Unleashed

***Unleashed*** is a video game franchise developed and published by J-Games in co-operation with J-Animations. Focusing around a series of role-playing video games, the series was created by Jay Stevenson, and is written and directed by him. The first entry, *Unleashed*, released in 2018 as a launch title for the J-Revolution. Since then, 6 subsequent mainline entries have been released, concluding with *Unleashed 7*.

Each entry in the series follows the protagonist, Goro, and his group of friends as they live out their initially high-school-centric lives in a fictionalised version of Tokyo. By night, the characters fight an assortment of spiritual creatures that infest the city, and once in each game enter the mind of the villain in order to defeat them. The life-simulation aspect of the games features Hangouts, whereby the player can choose to spend time with any of the main and supporting cast, as well as minor characters and randomly-generated characters throughout the city and its surrounding districts. The game is open-world and also allows the player to sightsee and partake in numerous activities either by themselves or with others. The nighttime combat follows a turn-based system where each member of the player's party attack the enemies, and vice versa. They also include quick-time event segments, as well as action-RPG-like battles that occur in real-time. The in-game day runs on a 24-hour system, where each hour lasts 5 minutes, making the total day last 1 hour and 40 minutes, however attending school, work, indulging in extra-curricular activities and, most notably, sleeping, all consume a certain amount of in-game time. Each game follows on from the previous entry, but contains its own unique storyline.

The series began development in 2010, with J-Games announcing the production of the first game in 2013, with it initially being planned to release on the J-Exo. Jay intended for the game to be entirely hand-drawn, and thus used the help of J-Animations artists to hand-draw 3D characters, objects and environments. This unconventional approach to animation resulted in many animators initially struggling to execute the concept successfully, thus the game was pushed back to a scheduled 2018 release. Animators eventually drew their designs onto 3D objects. Every character's movement was also hand-drawn. The series features extensive use of Artificial Intelligence, allowing for extensive user input to be met with appropriate responses from characters. Characters in the game world were also randomly generated by the AI, which would also generate all their dialogue and formulate individual backstories for each character.

The series' art director was Tite Kubo, known for his work on the shonen manga series *Bleach*. Kubo was enlisted to help after the conclusion of the *Bleach* series in 2016. He also served as character designer. The series' original soundtrack was composed by Jay Stevenson, and also featured music from Nujabes. The game's extensive voice cast features performances from Johnny Yong Bosch, Max Mittelman, Jay Stevenson, Cherami Leigh, Matthew Mercer, Dianna Agron and Xander Mobus, amongst others.

Since the first title of the series released in early 2018, the franchise has been met with universal critical acclaim. Critics have praised the game's visual presentation and style, immersive atmosphere and environment, lengthy and engaging narratives, unique and developed characters, and its soundtrack. The diverse combat system has also been well-received. Many regard the series, along with Atlus' *Persona* franchise, to have popularised role-playing games and made them the recipient of mainstream attention. Critics often view *Unleashed* as J-Games' best video game series, and it is seen as starting the 'J-Games Golden Era' that lasted the entirety of the series' run.

Commercially, *Unleashed* is the best-selling video game franchise of all time, having sold over 1 billion copies across all platforms. The series' sales peak, *Unleashed 6*, reached heights of over 200 million copies sold. The series is known for boosting J-Games' popularity in a time where the company was struggling to make profits. Over the years, *Unleashed* has been the recipient of numerous accolades. The series had an anime adaptation by J-Animations, which began airing in 2020.