RPG lovers out there, have no fear because From Software has a treat for you in the form of Rune. Even though this game was thick with Japanese text, as well as very early in development, Rune is looking quite tasty.

You walk around the levels like in Final Fantasy where you can’t see the enemies. Then you’ll be zapped into a battle sequence. The battles are action based, and not turn based like FF or Paper Mario. You’ll have multiple enemies coming at you at once. This is where the cards come into play. There are four cards on your screen which control your actions and summons. Each playing card has a button that can select it. When you kill enemies you can pick up jewels that I think add more power to the cards. You’ll use slash attacks, throw things, and of course summon monsters. The summons are truly breath taking, as well as very Japanese. I saw a caterpillar-esqe thing, a huge dragon, as well as an elephant type creature in the time that I played…and they all pack a wallop.

From what I saw and played, Rune has an overhead look like Diablo, but a bit better, and the camera rotates. I would have liked the ability to have more control of the camera with rotation and zoom, but that could possibly be added later. Even though this build of the game is early, it was visually pleasing. The summons by far were the best thing to look at, but even when you were just walking around you could see where From Software was going with Rune. Instead of walking around pre-rendered backgrounds in Final Fantasy, you’ll be able to interact with the surroundings.

That’s about all I could really figure out. I’m not a serious hardcore RPG fanatic, but from what I got to see at Spaceworld I was impressed. I don’t think we’ll see Rune in the states until late 2002, but at least it’s looking like GameCube is going to have an interesting and intriguing RPG in its arsenal.