Eldorado Gate was a jRPG saga by Capcom released bimonthly on Dreamcast, exclusively in Japan, from 2000 and 2001. It's really a shame this series was never localized because of many reasons:
- Yoshitaka Amano was the main artist and he created all main 12 characters plus all enemies (which appears, in-game, through his artworks, while characters on the field appear through super-deformed renditions). Amano is not a conventional artist and this shows in his characters---the main protagonist of the first volume is a shirtless old guy with spiky green hair.
- Noboru Sugimura was involved in the project. People might not know him (he died 13 years ago, RIP) but he wrote Resident Evil 2 story (that's when his full-time effort with Capcom started) and followed the production of the Onimusha series. Yoshiki Okamoto was involved too (the project started in 1996)---Okamoto worked for Capcom for years and later he founded Game Republic and created Monster Strike.
- It has plenty of high-quality hand-drawn backgrounds---the game is not open-world but it does have a lot of areas to explore: towns, castles and houses and then dungeons.
- Battle system is similar to Dragon Quest. It's turn-based and first-person. Magic works similarly to Final Fantasy VIII (they are items that can be consumed but also combined). Also, there are not character levels but strength comes from magic skills and weapons.
- Plots of each entry are self-contained but of course there are plenty of connections between entries. Indeed, save files can be loaded into new entries to receive additional contents. The idea is that in each entry there's a group of hero and all groups are looking for the same promised land.
- Music is also gorgeous.
Unfortunately, the game sold poorly in Japan as well. It seems that Capcom was planning to release many more entries---each release is composed of chapters and the idea was to release 24 chapters across an unknown number of releases. Eventually, Capcom released only 18 chapters across 7 entries.
