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

Nobunaga's Ambition X Pokemon Now Pokemon Conquest

So, uh, this was officially made a thing whilst I was on hiatus and while I was a little skeptical when the Japanese version was announced, I more or less figured on it being a reality.  Of course, without proof, I can't really prove that, so you'll just have to believe that I became less of a skeptic and this is not me being full of hot air.  Regardless, it had a pretty good shot just being a Pokemon product of some form, so that it's coming out in America (and PAL Land as well) isn't too much of a surprise.  The only thing to wonder about is just how well it's going to sell since the Pokemon name will give it legs, but not for everybody of course.  I imagine it's different enough that people won't be buying it on blind faith alone, and the Strategy aspect might turn off some of the more casual players of the game (which I imagine is a good bit).  At the same time, maybe the twist will go over more smoothly than I think.

Being a title in June however is, well, a problem.  Hell, being a DS title is kind of a problem for it for me, since I honestly don't really use my DS that much anymore, but even if I loved playing my DS and was hungering for a new Pokemon game (which, obviously, neither is true), I wouldn't be buying the game at launch because there is just no time whatsoever.  Depending on how it reviews and word-of-mouth, I might pick it up for the latter portion of the year, provided I'm not full of -other- new games to play, but, really, no guarantees here.  Which is pretty wild to imagine; not being able to buy new games because I have too many new games already.  I mean, I have too many games that I haven't played at all or at least not enough, but I haven't had a situation where I've literally bought a few games and just went "Shit, what do I play first, screw you every other game".

I guess talking about purchasing the game might just be a little premature, however, since I really don't even know what Pokemon Conquest is, in a manner of speaking.  Yes, I know it's the Sengoku Era of Japan, except everyone has Pokemon and the wars are thusly fought with Pokemon battles that take place on a wide map as opposed to just one-on-one duels, but I don't know the rest of it.  I guess asking for a 'why' is a bit much, but I guess a 'how' would work.  As in, a better showing off of the mechanics, not only with the battles themselves, but overall.  How will you get more pokemon?  You should likely be able to get more than just the Eevee to participate in the battles, I mean, and even then I imagine you'll be able to evolve said Eevee at some point.  And I still don't really know how other people are going to be set up with their pokemon either, since some have 'favored' ones that aren't actually the ones they've been showed off with or something.

I guess what I'm saying is that there is still a lot about Pokemon Conquest that is a mystery.  At the same time, that's probably a good thing since such a weird thing as this cross-over would be a little disappointing, I think, if it could be explained with ease.  However, part of me is just so curious since it's no secret that I enjoy KOEI's take on History, despite them making it really fucking difficult for me to like it, and that's basically what this is:  KOEI's take on the Sengoku Era, ala Samurai Warriors, plus Pokemon for absolutely no reason.  Not that a reason is necessary of course, since it'll be pretty fun regardless; just where it falls on the 'wackiness vs. good' scale it lands is hard to tell.  Based on my exposure to the battle system in Nobunaga's Ambition, it should be fun enough if it follows along with it.  Though it might be a more stripped down version since the one I played was free-move where this is grid-based.

Even if I probably won't be buying it right off, I did at least want to bring it up since it's something that I -would- have written about had I not been on hiatus.  Just because it's a KOEI thing, it's a Pokemon thing and it's both of those at the same time as well.  We all know that's just a recipe for my genuine interest more than many things could hope for.  Well, unless it was Yakuza and Feudal Japan but Sega would never....oh right, but at least they would localiz....oh..right.  Now I've made myself sad.  I guess I'll just bide my time by drawing up a pool of the next crossover game to be announced from Japan since that seems to be a thing for now.  Strike while the iron is hot and all that.  I'm only partially kidding about the pool, though.

Oh, Come On Nintendo!

Keen-eyed readers might recognize the above shot from the upcoming Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition that still doesn't have a better title because of the clear-cut tactics game layout it shows with Pokemon and a Japanese fan above the X button.  But, apparently Nobunaga's Ambition wasn't the first series pitched to Nintendo for a collab project.  If you guessed the first attempt was KOEI's most successful franchise in Dynasty Warriors, you would be correct, but Nintendo shot down the idea because it was 'too violent' to have in conjunction with Pokemon.  A game all about pokemon beating each other up was too violent for pokemon, a game all about pokemon beating each other up (at their trainer's orders).  Now, come on Nintendo you're not even trying here.

While I see the fact that Pokemon Tactics (that's what I'm calling it now) is likely more marketable to the world as a whole than Dynasty Warriors:  Pokemon and that's likely why Nintendo passed on DWP (either to force KOEI to bring up the strategy franchise of Nobunaga's Ambition or just leave them alone)  I can't accept that logic because it doesn't make sense.  I mean, like I said before, the entirety of Pokemon is built on your character walking atop a pile of corpses unconscious foes that he has made that way on the way to the Pokemon League to challenge the top Trainers in the land who got there by excelling in using their pokemon to beat up everyone else's pokemon.  It is a game all about violence and using it to solve your problems and that isn't changed by the fact that it does so without shedding a drop of animated blood.  There's episodes of the Pokemon anime that are more 'disturbing' for 'violence' than anything in standard DW gameplay for the sheer fact that you just sometimes see Pokemon getting wailed on by humans or other 'Mons.

Regardless, you all know me so the fact that I would buy the shit out of Pokemon Warriors is no surprise, and now knowing of its possible existence leads me to wonder just how it could've played out.  Would it be like Pokemon Tactics with Three Kingdoms dudes having their own Pokemon that they send out into battle to decide the fate of China?  Or would the Three Kingdoms guys themselves be represented by Pokemon?  That might be a little difficult, I'm sure, as I'm not quite sure there's a Pokemon awesome enough to be a Lu Bu analog, nor could I even imagine trying to replace any member of the DW cast with an existing Pokemon.  I can't help but wonder if maybe they'd go with some sort of middle-ground where the Three Kingdoms guys actually used the Pokemon in different ways - the example that comes to mind being Lu Bu riding a Rapidash into battle to replace Red Hare.  Stuff like that, though I'm not quite sure how well it'd work out on that, either.

I mean, I can acknowledge that it's a tough sell, but like I said to my friend, "Scyther's moveset would be awesome.  Can you just imagine Scyther taking down like ten Pidgeys at once with a single swipe?  I CAN.  AND IT'S AWESOME."  It boggles the mind how much awesome there stands to be here if Nintendo had been willing to give it a shot and instead we're left with a Tactics game that doesn't really look like it has a whole lot to do with the Sengoku Era aside from being, well, set in it.  I guess there's not a lot wrong with that and maybe it's just something that's really told outside of battle rather than in it, but I'd like to see a little more.  Though I guess that's what trailers are for!

The trailer shows off a little more gameplay alongside Japanese audio that I have absolutely no idea where to even begin suggesting what it's saying and, as I said, it pretty much just looks like Pokemon Tactics set in the Sengoku Era.  I'm still seeing a bit of the idea that every member of the time has their 'own' pokemon (Newly shown off in 'pairing' was Chosokabe Motochika with Oshawott and some guy I don't recognize with Smugleaf Snivy) as if you notice during the bit that starts at around 0:32, Pokemon are plopped down on the board with different era-members showing up thereafter, notably Sanada Yukimura following the placement of a Tepig (Which could by all means be his 'pairing' as I have yet to really see one for him) after Toyatomi Hideyoshi following the placement of a Chimchar which is the first form of Infernape which has been shown off as Hideyoshi's partner.  (Which might be further evidence to the previous idea of Yukimura/Tepig or, perhaps the Tepig line.)

There's still a lot of questions that'll get answered eventually, I guess.  I'm interested in seeing how it all works out, as I wonder just what degree of control the player will be able to have for the battles; will he/she be able to control everyone on his/her side, or simply his/her Eevee or whatever it evolves into?  How does evolution play up into this whole partner situation they've sort of billed the game next to?  I'm sure, by it's own merits, the game will be a fairly fun game, but I still can't help but wonder what might have been now that I know Pokemon Warriors had been on the table.  Man.

Nobunaga's Ambition to Catch 'Em All or Something

So, if you were looking at some more Japan-centric news sites yesterday, (specifically Siliconera) you would've seen as the collective of the internet had their minds blown by a surprise Pokemon announcement that was, get this, an actual surprise.  Mostly because you couldn't make this stuff up, and mostly because even after being told, you don't know what to think.  A partnership you'd never expect (Tecmo-KOEI and The Pokemon Company) throws together two franchises you wouldn't think would mesh (Nobunaga's Ambition, the Wargame/Conquering Game about taking over Sengoku Era Japan as a warlord of your choice and Pokemon) means the game, creatively named Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition, is just something out of left field.  So it's definitely surprising, but the question to be asked directly thereafter is:  But will it be good?

That's a hard question to answer right off, but the tentative answer would, of course, be "probably".  There's nothing but a couple minutes of actual footage from the game which, surprisingly, looks nothing like either games involved with the franchise, but more of a turn-based tactics game.  (Nobunaga's Ambition falls -just short- of what is classically known as RTS for battles)  Still, there manages to be a theme from the Pokemon games directly intermingled into Pokemon + NA in that the main character appears to be fine-tuned to be little more than an avatar for the player (as in Pokemon games) and can be either male or female, though both will get an Eevee all the same.  Which is....again, also appropriate given that Eevee is either a blank canvas or the perfect expression of self with evolutions depending on your perspective.  Unless you like Ghost, Dragon, Steel, Flying, Poison, Bug, Rock, Ground or Fighting types, then you're kind of screwed.

I imagine Tecmo-KOEI's main contribution here is the general idea of the Nobunaga's Ambition concept (for all I know, they're pulling from an older game than the -one- we got over here) as well as their imagining of the Sengoku Jidai main players, since there's obviously no copyright or anything of the sort on them and Pokemon could technically make one on their own if they wanted.  However, using KOEI's versions makes it easy as hell to identify just who has what, which I can share.  Obviously, Oda Nobunaga's at the forefront with Zekrom from Black/White, his sister Oichi has Jigglypuff, Toyotomi Hideyoshi has Infernape (I believe), Akechi Mitsuhide has Articuno (Possibly for being an Ice Cold killer), Uesugi Kenshin has Mewtwo for some reason and finally (for now), Takeda Shingen has Groundon from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald.  I'm going to be completely honest here and say that there's little to no reason that I can discern why anybody has who they have (Especially Kenshin and Shingen - being the Dragon and the Tiger respectively, I would have thought they'd get something more thematic) but I'm not really about to argue with it.

Of course, here's the rub here as it's completely impossible to tell whether or not this will release in the west, so there's a very real chance any excitement I could have for this would have to be kept in check.  I mean, it's a pokemon game for the DS, it should come out here, right?  But at the same time, it's a Pokemon game that -isn't- pokemon as well as being a KOEI game, so that throws any reliability or firm standing out the window.  It could be just me, but I think there's a lot of 3DS push out there which has already started to rapidly phase the DS out, probably more than is necessary, so by the time this comes out in Japan and the time you'd have to add for localization, it just might not be feasible at all to release it over here.  Which I think would be a damn shame, since this could honestly be pretty neat.  It'll certainly be bringing new life and ideas to both franchises, that's for sure, and if you ask me, Pokemon is in dire need of a few.

Why Won't They Make These - Conquering Games/Wargames

Now, I know the question is mostly rhetorical, since the answer is clearly that they are so, so very niche.  But to that niche, of which I am a part, they are incredible things that have the ability to hold attention for weeks at a time.  So the distinct lack of them, especially now, is incredibly disappointing.

'What in the world is a Conquering game?', you might be asking yourself.  A Conquering game, simply put, is just one of those games that takes you and puts you in the role of a Leader (or in some of the more....advanced? games, allow you to take any role) during a war of some sort, or a period of Warring times, and lets you fight to gain control of the land in question.  Given that this is me talking, the obvious first choices here are the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series and the Nobunaga's Ambition series, but you may recognize these types by other game series like Hearts of Iron or, most popularly, the Civilization series.

Wargames seems to be the better term for this, so I'm going to just start using that now.  But the point is, that there are not very many games of this genre, which is in all honesty, a shame, since few games can really replicate the feel you get when you finally topple a neighboring kingdom by hiring his best men out from under him and invading with all the might of a whirlwind, crushing any and all who stand before your troops who have just been waiting for this moment for months that, to you, were mere minutes.  Similarly, there's nothing quite like the feel of seeing one of your top advisors suddenly rebel against you, raise an army and put you to a wall, leaving you scrambling for a way to pull up enough defensive forces and recall enough strategy to stave him off, lest your whole empire falls to him.

A few misconceptions about the genre are fairly inevitable; namely that there's no market for these games anymore and that, if there is, they're only concerned with going against other humans, so clearly, we need to make it more real-time strategy, like Starcraft.  Quite simply, to quote one of those things we all know of:  "If you build it, they will come."  They may not come in droves, or they may, but making these games can't be that expensive, and it's certainly a more interesting way of rounding out your catalog than by making another Team Deathmatch-focused FPS.

While wargames might just be fun to be played with others, that's not their sole duty, and the quicker we throw that out there, the better.  If there's anything that is becoming more and more distressing as games evolve these days, is the notion that a Single-Player-Only Experience is a lacking one, and you'll only get the real money, the real attention, and the real sales by putting out a game with Multi-player.  And since certain genres don't make themselves too welcome to Multi-player, they get phased out, rather than, well, continuing to exist.

Of course, these types of games, specifically if they're turn based (Like most of the RotK games and the NA games are) are fairly multiplayer friendly, which kind of ruins the point, but, well, hush.  What I'm getting at is that these are mainly Single Player experiences since you were never really likely to find a pal to sit down with you and play Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII by handing off the controller when it was your turn.  And even if you could, you would never actually finish the game, since it just took so long.  Not that that's a bad thing!

Of course, the genre isn't totally dead, which the recent release of the latest installment of the Total War series, Shogun 2 will attest to.  But a yearly release, (As Napoleon:  Total War came out in March or 2010, and Empire:  Total War came in March of 2009 before it) isn't quite enough, and especially so for those of us who don't exactly have the computers necessary to run the Total War series.  (At least, I know that Shogun 2 is a monster of a game.) 

But you don't need to go that intensive to release a game like this.  Especially if you put it where most logical people would; on a portable system.  That my only option for a portable Romance of the Three Kingdoms game is RotK IV:  Wall of Fire as a PSOne Classic blows my mind considering that take on Wargames seems perfect for handhelds.  Of course, looking up Nobunaga's Ambition earlier made it clear that there have been a few DS version of the series; but none of them were localized.  Surprise, surprise.

KOEI, I talk about you a lot more than I should, in more positive lights than I should, especially considering you make games that I really, really want and then never release them over here.  So I'm going to put on my best 'Son, I'm disappoint' face here and then we'll just move on.

Basically, the point I'm trying to establish here is that I want to be able to play a game on my PSP (or even the NGP, when it finally comes out) where I can have the same experiences I had playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms 7, 8 and 10, and Nobunaga's Ambition.  I want to build forces and invade neighboring provinces.  I want to delve in political matters and plan who I'm going to ally with, and who I'm going to inevitably backstab.  I want to focus on where to put my officers to maximize the development of my cities.  Why won't someone make this.