Major companies with a worldwide presence like Square Enix can’t do much of anything without getting notice from almost everyone, so it’s perhaps a little surprising that they launched a successful new series a couple of years ago with the English-speaking world paying it little mind. Million Arthur (Free) has slowly grown from a single smartphone app to an entire franchise, with multiple games appearing not only on mobile but also 3DS and Vita, a live action TV show, and more merchandise than you can shake a dakimakura at. It even got an English release in Singapore, but that’s about as far as it’s gotten for Western gamers until today, when Gamevil and Square Enix launched the game globally on iOS and Android.
Million Arthur is a card-collection social RPG that tells the well-known story of King Arthur and Excalibur in a, er, unique way. Well, look, Japan still owes Western culture some payback for the American Ninja pentalogy, so it’s fair beans. In the story, multiple (perhaps a million?) heroes are competing with each other to determine who is the true King Arthur. It might seem off the wall, but the story is written by Kazuma Kamachi, the creator of the popular light novel series A Certain Magical Index, so there’s probably more to it than meets the eye. A number of reasonably well-known manga and game artists have contributed to the game as well, including Disgaea series artist Takehito Harada. As for the gameplay, it seems to be a pretty standard social RPG, but I haven’t given it a proper go as of yet so I can’t really say if there’s something past the story and the excellent production values to make it as popular as it is.
We’ll have a proper review for you after we’ve spent some time with the game, but since it’s a free-to-play game, you could always just give a spin yourself to see if its world and characters pull you in. Fair warning that as a free-to-play social RPG, you can expect things like online check-ins, random gatcha draws, stamina meters, and premium currency, so if those things are dealbreakers for you, consider the deal broken. For everyone else, feel free to go forth and grab one of the million Excaliburs in order to save Britain from evil and/or sexy bad guys!
