A portion of an RPGamer interview with Ken Berry, Director of Publishing for XSEED Games...

RPG: Let's chat about Unchained Blades. Some on the Furyu staff also worked on Grandia and Lunar, you say? Looks like even Nobuo Uematsu composed a couple tracks on the soundtrack along with his studio producing the rest, right? How did this deal come about?

KB: Yes, Unchained Blades has quite the pedigree behind it with the scenario designer Takashi Hino having worked on Grandia, the director Toshio Akashi having worked on Lunar, and even Nobuo Uematsu contributing to the soundtrack, though most of the compositions are done by a young and upcoming composer named Tsutomo Narita, who works with Uematsu-san. And don't forget the artists, as 14 different celebrated artists spanning videogame and manga/anime fame each contributed to the design of one major character (well, 2 artists did collaborate on one design so there are 13 unique major character designs).

In terms of how the deal happened, we'd been following the title on Famitsu since before it released and our president was able to make contact with them. They wanted their game to be released in the West so we were able to come to terms pretty easily with FuRyu.