Pre-orders for One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 Steam Version is Now Open

Bandai Namco Games' PC port of One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 won't be released until August 25, but pre-orders are now open on Steam.  There's no pre-order discount and the bonuses are a little bit on the thin side (four costumes and a pack of additional costumes.) but if you really want a truck-ton of content, you can get the gold edition for a few bucks more in order to get 8 more mission packs and 20 more bonus costumes.

I have preordered the base package, so you can expect a review to appear on this site, but given that it's just a port and the game's console versions were already reviewed by countless others, I'll be focusing on the quality of the PC port - whether it takes advantage of the extra hardware power afforded by the platform or if it's going to be a basic port.

Hopefully, it's not going to be a Batman: Arkham Knight thing. Bandai Namco is known for decent, if not solid, ports when it comes to popular and lucrative properties (like One Piece is), and the developers Koei Tecmo also does fine with their ports - they get panned for crippled content and ridiculous DLC schemes, but in terms of code optimization they're pretty good at their job - in some cases releasing games that can run well even on hardware that doesn't meet their specified minimum requirements.

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.

Official Trailer for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4

Bamco Games has just released the first official trailer for CyberConnect2's Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 during Jump Festa. The trailer is more cinematic than gameplay footage-y, but considering that the game is known for gameplay that looks like anime scenes, it can be hard to tell. All you should know is that it focuses mainly on the fight between Hashirama and Madara, and judging by their looks and dialogue - it is set during their final duel when they were still alive.

You can check out the trailer after the cut:

New Gameplay Trailer for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution

A new gameplay trailer has just been released for CyberConnect2’s upcoming 3D Fighter, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution. The gameplay trailer will focus on one of the characters demanded by fans of the previous game, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst. It’s none other than the former leader of Kirikagure and member of the Hozuki clan, the 2nd Mizukage:

New Batch of Screenshots for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution

Yet another batch of screenshots has been released for CyberConnect2’s next installment in the Ultimate Ninja Storm franchise, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution. This time around, it features the Akatsuki. It is said that the screenshots came from the original animation that Studio Pierrot created for the game, which is rather lengthy as it clocks in at over 50 minutes – enough to fill at least 2 anime episodes.

Far from being a mere retelling of the story, the animation will delve into the origins of the Akatsuki, with series creator Masashi Kishimoto admitting that some of the characters have new outfits designed specifically for the game. Judging by the screenshots, both Sasori and Kakuu have the aforementioned new costume designs.

You can check out the screenshots below:

Japan Will Get a New Naruto Mobile Social Game Soon

Social game publisher GREE is planning to shut down the Naruto: Shinobi Masters social game this spring, but fans of the game should not despair, because GREE is already working on a replacement, alongside developer ForGroove.

The new Naruto mobile social game is still untitled for now (or at least, the official name has not been announced to the public), but there’s been word that existing players of Naruto: Shinobi Masters don’t need to worry about losing all of their hard work, as their existing items will be transferable to the new game, or will be converted to the equivalent items. More details will be announced by March.

Pokemon Battle Trozei Coming to the 3DS

If you thought the recent problems over the Pokemon Bank Launch and Nintendo’s current money troubles is a sign that we won’t be getting an experimental new Pokemon game soon, you’d be wrong, because Nintendo has recently announced a new installment in the Pokemon game franchise, this time around it’s a puzzle game titled “Pokemon Battle Trozei.”

You can check out the video below to see what Pokemon Battle Trozei looks like in action:



Pokemon Battle Trozei is scheduled for a March 20, 2014 release via the 3DS eShop.

New Character Videos for J-Stars Victory Vs.: Naruto, Yuusuke, and Kenshiro

A new batch of character videos has just been released for the upcoming inter-franchise 3D brawler, J-Stars Victory Vs., which is designed to commemorate Shonen Jump magazine’s 45th anniversary. The new videos feature Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto, Yuusuke Urameshi from Yu Yu Hakusho, and Kenshiro from Hokuto no Ken.

You can watch the videos below:

New J-Stars Victory VS. Video Features Fist of the North Star’s Kenshiro

Namco Bandai has just posted a new promotional video for their upcoming 3D brawler, J-Stars Victory Vs. This time around, it focuses on a bunch of its playable characters facing off against their respective adversaries. One of the more interesting parts here is the sequence featuring the characters Kenshiro and Raoh, the protagonist and main antagonist from Fist of the North Star.

You can check out the video below:

New Screenies for Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution

Namco Bandai has recently posted a new batch of screenshots for the upcoming update to the Ultimate Ninja Storm franchise, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution. Judging by the screenshots, graphics-wise it’s not going to offer much in the way of upgrades compared to Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst, especially since Full Burst didn’t offer any visual upgrades to UNS 3 and UNS2 (save for a few bug fixes and tweaks pertaining to the frame rate.)

However, we all know that people are already satisfied with the graphics engine of the Ultimate Ninja Storm franchise and don’t really mind not having extra bells and whistles. The true selling point of Revolution is gameplay tweaks and additional characters. There’s no concrete details about the gameplay tweaks yet, but info about additional characters have already been provided by Namco Bandai.