Tales Of Xillia Coming To North America, Europe

Namco Bandai announced plans to bring role-playing game Tales of Xillia to North America and Europe today. Xillia, the 13th game in the main Tales series, will make its Western debut in 2013.

The game takes place in Rieze Maxia, a world where humans and spirits live side-by-side. Players choose from two characters at the start: Jude Mathis, a medical student, and Milla Maxwell, a secretive woman with spirit companions. The two set out on a quest to stop the kingdom of Rashugal from creating a device that drains the world's mana.

Xillia brings back the series' signature Linear Motion Battle System with real-time attacks and movement. In this game, though, two characters can combine attacks to cause more damage to enemies. Namco gave the upgraded combat a particularly awesome name: "Double Raid Linear Motion Battle System."

The game will be exclusively available on the PS3. That's no big shock, as the same was true of the original Japanese version. The fact that Namco finally decided to release Xillia here in the West is mildly surprising, though. The game arrived in Japan last September and Namco was tight-lipped about any possible localizations.

If Xillia sells well in the West, it's possible that we'll receive a localized version of its sequel as well. Xillia 2 will be debuting in Japan in November of this year.