Saturday, January 11, 2014

Because I Don't Talk About KOEI Enough...


I'm gonna be honest and say that I don't -know- how I manage to come up with so many occasions to talk about KOEI games in general, in that I don't actively look for them.  I guess news just...sort of crops up and me being a whore mass consumer of KOEI things in general, I can just extrapolate enough words from what is very simple announcements and turn it into a post or two.  It happens, and I haven't heard any complaining directly, so I assume you folks don't mind all that much.  Which is good!  Because I'm just gonna...keep doing it, I assume, until KOEI milks out every last bit of goodwill that I have towards them which will likely take a while despite my constant bitching criticisms.  Anyway, this post will be chock-full of new and less-new KOEI goodies that I decided to talk on tonight because I can't think otherwise since my back hurts again.

The above is a trailer for Nobunaga's Ambition:  Creation for PS4, which in itself is just a port of the game of the same name for PS3 and PC that was released last year.  I'm sure I could get some information about the game from the internet, but the fact is, it's probably not going to get localized, so I'm not looking too much into it, even though it would be fucking perfect for Remote Play (if not an outright Vita version, but no, that makes too much sense) and that fact alone makes me all the more sad that I'll never play it.  Of course, I -have- reached out to TecmoKOEI USA's official Twitter about it, but I really doubt that I'm going to hear back from them because, well, you know.  KOEI.  The fact that the account went inactive for months and only resurfaced -yesterday- says more than enough for the prospects of it being used as more than a means to congratulate themselves for whatever small accomplishes they make and no, I'm not bitter at all.

I'm not sure why they chose to go with what appears to be the Honnō-ji Incident for the intro cinematic to a Nobunaga's Ambition game either, but....well, that's at least -one- way to show off your pretty graphics, and especially so on an updated piece of hardware.  Reports indicate that Creation will run at 1080p and 60fps on the PS4 which is hardly surprising (unless you don't trust KOEI's technical acuity) but impressive nonetheless.  You'll also be able to command up to 1,000 men at a time (I assume they're not using the traditional 'units' anymore) rather than only 300 which is certainly something that will add quite a bit to the gameplay.  Regardless of anything, it's going to be a smooth entry (re-entry?) into the Nobunaga's Ambition series and I -do- hold out a little hope of seeing it come out in the West, but that's just it - a little hope.  Still enough to speak on, however, as I did.


There's some good news about Samurai Warriors 4, beyond the (old) news that it might (probably will) come here in the Summer.  The news, specifically, is that Create-a-Samurai is making a return in the base game, and not waiting for one of the expansions to introduce it.  Create-a-Samurai (or Create-a-Warrior for a general application in the Warriors games in general) is fairly self-explanatory, but it's a mode that allows you to customize your own character in name, appearance and fighting style to take into battle.  In the original Samurai Warriors, they handled it in a rather cool way, where you went through 'courses' to train specific aspects of your character, shaping their base attributes to contribute to their overall growth.  I'm not sure if there'll be a similar sort of thing in 4, but it sounds like there's -something- beyond "make your character, okay cool, go kill stuff".

The post mentions that officers will pose questions to you, to which your answers will help mold an image of how they see your character, which I'm sure will have an affect on their build.  Unless it's a fame/infamy type deal in which it won't matter in the least and will be another one for the "waste of effort" pile.  There's also a mention of a map where you can pick missions and if that's true, then that's certainly a departure for Samurai Warriors at least, though it brings it a little more in-line with what the Dynasty Warriors games have been doing with Conquest Mode and the like.  Unless it's specifically for Create-a-Warrior mode, which would be really cool, and reminiscent of Destiny Mode from Dynasty Warriors 5: Xtreme Legends.  Also known as "one of the reasons DW5 was fucking awesome".

Destiny Mode was a mode in which your character started out as a grunt in the personal army of an officer of your choice.  When I say a grunt, that's explicitly what I mean - your moveset was a three-hit combo, you had shit for health and were more of a liability than anything else, yet were still expected to power through and destroy officers.  With each victory, you gained skill points to bring your character up to par to an -actual- warrior of the ages (buying the ability to have longer combos, musou attacks, etc.) while also bringing glory to whoever you were pledged to, which you could change at certain points if you felt like it.  However, the person you ended up with at the end of the last mission was the person whose weapon set you took after (I believe), so you needed to make sure to stay the course if you wanted someone in particular.  Still, it was empowering, playing some podunk little soldier that moved up to the big leagues (even giving you jobs such as Base Captain and the like) and I'm amazed that KOEI hasn't used it again.  I doubt that Samurai Warriors 4 will use it, but goddamn, I can hope for that too.

Aside from the (probable) release of Samurai Warriors 4 to us, we still don't really know anything about anything else.  Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends is heading this way as we already know, but there's plenty of other games that could get an announcement for Stateside travel as well.  Samurai Warriors 2 HD+XL/Empires, Warriors Orochi 3 Special or whatever the name is, Nobunaga's Ambition, Shin Dynasty Warriors Gundam and I'm sure a few other things I'm forgetting right now.  Hopefully the revival of KOEI's North American Twitter means good things, but in situations where KOEI is concerned, Hope and two quarters'll just get you fifty cents.  Still, I never expected the Vita vesion of DW8+XL to be announced for us (because KOEI would be the ones to be dicks like that) and that's happening, so who knows anymore.  It's a strange, confusing and maybe not all-together terrible world we're living in now.

yes, I know I said hope a lot, I don't care

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