Googleshng:
Well let's see, there's the facts that they both have that Renaissance Europe setting full of various evil ruins of religeous signifigance, the same person wrote the story for both, and that whole A. J. Durai bit, along with some other things I'm sure I either forgot or never knew since I could never bring myself to finish VS, and then of course I seem to recall reading an official statement to that effect way back when. I realize that's a bit flimsy but you're asking for somewhat obscure trivia on some relatively old games there.

Googleshng:
Well, for starters there's pretty much everything ever translated by Working Designs... except Arc 2. Skies of Arcadia tends to be pretty darn light hearted too. Paper Mario, Earthbound... Brave Fencer Musashi...

Oh, and of course if you get really desperate, there is a general concensus that Beyond the Beyond is a complete joke. *rimshot*

Googleshng:
What would Cloud do? Well, shrug and/or have a psychotic episode. Come to think of it, I think that's what Cloud would do in any situation.

On an uninteresting sidenote, I was in a similar situation once, but replace washing silverwear with emptying trashcans full of rancid produce, complaining with grim acceptance, and being yelled at with being forced to work overtime every night as a janitor/maid in addition to the regular list of things I was forced to do outside my job description, and eventually being fired for not coming in to handle people's food when I had the flu, on a day I should have had off in the first place.

Anyway, the main point of this is that any job where you're handling food for minimum wage under a jerk of a boss honestly isn't worth it, so my advice would be to march in boldly, quit, and try to find a new job. Odds are there's a restaurant across the street that'd love to hire a disgruntled ex-employee of their competition. Especially if you have horror stories about unwashed silverware and whatnot to spread around. There's also good odds of getting a significantly less sucky job too... all of this assuming you don't live in my home town that is, where after hiring the kids of all the local rich snobs to bring in more business, every place of business is overstaffed.

Googleshng:
Well, Castlevania is probably the shortest game on your list, but also the only actual new game, and I'd guess the most fun. YI you've already played and presumably own, so don't even think of that one, and BoF2 quite frankly was a really mediocre game when it first came out, and it isn't old enough to classify as an "old school" RPG with that sort of nostalgic difficulty and need for exploration, so by today's standards it's even worse.

Googleshng:
I didn't run across many undead in there this time through, just slimes and bugs mostly, then the Mages at the end. And you know, it really is sadistic to put a huge cave where everything can poison you so early in the game that poison isn't trivialized by spells and abundant items.

Googleshng:
You know, on one hand I'm relieved to hear that, while on the other hand I'm hoping for someone to make the leap of poor taste required to finally inflict "Bubba Lum" upon the world. Seeing yet another guy dressed like Sailor Moon would just add to a general sickening effect, but hearing the screams of horror from an auditorium full of people always warms my black heart.

Incidentally, my surveys show you couldn't even rake in $200 that way.