The G-Star 2016 compilation trailer for ThingSoft’s upcoming MMO, Peria Chronicles, appears to greatly channel Bandai Namco’s Tales Of series. The cel-shaded graphics, anime designs and colorful cast of characters seems like something you might expect to see on the PS4. However, it’s actually a story-oriented MMO with emergent gameplay centering around town ownership and construction, as well as community-made content and buildings.

Free MMO Station did a brief write-up on the game explaining the basic concepts, but the article doesn’t really compare to what you see in the actual trailer, which is quite impressive. You can check it out below.

The one ting that stands out about this game is that it not only has an engrossing art-style that just draws you right in, but the animations are superbly smooth. They made sure that the transitions are procedural without snaps, and that the blending gives each of the characters a vibrant, fluid look… and that’s not even mentioning the fact that the female characters are well endowed with physics-enabled assets.

Graphically the game reminds me a lot of Tales of Zestiria. However, the player-character can be customized to your liking, with shoes, shirts, skirts, pants, hair-styles and all sorts of face shapes and skin tones being available through slider bars. Your character even shows up right proper during the cinematic sequences.

I’m sort of getting some Mabinogi vibes from this one.

The combat and creation tool suite are done through summons. Different summons will allow you to battle enemies with various types of elemental and magical abilities, whereas the creation set will allow you to dig through areas, build certain structures and craft various objects. The trailer doesn’t go too far in depth to show the full extent of the creation suite, but it looks promising.

There’s no release date set and we have no idea if Peria Chronicles will make its way Westward, but the game looks absolutely fantastic and it appears to avoid the vapid tab-clicking by introducing a more decidedly strategic combat system, so it’ll be fascinating to see how this works on a large scale with more players on the screen.

Peria Chronicles is running on its own in-house game engine, so it’s tough to tell what the time-frame will be for its release. I guess gamers interested in the project will just have to keep an eye out.