Woah Now, Europe

Stop getting all this shit I want, okay?  I mean, I know we Americans are kind of spoiled with releases since we get things when you generally don't but, well, these are things I want.  Earlier today, a Tecmo KOEI community manager mentioned the fact that Warriors Orochi 3 will see a European release, though it was not, y'know, confirmed quite yet.  Notice that it was, indeed, called Warriors Orochi 3 because it will be the third proper Warriors Orochi game outside of Japan where it, much like Dynasty Warriors, has been quite funky with its naming of the iterations of the series, leading our Warriors Orochi 2 to only be considered an expanded version, thus making our Warriors Orochi 3 their Warriors Orochi 2.  It's all quite confusing and brought about by quite dumb things, but oh well, that's just sort of how it flies.

My interest in Warriors Orochi 3 is very well documented and I never really -doubted- a version with English would get released, considering this would be a mainline release which we get fairly consistently.  I just never imagined that English would mean, well, English, as in from the UK.  I still don't think it'll come to that, but if it does, then I guess I'll just have to jump into this whole importing thing with both feet, because I am going to get this damn game one way or another.  It's apparently the closest I'm going to get to play Samurai Warriors 3 on PS3 in English, so I guess that's all I've gotta think about when I go for it.  (Tangentally related, Samurai Warriors 3 is getting a PSP version which means it's going to stay in Japan, obviously.  They can port the game to everything under the sun, but not localize it?  Makes total sense, of course.)  Aside from that, I love the Warriors Orochi series, as I've said before, for the simple fact that it goes crazy with mystical stuff, screwing with the timelines and relationships and doesn't even care.  I can respect that.

You would think that with me playing so much Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 that I'm actually grumbling about random things with it (Like it having -9- missions that are the same as every other mission with guaranteed aces that have to be played on hard for no reason other than to pad it out some) that I would be a little tired of Warriors news.  Or, maybe you know me and wouldn't think that at all, because I am very obviously a Warriors sponge and I soak this shit up and can't wait for more.  I'll keep an eye out for an official announcement regarding overseas release, but I would imagine at least the PAL release is concrete and a NA release would be right behind it.  With any luck, KOEI will be brilliant and release it right after/before One Piece:  Pirate Warriors and something else to flood the market with KOEI games and then wonder why only some of them get bought, instead of reasonably releasing them at something resembling a good pace.  Because why would they do that, that would be sensible!

In other "Getting a European release but no word of American release" news, Way of the Samurai 4 is finally getting released outside of Japan 'sometime this year'.  It seems a bit late and all, since WotS4 has been out for quite a while already, but, hey, any chance for us to get our hands on it is a good one because of just how different the games are.  I imagine Way of the Samurai 4 is a little....errr...more realized in this gen than 3 was by any measure as well, which should make things a bit nicer for it on the whole.  Just the picture above is miles and away better than how 3 looked at some points, possibly even its best, but that's fairly expected from something that was sort of realized as a budget title anyway.

Still, as I mentioned, the amount of choice and the way the story conforms around your choices is pretty much unmatched by any other game out there.  Sure, it's not very long if you're just looking to get a couple stories down, but if you are the type who wants to (or has to because of trophies) get into everything, these types of games will give you endless hours of content that, at times, will always seem a bit new to you, if just because something different than the norm, or what you expected to happen, happened.  Those subtle little details are taken into account always, and especially so with 4, as it seems your choices might directly impact the next time you play as well.  So not only does what you do build the story, it also shapes your next one which likely means that much more possibility.  I'm not sure how it works, but it's interesting, at least on the surface.