London, UK– 29 February, 2016 – Today, Ubisoft® released Anno 2205™: Tundra, the first major DLC for the city-building simulation from Ubisoft’s Blue Byte studio, along with a free update available today for all 2205 players. With Tundra, players will have access to a brand new sector to manage along with the Temperate, Artic and Moon sessions. In the desolate land of the Vanha Plains, players will gather new resources and complete specific quests to further improve their metropolises.
In this new 82,000 acre territory, players will discover new gameplay tactics as they need to dry the marshes before settling in the area among the muskoxen and the icy surroundings. Two new population types are also available, the Tundra Scientists and the Tundra Protectors, of which players will have to manage their specific needs. In order to fulfill these needs, five new production chains and ten new goods types challenge players to use their management skills more effectively.
A new additional module type can be unlocked by solving the sector quest and inquiring on the past generations failures. This module improves farms and factories in the Tundra sector, but also in all other regions of the game. Throughout the story quests and optional side quests, players will control a futuristic flying vehicle to hover over the desert landscapes.
A free update named “Corporation HQ” is also available today for all Anno 2205 players. This patch enhances the corporation progression screen to make it more intuitive, and to provide a good overview of the player’s achievements and improvements. With this update, players can now sell goods depending on requests to NPC traders.
Tundra is available to owners of the Anno 2205’s Season Pass, and can be purchased independently for all players.
Ubisoft is a leading creator, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and services, with a rich portfolio of world-renowned brands, including Assassin’s Creed, Just Dance, Tom Clancy’s video game series, Rayman, Far Cry and Watch Dogs. The teams throughout Ubisoft’s worldwide network of studios and business offices are committed to delivering original and memorable gaming experiences across all popular platforms, including consoles, mobile phones, tablets and PCs. For the 2014-15 fiscal year Ubisoft generated sales of €1,464 million. To learn more, please visit www.ubisoftgroup.com.
About Blue Byte, a Ubisoft Studio
Having opened their doors in 1988, Blue Byte’s first hit came in 1991 with Battle Isle, followed by the ever-popular development strategy game The Settlers® – which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2013. Following their acquisition by Ubisoft in 2001, the studio continued work on The Settlers® series, and began overseeing the production of ANNO® in 2007. Winner of 2012 “Best European Studio” award (European Games Awards), Blue Byte expanded in 2014 with the acquisition of a new branch in Mainz. The teams are developing and operating HD, browser-based and mobile games, including Might and Magic® Heroes® Online, ANNO® Online and The Settlers® Online, captivating millions of players worldwide. In 2014 the studio successfully launched ANNO®: Build an Empire on mobile devices. Currently The Settlers®: Kingdoms of Anteria for PC and Assassin’s Creed® Identity for smartphones and tablets are in development at Blue Byte’s Düsseldorf studio while the Mainz studio works on Anno 2205 which will bring the acclaimed city-builder series into space. More information can be found at www.bluebyte.com.
This time around Koei Tecmo‘s Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 character trailer focuses on the oldest member of the roster, coming in at 1018 years old and apparently very surprised that she couldn’t bring her wings with her, the focus is on Nyotengu. In the video we see Nyotengu relax in a number of different locations in the game while wearing a variety of different swimsuits.
You can check out the video below and as for the game itself, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 is set to be released for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in Japan on March 24th and the Asian release, featuring English subtitles, can be pre-ordered through Play-Asia.
WayForward has announced that they plan on releasing Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse onto the Xbox One on March 16th where the game, that is priced at $19.99 on the PC and Wii U, will be offered at a special launch week price that has yet to be revealed.
For those that haven’t been following the game, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is the third entry for the indie platformer and was originally released on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in late 2014 and then on the PC in 2015. Although WayForward has not announced exactly when they plan on bringing the title to the PlayStation 4, they have confirmed that it is on the way.
Ys Net recently shared some brand new images of Shenmue III during a presentation that was held at the Monaco Anime Games International Conferences and these images focus almost entirely on showing off the game’s colorful environments.
The company also showed off a few in-game scenes that demonstrated the weather effects and more and you can check that out below. Currently Shenmue III is being developed for the PlayStation 4 and PC and those who missed out on the initial funding scene can still back the game through Paypal. You can learn more about this method on the game’s official website.
Last week it was revealed that Bandai Namco would be including Marshall D. Teach, better known as Blackbeard, as a playable character in One Piece: Burning Blood and now V Jump has released a thirteen minute video containing a little over eight minutes of gameplay footage showing off Blackbeard’s fighting style and techniques.
You can check out the video below and as for the game itself, One Piece: Burning Blood is set to be released for the PlayStation 4, PS Vita, and Xbox One on May 31st in North America and June 3rd in Europe with a PC version also being released sometime in June.
Overview Over the last few years we have seen countless JRPGs localized that very few would have ever thought would be possible due to what a massive undertaking the translation would be. A few of these just so happen to fall under The Legend of Heroes series and with XSEED handling both the first and second chapters of Trails in the Sky, they have opted to continue the series with the most recent trilogy, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. With the second title already being localized, does the first Trails of Cold Steel offer an experience worth sinking your teeth into?
Story The story in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel begins mid-siege as we join the yet unintroduced members of Class VII as they are fighting against enemies that have invaded a vital building and are preparing to use the country’s own weaponry against it. Just as things start to look bad, the story cuts back to the beginning. Set in the Erebonian Empire, a place fans of The Legend of Heroes series will recognize, we join Rean Schwarzer as he steps off the train into his first day as a student at Thors Military Academy.
As he makes his way through the city and eventually to the auditorium for initiation, he notices that only a few students wear the crimson colored uniform that he was given. While Thors Military Academy generally has split the classes between nobles and commoners, the members of Class VII, those in the crimson uniforms, have been assembled regardless of social status, a movie that causes some small amount of friction between a few members at the start.
That all changes over the course of the game however as, once players move past the initial slow start of the title, the members of Class VII and their instructor find themselves swept into a world of war, betrayal, love, honor and more. To give more details about certain events that take place, especially a number of twists that occur in the story would do the game a disservice but let’s just say that this is an RPG that focuses heavily on delivering a fleshed out and complex storyline, though be prepared for a cliffhanger into the second game.
On top of delivering a satisfying core narrative, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel manages to do something that even games with a small core cast often fail to do. It manages to develop these characters in such a manner that it actually makes players care about the many core characters that end up becoming party members throughout the game. While a few do end up getting sidelined a bit in regards to the main storyline, the fact that the Thors Academy serves as the main base of the game allows for the title to give players moments of free time where they can freely interact with their friends and learn more about their personalities and advance their subplots. That being said, usually players will only be able to interact with a few of their members at any given time which means that it is possible to lose out on some character development if you don’t juggle character interactions well enough.
In fact, beyond your immediate classmates players will be able to watch numerous little side stories develop as other students and teachers at Thors Academy have been given interesting personalities and dialogue that changes as players progress throughout the game, meaning that I often found myself exploring in order to catch up with everyone before trying to push through with the core storyline. Learning about the backstories of the core cast and interacting with them as they deal with the various events unfolding in the story, catching glimpses at the lives of other classmates, all while diving into the massive storyline here in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel means that this is a game that can be daunting from a story perspective (a recap journal is filled out as players progress for those who may get lost) but it is one that is extremely satisfying and will leave fans wanting more and thankfully that appears to be exactly what they’ll be getting in the future.
Gameplay While players will be spending plenty of time at Thors Academy and finding their party members often being swapped out while they are sent on different field study missions, this brings us to the other hefty portion Trails of Cold Steel, the combat and customization systems. On the surface the combat in this game may seem fairly standard as it uses a four party member turn based system that allows players to strike their opponents in the field before entering into combat for an advantage. Then once entering battle they can move around the field to close or gain distance from an enemy or attack, use an item, or flee from combat.
This is all fairly standard until we get into the Craft Skills, Arts, Tactical Link system, weapon weaknesses, and elemental weaknesses. While the last two may seem fairly standard for RPGs, Trails of Cold Steel really takes advantages of these strengths and weaknesses, meaning that players will quickly find themselves learning about their foes in order to take them down in the best way possible, especially since field attacks with a weapon an opponent is weak against can lead to a battle that is practically over before it even begins.
As for the aforementioned systems, Craft Skills and Arts work fairly predictably with both allowing players to use skills of various types to either attack the opponent or buff the team though Arts draw upon EP while Craft Skills pull from CP. CP can be obtained from fighting in combat while EP works more like a mana system with both systems requiring some management and tweaking, with arts generally coming from quartz that can be equipped to each character and if the player can bring up a party member’s CP to over a hundred they can unleash powerful S-Craft attacks that can devastate an opponent in a flashy manner.
The Link system relies upon the various bonds that the party has made throughout the story so far by allowing characters to team up during battle to provide cover from attacks or help deal a finishing blow against an opponent. Using the aforementioned free time to bond with your party members allows these various link specials to be unlocked so not only does it help develop the characters in your party, it helps in combat as well. With players able to call in various types of Link attacks or assists depending on what is unlocked, there are generally plenty of options available in a fight, especially since if you have more than four party members at a time they can be swapped out with a party member on the sidelines to bring a fresh member into a battle.
This allows for a fluid and surprisingly easy to understand, despite the complicated sounding systems, combat system that never really feels unfair despite the fact that some opponents you come up against can be rather difficult. Figuring out the strategies to take down these foes and using the fast paced combat system to eliminate them as efficiently as possible delivers a satisfying experience, though ignoring these weaknesses can also lead to crushing defeat.
Of course with the meaty storyline offering plenty of content to explore and so many side-quests that I stopped counting after a while, there is more than enough content here to learn all of the intricacies of the system. Then if you feel like going through a second time, the title does offer bonuses such as link levels, items, and more that can be carried over or added into a New Game Plus mode.
Visuals The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel marks the first game in the series to be developed specifically for the PlayStation 3 rather than simply being an upgraded port. This means that those who are familiar with the series will be treated to the first 3D game in the series though don’t expect anything too amazing here as the character models, while designed nice enough to appear similar to their gorgeous character portraits, have a number of stiff animations and can appear rough looking at times.
The enemies players face off against are varied enough while the combat sequences are also handled fairly nicely and the numerous dungeons and environments that players will be exploring are designed with a unique feel to keep things feeling fresh for quite a while. It is worth noting that the PlayStation Vita version (with cross-save support) of the game doesn’t suffer much graphically outside of some artwork appearing less vivid and suffering from more slowdown than the console counterpart.
Audio For a game that contains such a massive amount of dialogue that is found in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel one must give XSEED Games quite a lot of credit because not only is nearly all of the content (outside of the main character occasionally) voiced, the voice actors that have been chosen for these roles are great fits for these characters with only a handful sounding a bit off.
As for the game’s soundtrack, this one sports an amazing collection of music that really helps add emotion to the game. There are tunes that work well for a high-tension boss battle as well as those that drive home how dramatic certain sequences can be. With such a wide-range of variety here, as well as enjoyable exploration music, this is one that fans won’t be getting tired of anytime soon while working through over seventy hours of content that can be found in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel.
Overall If you are a fan of RPGs then passing on The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel would be doing yourself a great disservice. By offering a well-crafted, albeit slow starting, storyline containing characters that you will actually begin to care about as the story progresses, and tons of content to enjoy supplemented with a combat system that may seem rather by the books but is incredibly satisfying at times, this title tells a story that can easily eat away at your time for hours on end. Trails of Cold Steel is a superb title for RPG fans, especially since it has a sequel in translation and a third title in the works. Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Overview Telltale Games made a massive impact on the fans when they released their first season of The Walking Dead and while a few cameo appearances were used to help generate some hype in the first episode, the company quickly moved into molding their own story separate from the main storyline in The Walking Dead comics. Unlike those first two seasons however, this time around Telltale Games is crafting a story set around a fan favorite character in the mini-series The Walking Dead: Michonne. With the first episode, In Too Deep, now available, is this series off to a decent start?
Story It is worth noting that although this storyline does take place ahead of the television series (most likely a few seasons ahead at least) those who have never touched the comic book series shouldn’t worry about any core story spoilers here while those who have been keeping up with the comics can likely place The Walking Dead: Michonne’s placement due to her missing signature samurai sword being replaced with a machete.
Anyways, the story here kicks off in an extremely memorable way as In Too Deep begins the story with a look at Michonne as she struggles with her past and those that she has lost. In an absolutely wonderful blend of action and traumatic flashbacks that blend together to offer a striking experience where Michonne near absentmindedly fights off Walkers while being haunted by her past. This is then followed by a striking decision that, while unfortunately meaningless, shows the mindset that Michonne is currently in while traveling alone.
It is here that she meets and joins with Pete and three weeks later finds herself on board his boat with a small group of survivors. While Pete is attempting to try and reach some friends that he has traded with in the past over a short-wave radio, the boat becomes damaged and it is here that the story starts to struggle with setting itself apart from being cliché.
In a search for supplies that may fix their boat, Michonne and Pete leave the rest of the crew behind and check out their only option, an apparently abandoned ferry. As one would expect, things immediately start to go wrong as Walkers attack, an unexpected encounter with other survivors leads to a dangerous misunderstanding, finally leading to capture and intense questioning before leaving fans with very little meaningful development for any of the side-characters or why we should care about any of them.
While the setup is as predictable as they come and the few decisions that players make on who they wish to side with takes place over a number of tense feeling scenes that, from the preview of the next episode, boil down to an unfortunately straightforward route, the way that the story handles Michonne as a character and her emotional struggles is the best part of this series so far.
Being the star of this mini-series and already a fleshed out character that fans are familiar with it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to hear that she is easily the best part of the series. Michonne’s traumatic losses continue to haunt her in memorable fashion and if In Too Deep is a sign of things to come, it’ll be interesting to see how Michonne struggles with her emotions over the next two episodes, though hopefully they will be longer than this one as, even while examining everything possible, this episode clocks in at barely an hour in length.
Gameplay As one would expect with a Telltale title, The Walking Dead: Michonne – In Too Deep, features many of the standard gameplay mechanics that involve making dialogue decisions, some of which are important, within a certain time period, taking part in quick time events to combat Walkers, and exploring an environment and examining various parts to an area to either uncover something or learn a bit more about the area.
This title offers a little bit of exploration but what it really shines at is the action sequences. When Michonne is about to enter combat against the undead the screen narrows to highlight the action and put an emphasis at how skilled Michonne is even when she is using a machete instead of her sword. The fights are of course handled through QTE moments but the way these sequences play out in The Walking Dead: Michonne really make the combat feel intense and visceral. Unfortunately this does lead to some trade-off where the title will suffer quite a bit of slowdown during these action sequences.
Visuals & Audio The cel-shaded art style persists in The Walking Dead: Michonne and works to the benefit of the series as it fits well with the comic book styling of the original artwork. The characters are handled well with Michonne appearing very close to her comic counterpart while the violence and gore is displayed in brutal fashion as quite a few of the Walker kills are a bit unorthodox this time around.
Considering the fact that so many people will likely be familiar with Danai Gurira portraying and voicing Michonne, Samira Wiley handles the character incredibly well by fitting her personality nicely. The soundtrack for the episode fits well with a solid voiced opening theme and closing credit song.
Overall The Walking Dead: Michonne – In Too Deep does a decent job introducing fans to the three episode mini-series by offering fans a look at what is haunting Michonne but unfortunately players shouldn’t expect too much more than that for now. This episode sets up some solid groundwork with Michonne being portrayed perfectly but does little to get the player invested in the rest of the storyline in this short episode. Let us hope that the next two episodes will delve deeper into Michonne’s traumas while also providing players with some reason to care about what else is happening around her. Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Koei have been working diligently to offer up a good number of titles this generation, with the most stand-out being the two Samurai Warrior titles that have both seen a release on the Sony platforms. Today, we have sat down with the publishing team to discuss Samurai Warriors 4: Empires. Join us as we run through all of the features one can expect with this new entry.
Samurai Warriors 4 and 4-II both had stunning visuals on the Playstation 4. Can we expect to see the same treatment for Empires?
Thank you. Players can expect the same stunning visuals for Samurai Warriors 4 Empires. Speaking of visuals, I hope players can enjoy the newly introduced ‘Intuitive Politics System’ (note: castle play)
What new features are in store for this version?
First of all, the new main feature of Samurai Warriors 4 Empires is ‘Intuitive Politics System.’ Through many trials and errors, we were successful in implementing sophisticated simulation elements while achieving an intuitive play.
‘Base Battles,’ a very popular feature on Samurai Warriors 2 Empires, returns to this title. You can claim “chains” of enemy bases by cutting off enemy supply lines and isolating enemy bases. Analysing the enemy placements will enable you to seize the advantage more efficiently. For the very first time, this game enables you to lead allied forces throughout the battlefield to claim victory. Players can give out individual commands to allied officers in order to have them each attack an enemy, defend a base or defend an ally. When you share a special relationship with an allied officer, you can also take direct control of him/her, playing as him/her on a different front of the battlefield.
Don’t miss human drama in this game. Dramas will unfold through interactions between characters which can be easily affected by your gameplay. You will be able to find a lot of events based on historical facts/anecdotes, at the same time; you can re-create those historical events with other officers or your own custom characters. I’d like to point out that all event dialogs were recorded with all Musou warriors’ voices. With such customisability, I would like to encourage players to create their own history.
Are there any new characters that we should look for, and if not – how did you incorporate prior personalities into Empires?
Unlike orthodox Musou titles which focuses on character play, one of the highlights of Samurai Warriors 4 Empires is that relationships and stories will be influenced by player’s action/decision, thus bringing infinite playability. That is why there is no new Musou officer in this title. However, we did add over 100 of historical male officers, as well as over 100 historical female characters that left their marks in the Warring States period in Japan. They are all given unique appearance, playable, and can be befriended. Needless to say all Musou will be available for playing and befriending.
Tell us about the Marriage Events.
The Marriage Event is part of ‘human drama’ in this title. Depends on the play style, players can walk their own paths, including the marriage event. Going to battles together and deepening relationships in castle with an officer from an opposite sex may trigger the marriage events. It is possible to create different couple regardless of history.
How does “Residential Administration” work in Empires?
The main new features here are ‘Intuitive Political System,’ a graphical as well as intuitive dashboard for players. The castle contains a cluster of rooms, each function as an administrative office for development, military, and more. Players can use the Castle interface to place valued allied officers as Magistrates in each room and to assign various tasks to them. The basic flow of this system is for players to decide whether or not adopt proposals submitted by Magistrates.
Officers have strong and weak points. There are certain proposals that can only be made by specific officers. This is a good place to show players’ ability for making decisions which officers to use, what proposals to adopt, for such decisions may change the rest of your gameplay.
As the number of territories under players control increases through success in battle, home castle can grow to a multi-tiered stronghold. This allows more Magistrates to be appointed and a wider range of policies to be proposed. Through some turning points, the castle is developed into a development type, a military type, and more. Players’ decision on selecting a type of home castle may change the gameplay of this title.
What kind of downloadable content can we expect to see in the future?
Currently planned downloadable contents are special costumes of Japanese summer kimono for Musou officers, special home castles, campaign scenarios, and more.
Samurai Warriors 4-II felt like the definitive version of the game. Are there more plans to expand in terms of sequels, or is that story now told?
I do not have anything to say now, but we continue to make our best efforts to release more enjoyable titles. Please look forward to our future announcements.
When localizing the Warriors games in general, how does feedback from the west shape changes made during the development cycle?
It is difficult to say as teams work differently for different Warriors titles. Of course, opinions and feedbacks from native English speakers staff are incorporated into the development cycle. At the same time, we have a number of Western team members, so that we continuously adopt comments from them.
Samurai Warriors 4: Empires which launches in the west on March 15th, let us know what you thought of the interview in the comments section below.
A new full trailer for Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator has been released by Arc System Works and in this trailer we see a number of the new characters for this iteration of the game, such as Johnny Sfondi, Jack-O, Jam Kuradoberi, Kum Haehyun, Raven, and of course a teaser silhouette for Dizzy who will be included thanks to winning a fan poll but has yet to be fully revealed. The key visuals for the game have also been released and can be found both above and below.
Currently Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator is set to be released for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 on May 27th in Japan and will be released in North America on June 7th and June 10th in Europe.
Last week Idea Factory International introduced us to a few familiar old faces in Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force and this week they are doing the same with six more characters that have undergone a couple of cosmetic updates. The ones being introduced this time are Sherman, a Fencer on a mission to collect Furies to ensure world peace, Ryshuin who is Sherman’s fairy partner, Ethel, a Fencer that attacks Fang, Karin, Ethel’s fairy partner who is gentle and a stark contrast to Ethel, Harley who is a scientist that studies fairies, and Bahus, Harley’s fairy.
The character art for these six can be found below and as for the game itself, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force is a PlayStation 4 exclusive that adds additional story paths tot he base game and follows Fang as he faces off against new opponents, meets new fairies, and fights alongside six party members at a time.
