That’s the basic set-up for Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, an enhanced re-release of Namco’s beloved 2008 RPG. Namco Bandai has done really great work here: the game runs at a smooth 60 frames and the graphical updates look good. In addition to the technical upgrades, the Definitive Edition also packs in a ton of new content. The biggest additions are two new party members: Flynn and Patty. Flynn isn’t new to the narrative, but this is the first time he’s been playable; he’s Yuri’s longtime buddy, but the two often clash over the best way to do things. Flynn’s as honorable and straight-laced as they come, while Yuri isn’t above going around the law when he’s feels it’s necessary. Their friendship – and the conflict their diverging worldviews bring to the story – are a high point of the game, and it’s nice to see Flynn join the party as a playable character.

"This cast butts heads all the time. Many of them don’t get along. The things they do are often morally questionable. Some of them are jerks. They’re a pretty unique group, and watching each of these characters grow and change over the course of the game’s plot is a lot of fun."

The other new addition is Patty, who is completely unique to this version of the game. She’s a little girl who dresses like a pirate and claims to be the granddaughter of the legendary, and long dead, pirate Aifread. She’s got an interesting backstory and character arc, but like all small children in JRPGs, she can be a bit annoying. That said, she’s a fine addition overall and the game is better for having her in it. The most impressive thing is that nothing about her addition feels out of place. She fits into the existing narrative really well, and you’d never guess she wasn’t a part of the original story unless you already knew better.

It’s good that the new characters work so well, because the cast is a major part of Tales of Vesperia’s appeal. This is an exceptionally motley crew: Estelle, a girl of noble birth who spent her entire life in a castle reading books and is so sheltered that she doesn’t understand the concept of nicknames, is sweet and naïve to a fault, but the rest of the cast rallies around her and supports a fantastic character arc. Yuri and Flynn fight all of the time, and both are better men for the experience. Rita, a brilliant mage, and Karol, a cowardly child who dreams of being a great monster hunter, actively dislike each other, at least at first. This cast butts heads all the time. Many of them don’t get along. The things they do are often morally questionable. Some of them are jerks. They’re a pretty unique group, and watching each of these characters grow and change over the course of the game’s plot is a lot of fun.

But for all the game’s success with both its story and characters, and there are many, Tales of Vesperia: Defintive Edition is held back by its storytelling. This isn’t the fault of the game necessarily; it’s more to do with the fact that the game is old. It’s most noticeable in the in-game cutscenes, which can feel janky; characters’ mouths don’t always move correctly, and many featured stiff animations. It’s minor stuff, but it’s there, and can pull you out of the game. There’s also some awkward patches of dialogue and voice acting, and some minor issues with the localization, such as misspelled words. The other main issue comes with the new content that’s been added to the Definitive Edition. For starters, there are a number of new costumes that have been added, as well as new bosses, dungeons, equipment, skills, and even mechanics. It’s a lot to address here, especially if, like me, you didn’t play the original game, but nothing I ran into felt out of place.

"The real star of the gameplay is the game’s combat and leveling system. While you can only control one character at a time, every member of the cast is playable, and you can switch who you control at your leisure."

No, the real issue is the additional scenes that were added from the PS3 version. Namco Bandai decided to dub these scenes into English, but they didn’t bring back the original cast. This is especially noticeable with Yuri, who was originally voiced by Tory Baker.  While his replacement does his best Tory Baker impression, it becomes pretty obvious when the character’s voice changes. This is true for many of the other characters, too, and some of the replacements don’t even bother to attempt to sound like the person they are replacing. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it is noticeable and once you recognize it, you’ll see it everywhere.

While the new additions are welcome, it’s the core game that holds up remarkably well. The game’s cell-shaded art is still beautiful, the soundtrack is arresting without being overpowering, and the environments are wonderful to explore. Some will find the lack of a mini-map for towns, dungeons, and really about anywhere outside of the world map to be a bit bothersome, but I liked the choice. It kept me in the world and allowed to explore in a way that felt organic. In an era where every game has about a billion things for you to collect, it felt nice to just explore. The zoomed-out world map also feels pretty 90s, but when you consider that Vesperia is harkening back to an era of JRPG that no longer exists, it makes a lot of sense.

The real star of the gameplay is the game’s combat and leveling system. While you can only control one character at a time, every member of the cast is playable, and you can switch who you control at your leisure. What’s more, the game supports cooperative play for up to four players, which is great if you have someone you regularly share a couch with. When you’re not playing with friends, you can customize the actions your AI controlled allies will take in explicit detail, allowing you to build a detailed strategy against even the toughest of foes. It’s exceptionally rewarding to absolutely destroy a tough group of enemies because you planned well, and I admired how much control the game gave me, from everything over when my characters would use items to where they’d stand or how they’d behave during battles.

"Combat is classic Tales stuff: a real-time rumble with simple controls and a deceptive amount of depth (go watch a Tales of Vesperia combo video if you don’t believe me), and the game does a good job of continually adding mechanics so you’re not getting bored."

Combat is classic Tales stuff: a real-time rumble with simple controls and a deceptive amount of depth (go watch a Tales of Vesperia combo video if you don’t believe me), and the game does a good job of continually adding mechanics so you’re not getting bored, but the core here is pretty simple: a combination of basic attacks and Artes (special moves), while managing your spacing and position on the field. It can take a bit of getting used to if you’ve played newer Tales games – attacks are fairly slow and you’re open while you recover from any given move, so you can’t just mash; spacing and timing matter – but once you’ve gotten the hang of the game’s flow and the systems begin to open up to you, there’s a lot you can do.

Special praise must be assigned to the game’s skill system, as well. Skills are attached to weapons, which is how characters initially access them. Keep a weapon equipped long enough and the characters will learn how to use the attached skills without them. It’s a simple system, but one that gives you incentive to use weapons for reasons beyond its core states and gives you complete freedom in customizing your characters. Don’t want them to learn a certain move? Don’t equip that weapon. It’s easy as that, and it’s nice to have so much control over what your characters learn.

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition amounts to a fine package, and easily the best version of a beloved game. While I wish that Namco Bandai had taken better care to ensure that the experience was more uniform by bringing back the original voice actors and fixing the cutscenes and certain parts of the script, but this is still a very good game that does a lot well, even ten years after its original release, and it’s easily the best version of the game available. Tales of Vesperia may not have an explosive start; it may start small. It might be simple. But it is charming and has an enormous amount of heart, and flawed as it is, that means a lot, even a decade later.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox One.

Just a few months ago, Bandai Namco Games, formerly Namco Bandai Games, changed their name worldwide to Bandai Namco Games; now, in less than a year, they have applied for a second name change, this time from Bandai Namco Games to Bandai Namco Entertainment. Jeez, guys, couldn’t you have just done that to begin with?

The reason for the new name change, Bandai Namco explains, is as follows:

“The BANDAI NAMCO Group operates the game business in Japan and overseas. With the advance of technology and diversification of user preferences, the Group has expanded into new products and service domains that extend beyond its previous game business domain.

With the start of its next Mid-term Plan in April 2015, the Company will change the names of its subsidiaries to widen the definition of their business field to entertainment without limiting them to the present field of games, thus aiming for further growth through new development of service and content businesses that utilize networks.”

The name change is scheduled to come into effect on April 1, 2015.

New screenshots for the upcoming Dark Souls 2 have been released. This latest release comes a refreshing turn of events in the wake of all the issues that have sprung up in regards to the Dark Souls 2 North American Beta.

Dark Souls 2, which strives to maintain the same core elements as it’s predecessor, Dark Souls, is an action RPG which focuses on attempting to utilize realistic combat elements mixed with fantasy. Meaning, if you’re set on fire you won’t just run around burning like something is wrong – you’ll bloody well get hurt. Yui Tanimura, one of the game’s directors also spoke to the fact that a special emphasis is being placed on ensuring that the game retains it’s uber difficult nature.

In this sequel the playable game world will be more than twice the size of the original. The game’s AI systems have been updated, offering more complex and realistic interactions with non essential and essential in game characters. All in all, based on what we know of Dark Souls, and what we’ve seen so far from Dark Souls 2, things look to be very promising.

It seems that there have been some issues with North American Beta for Dark Souls 2. Apparently the game was so rife with problems that many North American gamers couldn’t even log in. The beta was scheduled to launch last Sunday, October 27th. A new beta test date has been set, now at 11:00 PM PST on November 10th.

“Attention Dark Souls II Testers,” read a tweet on Namco Bandai’s twitter feed on Sunday night. “It seems that North and South American players will not be able to log into the servers for this test.

“We thoroughly apologize for all of the confusion and issues. We will be rescheduling the Network Test for another date.

“We know this is quite disheartening and we thank everyone for their enthusiasm.”

According to Namco Bandai, all gamers who successfully signed up for the initial beta will still have their spots on this latest version. The game is due next year.

According to a listing on the Australian Classification Board that popped up earlier this week, a premium edition of Enslaved will soon be making its way to PC and PS3. Namco Bandai Games has confirmed that the re-release will indeed be making it’s way to PC and PS3.

Originally released in 2010 on PS3 and Xbox 360, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was generally well received by gamers. It is an action adventure platformed, based on the Chinese story, Journey To The West, by Wu Cheng’en, considered to be one of the four great classical novels of China. However, this game boasts some major differences from the novel.

While Journey to the West was set in ancient China, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West takes place in a bleak, post apocalyptic future following a world war. The main plot points are the same, however, centering on a character who requires the help and protection of a skilled warrior.

Stay tuned to Gamingbolt for the exact release of Enslaved: Premium Edition on PS3 and PC.

New details regarding the multiplayer mode for the North American release of Dark Should 2 have surfaced. According to the official Dark Souls 2 Facebook page, it seems that Beta players won’t have to go through any sort of registration process to play.

Rather, gamers will receive a message with a special code via the PlayStation Network, which will grant them access to the first round of testing, scheduled to start on October 12th. Here’s the full list of details that has been released:

• Select users will receive a PSN message on Tuesday Oct 8th with a code to redeem the download for the Oct 12th testing round.
• Only 5,000 players will be allowed in this round on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Many more players will have an opportunity to get into the second round of testing.
• We will share a universal download code on Oct 22nd that can be redeemed to download the client for the Oct 26th testing round.
• 30,000 testers will be allowed in for the Oct 26th round, but on a first-come, first-served basis.

Ace Combat Infinity is the soon-to-be released flight based action game from developers, Project Aces. Ace Combat Infinity will be free to play, and will release exclusively on the PlayStation 3. It will be the first free to play installment in the Ace Combat series.

In this trailer, we see some Ace Combat Infinity plot centering on the “Ulysses Disaster.” The trailer also gives us some good looks at what we can expect in terms of game play, showing off both the cockpit-perspective flight simulation, and the third person outside-of-vehicle view, while also giving us a glimpse at some of the weaponry that certain planes will utilize to neutralize their targets.

The Ulyssees Disaster centers on a rogue series of asteroids headed for earth, and the efforts of earth to thwart them. With the help of advanced technology, mankind was able to spare the earth at the expense of the majority of her inhabitants. We can assume that your rigorous flight training will center on trying to prevent such a disaster from every happening again.

One Piece is one of the most beloved and successful mangas of all time, and is arguably the best manga that is still being drawn – sorry, Bleach fans. Since the first ever One Piece game release in 200 for the WonderSwan, the series as spawned an epic list of over 40 games based on its plot and characters.

Most of these games have remaied in Japan, with only some seeing a worldwide release, but still. They are generating at an incredible rate.

Earlier Namco Bandai released a new trailer for the latest entry in the One Piece video game series, One Piece: Unlimited World RED. The trailer is entirely in Japanese, but the visuals are incredibly crisp, and the villains and heroes look just like their manga counterparts. As things stand it looks as though the game will only release in Japan. We are unsure as to whether or not there are plans to expand to other regions.

For whatever reason in this sequel to Race Driver: Grid, the much loved Demolition Derby mode from the first game was left out. As reported earlier, a surge of requests from fans prompted Codemasters to begin development on a new and improved Demolition Derby mode. And it’s free.

This new Demolition Derby mode will be similar to the original, but will feature the updated mechanics and graphics featured in Grid 2. Additionally, it will include the Jupiter Ray MK 5 Demo Derby car, the ability to customize liveries, and the Detroit Demolition Stadium, which can be configured two separate ways.

Demolition Derby mode can be played single player, split screen, or with up to twelve players in online races.

The new game mode will be available for all versions of the game, PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Earlier today, Namco Bandai Games announced that Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3: Full Burst for the PC and the Full Burst DLC for PS3 and Xbox 360 will be making their way to Europe on October 25th, 2013. The Full Burst addition to Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 will introduce a Kabuto in a new chapter, add a selection of 38 costumes from previous games, and will bring together all of the existing characters.

Full Burst will feature characters from the Five Kage Summit Arc, the 4th great Ninja War Arc, the Invasion of Pain Arc and more. There will be a new series of 100 missions, each with their own objectives. In addition to classic one on one battles, also included will be group fights against enormous and vile enemies. There will also be revamped cinematics and more.

PC owners of the game, if they get the Day One Edition, will get the full version of the game, plus five fan selected hi-res glossy photos from the best moments in the game.

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3: Full burst for PC and the Full Burst DLC for PS3, and Xbox 360 will both be available in Europe on October 25th.