Bladestorm: Nightmare

Bladestorm: Nightmare (ブレイドストーム 百年戦争＆ナイトメア, Bladestorm Hyakunen Sensou & Nightmare; Hyakunen Sensou translated as "Hundred Years' War") is a revamp-follow up to Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War.

The director is Atsushi Miyauchi and Akihiro Suzuki is the producer. Development for the title began in 2009. Graphics will not be given a dramatic visual upgrade.

Buy the game new to receive Shin Sangoku Musou Blast collaboration costumes: a Zhao Yun costume for Edward the Black Prince and a Wang Yuanji outfit for Joan of Arc.

Gameplay
The general gameplay remains the same with the following alterations:

Protagonist creation has been revised. Players can create multiple characters in one game to exploit a new tavern Dispatch command. These secondary characters can appear as ally units in the battlefield whose goal is to hunt for loot and experience on the map. Players will be unable to control them, and they risk losing every treasure gained if the unit is routed.

Story Mode is split into two halves: Hundred Years' War and Nightmare. Hundred Years' War offers the same experience as its base title. It is unaltered from the original game.

Nightmare is an original and alternate fantasy narrative with new music and make-believe battles; it stars an evil Joan of Arc and her army of wizards and dragons. Nightmare players can command armies from the realm of fantasy with various customization features. Mounts besides horses are available for the player character to ride once these units are conquered. If certain conditions are met, players can use their Nightmare units in the Hundred Years' War side.

Players can switch between four battalions in battle. Up to 200 soldiers can be controlled per squad. "Zapping", or instantaneous unit switch (R2 and corresponding direction with directional pad, PS4), can be assigned to the four possible battalions. When one squadron is ailing, it can unite with another to form new "Corps" units. Corps can unleash a powerful "All Out Assault" unique to each formation. Bonuses can be granted for controlling all four units in battle.

Each unit has a new soldier called "Guardians". Guardians are stronger than common soldiers and have their health protected by a secondary "Break Gauge". Attacking them triggers a chance to smash through the gauge, or "Chance Time", to make them easier to remove from combat.

Troops can accumulate Skill Points to learn secondary support skills. These passive skills can bolster troop strength and defenses or aid Skill Point collection. Skill points can be collected in battle, earned by using war tomes, or received every time the troops gain a level.

Online co-op has been implemented. Co-op has two players actively switch between whatever four units were assigned by the first player. Missions which are completed with a friend count towards story completion.

Players may choose to activate the added Visitors command at the tavern. Visitors are other player characters who are invited into Story Mode to act as enemy units, allowing a limited player-versus-player set up. If visitors are defeated, they may bestow rarer drops.

Two players can also compete in online missions with the same rules as co-op. These missions are separate from Story Mode and have diverse rules:
 * Capture Bases - Race to see who takes the bases first. Orthodox rules and restrictions may apply.
 * Capture Guardians - Players are given the simultaneous mission to defend their base and destroy guardians that appear.
 * Defeat Commanders - Whoever defeats the specific commander stated within the mission objective first wins the point.
 * Monster Campaign - Deal the finishing blow to a particular monster type or number of monsters to claim a point. Giant monsters can threaten the field.

Other minor changes are:
 * Troop compatibility is visually signified by light or dark triangles hovering over units. Strengths and weaknesses for each troop type has been tweaked for balancing issues.
 * All units have had their movement speeds altered to simulate a faster battlefield experience.
 * Bladestorm mode unlocks an extra finishing attack.
 * Battle situation data can be viewed by swiping the touchpad (PS4).
 * PS3 users can transfer their original save data to the PS3 port of this game.
 * The Japanese PS3 manual has an error describing giant monsters that Omega Force has addressed and apologized for on the game's official website.
 * Downloadable content includes character parts and special equipment skins.

Bugs and Glitches
PS4 Opening Movie Freeze: If players select their spoken language to be English and try to start a new game in The Hundred Years' side, the game will freeze. Omega Force realized the bug too late to fix it before release. They suggest for offline PS4 users to not start a game in English as a workaround.

Dispatch Error: Players will be unable to dispatch spare edit characters and will receive an application error message or the game will freeze. Omega Force promises a fix in a later update.

Related Media
Interested fans could have sent Suzuki ideas and comments for the title online at Famitsu. Fans could continue to post questions and comments for Suzuki and Miayuchi to answer on stage for the game's Tokyo Game Show staged talk show on Twitter. NicoNico users could watch the event live September 20, 12:00 JST. Director Miyauchi demonstrated the game online on September 19, 12:00 JST.

It was one of the PS4 titles shown at the SCEJA Press Conference 2014. It was one of the playable demos at Koei Tecmo's Tokyo Game Show 2014 booth. It was one of the Koei titles present for the PlayStation LIVE Circuit 2014. Director Miyauchi showcased this game again for the January 15, 2015 episode of Denjin☆Gacha! and for the PlayCafe 64th episode (February 4, 2015 Ustream/Nico Nico Live steam).

Former Japanese mercenary Terence Lee was hired to serve as publicity for this title.

An experience trial is planned for December 25 and can downloaded at the PlayStation Store or Xbox Games Store. Players can keep their created protagonist, earned inventory, weapon levels, and any story progression if they choose to reuse their trial save for the published version.

Allusions

 * Naran's personal unit is named after the Japanese title of the Genghis Khan series.