Producer at Koei Tecmo Akihiro Suzuki has revealed that during the making of Bladestorm: Nightmare on the PS4 and Xbox One they did not faced any major issues, but the development team did find the PS4 slightly easier to handle.

“Looking back on developing for Bladestorm: Nightmare, there weren’t any major issues that the team faced for the PS4 or for the Xbox One. But having said that, if you look back at the history of the hardware, Sony has always been saying the PlayStation 4 is going to be much more developer friendly in a sense,” Akihiro said to GamingBolt.

“So maybe that’s why a lot of developers are saying that or indicating that the Xbox one is a bit more harder [to develop for]. But again, for Bladestorm: Nightmare’s team there weren’t any major issues. But having said that, maybe the PlayStation 4 is slightly easier. ”

With the debate on resolution and frame rate being such a hot debate amongst western players, we asked how does a Japan based company like Koei Tecmo handles this kind of a situation. Akihiro stated that although a higher frame used to be a priority before, they are now pushing for better visuals, resolution and a variable frame rate instead.

“At Koei Tecmo it may depend on the project we undertake, but starting from the PlayStation era say the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 era obviously frame rate was important to us. So we had to make sure sixty frames was always expected as a standard to start with. But having said that we couldn’t jeopardize the visual expression of the game, as that’s also important to our franchise and all the games we make. So in terms of balancing, we don’t seem frame rate being that important as it used to be. ”

“Obviously looking at our Dynasty Warriors games, most of them actually have varying frame rates. So depending on the circumstance of the battle some scenes actually move at sixty frames, but with these areas we wanted to make sure that we at least reach the minimum visual quality. ”

“So in such instance that the frame rate drops to let’s say thirty frames and in this way we make sure we get the right visuals to appear on the screen. So you know, for us, if we had to pick one or the other we would slightly prefer resolution as we would like to make sure that we have the right visuals to appear on screen in any given area of the game.”

Bladestorm: Nightmare releases this month on the PS4 and Xbox One.

Speaking to Bladestorm: Nightmare’s producer Akihiro Suzuki, GamingBolt can confirm that the game will run at 1080p and 30 frames per second on the PlayStation 4. However the Xbox One version does not have a definite resolution which possibly points towards a dynamic resolution.

“So talking about the PlayStation 4 to start with, it’s going to be 1080p at thirty frames per second. On the PlayStation 3, again it’s going to be at thirty frames per second and it’s going to be at 720p. With the Xbox One it’s going to use auto-scaling, so there’s no specific resolution,” Suzuki said to GamingBolt in a recent interview.

Dynamic resolution isn’t exactly unheard of. Previous games from Koei Tecmo such as Dead or Alive 5 were rendered with dynamic resolution on the PS3 and Xbox 360 and more recently Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and Dying Light also utilized the same approach on the Xbox One.

Bladestorm: Nightmare releases next month on the PS4 and Xbox One.

It’s no secret that Microsoft and Japan don’t exactly share a productive relationship. Microsoft’s every gaming console till date has struggled in the region whereas companies like Sony and Nintendo are still doing pretty well due to obvious reasons. Just recently the PS4 sold over 1.1 million units in Japan which is not a lot but still substantial enough to indicate that console gaming is not dead in Japan yet.

GamingBolt recently had a chat with Koei Tecmo’s Producer Akihiro Suzuki regarding the upcoming release of Bladestorm: Nightmare on PS4 and Xbox One. During the interview we asked Akihiro about his thoughts on how Xbox One is performing in Japan.

“So when we talk about Japan as a games market, obviously looking back at the Xbox 360 era, Japan has always been struggling with Microsoft consoles and that trend is following with the Xbox One as well. If things continue to move this way and stay as it is then things will continue to be dominated by PlayStation platforms in Japan.”

Microsoft has been traditionally strong in North America and to an extent in UK territories so it seems that once again that the Redmond based company won’t see success in Japan. Of course, Microsoft can turn the tides in their favor but given the situation it does not look likely.

Bladestorm: Nightmare launches next month and we will have more coverage on the game in the coming days.

The game is currently in development under the respected Koei division, Omega Force, the same team that has found major success in a niche market with their work on the Dynasty Warrior Franchise and Warriors Orochi. The title is set to be published by Omega Force’s parent company, Koei, a division of Tecmo Koei Games.

The game is currently slated for a multi region release, coming to Japan on January 29th of 2015 then following a slight delay the game will be brought to the States on March 3rd of 2015 and Europe on March 6th of 2015. The game will be launching on both 7th and 8th generation hardware, being made available on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 whereas Microsoft will only receive an Xbox One build of the game.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

Bladestorm Nightmare is part sequel and part revamped build of a previously released game called Bladestorm: The Hundred Year’s War. To this end, the game is split into two separate pieces, though released as one package. These two separate parts are aptly called Bladestorm: The Hundred Year’s War and Bladestorm Nightmare.

Bladestorm: The Hundred Year’s War is the exact same as the base build of the game that was released in 2007 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Bladestorm Nightmare however, is an original story in a high fantasy setting that is said to include a number of fantastical beings including wizards and dragons.

The game was one of the first titles put on display at the Sony Computer Entertainment Japan press conference that took place in 2014. It was later made available as a playable demo at the Tokyo Game Show 2014 at Koei Tecmo’s booth.

Story

The story elements of Bladestorm Nightmare are split into two parts, “The Hundred Years War” and “Nightmare.”

The Hundred Years War is loosely based on a real world event that was sparked by a conflict over the succession of the throne. From this, a war between France and England is brewed. With the Knights and Common folks of the war effort being either dead or fatigued beyond retrieve, Mercenaries are brought to the fore.

Nightmare is a spin off from the main storyline that is based loosely of The Hundred Years War. As the war wages between the French and the English, a new threat emerges as if from nowhere and begins to attack both sides with unrelenting fury. The French and English call for a truce and unite under a common cause to combat the new threat.

Gameplay

The gameplay tweaks and the new campaign are the main focus of this title with graphical fidelity improvements not being the main goal.

In the Nightmare mode, players can take command of huge armies that are based in the fantasy world that also come with a variety of customisation options. Certain creatures that players encounter can be used as mounts once they are bested in combat.

Enemies from Nightmare game come in many forms, one of these is in the shape of counterparts of The Hundred Years War soldiery. This gameplay mode also includes a new musical score.

Players can assume control of four battalions when they’re in battle with each individual squad numbering up to 200 soldiers. One of the tweaks in the game is that many units will have altered movement speeds to help better simulate a fast moving battlefield.

An online Cooperative mode is available for the story mode as well as an online two player competitive mode that have set rules. The rules are:

Base Takedown – A race to control territory.
Guardian Hunt – Players must defend their own territory whilst destroying the opponents Guardians.
Kill the Captain – A race to defeat the specified captain first.
Monster Extermination – Slay a specific creature, or a specific amount of lesser creatures.

Players that have Bladestorm Data from previous builds of the game can be transfered to Bladestorm: Nightmare.

Characters

Edward, the Black Prince of England – Edward gained his nickname based of his black armour which he always wears onto the battlefield. He is of noble blood and the only hope for England’s future.

Joan of Arc, Maiden of France – Joan of Arc is a young woman with a powerful belief in her ideals and justice. She fights only to free others from the horrors of war.

Joan of Arc, Nightmare Maiden – Barely recognisable when compared to her much fairer former self, the Nightmare Maiden just exudes evil.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.

The title is developed by Omega Force (a development team from within Koei) whilst the game is being published by Koei, the same team behind Nintendo’s Hyrule Warriors game. Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate will be primarily available on Sony consoles, launching on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. The title will also be launching on Xbox One, but not Xbox 360.

It will launch on PS3/PSVita: Jap September 26 2013, US September 2 2014, EU & AUS September 5 2014. PS4: Jap June 26 2014, US September 2 2014, EU & AUS September 5 2014. Xbox One: US September 2 2014, EU & AUS September 5 2014.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 2. Characters

Development

Given the nature of Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, meaning it’s effectively an upgrade, the development cycle focused on changes and new inclusions rather than the development of a new game. Beneath, you can find a list detailing some of these tweaks.

Character performance has been tweaked to alter gameplay by influencing how the play when compared to Warriors Orochi 2.
The level cap has been raised to 100. One level higher than the previous 99.

Character level progression is partly influenced by weapon enhancements, this means that any character which has reached the lofty level cap can still be customised a little by switching these enhancements out.

Reaching the level cap will allow you to “reset” your character for a permanent buff to your characters stats. This could originally only be done three times, but has since been patched to allow for nine resets.
Player characters all receive a second personal skill, these buffs contribute to the overall stats and performance of the players team.

The player can choose to field their entire team and throw them into battle by pressing the Down button.
Players can select which side they play on during Free Mode, this includes the option to play on opposing teams.
Triple Ruse (a stronger version of the Switch Combo attacks) will launch enemies upward for more combos, Triple Ruse also allows easier attack cancelling.

Triple Rush can be combined with up to 50 different combinations for character specific attacks.
“Midair Tie Up Action” is a new aerial attack, it will drain the Musou gauge. How the attack is executed depends on the characters power, speed, technique and wonder.

Two players can perform their individual teams Musou attacks to have all six characters perform a special attack called Shin Musou Burst.
Borrowing from Dynasty Warriors 8, Horse Whistling (which summons your mount) is available by pressing Up.

Rather than carrying two items into the field, players can carry six. Upon reaching level 100 an extra two slots are unlocked.
The array of items in the game has been expanded with new inclusions.

Story

Similar to Warriors Orochi 3, Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate eschews the stylings of the previous games by having the games story mode split into a clearly defined storyline that takes place over 4 chapters and multiple battlefields.

4 new chapters have been included in Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate. These chapters carry the player across two story arcs. They are:
The Tale of the Latter Day.
The Tale of the Former Day.

Gameplay

The clear inspiration for the Warriors Orochi titles has always been Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate borrows very heavily from Dynasty Warriors 7. Anyone familiar with the hack and slash combat that is found in Dynasty Warriors will instantly slide into place whilst playing Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate.

Town features that allow players to converse with the characters in that area and purchase weapons from the store carry over, as does the AI of the enemy, the missing morale gauge, the ability to swim and the ability to climb.

Gameplay mechanics that first showed up in Warriors Orochi 2 return, this includes thing slike the triple attack and switch attack functions.

A new gameplay mode, Gauntlet Mode, which focuses on a 5 man team has been introduced. The goal is to make it out of a mutli tiered dungeon that scales in difficulty. Players can only save once a dungeon level has been cleared. A co-op mode gives two players control of a character of their choice within the team, they can however switch between characters by pressing Up. Any other characters on the team are controlled by AI.

Characters

The following characters have been added to Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate:

• Tamamo
• Yinglong
• Nezha
• Kyubi No Kitsune
• Hundun
• Kasume (dead or alive 5)
• Sterkenburg Cranach (Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland)
• Sophitia Alexandra (soulcalibur IV)

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game. 

Game Overview:

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn was originally released in Japan as Gundam Musou. In the game players will experience their favorite moments from the Gundam franchise. The game features 37 areas in the game’s official mode and the Ultimate mode features more than 150 scenarios.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn is developed by Koei and Omega Force, and published by Namco Bandai. The game is now available for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita.

Check out the video walkthrough of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn below and let us know if you have any questions in the comments section below.

For video game guides, tips and wikis, check out our gaming portal here.

GamingBolt spoke to producer Akihiro Suzuki about the Complete Edition including differences between it and Xtreme Legends, improved visuals on the PlayStation 4 and the overall reception to the game’s launch across the world. Check out Suzuki’s responses below.

Rashid Sayed: Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition will include the original game and expansion pack. It will be available soon for North America and Europe on the Vita and PS4, but how has the reception been for the game’s launch in Japan?

Akihiro Suzuki: This is the first time we released a “Complete Edition” in Japan for consoles, and with the many additional features and added value, it has been doing extremely well; especially since we released both “Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends” and “Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition” for the PS3 in Japan, and the PS3 CE version is selling a lot more than we expected.

"Since we couldn’t release a launch title for the PS3, we took this opportunity to release DW8XLCE as a launch title for the PS4 in Japan, and our fans have been strongly receptive."

Rashid Sayed: What are your thoughts on the PS4’s launch in Japan compared to the PS3? Is the reception comparatively stronger or weaker, especially factoring in that the former launched later than its English counterparts?

Akihiro Suzuki: I think there were many users who were stumped as to why Japan was the final territory to launch the PS4,but as a result we were able to see the success of the PS4’s launch in North America, Europe and Asia, and gained a lot of information about the many titles that showcased the PS4’s powerful specs, so the pre-launch momentum and excitement was maintained for the Japanese launch.

For Omega Force, since we couldn’t release a launch title for the PS3, we took this opportunity to release DW8XLCE as a launch title for the PS4 in Japan, and our fans have been strongly receptive.

Rashid Sayed: The expansion can be picked up separately but for those who purchase the Complete Edition, will there be any additional content?

Akihiro Suzuki: No, there are no differences.

Rashid Sayed: What motivated you to put Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition on the PS4? How much of an improvement do the visuals offer over the original game?

Akihiro Suzuki: In order to realize our concept of the Warriors series – “the exhilaration of one vs. many” – we placed priority on showing many enemies on screen, which resulted in our constant struggle of improving the visual quality and dealing with lag. We felt that the PS4 had the ability to resolve these issues, and also greatly improve the game’s quality and potential.

The visual improvements are as follows:

• Full HD (1080p)
• Realistic textures through physics-based shading
• Real-time motion generation using Full Body IK (notably during damage)
• Increase in post-effect quality resulting in accurate blurring, anti-aliasing, etc.
• Rich environments using multiple light sources for dynamic lighting changes

"We’re using a variable frame rate system, so although it is not fixed at 60 fps, most of the scenes maintain a frame rate of 60 fps."

Rashid Sayed: Does the Complete Edition provide a big change over the original, base experience?

Akihiro Suzuki: Yes. To begin with, we’ve added a Story Mode for Lu Bu, the most famous officer in the Three Kingdoms story, so players will be able to experience his turbulent story. We’ve also added features to utilize bodyguards for a wider range of battle strategies. There are also additional officers and weapons, the implementation of Challenge Mode, and the enhancement of Ambition Mode.

Rashid Sayed: Though Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition features a 1080p resolution, the series has had its share of frame rate issues and lag in the past. Considering all the action on screen, does the game run at 60 fps on the PS4?

Akihiro Suzuki: We’re using a variable frame rate system, so although it is not fixed at 60 fps, most of the scenes maintain a frame rate of 60 fps.

Rashid Sayed: Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends isn’t available on the Xbox 360 and the Complete Edition isn’t currently planned for Xbox One. Will we ever see either make their way to Microsoft’s console? If not, why?

Akihiro Suzuki: It’s undecided at this point.

Rashid Sayed: How many hours of entertainment can players expect from Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition?

Akihiro Suzuki: Main gameplay: approx..50 hours. Including replay value: 100+ hours.

"We’re pretty satisfied with the [PS4's] specs. We would be overjoyed if the clock was a little bit faster."

Rashid Sayed: Can you walk us through the porting process over the PlayStation 4? How difficult was it? Furthermore how many months did it the overall porting process took?

Akihiro Suzuki: Porting the PS3 version directly went fairly smoothly, but when it came to improving the visual quality to match the PS4 specs, the transitioning to “physics-based shading”took quite a lot of work. There wasn’t much problem with the PS4 system, but since we lacked the knowledge and experience of creating the required data, it was a struggle raise the quality up to what you see in the final version.

Since we worked on the various platforms simultaneously, we don’t know exactly how much time it took to port it, but I’d guess that it ranged between 6 to 10 months.

Rashid Sayed: Finally, what are your thoughts on the PS4’s three main architecture units: a. 8GB GDDR5 Unified memory b. The CPU c. The GPU?

Akihiro Suzuki: a) It’s very useful, and the capacity is enough.
b) We’re pretty satisfied with the specs. We would be overjoyed if the clock was a little bit faster.
c) The 14 + 4 unit set-up is easy to use. If the number of units increased, the possibilities of what we could do would increase as well.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is a hardcore zombie slaying ninja game that is heavily influenced by the Ninja Gaiden titles.

In the video Yosukue Hayashi and Keiji Inafune bring up several interesting points about how American game developers differ from Japanese. It’s an entertaining developer video of two guys talking in complete Japanese with English sub-titles and discussing how a Japanese game is being developed by an American studio called Spark over at Los Angeles.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z will be at E3 in playable form, so expect a lot of media and new details. The game will be coming out next year for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it is currently unknown if Yaiba is getting the next-gen treatment.

Let us know if Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z peeks your interest in the comments section below.

Check back on GamingBolt for more updates and media as we get closer to E3 2013.

ynasty Warriors returns again in Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires. The Empires franchise of Dynasty Warriors series is geared towards more political and strategic battles rather than your regular Dynasty Warriors game. However, it wouldn’t be a Dynasty Warriors game without dozens of enemies, bases, and officers to conquer on screen at a time. Empires is a bit more complicated than the regular Dynasty Warriors games, only because of its strategic and political nature, and with that being said I will be explaining the core mechanics of this game in greater detail.

Gameplay Structure

When you begin the game, you choose which officer you want to play as and conquer the kingdoms. There are more than 50+ officers you can choose from, each officer has a his/her own fighting style, some are very good at dealing a lot of damage, while others are super fast but deal a lot less damage and then you have the ones that are in the middle. If that’s not enough, the player can create their own custom officer in a mode called Edit. Edit mode allows you to create your own personal officer. The play may choose armor sets, voices, tattoos, customizable physical appearance and of course different fighting styles. Later in the game, you can also unlock and buy new armor sets and weapons.

Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires is an interesting beast, it combines role-playing as a nobody who can either join in with another famous ruler to conquer the kingdoms, or you can befriend someone and then backstab them later and take every kingdom for yourself. The whole point of the game is that you’re a Chinese general who’s main goal is to conquer the entire land, whether it be through an alliance, betrayal or of course all out war with everyone else.

The game achieves this goal by introducing a system called  Fame. Fame has multiple ratings that you can choose, the player may choose from Brave, Evil, Wise, Kind, Orderly and Affluent, each path grants you something called strategems. Strategems are these different abilities that you can unlock as you level up your Fame, each path of Fame has many different types of stratagems. You may use these stratagems when you are in an actual battlefield, one of the strategems lets you lock gates to your base so that the enemy won’t be able to assault your camp.

You can level up Fame rating by either political choices when you take a turn or on the battlefield depending on which kingdom you decided to defend or attack. There will also be times when a different ruler will ask you to join them on the battlefield to destroy an enemy officer and take over their main base, you have the right to decline or accept. As a general you can sign contracts with different people that grant you different bonuses to yourself and your troops. Players can also talk to other leaders in the world and earn more experience for their Fame rating based on which officer they’re talking too. During a scenario, there also will be a time when you will be able to change your main Fame rating to a different one.

However, if you’re playing on easy difficultly they’re not that important or really helpful for that matter, they were designed for harder difficulties and they can help out a great deal. It’s a good system, it’s interesting and it adds a  lot replay value to the game. One of my officers I went fully Brave Fame, once I was done with a scenario I made a new officer and decided to go Affluent the 2nd time around. Each Fame gives you a different ending once you have finished a scenario and there are trophies to be earned for each of the Fame rating.

The game is pretty deep, when I first started playing it I was really overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things you can when it comes to the political and strategic choices. Once you spend a decent amount of type with the game you will slowly start to understand how the game works and what benefits you the most.

Presentation

Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires has great Japanese voice acting, the soundtrack is as fitting as it always have been. If you’re looking for that good old Dynasty Warriors music, you’ll find it plenty of it here and that is a good thing. However, the has some graphical issues, as you play the game you will be seeing a lot of low-resolution textures, soldiers pop in the far distances along with the environmental objects. While the framerate is steady majority of the time, I couldn’t help but to cringe at the overall graphics of the game. There is no excuse for this game to look this bad, especially this late in the console generation cycle.

Overall

This is not a bad game by any means, if you can manage to look past the graphical problems of this game then there is fun to be had. Thanks to the great combination of politics, strategy, Fame system with its stratagems,  huge list of officers too chose from, Edit Mode and of course the classical gameplay of Dynasty Warriors on the battlefield. There is a good game to be played here, whether you’re a fan of the series or a newcomer. If you’re a loyal fan then I would strongly recommend you buy this game, if you’re new to the franchise then you should decide for yourself if you want to give it a whirl.

The game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.

The first disconnect is the language barrier. I understand this game was not developed in America, and with that, it can be understandable that the main language is not English, but it’s a thin argument at best when a large amount of games come out of Japan and have English dub. When you have to sit through cut scenes and concentrate on reading the sub titles, it takes away from what is actually a cool cut scene approach which look like they were taken from the manga pages.

When it comes to the main characters there’s some good detailing done although the style is generic, in a sense that the characters could have been plucked from any random game. On top of that, all characters are kind of shiny, which in all honesty is weird.

The background levels aren’t much better. For the most part every level is just a corridor. If you throw a bad guy into a wall there is a small amount of level destruction, but it seems obvious that destroying the worlds were not a main focus. In the game Ken gets imprisoned. When it comes time to break out all he has to do is bend the bars making you wonder how it’s even possible to imprison him, and why he didn’t bother to break out sooner.

For the most part the boss fights are not impressive. As it is, the combat system is pretty simple. I’m not asking for Street Fighter, uber combo moves, but something more than a 4 button move would have made the game a little more interesting. The combo’s are quite easy to master but after the second level it all gets a little too generic.

The only remotely impressive feature of the game is the large amounts of hordes you have to fight. This stays in the tradition of the previous games. Back in the day it was impressive to see large amount of bad guys on the screen, but unfortunately it’s no longer such a new concept, and now it looks a little dated. Every hardware has a limit which makes a large amount of bad guys on the screen at one time hard, but again, since we’re nearing the end of the PlayStation 3 life cycle it should be expected that there would be a work around by now.

As cool as it to fight a horde, their AI is not smart making it rather simple to just blow through them with your limited combo’s. You also don’t really see stronger hordes as the levels progress. You pretty much fight the same AI hordes throughout, and it becomes very repetitive, very fast. Once you break through the horde and scatter them, they work very hard to get close to each other again, making it easier to kill them.

I would assume for the most part the developers were really trying to cater to the die hard fans here, rather than bring new people in. The Legend Mode is centered around the original manga. Dream Mode focuses on new stories based on the manga series. In Legend Mode, you play as Ken. In Dream Mode you start with only an unnamed Outlaw. You can play Wasteland Thugs in the Free Mode with the Outlaw, and you can also play online. The options for online are either co-op through Dream Mode, or as a Team of 4.

It seems like the overall issue to Ken’s Rage is that the game lacks a good quality check. It just falls flat in every area, and interest is lost fast when it becomes repetitive. Although it caters to the die hard manga fans, it still lacks polish and makes the game look like it was rushed to the market. With the lack of major content it’s also odd that this download was over 9 GB. I would have just assumed, with the reuse of such generic characters and models that the game could do a better job at managing assets.

This game just reminds us that fighting horde after horde is no longer an interesting concept. There needs to be more variety in game play. There needs to be better skin textures, unless you want us to think the characters are plastic. But most of all, there needs to be quality control on a game like this that just makes you feel that the developer just weren’t fully invested.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.