As fans eagerly await the arrival of Etrian Odyssey 3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者] on the first of April, a fair amount of new promotional material continues to appear. The second promotional video, as seen below, first appeared on Famitsu. It is now on the official website too, along with a new wallpaper featuring the four Pirate class models. It should be noted that since the game’s release was pushed back, the OST has also been delayed and will become available on April 7th, 2010.

In this week’s Famitsu issue, EO3 has a little corner to itself, announcing secondary color palettes for every character portrait. This option involves a toggle between color versions once the character base has been selected, and provides a total of 80 unique sprites to choose from. A HQ scan is below the cut, for those who would like to see the second set of colors for the Princess/Prince class.

The development blog sees another post by battle designer Kakuichi, who notes various technical improvements: making the active attacker more obvious, giving monsters shadows, allowing powerful monsters such as bosses to dish out damage to the entire panel at once,  and adding distinct damage animations to indicate the types -  slash, bash, and pierce damage.

[Discuss]

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Stuart Black – the lead designer on Criterion’s famed destruction heavy shooter Black – is working on a new FPS with Codemasters using their EGO engine. Attracting a loyal following when it first appeared on the PS2 and Xbox back in 2006, many thought Criterion would return to the scenery-chewing franchise when the current generation of consoles came around. For reasons probably best known to themselves, however, they decided to focus on the Burnout franchise instead, leaving Black to stand alone as a once-off title that, though thrilling many, was destined to remain a standalone game without any form of follow-up. Until now.

Of course, Stuart Black is not confirmed to be working on a bone fide Black sequel, the FPS title being just one of the many (like Dungeon Keeper, Alien Odyssey, Urban Chaos and Viking) games he’s worked on. But with the news that the Guildford studio are working on a new FPS, and taking into consideration Black’s most renown game (to us at least), well, we’re going to go out on a limb and say “Black 2 is coming!” Just kidding.

Or are we? The taster section which highlights what’s coming next month in the current issue of OXM UK claims a “world exclusive reveal of the shooter that everybody asked for …’

Stuart will be joined by Tom Gillo (executive producer) and Andrew Wilson (senior producer), industry stalwarts who have previously worked at SCE’s London Studio and Blackrock Studios respectively.

Gavin Cheshire, VP of Codemasters, has commented on the appointments by saying:

“Codemasters’ Guildford Studio is key to our overall development strategy, and this year has opened further positions across its design, programming and art teams. With Stuart Black directing the vision for our new IP in production, deployment of EGO and key development figures heading up a highly skilled team, our Guildford facility offers great potential for development talent based in the South East who want to join a growing studio and work on original titles.”

[Source: TheSixthAxis] – [Discuss]

While a top notch side-by-side comparison of the PS3 and 360 versions of Final Fantasy XIII has yet to be published by any of the major gaming sites, we have the strongest indication (through analysis), that the PS3 version remains the superior of the two. A user known as MazingerDUDE, who performs tasks for well respected analysis website Digital Foundry, has revealed that through a study of recent Xbox 360 and PS3 screenshots, that the 360 version actually runs at 576p, which is not HD resolution.
Furthermore, he has also provided a hi-res screenshot of the same image, for both versions of the game – just look at the differences for yourself.
If you still didn’t know what version you wanted to pick up in March, you might do after hearing about this.

[Source: NeoGAF] – [Discuss]

The Etrian Odyssey 3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者] official website has been updated, with all character portraits now up for viewing. We’re happy to provide all these images (with transparent backgrounds) and hope you will put them to good use: whether it be for assembling your guild and party line-up, editing to create custom characters, or embellishing a desktop or even a website. Enjoy!

To download the full set of EO3 class portraits, click here.

Furthermore, there are three new system videos which demonstrate the skill types and the use of limit skills (we reported on these in our previous post). The character customization screen has individual tabs differentiating between main and common skills, limit skills have their own submenu, and subclass skills appear in blue (versus main skills in green) in the battle menu. Director Komori has posted in the development blog, apologizing for the long silence. He comments on the subclasses, though he isn’t entirely clear on the limitations of the feature. Komori seems to say that the best use of the subclass involves augmenting the strengths of a character’s main class. The videos, however, suggest a huge range of possibilities: among others, there’s a Shinobi with healing skills, a Warrior with Beastking skills, and a Monk with guard skills. Make of it what you will!

Today we’re pleased to announce that the Aniom series has been updated for Firmware 3.15, we would also like to announce a few other things, firstly that we will be releasing SDTV versions of both Aniom and Aniom Taiga within the next week, and in the coming month be releasing two brand new themes.

Without further ado, here are the download links for the latest versions of the Aniom series.

Aniom 3.1.5 720p
Aniom 3.1.5 1080p
Aniom Taiga 3.1.5 720p
Aniom Taiga 3.1.5 1080p
Kalsa 3.1.5
Tesla 3.1.5

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There are no new Famitsu website articles nor development blog posts for Etrian Odyssey 3 [世界樹の迷宮Ⅲ 星海の来訪者]. However, scans from the latest issue of Famitsu showing a female model for each of the Ballista, Beastking, and Farmer classes. Scans are below the cut, click for a larger view.

There are three kinds of skills in Etrian Odyssey.
Common – Skills common to all classes, like those for item collection and those that raise TP and HP.
Main – Skills unique to the character classes. Since skill points are gained slowly by leveling up, you may want to give your characters a focus within their skill ranges.
Limit – Skills that open up for use when special items are obtained. Anywhere from 1-5 characters may be involved, depending on the skill.

An interesting new feature, limit skills depend on an item equipped to the head of your adventuring party, and the characters involved can be set. Over the course of several battles, the limit gauge fills. When each character has a full gauge, the limit skill can be used – making it possible to suddenly turn the tides of war in your favor. Lots of different limit skills exist, so search high and low for new ones!

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January is winding down, bringing us a month closer to the April 1st release of the third Etrian Odyssey installment [世界樹の迷宮III 星海の来訪者]. As of today there are still no new posts on the game’s official development blog, however, this week’s issue of Famitsu did include another spread on the game. The images above refer back to the new nautical features: fishing, ocean navigation with unique obstacles, and multiplayer quests as well as item trading through the NDS’s wireless communication. This presumably means that completing the item compendium can now be a team effort!

The magazine article, in combination with the new post on Famitsu’s website, shows off the Warrior and Zodiac classes and introduces the new “subclass” element of the game. With subclasses, characters become able to acquire the skills of another class. For instance, a Pirate with the subclass Shinobi enhances the agility advantages the class already has, with the potential to develop into a character specialized in speed skills. This all-new feature allows for a far wider range of character specialization, customization, and development, refreshes battle tactics, and potentially softens battle difficulty. HQ scans are below, click to enlarge.

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Ever get the feeling that you’re never really a part of a gaming website? Sick of stuck-up admins and the miles of red tape just to reach someone in charge? No worries, you can talk to us directly, right now!
What do you need, then? Well, see below the cut for details!

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