The Frustrating Case of Koei Tecmo PC Ports

Toukiden: Kiwami is the latest example of Koei Tecmo's inability to make
decent PC ports.

From a fairly young age, I developed an interest in series like Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was probably some time in the late 80s when I picked up the former on a whim at the video rental place near my house.  Something about it just looked interesting, managing a small pocket of Japan and trying to expand, hopefully conquering the entire country. Over the following years, I made a point of familiarizing myself with Koei, trying out subsequent games in these series, and other offerings they brought to the West over the years like Gemfire.

So, when discussion came about a few years back that Koei Tecmo were thinking of making an effort to bring their games to PC on these shores, I was pretty excited. Their strategy games have been released on the platform in Asian markets for years, and the company was even looking at bringing their action games from Tecmo over this way as well.  It was something that I'd always hoped for, but was a bit skeptical that it would ever happen.

The mighty legions of the Dynasty Warrior cult will ensure
the series is a moderate success on PC at least.

Then the games started to make landfall here...and their quality was consistently poor to mediocre with a cringe-worthy price tag slapped on them for good measure. It's flabbergasting that this company has done such a poor job of porting these games and made all the more galling since these are often games that should otherwise be pretty fun, have a decent fan base, and could do quite well for themselves on PC if only they ran better on the platform.

By now, publishers and developers should know full well that a sizable number of PC gamers have certain technical expectations of games, and 60 FPS is one of them. Just look at the amount of backlash a game will get if its locked at 30 when it comes out on something like Steam. The game gets inundated with thumbs down ratings and angry comments which can sometimes damage a game's reputation for the long term even if the developers turn around and patch it to support the higher frame rate. Even then, we're lucky to get that as it often comes down to fans making patches of their own in order to deal with it. If the game's speed is fixed to its frame rate, well, good luck with that!

On top of this, it's not fair to assume that everyone with a PC is going to run out and get a gamepad, let alone an Xbox 360-styled one. There are a lot of people out there who are quite content to stick with their keyboard and mouse setup, yet we see countless ports come along with incredibly half-assed support for these.  It may say that the game can be played via kb/m, but it often turns into an unintuitive, and sometimes unresponsive mess. In particularly frustrating cases, the on-screen key prompts for actions and menu options will actually show the 360 controller buttons instead of their keyboard and mouse equivalents. It's like the game is saying to players, "We didn't actually think you guys would really use a keyboard..."

It may surprise you to learn that
fighting game fans like playing online.

Sadly, Koei Tecmo has been guilty of both of these issues and more. Dead or Alive 5 had no online multiplayer at launch, which is pretty darn important for a fighting game in this day and age. The company is apparently working to fix this, but in all likelihood, the game's player-base is gone and it's not coming back. Even more shocking is that the company has been releasing some of the recent Nobunaga games on Steam's North American store without even bothering to translate them into English. It's just insulting to see something like that. Why even release it here if you can't be bothered to localize it.

Still more outrageous is that the company thinks we're willing to pay top dollar for these games, as they regularly debut on Steam at around $60US, maybe with a 10 percent pre-order discount. Who do these people think they are? There are very few games that justify that price point as it is, and mediocre ports aren't among them.

Admittedly, there have been a decent number of cases where Japanese publishers have stumbled while making their way onto the PC platform, and I think the majority of PC gamers have been pretty understanding about the whole thing. It's something that these companies haven't really done before, and in a lot of cases they've been learning as they go. In the case of some companies we've seen steady, albeit gradual, improvement as they release more and more games on the platform.

Not even bothering to translate a game getting a Western release into
English has to be a new low.

Not so with Koei Tecmo. The consistently substandard quality of their PC ports has been truly disappointing to such an extent that I think they may irreparably poison their brand in PC gaming circles if they don't sit down and seriously look at improving quality when bringing games to the platform. There comes a point when goodwill runs out, and that time may be coming soon for this company. They've been fortunate to have a small, dedicated group of die hard fans shouting that we're lucky to be seeing these games come to PC at all, but who wants to listen to a bunch of people suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

I genuinely feel bad for the people who have to promote the company's games in the West. They must surely know that these ports just aren't very good, and the price Koei Tecmo is asking for them is way too high. Nonetheless, they still have to crack a smile and tell people these games are good buys. Sadly, they are not. PC gamers have certain expectations and they aren't being met. In this day and age, publishers should be well aware that they'll be crucified if they don't at least get the frame rate up to 60, and have decent keyboard and mouse controls. It would also be nice if games released in North America were actually in English. I mean come on. Koei Tecmo can't seem to do any of this. It's unacceptable, and, even worse, very frustrating because they actually are capable of making some very good games, and I think a lot of people would have quite a bit of fun with them if only the ports were handled with a bit more respect.