Macstorm - 8:06 EST

Here I sit on the last day of my vacation down here at the beach. Oh, it has been great. I've been snorkeling, swimming with dolphins, playing with crabs, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Now, I get to do another Q&A. Yay! I don't want to go home, but alas, I must. But for now, enjoy my distracted replies as I eat, pack, and watch a movie. I also just celebrated my one year wedding anniversary on Sunday. I had lots of fun with that as well, but we'll not get into that. Enough about me... it's letter time.

Hey, I read your comments on character leveling in the last Q&A column. and it got me thinking about my gaming habits. I've gotten into the habit of not even using my lower level characters unless I have to. I'll get a new character in my party and never use them because they're lower level than the characters I'm using so I don't bother with them.

Normally in the beginning of a game when you pick up your second or third party member their level is close to what yours should be. But the other day I started playing the predecessor of one of my favorite SNES games (which I'll not mention the name due to the legality of which I was playing the unreleased yet translated game). Every time I acquired a new recruit to the team they started at level one. Which made it quite hard to keep them alive so they could level up, but I guess that makes sense being that they're all kids with no combat training. Oddly enough while leveling up before the final showdown with my alien great uncle my three characters were all within a level of each other. It's funny how that works out.

which brings me to my last topic up for discussion. Earthbound 2 or Mother 3 however you want to look at it. The game looks great. I've been playing a Japanese copy of it, which is a little tricky, but thanks to a walkthrough and translation guide I have some clue as to what's going on. The battle system is fun because you can do some crazy combos by tapping A in rhythm to the battle music. I truly hope they release it over here or I think I'm going to have to become fluent in Japanese just so I can play the game without having to check a walkthrough to see what I need to do next. I read somewhere online that it's going to be released in Europe in December so hopefully it will make it over here too.

SuperKyle

I think Xenosaga: Episode 1 had the same issue of being censored before being released in America. There was supposedly a sex scene between Albedo and Shion...I think I've mentioned this on here before, but how the hell would that come about?!

What anime movie or series would you most like to see converted (or reconverted) into an RPG? I'd really like to see a Berserk RPG. Never gonna happen, but a guy can dream, can't he?

Vicissitude

hi - I saw your website. I was wondering if you had access to a free walkthrough for this game. I am stuck at the end. I have defeted all of the bosses thus far. I have no idea what the "paranoia soul" is. can you offer any advice?

thanks - joe

Salutations, sir Josh, Oh, identifying what qualities draw me back into an RPG isn't hard to do - although it is very hard to qualify. If a game sucked me in for one playthrough, I generally like to play it through again. There have been exceptions (Lufia 1, Vay, Warsong - the first game is universally acknowledged as the least of them) but just about everything I've played through once I've played through again. And if a game failed to intrigue me enough, I stop in the middle and never play it again. I'm finicky that way. Y'know what - I didn't list enough obscure RPGs yesterday! Let's continue the spiel, as I go even farther into the hinterlands of games that were never properly recognized!

Sailor Moon: Another Story. Say what you will about the Sailor Moon anime (and I've seen a fair chunk of it...) but this is a surprisingly high quality title to be found under the 'licensed game' category. Sure, it means more if you're familiar with who most of the baddies are from the show, but I enjoyed it enough to play through a Super Famicom cartridge. And then I found a translated ROM, so boy did I miss that boat.
Dragon Ball Z: Legend of the Super Saiyajin. This one I really don't know if I could've slogged through absent my fervor for all things Dragon Ball at the time. In retrospect acquiring every piece of Dragon Ball on video, subtitled was a colossal misuse of funds and gave me way too much occupied shelf space... but I digress. The game wasn't terrible but was roughly 95% leveling and 4.5% fighting bosses, so it got pretty monotonous. I must still have a liking for Dragon Ball somewhere though since I played through the ROM in its entirety six months ago....

Rudra no Hihou. Here's a goofy one that I haven't played, but have never seen mentioned on Q&A. The sad part is that there's no way to translate it, since its magic system is based on the player inputting characters to form spells. The problem here is that there is no way to render a system built around the thousands of characters in Japanese into English.

Soul Blazer. You mentioned Illusion of Gaia, which I liked, but Soul Blazer offered the neat concept of rewarding the player by rebuilding towns after monsters got whacked.
Shadowrun. Damn thing I kept losing on eBay bids for, but I'll get it eventually. SNES or Genesis, you make the call!
Lord of the Rings on SNES. Can it be as bad as everyone says?

Dark Wizard. Now this is an interesting tactical one I started playing on Sega CD, then for some reason left to start again. I'll get back to it eventually.
Popful Mail. Cute little action-RPG on Sega CD that sported a fine Working Designs translation. Goes by pretty fast, but it's fun and encourages replay for those trademark WD outtakes.
Albert Odyssey. Why am I the only one to mention possibly Working Designs' funniest translation job ever?

Shining Force CD. Certainly the least-played of the Shining Forces, thanks to its stranding on the poor Sega CD. Quality offering though, and quite lengthy -which is good. They combined two Game Gear games for it.
Okay, and now I must clear up the misconceptions you have about Shining Force III. A first-person battle system is not sported by it. You're probably thinking of Shining the Holy Ark, also on Saturn. And it's a fine game also, which I have played through multiple times. Aside from a few storyline tie-ins though, it has nothing to do with SFIII.
Shining Force III sports one potential downer, the return to the chapter system of SFI. I didn't mind after all the wandering around I did in SFII, but some might. And the battle system is straight Shining Force - with a few modifications to make it even better.
First - friendships. When two characters fight the same enemy, or one character heals others a lot, their friendship levels rise. Depending upon the character friendship levels can raise attack, defense, raise magic power, reduce the likelihood of enemy criticals and specials, increase counterattacks, raise magic resistance, and probably something I'm forgetting.
Second - specials. Every character has a certain range of weapons to equip. Each weapon a character can use has three levels of skill. It takes a lot of use to go up a skill level, but you're rewarded with some wicked-looking special attacks and the increase of attack power with each skiil level. And there are plenty of different specials to keep looking for.
Third - things happening on the battlefield. This is rather vague, but it essentially indicates how much more is going on in SFIII battles than there were in earlier SF's. In every chapter, for instance, there is a ruin or temple that the player must compete with thieves inside of. The ruins are optional, but many very nice items can be obtained - but once the thieves have their loot they'll leave and the ruins will be inaccessible. So it's a race. Also, many characters can only be recruited on the battlefield - don't go after them and they tend to get themselves killed easily. If they die before being recruited, they're gone. And numerous battles have something special going on - such as a battle between ships, where except when bird warriors fly over most of the force is stuck trying not to get hit by shellfire, or a battle where cannons must be taken over and used to blast down a gate before the boss will come down and fight. There are even several recruitable bosses, and a few of them I missed first time out.
And then there's the story. The Synchronicity System makes for a great twist, and I love figuring out where my other forces are at certain points in the story. Scenario 1 takes place from Synbios's perspective as the son of a prominent figure in the Republic of Aspinia, Scenario 2 takes place from Medion's perspective as the third prince of the Destonian Empire, and Scenario 3 takes place from Julian's perspective as a mercenary formerly under the direct employ of others. 1 and 2 take place concurrently, 3 starts midway through their timelines and concludes the story. Just as a quick note, this story is much much better than the tales of Shining Force 1, 2, and CD. But you wouldn't want it spoiled, right?
And there's the little bonus of the Premium Disk. Lots of bonus materials, along with the bonus battles against first some villains (far from all!) from SFIII and then against the final foes of past Shining Forces. You can pick anybody from your save file to be on the team, and the last few battles are really tough.

In case I've been in any way unclear here, I urge you with every fiber of my being to track this down and play it. Any means necessary. I hear someone finally came up with a working Saturn emulator....

Swamp Diamonds I don't remember being quite as boring as that German Hamlet, but any Roger Corman movie is quite capable of sucking your interest away. If you haven't seen one, try out Teenage Caveman or The Undead. TC will make you disbelieve your watch, because clearly 6 hours have passed in 30 minutes of sheer boredom. And The Undead comes Leonard Maltin-approved, so you've got that assurance! His 3 star rating means it's just as good as Unforgiven, Superman II, and better than The Princess Bride or Alien! Of course once you've actually seen the thing, you'll most likely write him hate mail.

What good or mediocre Sci-Fi movies could be made into RPGs? Fantasy too, but not many fantasy movies have been successful except LotR - and that hardly needs new games.

JuMeSyn

Argh, I feel terrible, 'cause I got a tad confused over Mac's vacation dates, so...urgh. Sorry Mac, I hope this didn't take too much out of it. I'll make it up to ya!

You know, we're starting to get into the age of multiplayer gaming in consoles across the internet (well, there have been many games already, but hear me out), but other than FFXI, there haven't been too many RPGs that take advantage of these capabilities! So, are there any ideas you have for the expansion of RPGs into the online console arena?

See you all tomorrow!

***Josh has written 60 pages of stuff in the past 3 days.