Now that is a fantastic question! I think the first thing to realize here is that these first-person dungeon crawlers are mostly going to attract a retro crowd, so the importance here is to keep them coming while at the same time creating a game that is  flat out good enough to expand beyond the core audience. Some games of this type such as Wizardry and yes Elminage stick way too closely to old conventions that don't work as well anymore (and even if they didn't they have other issues). For example people want to be able to customize their own party, but no one wants to have to deal with the vagueness of the character classes in many Wizardry clones. These types of games also seem to have a tendency towards awful dungeon design, with too many pointless empty rooms and dead-ends.

The Etrian Odyssey series provides the perfect template for mixing old school appeal with new school design. It has the retro style, with classic turn based combat, music literally made on an old computer (except in IV), classic first-person turn-based exploration, and of course do it yourself mapping on the touch screen. Despite all that, it brings a number of modern features to the table that make the series leagues more accessible than Wizardry clones. Character classes are very clear as to what they are, with well designed skill trees and no need to try and find race/alignment/stat combinations that let you use a class (because Etrian Odyssey games have no race/alignment/stat selection). The series has excellent menu navigation that makes combat and party management easy. The games are quite challenging, but not to the unfair levels many Wizardry clones reach. Finally mixing random encounters with visible F.O.E. enemies provides an interesting wrinkle to gameplay no seen in classic games (except games like Eye of the Beholder that already do on screen enemies).

That of course brings me to Legend of Grimlock. I haven't actually played it yet, but it appears to bring the Eye of the Beholder type dungeon crawler to the modern age with an awesome fresh coat of paint. I think with a slick look like it has and with a focus on real time combat it provides a nice template for getting new Western gamers into the genre. Of course I'm sure it has other modern niceties as well, such as in game mapping?

So in the end what it comes down to is applying modern sensibilities to classic design to create something that is both retro and fresh at the same time. Both Atlus' dungeon crawlers and Legend of Grimlock provide fantastic templates by which developers big and small can learn from. Wizardry clones have a lot of cool things about them, but if they can just modernize their games a bit I think we could see more of a renaissance in this great sub-genre.

Why!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?

I'm sad to say there's actually lots of good reasons for this but why would you make poor Wheels do this? 7th Dragon would be a highly niche game here in the west on a system that at the time was rife with piracy. Sure somewhat similar games found success (Dragon Quest IX, Radiant Historia) but they had more marketable art styles. Publishers and reatailers alike would and should be worried about 7th Dragon's odd chibi art style. Even the presence of the creator of Phantasy Star wouldn't help. Plus Sega had just had failures to an extent in Shirin and Sands of Destruction.

I hate myself for typing all that.

That's fair (that he's the only person you know). He is the figure head of the whole North American operation. Still, Nintendo is a large company so there's problem lots of blame to go around when it comes to anything you're mad at the company for. I'm still mad at them for the last Fire Emblem, but who knows what caused them not to localize it. Maybe the whole business department?

Well XSEED wouldn't have been in on that as it came out way back in 2006, well before they got involved with localizing the Ys series with Falcom (though Ys Strategy wasn't developed or published by Falcom). The game was probably just too old by then to consider localizing (yes I know Trails in the Sky was just as old when they brought it over but that had a great reputation from imports while this did not). Not clear what caused Rising Star Games to pick it up, maybe strategy games are more popular over there? Reviews for it aren't that great so I don't think we missed much? Ys Strategy just seems to be an oddity in what is already an odd licensing history for the Ys series.

That's a good question. It may have not even been sales, maybe just a busy publishing schedule? Or perhaps worries about piracy on the DS? I think that was around the time when piracy on the DS was high, but still relatively difficult to do on the PSP. Probably just a combination of factors. Given their low print runs you can generally tell if a title has done poorly if it is readily available well after release (though this is changing a bit, their big titles are more plentiful) , and neither of the Luminous Arc games are. So I'm going to chalk it up to bad timing, and thus bad luck for Luminous Arc fans. Any Luminous Arc fans out there have more info?

You know despite the success of the second Star Ocean game I just never get the feeling that tri-Ace really likes doing sequels. Most of them tend to be worse than their predecessors (again, Star Ocean 2 the exception) and new IP has resulted in masterpieces like Resonance of Fate and Valkyrie Profile. So Square-Enix will probably fire up some ports and such but I don't think (barring an infusion of young talent interested in working on it) tri-Ace will want to be involved.

I haven't been paying detailed attention to info on the remake of Dragon Quest VII but I'm sure many battle tweaks will be in order. That said there's more issues I'm unsure of, such as the length of time taken to get to the job system. Being a popular game in Japan, I have a feeling that may not be in the cards for a tweak. Who knows? I'm OK with the game staying a slow burn, but I doubt many agree with me especially after the reaction to Final Fantasy XIII. Whatever they do change I hope it works out for the better.

I can't argue with that in the slightest. I love the nostalgia trip that game provides, and it is a fine rhythm game in its own right. I wish it had certain songs, but it is somewhat impossible for them to include a catalog that pleases everyone. I would love to see more fan focused games like this and less All the Bravest.

I actually haven't played that game or even have any recollection of what it looks like! I think I need to fix this...

Is LEGO: Lord of the Rings that good? I've never been able to get into the LEGO games for some reason but I wanted to try that one. Devil Survivor 2 is a huge contender for game of the year for me, even more so than The Last Story and Xenoblade. The refinement of combat from the first game and an interesting story kept me playing through that game with hardly a break. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought it was that good! I hope the sub-series continues with a third game on 3DS.

Well I had a long list of issues with XIII-2 (I prefer the first game), but oddly that didn't bother me as much. I think we all knew another sequel was coming beforehand, but I can see why it annoyed people so much. I guess had I liked the game more I would have been right there with you! I did love the game's soundtrack at least. Anyway, thanks for the letter! What are you most looking forward to this year?

Well that is a fantastic question with so many possible answers. Do I choose some of the classic abilities like that laser thing I got to use in some of the early games? Do I choose something from that strange yarn based game that I never played? Or perhaps I choose something from his often dominating performances in Super Smash Brothers? I think the last one has to be the answer. I loved his ability to transform into a giant rock or anvil (it's been awhile) and smash down on people. I used that often for devastating effect. Still, my actual favorite thing would have to be singing Kirby with a Link hat on. He looked so cool! So yeah, favorite Kirby ability would be Kirby as Link, if that counts.

My dream Final Fantasy for iOS is actually something very similar to Final Fantasy: Dimensions. The initial app should let you create a party and do some intro dungeons (and it should be free). Then, the DLC would be a large number of different adventures to take your party on of varying sizes. Some could even be whole classic Final Fantasy games! DLC pricing could vary based on size so if you were just looking for a short adventure you could buy something cheap. You could even add social features like transferring parties to friends or even loaning out characters. They could even release an adventure editor that let people create their own adventures that could then get approved and added to the in-game content sore. Now how cool would that be?