This Week In Videogames – 10/04/2016

All the single Warriors, put your hands up! It’s a goddamn Koei fest in the news roundup this week, there may be a sad lack of musou, but there’s plenty of friendship-becomings!

Free Chems!

High-class neon and slimy swamp dwellers are on their way to your settlements the Commonwealth over, come Tuesday, April 12^th, when Fallout 4’s second piece of DLC, Wasteland Workshop releases. Here’s the trailer; I’m particularly pumped for the vegetable patches, at last order can be brought to the most base organic constructs. 

Samanosuke’s Souls

Koei Tecmo brings a much needed helping of Katana to the turf of From Software with Nioh. It’s a fantasy samurai game at least somewhat inspired by From’s Souls franchise, that much is clear from the deliberate combat of the trailer below. Developed by Team Ninja I’m honestly more taken by its style, which evokes all kind of emotions left unstirred since the days of Onimusha.

Nioh’s getting a timed alpha demo from April 26^th to May 5^th, on the PlayStation 4.

The Many Shades Of Xenos Filth

The sleek and delicate hulls of the Eldar join the battle this coming week in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada’s on-going beta, accessed by pre-ordering the game. The Eldar ships are highly manoeuvrable, a trait key to success in Armada, but they lack the buffer of shields. Beautiful, but fleeting.

This week also saw the announcement of yet another Battlefleet Gothic game, Leviathan, this one is sailing onto mobile devices rather than PC, at least initially, coming to iOS this Spring. Leviathan sets the Imperium (Imperial Navy and Blood Angels Chapter) against the Tyranids in a retelling of the Shield of Baal campaign – a collection of novellas, short stories, Warhammer 40k campaign supplements.

Unlike Armada, Leviathan is turn-based; having played a great deal of Armada, an exceedingly micro-management intensive game, this fact maybe to Leviathan’s advantage. That said I like the combat of Armada a lot, I plan to review it once it releases in full.

The City Falls

So far we’ve only covered releases, but things turn a little darker over Nosgoth, the free-to-play Legacy of Kain spin-off, which will be closing on May 31^st. It’s always sad to hear of games going away, a nightmare from an archivist’s point of view, but with Early Access multiplayer a dime a dozen on Steam it isn’t totally surprising.

Nosgoth had a community though that much I know, despite never actually launching – it’ll die in beta form – there were always a few hundred to a few thousand players in-game whenever I checked in over the last year. Looks like it wasn’t earning enough to tread water:

“This was not an easy decision to come to. It has been a pleasure to build this game with your help, but ultimately its audience hasn’t grown enough to sustain ongoing operations.” 

There is an extended refund policy for recent buyers, and a freeze on the in-game store, full details linked below.

(Steam).

Eiketsuden! Bless You

Although it’s only due to release in Japan (in 2016) so far, Koei Tecmo announced a whole new subspecies of the Dynasty Warriors series, called Eiketsuden – catchy right? Dynasty Warriors: Eiketsuden is a grid-based strategy RPG, here’s some of the details care of Gematsu, Games Talk, and Famitsu:

“The protagonist is Zhao Yun, who together with his friend Lei Bin, uncovers a mysterious girl named Li Xia sleeping in the pillars of ice within a shrine. 

At its core, it is a grid-based strategy RPG, but since it’s a Warriors series title, you’ll have a single military commander unit as well, and there will be tons of small fry to destroy. During battles, it switches to action scenes, and while you don’t control the action, Warriors-style action scenes will seemingly unfold.”

(Click to enlarge).

From an interview with its producer Akihiro Suzuki:

I had a different time trying to convince the company, but presented a desire to create a rich story with a deep setting. 

Since it’s a strategy RPG, it’s necessary computations are reduced, and we can have more soldiers to make for a more powerful battle production. 

It uses Romance of the Three Kingdoms as its base and adds fantasy elements.
Since Zhao Yun is the protagonist, it will focus on Shu Han military commanders, and military commanders who have yet to appear will also make their debut. 

There will be special conversation events and friendship-becomings among the game’s appearing military commanders. 

Characters will grow according to a skill system.

(Via Gematsu, Games Talk, Famitsu).

Wings Of Anime

Koei really went to town this week, announcing western release dates for their Attack on Titan game. In the Europe it’s named A.O.T Wings of Freedom, a deft manoeuvre to avoid the nasty copyright issues that Spike Chunsoft’s 3DS game ran afoul of last year, and will release on the 26^th of August 2016. In the US it is just Attack On Titan, coming a few days later on the 30th of August. 

It’s coming to PS4, Xbox One, PS3, PSVita, and PC.