The God Eater series holds a special place in my gaming memories. As one of the more established competitors to Monster Hunter, Bandai Namco gave a more extensive focus on the characters. It also let players bring NPCs as party even in single-player sessions, which did not appear as a feature in Capcom's games prior to the 2022 release of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak. However, the God Eater games released on the PSP, PS Vita, and PS4 also had a trick that allowed players to characters from the same 's saved slots as avatar NPC companions.

To put the trick into perspective, we should first learn how the avatar NPC feature came to be in a genre that thrived with multiple competitor titles around the 2010s. The Monster Hunter games have a Guild Card that records each player's activities. Players can also customize the card before sharing it with others by writing their own messages while choosing a specific pose and title. However, the cards barely serve any gameplay purposes other than recording proof that you have encountered those players in a multiplayer session.

This was where Bandai Namco tried to amp up the competition by adding a meaningful gameplay feature to the cards. In the God Eater games, exchanging these cards would not only let players see each other's records; it also actually let them select the player's avatar as an NPC party member akin to the in-game story characters.

Some of the games' players have even discovered a trick where they can characters from other save slots in the same as avatar NPC companions, which also means they can technically add their own created characters as party . Such a trick has since been known in the community as the "Self Avatar Card."

The trick was made possible by utilizing loopholes in the wireless and online features of the now-legacy consoles, although one would be required to own two copies of the same game and/or console to pull it out. While methods to execute the trick had existed as early as the release of God Eater Burst—the enhanced edition of the first series entry released for PSP in 2010, I had the most profound experiences with God Eater Resurrection and God Eater 2: Rage Burst when Bandai Namco released them for the Vita and PS4.

There were two methods possible to execute the trick in both games. The first one utilized two Vita consoles—one of them could also be a PlayStation Vita TV. And if one had purchased the game digitally, they could and access the same game on both consoles and then connect with the local Ad-Hoc mode.

The second method—and the one I actually used—involved purchasing a copy of the game for each of the PS4 and Vita. I still how I could connect to a private online room with the same simultaneously on both platforms. After successfully performing the internal exchange, I could sync the saves with the updated Self Avatar Cards via the cross-save feature. In God Eater Resurrection, that also meant I could add the franchise's anime protagonist Lenka Utsugi besides my own characters to the list of callable allies.

God Eater was not the only series in the hunting action genre to feature the Self Avatar Card trick. When Koei Tecmo launched Toukiden Kiwami around 2014-2015 and Toukiden 2 in 2016, it released both games on the PS4 and Vita. I still fondly how I could pull out the same method and have my characters appear in each other's saves.

God Eater 3, unfortunately, does not the same trick due to the lack of cross-play and cross-save between its PS4, PC, and Switch releases. Technically speaking, players of the Switch and Steam versions could have a similar experience of exchanging avatars between two respective devices. However, both platforms have more stringent checks so it would necessitate a secondary . And while there is a way on the Switch to access a single digital copy on two consoles and s, both consoles can only connect via online multiplayer, which also requires a Nintendo Switch Online subscription for each of them.

The experience of having another self-made avatar as an NPC companion in these character-driven hunting games is different from the likes of Freedom Wars' Accessory androids or Dragon's Dogma's Pawns. In the latter games, you could create the secondary avatar right away, but they are more designed to be emotionless servants to your primary character.

The avatar NPCs can appear as callable characters with a more complete personality that can even become indistinguishable from the existing story characters if they are created elaborately enough. I actually felt more motivated to replay God Eater and Toukiden games with secondary and tertiary avatars when I had my previous character(s) appear to help me in the new playthrough.

However, looking at how stringent the check has become in more recent platforms, it becomes more crucial that generating self-made NPCs should not be the result of a cross-play trick, but rather should be implemented as an official gameplay feature. Having such a feature can help give more motivation to players who want to get immersed into the game's world but prefer playing in single-player modes, such as myself.

But I am personally hoping that the self-made avatar NPC feature can appear formally in not only a hypothetical God Eater 4 by Bandai Namco or Toukiden 3 by Koei Tecmo but also all other hunting action games, including Capcom's Monster Hunter Wilds which is starting to go all-in on NPC hunters. Imagine replaying the latter game with a newer character and you spot your first avatar coming to help after you launched the SOS Flare... How cool would that be?

Screenshots for this article were taken from the PlayStation 4 version of God Eater 2: Rage Burst. The game is also available on PlayStation Vita and PC.

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The PlayStation Now March 2020 roundup has arrived, and it is a good month for subscribers that are Koei Tecmo fans. A number of entries in the companies’ established series have all ed the roster. This means all of both the Nights of Azure and Toukiden series are available as a result.

Nights of Azure, the action-RPG series from Gust that stars half-demon heroines who fight against demons and must face the prospect of the women they love possibly being sacrificed for the greater good. Both Nights of Azure and Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon are available to play.

Toukiden is a Monster Hunter-like action-RPG from Omega Force that places a strong emphasis on being able to fight alongside capable NPC allies and collect mitama souls to boost your avatars’ abilities as you fight oni. The enhanced version of the original game, Toukiden: Kiwami, and Toukiden 2 are both available.

The other Koei Tecmo PlayStation Now March 2020 additions come from established series. Dead or Alive 5: Last Round gives people access to the fighter. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII is there for strategic endeavors. People can also hop into the Warriors All-Stars Musou that brings in characters from installments in the company’s major (Dead or Alive and Dynasty Warriors) and minor (Samurai Cats and Haruka: Beyond the Stream of Time) series.

The other PlayStation Now March 2020 games being added are:

• Control (available until Monday, August 31)
• Nascar Heat 3
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

Control will only be available until August 31, 2020, while Shadow of the Tomb Raider will leave the library on September 7, 2020.

PlayStation Now is $9.99 for a month or $59.99 for one year. It lets people play games on their PlayStation 4s and PCs.

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Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia announced January’s lineup of free titles for PlayStation Plus subscribers in Japan, which includes Toukiden: Kiwami, Hardware: Rivals, and more.   Here’s the list of all the free play titles for January in Japan:  

• Toukiden: Kiwami—PS4/Vita

• Hardware: Rivals—PS4

• Capcom Generations 5: Street Fighter Collection 2—Archives

• SSX—PS3

• Urban Trial Freestyle—PS3/Vita

• Xeodrifter—PS4/Vita

• Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken—Vita

  The games listed above will be available starting tomorrow, January 6, and will be available until February 2, 2016.

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Sony Computer Entertainment held a PlayStation press conference during ChinaJoy. A Just Dance 2016 bundle is scheduled to come out on August 25. In September, China will get a Toukiden: Kiwami bundle which includes a copy of the game localized with Simplified Chinese and a limited edition PS4 console. Final Fantasy XIV director and producer Naoki Yoshida took the stage to announce a Chinese version of Square Enix’s MMORPG which will be released in 2016. Other PS4 games slated for release this winter to early 2016 include: Street Fighter V, Saint Seiya: Soldiers’ Soul, Transformers: Devastation, Project Cars, Moto GP15, F1 2015, Sword Art Online: Lost Song, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, Kingdom Under Fire II, Freestyle Basketball 3, and Firefall. Sony also announced a slate of local Chinese developed games such as Chinese Paladin 6, Combo Steel, Zhànguó Pòhuài Shén, Huànjìng Jièxiàn, and Xuan-Yuan Sword Tales: The Gate of Heaven.

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Toukiden Kiwami is coming to PC via Steam worldwide, Koei Tecmo announced this morning. The game will be available on June 26th, and you can watch an announcement trailer for the PC version below.

The PC version of Toukiden Kiwami will include an online multiplayer mode, and pre-purchasing the game on Steam will allow one to avail a 10% discount.   Update: Steam page up. The game costs $60.

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Period: The week of April 20th  – April 26th (2015) Top-seller: Bravely Second (3DS) – 100,047 Nintendo 3DS sales: 1,095 | Tot. sales: : 9,831,802 Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 1,253 | Tot. sales: 6,899,608 New Nintendo 3DS sales: 5,329 | Tot. sales: 537,984 New Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 13,981 | Tot. sales: 1,295,464 PlayStation Vita sales: 15,467 | Tot. sales: 3,731,614 Vita TV sales: 558 | Tot. sales: 161,706 Wii U sales: 7,210 | Tot. sales: 2,289,803 PlayStation 4 sales: 20,112 | Tot. sales: 1,429,255 Xbox One sales: 201 | Tot. sales: 50,618 << Last week’s software sales chart << How to read and understand sales   Last week, Square Enix released Bravely Second in Japan and the game sold 100,047 copies in its first week. That’s a far lower debut than Bravely Default, which sold 141,529 copies at launch.   While the game has seen a slower start than Bravely Default, Japanese retail chain Tsutaya say they expect sales to remain strong through Golden Week, which should help offset the slow start to some extent.   As for why Bravely Second has seen a slower start than its predecessor… this is just a personal opinion, but judging by everything we’ve seen thus far, Second doesn’t really seem to do anything new that helps set it apart from Bravely Default. The game appears to be fairly iterative, and while that’s great for folks that liked Default and wanted more, it doesn’t help attract wider audiences.   And with that, the top-20 software sales chart for last week is as follows:  

  Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.

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Have you ever wanted to punch a giant spider in the face so hard that its limbs fly off? Toukiden Kiwami might be for you. Kiwami is an updated version of the Dynasty Warriors developer’s hunting-action game, Toukiden. As a fan of the genre, I put Toukiden through its paces to see how it holds up to its contemporaries.   Now full disclosure: I didn’t play the original version of Toukiden. I’m approaching this game merely as someone who’s familiar with other hunting games like Monster Hunter and Freedom Wars, so this will be less about the new Kiwami content and more about the game overall. The main attraction of this Kiwami release is that it basically doubles the content in the game, adding new monsters, weapons, and more. Of course since I was a Toukiden newbie, it was quite a while before I saw most of it.   If Monster Hunter scared you off due to its complexity, you may find Toukiden Kiwami more welcoming. Preparation for battles is pretty simple: you pick a Mitama (a spirit of a Japanese hero) which serves the purposes of both items and ive skills, ready your armor and weapons, maybe say a prayer at the shrine, and then you’re good to go. There’s way less prep time than one might expect in a game like this, and it’s just one example among many that paint Toukiden Kiwami as a much more straightforward experience. It may not seem like a big deal, but this differentiates the game significantly from something like Monster Hunter.   Honestly, I think Toukiden Kiwami is too convenient. While the game indeed feels simpler, it lacks a lot of the nuance of Monster Hunter games as a result. Nothing demonstrates this better than being able to check the health of your target by pressing the start button. At a glance it might seem like a simple convenience, but it’s a pretty telling aspect of how the encounters in Toukiden are designed.   There are very few indicators of progress when fighting the game’s big monsters. They don’t run away or move into different areas. They don’t show subtle signs of weakness. Instead of any natural indicators, almost every monster has access to a “second form” of sorts when they get low on health, where their moveset either changes entirely or they have one powerful new attack. That’s about as complicated as it gets, unfortunately. Whereas Monster Hunter has a lot of cool touches that feed your intuition about how well you’re doing, Toukiden simply gives you a health bar to check like a watch. “Oh, I guess it’s dead monster ‘o clock!”   That’s not necessarily game-ruining, but I feel the sacrifices they’ve made hurt the monster encounters overall. By their nature hunting games want you to replay the same fights over and over for materials to make better equipment. Because of this, games like Monster Hunter try to make no two hunts feel exactly the same, and they try to convey that through monster behavior and the environment. In comparison, the hunts in Toukiden are much more barebones.   As I mentioned earlier, monsters don’t move around to different areas when you fight them. It doesn’t really matter, though, because I rarely felt like the areas made a big difference. There’s no thrill of a chase, no strategies for fighting in different areas. The monsters fight with fairly limited patterns too, making the experience feel less like you’re fighting a fearsome foe and more like you’re wailing on a solid wall of meat until it falls over. Rinse and repeat a million times until you get the armor, weapons, and Mitamas you want. There’s nothing to really differentiate each encounter, no “I’ve never seen the monster do that before!” moments, and that makes the all-important grind kind of boring.   That said, I do like some of the touches that Toukiden Kiwami has to offer. There are a ton of really neat weapons that you won’t find in Monster Hunter, like punching gauntlets and the kusarigama. Some simplifications I don’t mind are the Mitamas as a way to represent your skills and purifying as a replacement for carving monster parts. I really like the Japanese aesthetic in general; it’s pretty distinct from the competition and makes for some really cool looking monsters. While there’s not exactly a ton of them, the monsters seemed to get increasingly cool looking and that pushed me towards wanting to see what I would fight next.   It takes a while to get to them, however.   The game starts very slow, at least if you’re focusing on the single player. Before you even get to fight the giant monsters, you’ll have to do quest after quest of clearing out the smaller, more negligible enemies that litter the environments. Once you do take on the giant monsters, be prepared to fight them repeatedly, and not because you’re working on an armor set you really want. Toukiden constantly makes you refight monsters you’ve already beaten in new missions, with only slight variations like the map being more open or your hunting partners being restricted. It’s one thing to make you fight monsters under different conditions, but the conditions Toukiden presents you with are so negligible that it all just feels like blatant filler. The missions do eventually get better, and sluggish starts definitely aren’t new to the genre, but I feel like Toukiden Kiwami’s goes on especially long.   Toukiden Kiwami uses its slower pace to focus heavily on its story, for better or worse. I think the concept is neat: demons have been devastating the land and consuming the souls of various Japanese historical figures. Your character teams up with individuals called Slayers who fight these monsters. Each slayer gets paired with one of their own Japanese hero souls, known as Mitama, which gives them special powers. Your guy is special because he can communicate with a whole bunch of Mitama, and thus it’s up to him to save the world from the demons. It’s as good of a set up as any, but one that tends to fall to the wayside as the game focuses more on individual character arcs.   Your comrades are a surprisingly big part of the single player story. The majority of your time outside of missions is spent talking to them, both to build on their back stories and to open up access to the next mission. While the character arcs are serviceable, I don’t think they carry the game as much as the writers probably wanted them to. I honestly can’t tell if there’s a lot of filler missions to accommodate these character stories, or if these stories were written to accommodate the excess of filler missions. Either way, it’s not a very interesting experience.   I don’t think Toukiden Kiwami is a bad game, but it feels like it was made specifically for people who felt burned by Monster Hunter, for whatever reason. The problem is that I love Monster Hunter, so I ended up missing all of the nuances of those games a lot more than I appreciated the simplicity of Toukiden. In of variety and depth it’s a noticeable step back, even with all of the added Kiwami content. I did enjoy some aspects of the game, particularly the weapons and all of the neat touches of Japanese culture that permeate throughout the monster designs and the Mitamas. It wasn’t enough to carry the game for me, though, and personally Toukiden Kiwami isn’t something I see myself going back to in the way I do other hunting games.   Food for Thought:   1. My favorite weapon to use was the punching gauntlets. I just really love the idea of punching giant monsters in their big dumb faces.   2. While the single player story paces itself very slowly, the multiplayer quests generally only require you to fight the big monsters to move onto the next set of missions. I really prefer that kind of structure because progress feels more dependent on the player’s skill rather than the game arbitrarily trying to soak time out of you with filler missions. If had access to more people to play the game with, the multiplayer would have definitely been where I spent most of my time.   3. Some minor spoilers about one of the slayer companions: A key part of Hatsuho’s backstory was that she mysteriously disappeared one day after getting sucked into some kind of demon dimension vortex. I looked up more information, and apparently she spends that time hanging out in a spin-off mobile quiz game. There’s probably more to it, but I’m amused by the idea of a major plot point in someone’s backstory involving banishment to the Quiz Dimension.

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Koei Tecmo is developing an enhanced version of Toukiden: The Age of Demons for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. The PS4 version has enhanced graphics and this video gives us a look at Utakata Village.

Utakata Village on PlayStation 4…

… and the same area from Toukiden: Age of Demons on PlayStation Vita from an earlier post about the oni hunting game.

Toukiden Kiwami is scheduled to come out for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita on April 23 in Japan.

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