Ballad of Antara was revealed at the Sony State of Play May 2024 event by InFold Games and Tipsworks Studio. It's the next action free-to-play role-playing game by the Chinese developers which will be available on PlayStation 5 in 2025. TipsWorks Studio had prior experience developing Pascal's Wager, a mobile soulslike game that subsequently made its way to PC and Nintendo Switch.

The announcement has elicited a great deal of excitement, but it has also been met with skepticism since Pascal's Wager didn't meet the expected recognition from both PC and Switch gamers. Some doubted that Ballad of Antara might turn out to be a rather common third-person game to contain a system that allows the player to move around, dodge, and switch between light and heavy attacks, while this is the bare minimum required for a game to be considered soulslike. But we think things could turn out differently since Tipsworks Studio will use what they learned from Pascal's Wager and the community's input to their advantage in their upcoming return with Ballad of Antara.

As for the game’s settings, Ballad of Antara takes place in a fantastical universe where two worlds coexist: one inhabited by regular people and another, Para, which is home to fantastical creatures. Emissaries are individuals who have been gifted the power to move between these two realities. They are referred to as those who have this ability. Finding and gathering these Emissaries is one of the tasks that players are faced with, along with discovering the truth about the duality that exists in the universe.

The game begins with you taking control of a group of Emissaries whose mission is to gather things around the Para. Although the exact number of Emissaries is unknown at this time, the gameplay trailer gives the impression that there will be a sizable roster with distinct fighting styles. Additionally, Tipsworks Studio has announced that they intend to release updates with new Emissaries regularly after the debut. The developers haven't said if these additional Emissaries would be available for purchase or as in-game unlocks, but considering the game is free to play, I wouldn't be surprised to see microtransactions.

If you are not familiar with the concept of the Para, it is understood to be an alternative version of the world in which the essential components of the living world are removed through the use of traps. According to Yang Yang, the head of Tipsworks Studio, each region that we visit in Ballad of Antara will have its distinctive para. This is because each region's distinctive essence will be removed, and we will encounter heroes and foes that are dramatically different from one another. 
There isn't a ton of information regarding the plot just yet, but we do know that our primary goal is to recruit additional Emissaries and scour the Para to save the little girl who appears in the trailer many times. The CEO of the studio has stated that the girl will have a significant role to play in the game's plot and in acquiring more Emissaries.

Ballad of Antara will include a gorgeous setting, but it will also have many challenging areas and even tougher enemies. This aesthetic was necessary for the vast majority of 7th-generation games to mask the visual limitations of consoles. There is no information available on the enemies at this time, but based on what the boss has found so far, they appear to be very powerful.

In addition, the Beta Testing phase of Ballad of Antara is scheduled to start at some point during this year. Unveiling the nature of the beta—whether it's open or closed—will allow us to learn more about the game's plot and mechanics. Moreover, we already know that the game supports both single-player and multiplayer modes with a maximum of three players, which means that we may be able to observe how the developers intend to implement the multiplayer mode in the beta version as well.

Despite plans to release the game on numerous platforms in 2025, Sony has only announced a PlayStation 5 version. There has been no word of an Xbox version of Ballad of Antara yet; the announcement solely pertains to the PlayStation 5. Tipsworks Studio has expressed a preference for the PlayStation 5, which means that Ballad of Antara will be released on PlayStation 5 in 2025 followed by the PC release in the same year.  Getting the game on Xbox is unlikely. We're eagerly anticipating how the developers will include new elements as the game's plot unfolds. The beta is scheduled to be released this year, so we should hopefully reveal more details soon.
 

Azfar Rayan (@AzfarRayan)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed