Googleshng:
Darn good show, and one of the very few that can swing back and forth between serious and silly successfully.

Googleshng:
Well, looking at the list of anime I like, there's no noticable pattern at all. A silly fantasy show here, a serious sci-fi/western show there, a sick twisted shoujo series over there set in the real world or a reasonable facsimile...

Googleshng:
Nope, and considering that every TRPG worth playing has a very unique and interesting set of mechanics, I doubt you'll find one.

Googleshng:
I haven't heard that myself, but I don't hear much of anything before it crosses the rumor line.

Googleshng:
I created a play-by-e-mail RPG from scratch once, so i guess I'll have to say yes here.

Googleshng:
None of the above. I personally don't like reading fanfics, but I am not at all offended by their existance.

Googleshng:
Go into the experience spending screen and bring up everyone's traits as much as you can. Arngrim you still won't be able to send up, but the others will do quite nicely. Hero values also go up with experience, and since the higher you have the better, and it's just nice to have a full party, you should always wait until the last minute before sending people up.

Googleshng:
The 9 character party bit does sound interesting, of course I'm told that only the 3 on the side you get attacked from fight, which of course means that if you only have 3 people standing, being attacked from the side is a very very bad thing.

Googleshng:
I recieved a couple of letters along these lines, including a version of this one here with two news stories attached. I used this version though since I'd rather not name names in what I am about to say if I can help it. A while ago, a certain major news network which makes the occassional sloppy mistake vaguely alluded to a rumor being dispelled about the development team of Hoshigami. Just as a guess, I'd say, this was probably a sloppy reporting of the fact that not EVERYONE who made FFT is working on Hoshigami. There was a handful of core Square employees involved just as far as putting the FF in FFT, who are of course still at Square. In any case, upon seeing this, some smaller news sites embellished this into large stories proclaiming that there is absolutely no connection between the two. The only articles I've ever seen pointed out supporting this are the aforementioned vague reference to a rumor, which doesn't contain enough information to prove anyone's point, and a story on a site which I know for a fact has run stories in the past that have no basis in reality whatsoever. Now you see why I didn't print those links. 8) Meanwhile I've talked to Atlus about Hoshigami, and they didn't deny its parentage, I've PLAYED Hoshigami, and it clearly uses the exact same graphics engine and character designer as FFT, in fact the main character looks exactly like Ramza with a haircut, and I am absolutely certain that it's made by the same team, and every reliable source I can find agrees.

Googleshng:
Up until that last sentence I completely agreed with this letter. As far as I can tell, this is how Parasite Eve 2 came into existance. First Squaresoft makes the original PE, an odd little Action/RPG that blends some elements of the Resident Evil series in with some elements from Square games. It wasn't exactly one of the greatest games of all time, but it had some good points, and I for one actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Overall it didn't do too well though, and the Resident Evil series continued to get good reviews all around, especially the second one. So Squaresoft decides they should just copy RE2 directly. They make a game that has absolutely no connection with the original PE except for the main character, the fact that you have spells, and the word mitochondria. Everything else about the game is ripped directly from Resident Evil 2, including most of the plot and setting. All of PE's virtues are gone. The gun customization, the unique plot, the constant high quality (for its time) FMV, the ultra-sick optional side quest in the plus games, not a trace of any of them. Now, directly copying RE2 then changing some names and appearences wouldn't have been such a bad thing. RE2 is a darn fine game. Unfortunately, the principals that made RE2 great (limited ammo, puzzles, a growing sense of dread as the game goes on and your resources dwindle to a dangerous point and bigger things keep appearing, the quick judgement calls on whether to fight or dodge, the very limited inventory, and legitimately scary scenes) all escaped Square's grasp. On top of that, they made a number of unbelievably moronic design choices, including a targetting and moving system that seriously hinders gameplay in an unfair fashion, and having unlimited ammo, and monsters that aren't a threat whatsoever but take 200 hits to kill and you're penalized for running. Oh, and then there's the unliked item boxes that force you to run back and forth across 20 screens every half an hour dragging your inventory through the game. Put it all together and you have the worst excuse for a game I have ever had the misfortune to play. Uh... ahem. Got carried away there didn't I?

Moving along to FF9, well, people whined about FF7 and FF8 "going high tech" despite the fact that the level of technology has been steadily increasing in the FF series forever, and even the first had a big nasty robot. People also complained about FF8 getting way too experimental in terms of mechanics. So then they decided to make FF9 a major nostalgia trip back to all the SNES FFs in an attempt to shut people up. This worked, but it caused other people to scream bloody murder at being sold a game with nothing new in it, not to mention a complete lack of character development for the 8 one dimensional characters it stars. So now they might just alternate between experimental and conservative for a while so that everyone is happy half the time... except of course for all those people who think the series has lost it's edge and are just moving on to games by other developers.

Googleshng:
It was indeed said that Xenosaga is planned as a 6 game series with the 5th basically being a remake of Xenogears. We ran a story on it, which should be linked to from our news archives and the Xenosaga page.