FUNimation has been announcing several acquisitions for the Winter 2015 simulcast season recently. Many new shows are premiering in January and many shows are returning for another season.
Rolling Girls was announced for simulcast at a to-be-announced date. A description of the series is provided below.
Gun your engines and get ready for the full-throttle adventure of The Rolling Girls, the first original anime from the studio that brought you Attack on Titan! In the wake of the Great Tokyo War, Japan, as the world once knew it, no longer exists. What remains is a fragmented network of independent nations ruled by heroes known as the Bests. Each Best commands an army made of the Rest as they seek to conquer anyone in their path. Enter Nozomi, Yukina, Ai, and Chiaya. These four intrepid and adorable girls are ordered by their Best to travel across the country by motorcycle, keeping a watchful eye on the field of battle wherever they encounter violence between warring nations!
Death Parade was announced with a premiere date of January 9, 2015 at 12:28pm ET. The episodes that follow will be broadcast on Fridays at 11:30am ET. A description of the series is provided below.
There is a place after death that’s neither heaven nor hell. A bar that serves you one chance to win. You cannot leave until the game is over, and when it is, your life may be too. From Studio Madhouse (Death Note, Black Lagoon) comes a thrilling new series where the stakes are high and the rules are simple: your life is on the line.
Sequels and returning series include: Tokyo Ghoul √A, Fairy Tail, Shonen Hollywood, One Piece, Yona of the Dawn, Kamisama Kiss 2 and Garo the Animation.
Lastly, a home video release was announced for Inari Kon Kon (Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha), which will include the OVA episode. It has not been clarified if there will be a Blu-ray release, but it was confirmed that this will be a subtitled-only release, a rare decision for FUNimation. A free digital calendar featuring artwork from the series is available here. A synopsis is provided below.
Inari is a cheerful girl in Kyoto who has a crush on one of the coolest guys in her middle school, but she can’t seem to confess her feelings to him. After saving a beautiful goddess’s familiar, the deity blesses Inari with the ability to shapeshift—much to the chagrin to the rest of the spiritual world. Will love bloom for the newly empowered girl when the spirits intervene?
There are still more announcements to come from FUNimation in the near future.
Tindalos Interactive & Focus Home Interactive have released their first gameplay trailer for Etherium. The trailer for the new RTSÂ show us very polished graphics, with the weather effects showing off the dynamic game engine. The GUI looks clean and well laid out, though stylized quite differently from other strategy games.
The large campaign brings to mind Star Wars: Empire at War. You build fleets and send them to planets in order to colonize them and build up tech trees. Then, battles occur both in space and on the ground. Battles can be won by either destroying enemy bases, or by destroying their space fleet, offering a twist on standard RTS engagements.
The presentation of Etherium looks to be one of the more beautiful RTS’ I’ve seen. The single player campaign brings to mind Sins of a Solar Empire, with fleets warping in from planet to planet. Players are not given a linear path for the campaign, and they can choose how they wish to conquer the solar system. Space segments in Etherium are turn-based, while the ground segments are real-time. Much like the collaboration for EVE Online & Dust 514, space fleets will be able to aid on-the-ground troops.
The bulk of the title will be ground combat, and it looks stunning. It is a resource based game, with units being flown down from your space fleet. Players will be unable to amass swarms of one unit type; various units have distinct advantages over others, so you’ll need mix troop types.
Weather effects in the game are more than just a visual effect. Various types of weather affect combat and unit movement, adding a degree of realism into the futuristic strategy game.
Etherium will be available in early 2015 for PC, and can be preordered right now on Steam.
Allow me to be upfront with you: I loved the tabletop miniature version of Mordheim. Sure, some warbands were overpowered and some unit builds were infinitely exploitable… but what endeared to me was the semi-RPG aspect of having a warband which grew more powerful with experience as the campaign progressed. When I first heard about the development of this title, I was eager to see just how well (if at all) the developers had recreated this sense of progression and growth. Unfortunately, this aspect is yet to be implemented… among pretty much a lot of other features which made the original Mordheim so interesting for me. What has been shown so far in the early access of Mordheim: City of the Damned is a fairly robust base for the rest the strategy/RPG to be built upon.
The early access for the game is the very essence of basic. There are currently only three warbands available from which the player can choose. These options are the Sisters of Sigmar, the Skaven, and Human Mercenaries. At the current build you can select any of the above warbands and customise each individual unit to your heart’s content.
There is quite a lot of detail which has gone into this aspect of the game so far, with multiple builds available in accordance with the equipment that you give each unit. Most items provide different bonuses to hit/damage while others, such as swords and shields, provide the option to parry attacks/mitigate damage. To me, it felt largely balanced and I got the impression that it would be quite easy for me to spend a significant amount of time on individually working out the perfect build for each member of my warband. I have a feeling that someone will eventually work out the optimum build for a warband but until then it’s still fun to equip your units in accordance with your own stratagems.
Although each warband has a similar structure, with each containing space for a mixture of heroes, henchmen, and a single special unit, there is plenty of asymmetrical design to keep each warband unique. This largely keeps to the spirit of the original tabletop game, which is good in its own way, but hopefully the devs have learnt the lesson of the source material and worked to carefully balance the asymmetric gameplay of each of the warbands. On my playthroughs, I favoured the Sisters of Sigmar for their ability to dual-wield Sigmarite warhammers (Basically Holy Warhammers which pack a punch).
Having kitted out my holy rollers to my specifications (Insert joke about it being *Hammer Time*) I ventured to forth to play a number of skirmishes. Skirmishes are currently the only available game mode as of writing, but a campaign mode with progression and persistent wounds appears to be on the cards soon enough. I could never quite get into a multiplayer skirmish whenever I jumped on. Whether this is because there is a problem with my connection to the servers or that the Australian timezone doesn’t match up well with the game’s peak player activity is not known to me. Instead, my holy-rollers and I spent a good solid number of hours wailing on a variety of AI-controlled opponents (alongside dabbling with other, less sanctified warbands).
Whether versing a human or a computer, the base game remains the same with your warband attempting to eliminate the opposing force by either killing them all or forcing them to rout. The gameplay is an interesting mix of turn-based actions with third-person movement. Basically, characters act in initiative order and take it in turns to spend movement or strategy points on various actions. Moving around the map, attacking, taking stances, and various other actions each require a certain amount of points from either of the individual pools. Movement itself is performed by directly moving the unit around with WASD controls and once you cross a threshold (indicated by a blue circle around the character) you spend an additional movement point. Other actions such as climbing or attacking, which have a chance of failure, are shown with the percentage chance of success when the player highlights them. Factors such as out-numbering, weapon types, and positioning all come in to play to determine the outcome of these battles. This design provides for an interesting turn-based experience as the player guides their warband through the ruins to engage with the enemy.
It is at this point that I should probably point out that the maps are absolutely amazing. There are a limited number of maps currently available but I must absolutely commend the developers for their incarnation of the ruined city of Mordheim. It may not be the most graphically pretty urban space to grace your screen, but the city itself feels like its own foreboding character with plenty of ruins, side streets, traps, and Cronenbergian flesh growths strewn about the place. The distinct grim and macabre nature of the Warhammer setting is present in spades throughout the city with a distinct feeling of oppressive gloom. I look forward to having the ‘loot’ interaction properly integrated so that I will finally have a reason to actively search through these ruins and to see more of the terrain.
The design of the unit models themselves is similarly detailed and in-keeping with the source material. Unfortunately, customisation of units before a battle is somewhat limited as armour does not change regardless of what type has been equipped but at least weapons do change to reflect the selected option. The models are all suitable digital recreations of the tabletop figurines with great amounts of details. The music is similarly suited to the setting with the score playing ominously to match the grandeur of the ruined city. The music in this instance reminds me somewhat of a cross between the soundtrack of Diablo II and the Dawn of War series.
With all of this in mind, there is a still a lot of work which needs to be done (and to which I’m looking forward to). As I’ve mentioned previously, the ‘loot’ option is still not properly integrated but I imagine it will be brought in with the same update which finally enables campaigns. AI warbands also did not appear to field the powerful unique units of each warband (i.e. Rat Ogres) but this has apparently been fixed with a patch at time of writing. I look forward to returning to try out the campaigns and to growing a managing a warband as it explores the city of Mordheim more thoroughly at a later date.
The game is being offered at a discount due to its current state as an unfinished title. It is currently at a stable build with a few glitches here and there mainly involving movement around the map. I would recommend holding off until another major update just to ensure that you have plenty of content to dig into for your first foray into the dark city of Mordheim. If you’re interested to see how the basic gameplay is going feel and you wish to help out with its development, then now is a good a time to get your hands on it.
There has been an unintended victim since the release of the debug .exe file for Dark Souls on the popular modding site Nexus Mods. Durante’s DSFix 2.3.1 was accidentally swept up in the wave of DMCA take downs when the German office of Bandai Namco issued one against the DSFix file on Dropbox.
Fans reacted with anger and confusion on NeoGaf and Reddit as DSFix is a necessity to get the PC port of Dark Souls running well. Durante explains his fix works by intercepting API calls between the game and the computer, thus containing no infringing material.
The latest update from Bandai Namco is that they have recognized that the DMCA take down is in error and that the matter is currently being resolved. In the mean time, those who just picked up Dark Souls during the Steam sale can use the temporary mirror hosted on Mega.
Today Koei Tecmo and Gust has released a slew of new screenshots and details for Atelier Rorona Plus 3DS which is currently set to be released in Japan on March 26th. It has been revealed that the game will contain all of the content added into the Plus version that was previously released for the PS Vita and PS3 though everything has been given a chibi look to work better on the 3DS. This includes the extra mode that involves Totori and Meruru appearing from the future, also in chibi form.
Atelier Rorona Plus 3DS will make use of a revamped battle system that starts like standard battles, featuring either the enemy running into the player on the field or a symbol attack that then transfers into a grid-based battle arena to allow players to easily control their party members and defeat their opponents.
Also shown off in these latest screens are our first look at the Atelier Astrid mode that allows players to play through a small original story following a younger Astrid Zexis and her partner Sterkenburg.
A flyer that is inserted into the thirteenth manga volume of Working!!, as first discovered by Twitter user nobunaga421and reported by Yaraon, has revealed that the third anime season for the series will start airing in July 2015. The title will be similar to past versions as the only change has been an added exclamation point making the official title Working!!!.
A-1 Pictures will return to animate the series and at the moment it is unknown exactly how much of the source material the third season will cover, as there is much left to be tapped since although the manga ended its nine year run in Japan last month, the second season aired back in 2011.
It is worth noting that NIS America has licensed and released both seasons of Working!! in North America under the name Wagnaria!!, meaning that if they follow suit with this third season it will likely be called Wagnaria!!! as well.
We have some good news for fans of To Love-Ru Darkness as it appears that a second anime season for the series has been announced. On Sunday during an event for the series and then confirmed later through the anime’s official Twitter, an announcement was made stating that To Love-Ru Darkness 2nd will be airing sometime in the future.
The original cast will be returning to reprise their roles and although very few details abut the anime are currently known, the key visual that has been released, and can be seen below, does show that the story will progress up to the most recent events in the manga following Yami and Nemesis.
It is worth noting that although the manga has not been licensed for release in the West, Sentai Filmworks previously licensed and released the first season of To Love-Ru Darkness earlier this year.
After revealing that Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker would be hitting North America sometime in early 2015, Atlus USA has revealed what the game’s box art will look like once it finally does hit store shelves.
You can check out the box art below and the company also happened to reveal that if you do pre-order Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, you will be given the game’s soundtrack CD containing a special arrangement from Atlus composer Shoji Meguro and the Atlus Sound Team.
Currently no European release for Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker has been announced, but once the game is released in North America it will feature full English story voice work, a complete re-localization, and a new episode that continues the story past the final day in the original game.,
This week’s issue of Famitsu, courtesy of Hokanko, has revealed that the first PlayStation 4 Hyperdimension Neptunia game, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II, will be released in Japan on April 23rd. Gamers in Japan who pre-order Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II will be given a special art book.
The issue also revealed that the game features music by 5pb founder Chiyomaru Shikura and that the opening theme is performed by nao once again and is called “Sotai-sei VISION.” Currently no localization announcements have been made for Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II but we considering how quickly Idea Factory International has been jumping on the series lately, we can likely expect an announcement sometime next year.
Atlus USA had a lot to reveal for their most recent acquisition, Etrian Mystery Dungeon. Not only did they reveal the box art for the game, which can be seen below, they have also released their first English trailer for the title, also found below. Considering Etrian Mystery Dungeon was announced and revealed less than a month ago in Japan, Atlus has been extremely quick with this title.
Alongside this information came news that anyone who pre-orders or picks up a first-run copy of Etrian Mystery Dungeon will be given a soundtrack CD. Currently Etrian Mystery Dungeon is set to be released on the 3DS in Spring 2015.
