While i would have loved to splooge and do a full fledged Warriors retrospective, i simply can’t at the moment due to time lacking for such an endeavour, so we’ll have a musou game review each Sunday in May, starting from the 8th, which will alter the bi-daily posting routine we entered since February a little.
I wish i could do more, but i already know will not be able to get, play and review the upcoming Touken Ranbu Warriors before May itself ends, for one (as to why, basically because they are going with a digital only release in European territories, more below=. Though i can update my previous rants on Tecmo Koei’s monetization practices and content culling, as the Switch eShop page for that game went up recently and showed us that Tecmo Koei’s will simply NOT stop inventing new ways to “nickle and dime” hundreds of moolah from you for very little effort.
So, yeah, aside from being already disappointing how Koei simply decided NOT to make European physical copies of this game (which is a reversal of the shitty deal U.S. Warriors fans used to get) despite still releasing it in english only on the eShop… there’s the abysmal monetization, that somehow it’s mistifyingly both worse and “better”.
And also why i won’t be reviewing the game before May ends, i’m not giving them 60 bucks for a digital only release, i trust them even less as TK actually, factually released DW 9 Empires without a Free Mode or any kind of extra modes or challenge maps, while also removing some edit features that were in DW 8 Empires.
Still, 60 bucks for the base game, with a 40 bucks season pass, please.
So i will wait for a sale on this one, or import an american copy when it doesn’t cost twice as much as the MSRP. Koei has proven time and time again they don’t deserve any trust on anything that isn’t them making Omega Force work on a Nintendo franchise.
ANYWAY, the Touken Ranbu Warriors Digital Deluxe Edition costs 110 buckaroos, which is still an insane amount, but gets more insane as it basically should be the base game plus the Season Pass contents… but there’s no Season Pass option available yet.
And the paid content itself it’s embarassing, as it’s somehow both incredibly overpriced and lacking any value, as there are no extra maps, modes or playable characters, just 16 costumes, 5 unique remixes of tracks coming from Touken Ranbu Online… and backdrops for the main base/menù, the Honmaru.
Backdrops. still not technically new, as Koei did sell paid “wallpaper/eyecatch” DLCs for Arslan The Warriors Of Legend, but at least they also sold cards for that game’s power up system, extra battles, stuff that’s, you know, actually desirable. It’s extra sleazy as all this content releases on launch day, so they could have put that stuff in the game via a free patch, i mean, they’re not even planning to make more content down the line, they stated as such on the official website of the game, and given how they handled post-game support for both SW and DW 9 Empires, i do feel they’re not lying.
I’m surprised the company still isn’t embracing microtransactions (in terms of international releases, at least), maybe it’s also due to how fierce (and fully deserved) the backlash was to them trying to ask 1 buck for changing the hair color of a character in DOA 6… as in, 1 buck each time.
They know that their audience would immediatly and definitively abandon them if they went to the lootboxes, microtransactions and such bullshit. They have to.
But still, they’re doing incredibly well in somehow still implementing some of the worse monetization methods ever for their games.
Once again, i wish upon a star that Capcom would resurrect Sengoku Basara in the west and try to conquer this specific niche that TK pretty much owns.
That or for Koei and Omega Force to actually invest money, effort and ideas into these.
Wise Cafe (International) 