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Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Sakurazuka, is Pirate Warriors friendly to people who've never read/watched One Piece? Like does it properly go into its story? I've always wanted to get into that franchise but Jesus there's just so much manga and anime behind it that it becomes this daunting task. If Pirate Warriors can bring newbies "up to speed" to a certain point, that'd be great.

RyanManRules posted:

Is pirate warriors available now? Or is it :filez:

I believe it came out last week in Europe on Blu-ray but is out this Tuesday in North America on digital.

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Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

If you have a Japanese PSN account, you can go and grab the demo for Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires now. As you might expect, the entire demo is in Japanese. Don't let this dissuade you though from trying it, I figured out just about what everything did in the important parts within a few minutes of trial and error. It's around 1100MB in size.

Anyway, the big draw of the demo is the Edit Mode, which allows you to create your own officer. Tecmo Koei was actually really cool about this and apparently gives you the entire, retail level Edit Mode for the demo with no features removed. The officers you create and save will actually carry over into the final version, but that won't apply to you unless you plan on buying a Japanese version of the game.

Edit Mode's got quite a few features too. There seem to be a lot more creation options per section than just the usual 4/5 you might see in previous Empires games, although some complaints I have are that there seem to be 3 "basic" faces and Nobunyaga isn't in the demo (because apparently he's a pack-in DLC thing) so I just made some evil dark not-Nobunaga with black and gold armor. Move setup is kind of neat too. You can pick your weapon style, which includes all the DW7XL and the new Empires cast, and choose your EX, ground, and air musou attacks.

After you create your officer, you can take them for a test drive. You hit square on the officer select screen and you get the option to try them out in a mock battle. It's a short, five minute battle like you would typically find in an Empires game where you and the new DW7 Empires dude basically smack down a bunch of Wu dudes lead by Xiahou Dun for some reason. They give you a really strong weapon and level you up pretty high so you get a good idea as to how your dude will perform at his prime. The frame rate felt really wonky for some reason, like in the beginning of the demo I kept randomly dropping to what felt like mid 20s? It played just like DW7 though so I can't complain all that much.

The new Metroid Prime-ish HUD is kind of weird. It's functionally the exact same as your usual DW HUD, but with curved bars. Tecmo Koei finally fixed one of my huge annoyances with the Create-A-Warrior characters too: they give your guys their own officer dialogue portrait instead of a shadow face. It's a little different from the usual portrait, as it's an in-game model of your character's upper body rather than a picture of their face, but it's the little things that matter to me sometimes.

Policenaut fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Oct 11, 2012

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Oh and in actual news, Tecmo Koei is announcing a new Dynasty Warriors thing on November 1st. A lot of news comments I'm reading make the guess that it's something to do with Wii U, like maybe a version of DW7 for it.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

The GIG posted:

How In depth in the crate mode? I'm a sucker for any of those in a game.

I'd call it more in-depth than what I've seen in previous Empires games. It seems like most sections have around 10-20 different creation options, so there's a lot of room for customization. Faces have the basic templates then the eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, and accessory slots. Clothing has hat, shirt, gloves, pants, and shoes. There's the previously mentioned weapon styles, EX move, and musous to select, along with your basic starting stats and some other option at the end I couldn't figure out.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Samurai Warriors 3 Empires is the absolute closest we've ever gotten to RoTK and the Warriors franchises merging together.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

RoTK12 is on PC, PS3, and Wii U but they probably aren't gonna see US release.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

All I remember doing was like his SST combo or whatever where he did his Jesus powers in like two directions and he was strong enough that it one hit killed most grunts.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Some new details about DW8
  • Bringing back seamless transitions between movie and battle
  • Focus on the Jin dynasty :swoon:
  • Yue Jin and Li Dian are the two new additions
  • New Attack: "Storm Rush", activated by having an "edge" over the enemy warlord which allows you to "breakthrough their battle stance and retaliate with a series of swift strikes."
  • New Defensive Option: "Variable Counter", apparently is some kind of Just Guard/Parry sort of thing that can counter enemy warlord attacks and sends them and any other nearby enemy back to get some breathing room. Could be useful on harder modes.
  • New? Offensive Option: "Awakening". The usual thing you've seen in like every other Japanese action game where you get a huge boost to your parameters, also changes your Musou to True Musou and ups the item drop rate.

BOW DOWN TO JIN

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

EDIT 2: Here are Zhou Yu, Sun Shang Xiang, and Li Dian




EDIT: Wait I think I misread here. They're re-designs of older officers?

Policenaut fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Oct 31, 2012

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

I think the news itself is new, but not the type of news. I don't think we're ever going to see a disc release for a minor Warriors game anymore in North America, just PSN until the big time releases like DW8.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8uEDF8qtlk

Fist of the North Star 2 gameplay video. Kenshiro seems to move/attack much faster now.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Well, it doesn't look anything like Hokuto no Ken so I'm just gonna go ahead and assume it's from HnK2. I like to believe I've successfully wiped all memory of that show from my mind.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b49HNayT0gw

Shin Hokuto Musou trailer.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Yo Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires is dropping February 19th in North America and the 22nd in Europe

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Hey, you! Yeah YOU! You wanna play Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2 right now? Well, go turn on your PS3 and download the brand new demo from the Japanese PSN. It's 753 MB.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Just gave the Hokuto Musou 2 demo a whirl. Here's a bunch of words about the game you can read if you're a cool dude who's down with the Hokuto. It's well established by now that I like to write way too many loving words about Musou games, so enjoy.

The demo lets you play the very beginning of the game as Kenshiro. You get a tutorial which takes place briefly before the events of the first episode, where an old villager leads Kenshiro to the town only to be murdered along the way. Don't worry, it's not an escort mission. The tutorial's nothing special, but I enjoyed it far more than Hokuto Musou 1's indulgent "Lv.99 Kenshiro wrecks everything" sequence. You learn how to do attacks, special attacks, how to collect items, and the basics of Kenshiro's R1 Hokuto attack (the thing with the thumbs). I forget if this was a feature of HM1, but stages are peppered with "missions". You'll find a dude or see an event and be told something like "Save the old man!" and you'll have to do something in a set amount of time to receive a ranking. Some of these are actually pretty hard and are clearly intended for you to come back later to kick the poo poo out of them.

One REALLY weird change from the Musou formula is that you no longer break open barrels/crates/whatever to obtain items. You have to press the Triangle button in front of the crate, and Kenshiro will open the crate to reveal the item. I actually really like this, because now you won't accidentally bash open a needed item crate in the middle of a fight and waste an item you didn't need. On the other hand, you might be stressed for time like in Jagi's HM1's "RUN AWAY FROM THOUZER!!!" mission. It seems to work fine. There are actual distinctions now between the item sources too. A crate will give a healing item, while a treasure chest will give some kind of character building item.

The second stage is another tutorial where you guide Bat out of the prison while Zeed attacks the village. Again, this sounds bad but it's an escort mission in the vaguest sense. Bat has the smarts to know to stay the gently caress out of Kenshiro's way and hides in a corner for most of it. You learn about treasure chests, the grab/throw function, and how to charge special attacks.

There's another new mechanic following this: some kind of Hokuto glowing energy goddess statue thing. You step inside it and Start to access a character management, which means you can now improve your characters in a level as well as outside of it. You can equip skills into five different slots, which have your variety of Musou standard improvements and abilities. This seems to be really involved too. Skills can level up and apparently have some kind of cost. Each slot has a total of 3 empty circles, and when you equip a skill it seems to take up a number of them in that slot. Something that's really cool is that these 5 slots are actually connected on a vertical scale, and skills can improve depending on how they're linked together. The end of the first boss fight gives you 2 new skills on top of the one earned in the beginning, if you connect the two skills that are both Attack Ups on the left side you get +7 Attack instead of the +2 you'd get for both unconnected. I can see this system having a ton of potential!

There's a second feature here that it wouldn't let me access in the demo, so I can't really tell you anything about it.

Speaking of level ups, let me tell you about them. Characters have 5 basic stats: Health, Spirit, Attack, Defense, and what I think is Technique/Special? These five stats are all independent from each other, rather than tied to a generic EXP system, and they level up on their own. So you can have like Lv. 2 Health and Lv. 5 attack and so on. Was HM1 like this? I haven't played it in like 2 years.

Anyway, after the goddess thing you leave the prison and immediately fight Zeed. It's your standard arena fight with respawning enemies. Just like in HM1, boss fights are segmented into three "stages" that are reached when you knock enough health off the boss. It means that you can't whale on Zeed TOO fast because when you reach the end of one bar you have to let him get up and do his thing THEN beat the poo poo out of him. It's annoying. Something I noticed at this point is that characters can apparently emanate a kind of "aura" to them that causes lesser foes to cower in fear. By the third stage of the Zeed fight, the grunts spawning in actually ran away and cowered in the corner, begging me not to come over. That's right, enemies in this game will actually recognize that Kenshiro just murdered 150 dudes and go "HEY WE SHOULD GET THE gently caress OUT OF HERE" instead of thinking that them being dude 151 means they're bound to succeed.

The end of the fight signals the classic moment where Kenshiro does the 100 Hyakuretsu Ken on Zeed and we get the You're Already Dead moment. The QTEs return for this, but Tecmo Koei listened to feedback and made it a simple single button press that doesn't take you out of the game and into some anime red hell scape while Ai wo Torimodose plays. It's actually thematically appropriate now. This signals the end of the stage, and you're ranked on 4 different things. I believe it's Kills, A Ranks Attained, EXP Collected, and Level Time. You unlock a few couple new skills too.

The second stage in the demo is the one that directly follows the Zeed fight, where Kenshiro and Bat are wandering the wasteland. They come across the dude with the tree seeds being attacked by Spade and his men. You have a short timed gauntlet to rescue the old man, then learn about environmental damage and weapons before fighting Spades himself. It's a really short mini-boss fight that ends with you initiating the QTE to do the cool sequence where Kenshiro grabs the arrow shot at point blank and flicks it back into his eye. This is where the demo ends.

Okay so let me talk for a minute about how this plays.

Tecmo Koei sure as hell listened to people when they complained that Kenshiro was like the worst character in HM1. His general movement and attacks are much faster than the original, and even in his basic Lv. 1 state he is capable of doing more crowd control damage than he could before. The first SSSTT I did to a crowd of enemies essentially vaporized every enemy on my screen, and knocked back the stragglers. Kenshiro is buff as heck now. On top of this, he also has a brand new randomized Chaos effect in his attacks. So when attacking random mooks there's a chance that the Hokuto effect will kick in and kill them instantly. Maybe this was in HM1, I forget. I thought it was cool.

A huge change comes from the air attacks, in which there are none. Tecmo Koei realized everyone hated jumping, so Kenshiro just doesn't jump anymore. This is a welcome change because the X button now serves as a button for invincibility-framed dodging and parrying. You can now dodge through dangerous attacks and Kenshiro also has an incredibly useful parry command when pressed without moving. Similar to HM1, this parry is insanely good, the window on it is humongous and it's omni-directional. When triggered Kenshiro will avoid taking damage and do an invincibility framed counter attack to knock his enemies back. The downside to this is that Parry takes away a percentage of your Musou meter. You can apparently spam it too, I ran face first into Zeed's ground pound musou and parried through the entire thing.

Speaking of enemy musous, you can now break enemies out of theirs. When Zeed was doing a red musou attack against me, I managed to hit him hard and fast enough while he was doing it and stopped it dead in its tracks. I am unsure if this applies to Kenshiro as well, but it means that players can actually fight back against musou attacks now.

Before I go, let me tell you about the story presentation.

As you might have seen, HM2 has both "manga" and "cinematic" style of presentation. The manga style is typically used for moments that don't lead into any kind of gameplay. For example: when Kenshiro first meets Lynn and Bat in the jail cell, it's done in manga style, but the cutscene where Zeed's men attack is done in cinematic. Manga style seems to be hit-or-miss. While they do get the blocking and such accurate at times to the manga, the 3D models and the camera panning gives it this cheap look. It's like if they just filmed it in Garry's Mod or something. They really should have just done stylized graphics for them. Both kinds of cutscenes have QTEs now too. You have to QTE Kenshiro healing Lin and reflecting Spades' bolt. I have no idea whether or not you can actually fail these, as they're pretty easy and the window on them seems pretty big.

The cutscenes have a major failing in that they put some characters who obviously aren't as well rendered as Kenshiro into the foreground, where you can see how lazily slapdashed they are. Lin's eyebrows are the fuzziest pixels you will ever see, and Bat's goggles look barely textured. On top of that, they seem to have some kind of slowdown? The cinematic ones have faint moments where everything seems to go a bit slower, even when it's something really simple.

Graphics are what you'd expect. Brown. The second stage with Spade actually has a ton of grass and moss and stuff though, so it's a welcome change. Grunts are grunts, bosses are bosses, the Hokuto attacks still look okay I guess. Not much I can say about a Musou sequel.

The demo gave me a fairly decent idea of what this sequel is like, in that it's a much more expanded, fleshed out one that attempts to listen to some of the complaints made about the original. Whether or not they follow through on this is yet to be seen, but I felt a lot better after playing this demo than I did for the one for the original. It gives you a genuine idea of what playing the game is like, rather than a lovely boss battle and a single stage.

Here's a words emoticon so you don't have to type it yourself if you want to talk about this :words:

Policenaut fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Nov 29, 2012

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Samurai Warriors 3 Empires has a story mode. I really liked the story mode's implementation, where you play as a general during a certain period of the conflict and have to follow historical events while building your Castle Town. It was really more of a tutorial mode to the standard Empires mode itself though, as you never had to worry about random invasions or backroom dealings. It was always "Okay these dudes are going to attack you in 6 years in Spring, get ready" or something.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

GET READY FOR MORE ONE PIECE



One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 was announced in today's issue of Weekly Jump. This one will be on both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita.

I can't wait until I finally read enough of the manga to not be cheated by the original game. I'm on volume 17! Only like... 43 volumes to go! :shepicide:

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

I love Gundam and Dynasty Warriors but Dynasty Warriors: Gundam disgusts me. I devoted so much time into DWG2 before my original PS3 died (and took my 99% complete save with it...) and looking back on it I can safely say I really didn't enjoy it all that much.

Like Sanders is saying, the dissonance between the Musou formula and Gundam feels kind of weird. The battles never got THAT big until the very end, but they have Amuro Ray killing hundreds of Zakus in mission 1 and it's incredibly awkward. Nothing about it really feels like Gundam, aside from the odd stage they perfectly adapt like the finale battle in the colony gun from Zeta, and the Musou model doesn't fit Gundam at all.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Jibo posted:

Well you're half way to where it starts to get really good. Seriously, I just read through it all so I could play the game and Volume 34 is where they get to Water 7 which is where it really started to hold my interest. Around 50 or 51 is where it gets pretty hard to put down.

This sounds pretty encouraging. I'm already really enjoying the manga so far, it sort of reminds me of DBZ only things actually happen and its got pirates. I just wish it would lay off on the flash backs at a little. That volume which turned into a giant flashback halfway right as Luffy started fighting the Ice King was such a god drat tease.

My hopes are that by the time I finish reading all the manga, Pirate Warriors 1 wont cost $50 on the PSN :psyduck:

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Twelve by Pies posted:

I'm more confused why Guo Huai got put in Jin instead of Wei, besides the fact that that's where he died in the story...that still seems an odd reason to put him there. Anyway I didn't think the Jin campaign in 7 was even that great. I mean it wasn't terrible, more stages are always great, but nothing really super interesting happened, it was just "random generic officer is revolting, Jiang Wei is invading again, repeat three or four more times."

The real charm to Jin's campaign were the characters themselves, rather than the events of it. I found the entire Jin cast list to be chock full of really fun characters with interesting play styles that were just so different from the rank and file of the other three. I kept expecting the game to give me a character who was absolutely awful to play as, but it just never happened. This might be due to the fact that Jin had a much lesser cast size than the other three kingdoms due to the late game nature, but it sort of felt they had this "everyone has to have something unique" angle.

That's why I'm super excited for Dynasty Warriors 8 putting a huge focus on Jin, because the cast list for the kingdom was an all-time favorite for me and I'd love to see more of it. The Simas are my favorite characters in DW now because of Jin. Whether it's good ol' Sima Yi laughing as he nukes dudes, Sima Shi channeling Lelouch Lamperouge, or Sima Zhao's soldier surfboard, I'm totally down for more Sima family antics.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Samurai Sanders posted:

Sima Zhao is my least favorite of them, but he's also the lead. I run into this problem a lot in Japanese games these days...

I was really pleased that his incredibly anime character arc, complete with nagging childhood friend slash girlfriend and much more talented older brother who is also a rival, didn't end with some kind of typical pseudo-inspirational moment about hope, family, loyalty, or anything like that. He just goes "Holy poo poo! All of you are DUMBASSES!" and proceeds to curbstomp the kingdoms. It was like watching the birth of an anime Red Forman.

But yeah, beyond that he was kind of bland compared to Full Bamboo Jacket, Sad Painter, Crazy Strategist, Lelouch, or Xiahou Ba On Vacation.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

You guys should probably go to a site like PS3Trophies or something if you want to wrap up those online ones, I'm sure there's dudes in their forums for DWG3 who need to finish it up too.

Belzac posted:

And Empires is right around the corner with a whole new host of ridiculous grinding. 7 is the only DW game I've ever gotten all the achievements for, it's pretty easy by comparison to all the others.

DW6: Empires can be completed in a day, like 80% of the trophies are "win 1 battle as THIS character".

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

First screenshots and info for One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 are out.

I don't really know any of the new locations or characters or whatnot because I'm only at the climax of the Alabasta Arc, but I'll itemize it for you:
  • Game is set after the time skip during the "New World Saga"
  • New characters (i.e. Enel) and stages (Sky Island)
  • New "powered-up actions" and gameplay modes

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 is coming to Europe next Summer. Tecmo Koei Europe always confirms this stuff way in advance of TK USA so you can just assume that it's going to happen in North America. Only the PS3 version is confirmed so far.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

I'm almost willing to actually shell out for Hokuto Musou 2 when it drops on the NA PSN in February after playing the demo, but I'd really need to see how much KT USA will charge for it and read the Japanese impressions to make sure. I mean I only rented the original and managed to platinum it in that time, so going from $7 to a $40-50 digital investment is kind of much.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

thorsilver posted:

OK, this is from pages ago, but I've been wondering given your regular references to this game: is it good? Amazon.co.jp reviews seem pretty harsh on it, but then again it seems to me Amazon reviews are generally harsh in Japan, so who knows.

Imports of this seem much cheaper nowadays, so if it's worth $40 and it's a good attempt at an RoTK/Warriors hybrid then I might check it out.

I thought it was a really interesting take on the Empires concept, which baffles me in how Koei seems to be dismissing it for DW7:E. Would I call it a good game? Yeah, I'd say I had fun with it. I had this humongous effort post in the old Dynasty Warriors thread about the system mechanics behind it, but if you've ever wanted the classic RoTK 7/8/10 style city development in an Empires game then it'll do nicely.

The big problem is that it's not all that fleshed out compared to SW3's base game or that advanced in comparison to SW2:E. Castle Town is an amazing idea that feels really rewarding to develop and manage over the years, but there's an abysmal level of strategy and political maneuvering to access. If you've played SW3 already, then you've seen all the stages, characters, and heard all the music. On top of that, the game pretty much demands that you play through the History mode before tackling the Free mode, as you unlock a huge amount of powerful structures by completing characters and befriending certain officers that you'll certainly need to prevent entering no win situations. The game has a bonafide equipment carry over system though, where weapons, armor, and accessories found and crafted can be taken into other games, but you still have the standard "start every battle at Level 1 and get EXP" thing.

You definitely can't go wrong for $40 if you like Warriors games and Empires. I paid something around the range of $65 for my copy and came away rather pleased with the whole thing. It's not as advanced as you might like an Empires game to be, but it comes pretty drat close.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GKC7WHSY0g

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 teaser trailer

thorsilver posted:

Thanks for the write-up! Given what you've said, it sounds worth my $40 at least. I'm definitely someone who wants RoTK-style city development in an Empires game.

From what you describe, this sounds actually more appealing to me than the current direction of the Nobunaga/RoTK games. Those both seem to be going down the road of simpler battles and less features on the strategic map, presumably to appeal to a broader crowd (or at least so I've heard, having not actually sat down with NA13 or RoTK12 yet myself).

Seems to me the best of both worlds would be a deeper Empires game, where the strategic map is full of cool options and city-building stuff, politics, etc., then simply resolve battles in Dynasty Warriors style instead of sub-par RTS style.

I guess DW7:E is moving away from this, though? Was the demo pretty disappointing in that respect, or is there still hope?

Yeah, I don't believe DW7:E has Castle Town which I find incredibly disappointing. The demo itself wasn't that bad, to be honest, but it only let you muddle around with the CAW system and a single battle. The game's out now in Japan if you'd like to read some Amazon.jp reviews or something, but I haven't played the full version myself. I'm planning to buy it at some point along with Hokuto Musou 2 when they drop on the PSN in the West.

I should probably elaborate just a little bit more on Castle Town though, because more than a few people ask me what the deal is with it. It's sort of a bizarre cross between Sim City and Dark Cloud. You have a map with a certain number of open lots, and every season you receive a certain increased amount of food, people, and money depending on how your city is structured. Buildings created can have basic effects, like shops increase money and rice paddies increase food, but then you have cooler buildings that double gold production or increase soldier strength. You have to manage soldier and civilian population as well as city order, just like in RoTK as well. The real depth to Castle Town comes from building upgrades, which work in a strange manner involving proximity to related buildings.

Most buildings can be upgraded from level 1 to level 4, performed by surrounding one building from all 4 sides by buildings of a higher level. So say you have a 3x3 set of shops, the one in the middle may transform into a level 2 shop as the season changes. You swap that out for one of the level 1s, and it may turn into a level 2 also. Surround a level 2 with other level 2s and it may turn into a 3, and so on. A huge emphasis is placed on positioning, especially when it comes time to evolve buildings. If you place 4 level 3s in a square 2x2 formation, they transform into a singular all-powerful level 4 building. BUT! You could also place those level 3 shops next to a certain level 3 building of another type (I forget which one) and it'll transform into a level 1 market, which has even greater benefits. And the previously mentioned leveling and transformation rules still apply to this new evolved building, so you can create super money making buildings!

It's a lot more "active" than RoTK's time invested = numerical improvement system, but it's also limited in the sense that each Castle Town is restricted in the amount of space you have. You aren't able to use the entire town when you start, only by increasing your number of prefectures controlled will it expand. More prefectures levels up your Castle, which in turn broadens the borders of your Town. It sounds very complicated and it'll probably take awhile to get accustomed to it, but I found it really rewarding.

You may want to do a little research before hand, check out some gameplay clips and the like then make your decision. Koei Warriors has a wonderful translation guide and the SW3Z guide on GameFAQs applies perfectly to SW3E.

Policenaut fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Dec 14, 2012

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.



Sima Zhao and Sima Shi get re-designs and there's a new Jin officer: Jia Chon, who uses the "buton blade". Not sure if I like the Sima bros' new outfits.

edit:



Sima Yi looks regal as gently caress! The girl is Zhang Chunhua, who was Yi's first wife. Her weapon is string apparently? I think she's like Kasuga from Sengoku BASARA or something.

Policenaut fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Dec 19, 2012

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Famitsu has the first screenshots of the updated Jin cast, including Wang Yuanji!

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Samurai Sanders posted:

I think they deliberately made the Jin character's clothes all futuristic because they are the future of China, or something.

I think this might actually be the case, because I've been looking at the redesigns for the Shu, Wei, and Wu cast and (for the most part) a lot of them look pretty similar to their original designs. Jin, on the other hand, look like they all stepped out of a spaceship of what ancient Chinese people might consider the future.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

New Jump Festa trailer for DW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCypisQFzE

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Sima Yi's weapon looks like one of those frilly glowsticks you bought when you were a kid with the tips that lit up when you turned the knob and you waved them around in class.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNCtC00qO_o

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 official trailer

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

English trailer for OP: PW 2. I'd love to get excited, but I only just finished the Alabasta arc. Tecmo Koei also talks about things they plan to improve upon with One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1skYaYLcTo

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

SirPhoebos posted:

So I picked up a PS3 recently (credit for the sale goes to Okami HD :swoon:) and I now want to take a crack at the Empires demo, but I can't find it on Playstation Store :(

I think I can help.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Yeah, it's Tecmo Koei's New Years card. It's a big thing in Japan to put out something like that for New Years, a lot of companies do it.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Suben posted:

Extremely late on actually playing DW7 and hoooooly gently caress is Shu's story mode The Worst. Like I know they tend to get preferential treatment in the series and in the novel but DW7 seems to have ramped it up to obscene levels to the point where even the book would be like "dude, tone it down a bit would you". The Three Brothers are the greatest people ever and every officer of Shu is just oh so noble and purehearted but none moreso than Liu Bei who is far more good than Jesus Christ himself and if you so much as side glance at him then you're an irredeemably terrible person and Shu is so good that even their famously incompetent ruler Liu Shan is actually a beacon of righteousness. Also, Shu is powered by excessive amounts of benevolence and virtue.

I've never really liked Shu and thought they always had the more boring characters in the series but I kind of wanted to throw up the entire time I was playing their story.

Meanwhile Wu is just going to slide more and more into irrelevance with each game and late era Wu and dudes like Lu Kang may as well not exist considering they're getting Lu Su and Han Dang if the leaked roster is true, and it's been right so far.

You are going to love Jin's storyline so very, very much.

Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

Himuro posted:

Holy gently caress.

I may end up getting Ken's Rage 2 after all.

http://youtu.be/tAiXBqPUc0A

The... the true successor of Hokuto Shinken! God drat I guess all that time watching Kenshiro kick rear end paid off for her.

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Policenaut
Jul 11, 2008

On the moon... they don't make Neo Kobe Pizza.

I'm pretty sure literally everything about HnK2 is just them making it up.

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