Mecha and fantasy mix in a forgotten but vital chapter of FromSoftware’s history

BY CAELYN ELLIS

The satisfying clang of sword on shield. The deliberate pace of battle. The unintuitive yet thoughtfully crafted control scheme. Elements familiar to fans of Dark Souls, the game that cemented FromSoftware’s position as a top-flight developer worldwide – and all present, too, in one of the studio’s lesserknown titles, a Japanese Dreamcast exclusive that never had its planned official English translation and North American release.

Those who fancy themselves scholars of videogame history will most likely point to the King’s Field and Armored Core series, some entries in which received worldwide releases, as the standout examples of From’s earlier output. Together, they’re indicative of the two major strands that run through the studio’s back catalogue: fantasy with heavy doses of knights and magic, and mecha. Frame Gride is notable for blending the two. Its world is one of armoured, magic-wielding knights locked in duels across a medieval fantasy mélange. The twist is that these knights are fighting machines with guns and artillery as well as blades and bucklers.

Giant robots with melee weapons is hardly an original concept – check out just about any mecha anime and you’ll be bombarded with beam sabres and vibroblades. However, these are invariably science-fiction settings with appropriately hi-tech weapons. Fantasy mecha, where the robots, rather than the close-combat weapons, are the anachronism, are much rarer. Two works stand out as the pillars of the genre: Magic Knight Rayearth and The Vision of Escaflowne, both released in the mid-’90s. Rayearth was originally a serialised manga first published in 1993, with an animated series debuting the following year, while Escaflowne was an original animated work released in 1996. Both feature female teenage protagonists travelling from our Earth to fantasy worlds, making them examples of the isekai (different world) genre, long before its popularity exploded in the 2010s. Notably, the most prominent fantasy mecha work of the 21st century, 2010’s Knight’s & Magic, is also an isekai.