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

Samurai Warriors 4 is a Thing That is Probably Happening, Don't Care

So, Siliconera had a piece that said Tecmo-KOEI is sort of planning on a February 2014 release for Samurai Warriors 4 (for Japan only, of course), and I realized something sort of terrible when I read it:  I had not a single shit to give about it.  Honestly, I read it, moved on as I do when the cursory skimming of news titles and such doesn't interest me, and only a few minutes later did I realize what it actually said and go back to it.  The post itself is pretty insubstantial:  Samurai Warriors 4 is going to be a thing which surprises nobody, and they're aiming for a release date in 2014 because it will mark the 10th anniversary of Samurai Warriors being a series which is truly a momentous occasion and certainly everybody should care.  While I'm dismissing it like pretty much everyone else who isn't a fan of the series, I imagine you folks understand that I sort of have a reason to be bitter with the series, considering the debacle that was Samurai Warriors 3 and every recent release KOEI has put out for North America (and announced).

It's really kind of a shame.  I really liked the first two Samurai Warriors games; in fact Samurai Warriors 2 with Xtreme Legends is probably one of the better Warriors experiences you could ask for.  There's a lot of stages, a lot of characters, and yet pretty much everyone manages to maintain a certain individuality, which is certainly a strange and foreign concept where it concerns Dynasty Warriors as a series instead.  Also Samurai Warriors 2 features Musashi Miyamoto as a character who is as goddamn broken as he deserves to be, as well as Kojiro Sasaki who is fairly underrated but has a pretty fantastic weapon and moveset.  Samurai Warriors 2 + Xtreme Legends does a lot and remains a solid, solid entry for the series, for the overarching Warriors franchise as a whole.  The fact that it's so good is probably why Samurai Warriors 3 was such a let-down in concept, if not just the execution from what I've seen.

Samurai Warriors 2 was such a step up from the original in so many ways, and the Xtreme Legends for it only helped with that, never detracted from it, which is fairly impressive on its own really.  I, perhaps foolishly, imagined a similar step-up for Samurai Warriors 3, something akin to the step up from 5 to 7 (we're ignoring 6 for the argument) where not only was there the same cast plus some which is customary (Minus Pang De, again for the sake of argument, but really nobody cares about Pang De, that much has been made clear), but there are actual, genuine gameplay changes for the better introduced as well.  I was expecting bigger things as well, in terms of the scope of the game itself which, again, might have just been foolish on my part.  But it didn't help at all when the game was announced and showed off looking....well, looking like Samurai Warriors 2.  But not as good.  The whole Wii-exclusive bit kind of necessitated that, I realize, since, without offending anyone's sensibilities, there's not a whole lot of a power gap or ways to get a Warriors game of a higher calibur than the PS2 versions on a Wii.

I have talked about the whole Wii-exclusive move in passing in the past and don't really intend to retread the topic much, but I will say that something that honestly disappointed me about the game is that from Samurai Warriors 2 to 3, they removed Musashi and Sasaki.  I....can't even defend the move, because -sure-, Musashi might not have even been old enough to do anything at Sekigahara which is kind of where 2 tended to climax at, but there was other stuff after that.  A -lot- of stuff, really.  As well as a lot of stuff between Hideyoshi dying and the start of the vying for power between East and West that didn't get covered either.  And yes, Sasaki did nothing but die famously to Musashi in a way that can't even be proven, but it's not like they were the only superfluous characters in the game in terms of actually existing/doing things.  For one, they -did- actually exist, as opposed to....well, just take 90% of the female warriors and then those 10% generally get cut down as well for not doing anything battle-wise.  And Musashi and Sasaki are incredibly popular characters regardless.  So, much like the platform jump, it was an excessively weird move, but a decidedly negative one as well.

What I honestly really wanted out of a Samurai Warriors 3 was a focus on the generations.  For all that it mattered, there were honestly three 'eras' to the Sengoku Jidai that could have been played out in their own ways without focusing on trying to do all three in 80% of the characters' storylines, especially when they were not in it.  Nobunaga's Rise to power got a lot of coverage, as it should have, Hideyoshi's unification of Japan got....not that much attention, but more than a token effort, and the unification of Japan under Tokugawa got, essentially, one single battle, that being Sekigahara.  Sure, it was big, but it wasn't the -entirety of that time-.  Focusing on all three eras individually would have been a much nicer balance and would have introduced -several- instances for new characters that would only be vital to that era.  The entire Saito clan, or at least the ones that mattered (Dosan and his sons that killed him and ruined his land basically) could be in Nobunaga's Rise, Hideyoshi's failed Korean invasions could offer an entirely new aspect and roster of characters as well, and the entirety of the Sekigahara era could be expanded, which means renewed focus on the participants that mattered, and perhaps even some that didn't, but Basara has popularized anyway like Otani Yoshitsugu.

Maybe Samurai Warriors 4, considering that it will be 'forced' to go Next Gen (perhaps even Next Next Gen, ala Wii U which would make me grumble all the more) will be able to do these lofty things.  With two years to work on it, I expect that it will make the visual leap that Dynasty Warriors 7 made, but I have no clue what else it will include.  Given that weapon switching would be entirely more thematic with Sengoku Jidai era warfare, I hope to see it in SW4, but I have zero expectations for the game.  I will probably not follow a whole lot of the development for it unless something pops out at me.  And that's....that's something that really gets me down, since I should, in theory be all -about- Samurai Warriors 4.  But the knowledge that it's so far off, might be dumb, will probably be on a system I don't own currently, and might not even see a retail release if it gets localized in the first place....well, it sort of kills enthusiasm that one could have for the game.  I guess we'll see, but I'm not about to hold my breath.

Goddamnit KOEI, Let Me Buy This Game

Back in September, KOEI announced the Japanese Release Date for Warriors Orochi 2 which, surprisingly enough is the third game in the series, despite what you might think in the naming.  From my understanding, the second game wasn't given a number as it was in the states, thus, this will be the second true Warriors Orochi game and blah blah blah.  Similar thing done with the mainline Dynasty Warriors series; the first game in the series was actually a fighting game, then when put on the PS2, it became a very early concept for what we now know as the real, classic Warriors-style gameplay.  In Japan, the PSOne game and the PS2 game were called different things, thus no real number change, but in America they just saw fit to title it as a sequel for the express purpose of confusing everyone for years to come.

Anyways, that's not important.  What's important is that Warriors Orochi 3 (That's what I'm referring to it henceforth) has been announced for Japan, will hit there in late December, and nothing's been said for a stateside release.  You would think this is a no-brainer, but the machinations what makes KOEI turn are mysterious and confusing (read: dumb and terrible) so the chances of any game of theirs coming out in the west is always a 50/50 split at best.  If you need any examples, let's just take Samurai Warriors 3 and pluck it out of the air, since it's the perfect tool with which I might explain the way this beast works or, more succinctly, does not.

Samurai Warriors 3, as you might know, was released for the Wii way back last year (in America) and the Wii only, confusing everyone who's put anything into the Samurai Warriors series because we're sitting back with our PS2s, PS3s and 360s wondering "Uhhhhhhhhhh where's our game?".  And this isn't bashing the Wii at all of course, merely pointing out that we, as -game purchasers- generally know where our series are going to stay.  While there's always exceptions, the general rule is, if a series was on the PS2/OXBox/360 when the gen was still considered 'last gen', we more or less expect them to simply move up to the new gen at 'least'.  This does not exclude a Wii version, merely suggests that such a version would be released alongside the version for the series supporters as well.  It would be akin to, say, Persona 5 being announced as a Wii-U Exclusive; those of us that have played the series would expect it to be on PS3 at least, for the simple fact that Persona 3 and 4 were on the PS2, and all of the other Persona games have made it to the PSP one way or another (notwithstanding P4's upcoming Vita re-release).

My point is that, Samurai Warriors 3 on the Wii and Wii only was a weird, unfriendly move.  Not a bad one, not a good one, just a weird one and one that doesn't necessarily scream business sense.  Even though it's able to be rationed out as reasonable in that there are simply more Wii consoles out there than PS3's or 360's in theory and thus, greater sales could be expected, it doesn't make it anywhere near the reality that they eventually found and could have seen coming.  As is what it obvious, Samurai Warriors 3 did not see smashing success in the West at least, and I would imagine not so much in the East either (though I have no numbers to support this).  At the very least, every iteration of the Samurai Warriors franchise (both of them at the time) had had an Xtreme Legends version to go along with it, so betting on one was not a farfetched idea.

And this is where it got -weirder-.  Upon announcing Samurai Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends for Wii, KOEI also announced Samurai Warriors 3Z, a PS3 version of the game that included both the original and the Xtreme Legends in the same package (possibly on the same disk, haven't checked).....and kept both in Japan.  As in, in the face of poor sales, they made a conscious effort to increase the possible sales audience to the people most likely to buy the game....and then instantly shoot said possibility in the foot by opening it up to a portion of that audience.  Now I know there's all sorts of costs that go along with porting a game and localizing it, but in all honesty, most of it was localized already in the western release of Samurai Warriors 3.  For the Wii.  I imagine that takes out a good portion of the work and cost, provided contracts with the voice actors were proper and such, so it couldn't have been too bad.

So I think it's easy enough to say that I am -wary- of seeing this game come stateside, though I desperately want it to.  The Warriors Orochi games provide such a different setting from the main two series from which they draw, given the setting is completely different despite the familiar characters and that experience and that setting is something I crave.  The impressive roster of over 120 characters is nothing to shake a stick at either, despite worries that with that many characters, you will be -forced- to do something with all of them if you're in it for the trophies or the achievements.  Not to mention that said roster will include notable non-Dynasty and Samurai warriors characters; namely Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden, Jeanne D'Arc from Bladestorm:  The Hundred Years War, and Achilles from Warriors:  Legends of Troy, each of which will have a stage/map dedicated to the game they come from.  So it's not just a token inclusion, but a bit more than that in terms of effort.

This.....this rant has nothing to do with the pre-order bonuses that were just announced, by the way.  N-nothing at all.  Honest.  I don't even ca-OKAY I am a whore for Christmas things, we all know this and I want those so bad and I don't know why.  It's quite possible that I just want the one for Wang Yuanji since she saw a lot of use in my DW7 playings as her moveset was quite fun and she was a fairly decent character.  But clearly, the costumes were only the final tip to push me over into a froth of desire bordering on rage-inducing at the thought that it might actually not see the shores of the states.  I do so hope that I'm wrong in this, that I honestly have nothing to worry about (the fact that it was released on PS3 -and- 360 in Japan would suggest that the groundwork for the west has been laid already), but this is KOEI and KOEI is dumb when it really matters.