The Gaming Thread

[lordlundar]

Heroes or villains? I play a villain on virtue and a hero on justice.

[LostMyMind]

Thus, I officially declare Atlus to be the 2000's Squaresoft.

To be fair, Atlus isn't a game developer but a game translator. All Atlus games are made by another company in Japan.

So Squaresoft still top (for console) for me.

[Andara Bledin]

Heroes or villains? I play a villain on virtue and a hero on justice.

Both.

I'm a terminal altaholic, so I can never stop with just one... or tow... or ten...

I literally have a full stable on any server I play, no matter the game. When I was playing EQ2, it was the same, although I never paid extra for the extra character slots. I'm not about to pay just to support my altaholicism.

^-.-^

[lordlundar]

If you want when you play your villain, flag down someone in Corruptors of Fate and tell them Ruby Hawk sent ya. We're always looking for more peeps and though we are small, we have fun!

Though to protect our guild resources, we do have a recruitment policy in place. PM me if you want more info.

[gunsage]

To be fair, Atlus isn't a game developer but a game translator. All Atlus games are made by another company in Japan.

Well, right. In fact, I hadn't actually caught on to that until GK illuminated me to it. What I'm saying is much like Working Designs, I've accumulated quite a many Atlus titles or, to be fair, titles that Atlus had at least some part in "bringing over." Here's what I'd say so far as far as Squaresoft, etc.:

Longest Title
This was a tricky one. A lot of FF titles are expandable up to 100+ hours...well, the older ones, at least. If you want to be technical, FF11 would technically be the longest since it's a MMORPG. If we're not counting that, though, the top 3 would be...

Final Fantasy 1
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

FF1 took a collaboration between me and my bro back in the day, WITH STRATEGY GUIDE IN HAND, a year to beat. If it was clocking actual game hours, yes, it would be much less, but you get the idea.

FF7 was massive in sheer game hours, extras, etc. As a result, it was easily expandable up to 100+ hours, the only true contender to it being FF6...or so I thought.

Why is FFTA mentioned? Before I stopped playing, I still hadn't completed all 300 missions. I had completed MOST of them, though, including the "final mission." Twice. Yeah...my game time was as is, over 100 hours. This is yet another reason I'm interested in the upcoming FFTA2. Further, the most amount of gametime hours I've ever seen clocked? Disgaea - my roommates' files - 300+ hours.

Best Plot

Oh, this should be obvious. This is yet another reason I put 3 forward instead of just one.

Final Fantasy 7
Chrono Trigger
Xenogears

I know I'm going to be criticized, possibly heavily, for mentioning FF7 so much. This one's pretty valid, though, for a number of reasons, most of them would be obvious spoilers...like the final movie of disc 1...for example. There were often moments where the plot went to weird lengths, but typically it was pretty well grounded and not too terribly theorhetical, as seen in such titles as Xenosaga, Star Ocean 3, and really, even Valkyrie Profile, yet another reason I didn't bother mentioning it even though it's an awesome game.

I'd be stupid to not mention CT, though I'll probably be called worse for not mentioning FF6. Hear me out. CT should steal a number of categories and would probably mean more to me were it not for FF7. Enough about that, though. CT is awesome because it involves time travel, an impending apocalypse against an alien menace, and lots of different optional time stuffs you can do. As far as length, it's decent length, but not insanely long as seen in most FF titles, especially if you don't want it to be.

And where to start with Xenogears...well, let's see...it spawned a series that, while very VERY hard to follow, is very cool. The initial concept is a cool one in that it involves amnesia, hidden powers, and MARTIAL ARTS ZOMG! Well, that and giant friggin' robots. Si! If they had been just a liiiiiiittle bit better, Front Mission mentionables would be on here also.

Anyway, I think that's about it for that at the moment. As far as Mana Khemia goes, I'm about 14 hours in now and I can say that though the first few chapters fly right by, this game has DEPTH. There are certain areas that are quite shallow, unfortunately, as well. For example, you don't get exp and you don't level up. But you do gain AP which is used to gain abilities and stat upgrades that are unlocked by performing newer and newer alchemy fusions. There are elements from all Atelier games here and they're actually fused quite well.

Furthermore, certain "flaws" that were blindingly apparent in previous Atelier games are better, if not completely resolved. Here's what I've noticed so far...

Previous Atelier Games ----- Mana Khemia

Seems to load for various maneuvers - Does happen, but not nearly as often.
Audio problems - Absolutely none.
Prerendered backgrounds - Set camera angle, lots of sprites, but 3D.
Annoying voices, bad voice acting - Voice acting is very good, no annoying voices.
Timed dungeons, random encounters - No random encounters, there is a timer that causes day to turn to night which causes enemies to become much tougher, but dungeons are in no way timed...though some missions are.

Furthermore, if you enjoyed the prospect of school a la Persona 3, you'll definitely enjoy this one as you're off to alchemy school where you have assignments, jobs, character interaction, and all kinds of cool stuff. All in all, it's very well put together. Oh sure, it has its quirks, but if you enjoyed ANY of the previous Atelier games, this is a must have.

[gunsage]

Something really cool happened to me yesterday. Some of my inspiration came back. I'm not much of a writer, but when a creative stroke hits me, it hits HARD. For about 6 hours yesterday, I fired up RPG Maker XP and hammered away on an RPG development first for me...good and evil plot branching. To be more specific, within the first 5 minutes of the game, you can choose to be utterly defiant after being found out to be a thief and the entire plot then focuses around how much of an evil bastard you are.

Or alternatively, you can choose to be cooperative and what is originally shown as something awesome because you're evil, is actually shown as quite sinister since you're taking the good path. Further, you're inducted into the warrior's guild and you get a healing spell as opposed to an attack spell before you leave the sewers. Fun stuff.

Beyond this I'm hammering away on Mana Khemia and plan on doing yet even more tonight. As far as Patapon and Crisis Core, I didn't play them while on vacation, but I'm heading back into them now. That's about it for now.

[Chanlin]

I havent really followed much of the previous threads leading up to here so I don't know if it has yet been mentioned.

I just picked up Lost Odyssey recently and I must say so far I am extremely impressed by the game. The concept is fairly cool with the main characters being immortals who have lost their memories. The plot unfolds as you make your way through the first basic plot of being sent off to investigate a huge magical device and the plot begins to unfold as the main character begins to remember bits of his past.

So far the game has great visuals, a very engaging and somewhat emotional plot line, and a well done combat/skill customization system. Basically the immortals don't gain abilities by leveling up but instead learn skills from equipped items or by learning skills that the mortal characters in your party have. Esentially any skill that any of the mortal characters learn can be taught to the immortal characters. The immortal characters truly are immortal as well and will auto-revive after 1 round of being KO'ed.

There is also a side sort of mini game called 1000 years of dreams in which you unlock various memories of the main character who has lived for 100 years. Each memory is a mini story in and of itself and has some very deep and philosophical material to it ranging from the meaning of life, the ability to stop and smell the roses so to speak, prejudice, imprisonment and the like.

Overall I say anyone who enjoys RPG's should most definitely check this game out.

[Shangri-laschild]

I found my games for my gameboy the other day and finally went to go play them....only to find out my gameboy is broken. No clue what happened. Oh well. I'll just have to get my Zelda fix by finding the controller for the 64.

[gunsage]

I've seriously been wanting to try out Lost Odyssey. From what I understand, it's from the original creator of Final Fantasy or something. Also, definitely check out emus before you completely discard using the GB and if I may make some suggestions...

- Final Fantasy Adventure
- Final Fantasy Legend 3
- Revelations: Demon Slayer

And and...crap. I forgot what else I had in mind. Ah well. I was speaking clearly of ye olde GB and nothing else, but yeah, there's plenty of others out there. Does anybody else here use RPG Maker, have you found something better, or what? Personally, I think the best was 2003 version, where everything was side view much like FF6, rather than the old style of Dragonquest whatever. In any case, it's still very fun to play with and I've been using RPG Maker stuffs since the late 90s.

[LostMyMind]

Does anybody else here use RPG Maker, have you found something better, or what? Personally, I think the best was 2003 version, where everything was side view much like FF6, rather than the old style of Dragonquest whatever. In any case, it's still very fun to play with and I've been using RPG Maker stuffs since the late 90s.

I haven't gotten around to using RPG Toolkit but I believe that is the latest RPG Maker (open source one too). You can get it at Toolkit Zone

But yeah, I've used RPG Maker. I even got the PS2 version.

[gunsage]

So yeah...I'm about ready to punch some reviewers in the face. Allow me to explain. Actually, you don't even really need an explanation since most of it is in my reader review there, but still. I have all three Atelier Iris games that have come out in English. I remember getting the first one for my birthday one year, in fact. The AI series, for those unindoctrinated, is a very oldschool-style RPG that allows you to perform alchemy, where basically you take various ingredients and recipes and mash 'em together to make stuff...sometimes making entirely new items!

In any case, all three offer a fairly decent amount of depth, though my money is on the first and second ones being the best of the series...until I played Mana Khemia. MK isn't the best of the series, but it comes close by adding a lot of things and tuning up various others. That said...FARKING IGN GAVE IT A 5.7. Not only that...IGN dicked around doing the second AI review for about a year or so, then hurriedly seemed to have done it at about the same time they reviewed the third one.

Worse still, by their "standards," they're claiming each one is getting worse with each version. I call BS. Yeah, the third one had some...questionable...innovations (timed dungeons, missions, etc.), but it was still a nice addition. To be fair, on the low end, I'd probably give it a 7. In other words, the worst in the series, in my opinion anyway, deserves a 7. To recap, if you like oldschool RPGs with a hint of uniqueness, you should already have this collection.

Sure, I posted my review, but IGN has been quite biased lately vs. a number of titles. They really do need some new people is all I'm saying. Maybe I should get my reviews off of Gamespot instead. Ah well.

[Broomjockey]

Sure, I posted my review, but IGN has been quite biased lately vs. a number of titles. They really do need some new people is all I'm saying. Maybe I should get my reviews off of Gamespot instead. Ah well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Gamespot the one that fired the reviewer because he gave a mediocre score to a game that was getting heavy rotation in the advertising? And then another major person quit and said that everything was going down the crapper there due to the higher ups? And you're going OVER to them?

[gunsage]

I thought that was IGN, but I guess not. And the major controversy, if I remember it correctly, was there were a bazillion or so adverts for Kane & Lynch...suddenly it gets a 6 something from a reviewer who was notorious for being harsh in his reviews...and suddenly he's never heard from again and, hey! There's a new review for Kane & Lynch! Something like that.

The problem I have with IGN is when they score something high, there's a very good chance it's going to be something at least fun. Unfortunately, you just can't trust them on a whole lot else. Maybe I'm personally biased about this because I really enjoy the series, but the way I look at it, the series isn't getting worse, why are the reviews heading in that direction? While we're at it, a newer version of Persona 3 is coming out sometime this month. Here's the gist of Persona 3, for those that don't know.

[Chanlin]

I don't really read game reviews. If I see a game I think I might like I head out and rent it first.

[gunsage]

After I started reviewing at projectwonderboy.com, I didn't give a rat's ass about whether a game was good or not. I figured if it was something truly awful, it would give me something to write about. Otherwise, I just got myself a fun experience. And really, either way, since I'm only renting, it's no big deal. For example, normally, I'd highly recommend the Shadow Hearts series to anyone who likes RPGs...but to more casual gamers that RARELY play RPGs?

The problem here is that the original SH, in my opinion, is GREAT! Clearly there are a lot of flaws and if you don't like RPGs all that much in the first place, it may be a bit offputting. Further, some places have the original to rent, but anymore you'd have to buy it. That's NOT CHEAP. That's another reason why there need to be more honest, clear-headed reviewers out there.

When I sit down to review something, yes, it's going to be objective, but also, I'm putting in my two cents. Therefore, I try to keep things as open as possible to interpretation so that you get an idea of whether or not, regardless of what I scored it, you would actually get into it. For example, if you really like sandbox-style RPGs, you'll probably get a bit out of Metal Saga.

If not, though, STAY AWAY. It is definitely flawed and could have been better. I like it, but I tried to acknowledge its faults for those that may be "on the fence."