Gold edition of Valhalla Knights features new quests, multiplayer, Vita TV support

Marvelous AQL announced in this week's issue of Famitsu magazine that they'll be releasing an upgraded edition of PS Vita role-playing game Valhalla Knights 3. Called Valhalla Knights 3 Gold, it'll be out for the PlayStation Vita Feb. 27 in Japan.

"We launched Valhalla Knights 3 on the PS Vita back in May, and I'm glad to say that we got some good results from it," producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto told Famitsu. "Valhalla Knights 3 Gold is the result of us implementing feedback from gamers and also introducing things that we wanted to get into the game."

What sort of improvements can gamers expect? "We actually worked in a variety of areas," Hashimoto replied. "We went beyond things like adjusting the speed of battle; there are new story elements in here too, so while you're able to use your old save data in this game, it's really closer to a full remake. Also, the PS Vita allows you to share the game experience much more easily than before, so we're implementing competitive and co-op multiplayer over Wi-Fi."

VH3 Gold will also improve on some of the original's deficiencies, although the difficulty level will remain largely unchanged. "Certainly, we received a lot of negative feedback about the controls and load times," Hashimoto commented. "In those areas, we're definitely improving on it in Gold, so you can rest assured about that. As far as the game's difficulty goes, we got a fair amount of praise for that, even though it's a bit harder than the standard for games these days. This is something that we always debated on in the studio, but it made us realize that there really are a lot of PS Vita owners who like games a lot."

There's also going to be support provided for the PS Vita TV, Sony's micro-console. "It lets us do more things and approach users in new ways, which leads to creating better games," Hashimoto said. "To a developer, that's always fun to have, but at the same time, it makes it harder to decide how to arrange development schedules, or how far to go on an individual title. We're still just exploring the possibilities with PS Vita TV, and that's something we want to further explore as we release more PS Vita and PS Vita TV titles. I think if you play Valhalla Knights 3 Gold on your TV, you'll be glad you made the purchase."

No word yet on whether XSEED Games, VH3's US publisher, will pick up the upgraded version.