Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds (PC)

Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds is a sprite-based 2D Beat ‘Em Up for the PC (and PS Vita, PS3 and XBLA) that relies on cute, super-deformed magical girls as the main characters. The game is a spin-off of the Phantom Breaker fighting game, but it was a Japan-only title so it’s most likely unfamiliar to many readers of this blog.

The combat in Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds is a mix of button mashing and strategic combo play consisting of light attacks, hard attacks, blocks, parries, and supers. This means the game is accessible to beginners yet still appealing to hardcore players who wish to explore every nook and cranny of the combat mechanics. The stages are strictly sidescrolling 2D, but have 2 planes that you can switch between with a simple press of a button. In a way, the game is more like a side-scrolling Fatal Fury than a Double Dragon successor, but it could go either way as far as genre conventions are concerned.

Far from being a simple beat em up, the game lets you pick between 4 different characters/classes (5 if you have the DLC) each with its own strengths and weaknesses. There’s also a light RPG system under the hood that allow players to level up and upgrade their characters’ abilities and stats.

The visuals in Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds are cute and fun to look at, even though they are low definition by choice. The graphics are pixilated, but still extremely detailed and complex. The stages are a little bit constricted, but they provide ample space to run around and beat stuff up. The setting is varied, with locations based on iconic Japanese locales such as Akihabara.

Replayability is what you’d expect from any beat em up – it’s fun to go through once, but after that you’d make do with short bursts. Ideally, you should have a friend over (or online) so you can enjoy the game as a co-op brawler. In this context, the game is a must have especially if you’re a fan of retro-inspired games and the magical girl genre.

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.

Problems with Dragonball Xenoverse (Steam)

Okay, after several more days of playing with the Steam version of Dragonball Xenoverse, the main problems have become apparent. Don't get me wrong, it's still worth the full price - but you may want to lower expectations if you're looking for a competition-friendly, and technically sound multiplayer gaming experience. Off the top of my head, Xenoverse has the following problems:

Balance

Right now, balance is completely borked. Players have learned how to abuse certain races' special abilities to stack the odds in their favor when it comes to PVP (e.g. Saiyans going SSJ and spamming ultimates.) It doesn't make it impossible to beat them using the other races, but it will require more strategy and definitely gives one class a big advantage. Single player is also affected in this case because the CPU opponents that are in SSJ form will not revert to their base form, so they always have infinite ki and are able to spam ultimate attacks. Some parallel quests are almost impossible to beat because you'll be juggled by three SSJs. You can beat them by being really good or by using one of the OP Z-souls, which brings us to another borked aspect of the game...

...some Z-souls are so overpowered that they make the rest useless and turn PVP into a mess. It used to be that the neither kami nor piccolo Z-soul allowed players to be immortal due to the massive HP regen when ki is full - DIMPs at least fixed it. Now the new broken Z-soul is the Bwa ha ha thanks for the energy one, which heals a player back to full every 2nd or 3rd hit.

Technical 

On the technical side, the biggest problem is server availability. You'd have to chalk this one up to the popularity of the franchise, but it's made worse by the fact that even the Single Player mode of the game tries to connect to the servers. IMO, they'd lessen the stress on their servers A LOT if they changed the game so that single player is completely offline, and that the character data is only updated/saved to the servers when people enter the multiplayer. You could understand the online only approach if it's being used as an anti-piracy measure, but I don't think pirates are deterred. In fact, I think people playing the pirated copy of the game are in a better place since they don't need to connect to the servers and will have a much easier way of playing the game.

There's also a minor problem with the fact that the game relies on FPS for timing. The broken Z-souls is one of the side effects, as the ticks in regen/healing seem to be tied to FPS so people playing in 60 fps or more will have ridiculously high HP regen ticks. Some effects also get borked if you're not locked in 30fps - such as the vanishing move or some ki blasts (the former makes you reappear in the same place, while the latter disappears.) Locking the FPS to 30 fixes these problems.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse (PC)

It’s a bit difficult to pigeonhole Dragon Ball Xenoverse into a specific genre. It’s essentially a 3rd person fighting game with MMORPG trappings. If you’re one of the lucky few who managed to experience the short-lived Dragonball Online MMO, Xenoverse is basically that game wrapped around an updated iteration of the Budokai Tenkaichi series.

Gameplay

The game starts by dropping you in the middle of various fights between Goku and the franchise’s main villains – from Freiza to Cell, to Buu – but these are not full fights but a mere sampling of the gameplay you can expect when you get to the meat and bones of the game. It’s a trick that RPGs use regularly (re: start you off with a high leveled, fully-geared character and a strong boss monster before taking everything away and forcing you to fight rats.)

There’s no tutorial yet in this intro, but it’s easy to get a basic idea of the controls since there’s prompts appearing when you push buttons. Long time players of the Budokai Tenkaichi series might be familiar with the control schemes: you have two buttons for attacks, one for ki blast, and another for mobility. Then you have a key for lock-on, one for blocking, and trigger combinations that give you access to special and ultimate attacks.

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:

Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst (PC)

If the title hasn’t made it clear yet, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst isn’t the first entry in the series. In fact, it isn’t the 3rd one either as the series goes way, way back as it traces its roots to the Clash of Ninja series on the Gamecube. However, it is worth tackling because it is the first one to be ported to the PC, which is amazing because the PC isn’t the platform of choice when it comes to fighting games and games based on anime/manga franchises. Yet here we are, UNS3FB for the PC, with UNS Revolution reportedly following suit.

The Story

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst is a 3D cel-shaded fighting game based on Masashi Kishimoto’s extremely popular shonen franchise, featuring a story mode that takes you from the first appearance of the masked man (spoiler: who claims to be Madara Uchiha but is eventually revealed to be someone else) all the way to the fourth great ninja war.

The progression of the story isn’t linear, as it uses flashbacks to tackle key points from the past (pre-timeskip stories are only addressed in flashbacks.) Additionally, the ending deviates from the story in the manga and anime, probably to give it a proper ending – which it can’t if it tries to remain true to the manga’s (which is still unfinished.)