SEGA of Japan has released another trailer for Valkyria Chronicles Remaster, the PS4 port of the original Valkyria Chronicles on PS3. The trailer details the various factions in the game: the neutral nation Gallia, the Atlantic Federation and the East Europan Imperial Alliance. The player assumes the role of Welkin Gunther, who is tasked to defend Gallia when it’s invaded by the Imperial Alliance. You can take a look at the trailer (in Japanese) below!
Sega has announced plans for another Sega niconico live broadcast set for January 25 (next Monday) at 8:55 P.M. Japan Standard Time. Scheduled for demoing are the Yakuza 6 demo and the Valkyria Chronicles Remaster for PS4.
Additionally, Yakuza Kiwami (which released today in Japan!) will be demoed, and some additional and as of yet unspecified new media/info for Shin Megami Tensei IV Final (which will release on February 10) will be discussed during this stream.
Personally I think it will be quite funny if Toshihiro Nagoshi shows up again, only to act stoic for 90% of the stream. It was strangely enjoyable the last time he did that.
Sign up for a niconico account and view the stream here when the time arrives!
Credit for article info to Gematsu.
Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia has put together a highlight reel of Playstation 4 games scheduled to release from January to March this year. The video features an original song by Tofubeats, with a rap about each game.
SEGA Europe’s latest episode of SEGA Central, where they announce the latest news on SEGA games, showed us a bit of the Japanese Valkyria Chronicles Remaster trailer, and Dan Sheridan told viewers to tune in next week if they wanted to know if the game will be localized. While not an outright confirmation, it strongly implies that SEGA will soon be announcing that the PS4 version will indeed be released in the West. Watch the latest episode below!
Also worth noting is that in a recent Twitter poll by SEGA Europe, the majority of fans asked to see more content from SEGA of Japan. As you can see at the end of the video, it seems that Dan is already hard at work researching SEGA of Japan’s Youtube videos. In particular the ones featuring Japanese gravure idol Saki Yoshida.
This week’s Famitsu arrives with a substantive feature on Valkyria: Azure Revolution.
First, the reveal of new character Maxim. His outfit prominently features teal and he sports white hair. Maxim is an antagonist character. The Valkyria series has had a propensity for creating a squad of sub-antagonists under one main antagonist (as the Drei Stern were to Maximilian), perhaps Brynhildr and Maxim might fulfill that same role in Azure Revolution. Besides that, we learn that he was born in Rus Empire-occupied territory, selected to be a young soldier, and received an experimental (possibly unsafe?) Ragnite implant that allows him to use Magic Arts.
Additionally we’ve also got some new information on the battle demo for Azure Revolution that is featured in Valkyria Chronicles Remaster, and how battles for Azure Revolution play out. You control your party through a field and when encountering enemies on the field, you can choose to preemptively attack an enemy party with long range options (described as R1 or L1+Square, separately.) The Circle button can be used to interact with your environment to give yourself cover. If you successfully use a long-ranged attack to surprise the enemy party you’ll be given an as of yet unspecified advantage for the “real” combat phase – Close Combat.
In Close Combat, the player is given four attack inputs, which are assigned to your melee weapons and Magic Arts. The behavior of your allies and the enemy is sensitive to things like terrain, whether or not you attacked first, and how the battle is going thus far. If you initiate a successful preemptive attack, for example, the enemy party will react to your moves in a sub-optimal manner. This all would seem to capture standard Japanese ARPG combat with some Valkyria Chronicles-flairs.
However, should one of your party members reach 0 HP, they’ll enter a near-death state where a timer where appear above them. Either you reach them and heal them, or your party member is permanently incapacitated. Another Valkyria Chronicles staple with a new twist on it for Azure Revolution!
The Famitsu article states that music transitions between the field and entering battles will be seamless. A focus on how to treat and create seamless transitions seems to be more of an adopted trend amongst Japanese RPGs as of late, as opposed to loading screens that produce fights on a separate battlefield.
Yasunori Mitsuda will be contributing his talents for this game’s OST – it’s not clear in what capacity he’ll be around, whether it be for direction or composition, or if he would even be the sole composer. It also notes that Australian-Japanese singer Sarah Àlainn sings the “Song of Death” that can be heard in a recent Azure Revolution trailer. I’ll link it below in case you missed it or want a refresher!
Credit to Gematsu for the translated information.
The newest issue of Famitsu revealed another round of songs and modules for Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X.
Songs:
Modules:
Check out this Hachima Kikou entry if you want to view previews of the songs on Niconico.
Translated names are credited to the Project DIVA Wiki.
Phantasy Star Online 2’s Playstation 4 version is set to release on April 20 of this year, according to Sega.
Leading up to the release of the game, Sega will be running a closed beta. 50,000 people will be selected through submitting an application to the Japanese Playstation Store. Applications will be accepted through from January 25 to February 15. The beta itself will run from February 25 to March 6, leading up to the wide release of Phantasy Star Onlne 2 for Playstation 4 in late April.
Additionally, a separate package for the recently released Episode 4 will be made available for all three of Phantasy Star Online 2’s platforms (PS4, PC, Vita) at ¥4,990. A costume scratch for original character Itsuki Tachibana (from the currently-airing PSO2 anime) will also be included in this package.
Still no word on an English-based release of the game from Sega! Hopefully something changes.
Credit for the information goes to this Crunchyroll article and this 4Gamer article.
SEGA of Japan have released a story trailer for Valkyria Chronicles Remaster, the PS4 port of the original Valkyria Chronicles on PS3. The video doesn’t show any gameplay, and the noticeable aliasing on the characters suggests that, like the PC version, the PS4 version won’t feature remade cutscenes. I explained the reason for that in an earlier article. With that said, you can watch the trailer below! Fair warning for those who haven’t played the original: like one of the earlier trailers, this video also contains a potential spoiler.
The SEGA feat. HATSUNE MIKU Project team has released another song trailer for Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X, which shows the following songs from the game’s PS Vita version:
For more information and images for these and other songs, check out our past articles on the game! You can watch the trailer below (or watch it on niconico):
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X is scheduled for a release on the PS Vita in Japan on March 24, 2016 followed by a release on the PS4 in Fall 2016.
Via: Gematsu
Sony has announced a new Yakuza Kiwami-themed model of PS4 for Japanese consumers, to be released on January 21st alongside Kiwami itself. If you didn’t remember, Sony produced Yakuza Zero-themed PS4’s too, to celebrate the release of the last major Yakuza game. What we’re getting here is basically the same idea as what we got with the Zero-themed PS4’s. The featured image for this article is taken from the Japanese Sony Playstation Store’s product page for the Yakuza Kiwami PS4’s; preorders are also being taken for the hardware now.
It will cost ¥36,980, and it includes a PS4 + Dualshock 4 controller (both of which are either Jet Black or Glacier White-colored, depending on your choice), HDMI and USB cables, a power cord, and added bonuses including a Kiwami-themed hard drive bay cover and a monoaural headset.
Let that sink in – Yakuza Kiwami will be out in Japan in less than a week!
Interestingly, it’s also been announced that a demo of Yakuza 6 will be made available for Yakuza Kiwami owners on January 28th – one week after Yakuza Kiwami is released. This is reported by Sega by way of Gematsu. The demo will feature Kiryu as a playable character. There isn’t really anything problematic about this decision in itself, in my opinion, but I’m not familiar with demos designed to accompany one game being made available after that game is released. I wonder if we may expect a similar situation for Valkyria Chronicles Remaster and Valkyria Azure Revolution? To be clear, we don’t have indication that such a course of action is set to happen, as of yet. Maybe it’s a reflection of a time that is increasingly relegating demos to the digital space rather than the physical space?