Final Fantasy XIV as a Fighting Game

With the Heavensward expansion for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn still a few months away (June 23, dudes.), the main scenario writer Kazutoyo Maehiro had a little bit of fun and released a video reimagining the MMO as a fighting game. Square Enix wants everyone to know that this is just for fun and not a representation of an actual project or future plan, but it looks good enough that I'm sincerely hoping that they're just throwing us a curveball. In fact, I would actually prefer this game over the MMO.

You can check out the video, which pits Yda and Livia against each other at the Castrum Centri, below:

Note that people who really want a fighting game based on the Final Fantasy franchise have the Dissidia franchise as an option, although don't go in expecting the game to be pick up and play.

New Dragon Ball Xenoverse Steam DLC 2 Patch Introduces Minor Graphics Bug

The second DLC pack for Dragon Ball Xenoverse has recently dropped, and with it comes

• a level cap increase: from 80 to 85, 
• a new Master: Pan, 
• several new PQs and Timequests: I didn't count how many, you'll beat it in less than 15 mins anyway, 
• new playable characters: Eis Shenron, Nuova Shenron, Mira, Towa, 
• New Z Souls, 
• Random Bug Fixes: no more milky way cheesing
• a Rudimentary anti-cheat measure that prevents you from logging in if you hacked your savefiles: it reportedly checks the amount of stat points you have vs. your level, and if it exceeds the normal amount it blocks you from logging in. So no more hackers with 100 points in all stats. They have to delete those characters to get in.

However, the patch is not without its hitches. One change seems to have introduced a minor but very noticeable graphics bug during the select screen: the overlay effect that was supposed to be a blurring is now black.

According to a discussion over at the Steam forums of Xenoverse, the game now uses DX functions that are not supported by DX10.1 and older. This means players using cards older than the GT 400 series are affected, which is a shame because there are a a lot of video cards from the 200 series that are still capable of running modern games (basically the gDDR5 version of GT 240 and the higher models. The GT 260 and its bigger brothers, in particular, can still hang with current cards as long sa you turn off a few stuff and avoid 4K.)

No complaints from the AMD camp, but that's probably because the oldest AMD cards that are fully DX11 compliant are the 5000 series (the same gen as nVidia's 200 series.) There's probably nobody using a card from a previous generation while still expecting a 2015 game to run glitch-free, or at all.

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 and Saint Seiya Soldiers' Soul Coming to PC

So, it seems like Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst, as buggy and unoptimized as it is, actually did a lot of good as it finally convinced Japanese devs that there's a lot of money to be made on the PC platform regardless of the piracy problem.

And it's not no-name devs that produce non-licensed games either. We're talking big names here. Bandai Namco has been releasing games for the PC platform since ever, but they're now releasing anime and manga-based games that in the old days would have been exclusive to consoles. OTOH, One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 has been confirmed to be coming out on PC a few months ago, but it's exciting to know that the Steam store page is already live.

We also have the less popular in the West, but generally more popular and iconic Saint Seiya coming via Saint Seiya Soldier's Soul:

So right now we have Dragonball Xenoverse, two Naruto Games, a Saint Seiya, and a One Piece game coming up? It seems like the next couple of years is a good time to be a PC gamer and a manga/anime fan at the same time. That's just the confirmed games, though. Rise of Incarnates, if it's successful, may finally convince BAMCO to bring the Gundam VS games to the PC. And what about Bleach? Surely whoever is the license holder right now will see how successful Xenoverse and the Storm series is even if they're buggy messes? Come on, devs. Our wallets are ready. Get to porting.