two years ago at the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo, back when Ignition Entertainment was still a thing and Japanese gamers were making endless jokes about El Shaddai's handsome, wispy characters.

Originally shown off at Ignition's E3 booth, the publisher later transferred the rights to the game over to Atlus, which finally relayed the good news in this week's Famitsu magazine: Dragon's Crown is coming out for the PS3 and PS Vita July 25 in Japan. What's more, both versions will feature full net-based multiplayer, with the Vita game allowing for ad-hoc and infrastructure mode play. (Both versions are functionally identical and can share the same player save data.)

Dragon's Crown was originally slated to come out in the spring of 2012, but faded into obscurity as Ignition's U.S. operations fell into trouble and were eventually closed. The project was in limbo for a while before Atlus announced it had picked up the rights; in the meantime, Vanillaware turned its attention to other projects, including a new PS Vita port of Muramasa: The Demon Blade that comes out next week in Japan.

No word on a U.S. release date yet, although Atlus has floated around an August release window in the past.