Experience Inc.'s Stranger of Sword City is currently one of the strongest RPG's on the PS Vita/Xbox One, giving players an old-school dungeon crawler experience with unforgiving mechanics such as permanent death for your party members if they die too many times.
The game came out quite some time ago in Japan, but it just came out this year for the PlayStation Vita (April) and Xbox One (March), with fans on both consoles praising the game's unique mechanics and difficulty. In fact, outside of a few complaints, the game was met with praise across the board until early May.
What changed? It wasn't a glitch, a game-breaking bug or anything of that sort: it was an expansion.
In an announcement during its 10th anniversary celebration on May 1, Experience revealed that Stranger of Sword City would be getting an expansion, New Interpretation Stranger of Sword City: Black Palace. The company promised the expansion would be a straight-up upgrade over the original, featuring new character portraits, classes, events, battle mechanics and other user-influenced feedback.
Under normal circumstances, the announcement of an expansion would be well-received, but the problem in this instance was that the announcement came just days after Stranger of Sword City launched on the PlayStation Vita in the U.S. Many — rightfully — were upset that they purchased a new game, only to have an expansion announced just days later, leaving them to wonder why Experience couldn't have just let NIS America hold off on publishing the base game if it knew it was planning to release an expansion in a few months.
Unfortunately, now, all that wondering can come to an end, as it looks like New Interpretation Stranger of Sword City won't be coming to the West anytime soon. In a Twitter Q&A, Experience president Hajime Chikami revealed that there are currently no plans for a localization in the West.
@TiagoCostaX At this point in time we do not have New Interpretation scheduled for localization for the West.
— experience inc. (@PR_Experience) June 20, 2016
This is unfortunate news for fans who may have decided not to commit to the base game and wait until the expansion released. At the very least, however, Chikami didn't outright say that the expansion wouldn't be released in the West, so there is still some hope — just don't expect that hope to be realized anytime soon.
