Josh - 7:44 EST

Wow. I just realized today that as of tomorrow, I will have been doing Q&A for 6 months. That's a lot of time, I think. The funny thing is, tomorrow is the 1 year mark for Matt...I've been doing this now for exactly half of what he's done! So, because of the lateness of my realization, I'll have to do something next time for you guys...we'll just have to see what it is, then! ^^

Have you played VP: Silmeria yet? What do you think? I'm really enjoying it, much more so that I did the first title. It maintains some of the challenge and strategy but is less frustrating than the first title (i.e. I don't die regulary when trying to level). Doing away with the time constraints makes Silmeria much more fun and relaxed to explore than VP. Sure the einjerhar lend nothing to the story, but were they really that big a part of the story in the first game? I generally like the characters more in Silmeria too. I think the game loses some of the style that the first game had (gotta love those anime Street Fighter style finishing moves from the first game), and the battle system (while more interesting than that of most RPGs) has some easily exploted bugs (my favorite being trapping enemies, particularly bosses because they're so damn big, and running against a wall for max ap). I am a lazy, lazy gamer, so I'm surprised to find myself actually doing the requisite extra footwork and hunting necessary to survive while progressing through the story. Making good progress so far but gotta beat it in a month cuz you-know-what is on the horizon.

Hmm...I think there was a question buried somewhere in that rant.

Vicissitude

Hi there Ouro

In regards to the hiding your gamerness?? I don't make any effort to hide the fact I love playing games but I don't purposely go arround telling people that, if they ask what I do in my spare time I tell em the truth, I play games and watch anime, some people have problems with this, namely dudes my own age who insist my life sucks because I don't set arround drunk in a garage with tons of people partying, but I think they just don't have the skills time or patience for my kind of fun ^^;; so uh yeah thought I'd chime in with that, though I think the next dude I work with that asks me what I like to do is getting a punch in the face so I don't get drug through the hang out with me and my friends man it'll be way more fun than sitting arround playing games all day bs that usually follows -.-;;

Anyway now that I've ranted what happened over one of my days off to you I'll ask you a completely unrelated question

Question: Have you ever bought a game purely because gameplay footage looked so cool and original etc only to find it sucks hardcore when you actually play it?

That happened to me over my day off as well -.-;;

Arros Raikou
*is completely ok with not having a very active social life*

I picked up a copy of FFX for stupidly cheap the other day, and despite the long running horror I've had with that series (dislike of ATB type systems/needlessly messy power up systems, that kind of thing), I thought I'd give it a chance....well, however many millions of people that like that type of thing can't be wrong, and I wanted some of this amazing storyline stuff I'd been hearing so much about:)...to cut a long story short, I've played for about five hours, watched an awful lot of movies, slain hardly anything, and given up. The one thing I did like was the battle system, but if I wanted to watch a movie I'd go buy advent children:) I've since tried out every game in the series (courtesy of obsessive fanboy friends), and come to the conclusion that there's just something about the series that I don't like, which I'm quite sad about....I'm wondering what exactly it is that I'm missing? I did however quite like FF7, and the aforementioned fanboy mate bought me a copy, with the words 'it's worth keeping up with it just for the story'.

So I've decided I am going to finish this damn famous game even if it kills me, and if it still doesn't get me, I'm giving up and going back to fruitlessly yearning for more earthbound games:)

In other news....in a kind of apology for not being able to get along with DQ8 (too much like hard workL) I picked up Rocket Slime, and promptly became so horribly addicted that I played it from start to finish without stopping.(22 hours in one day 0_o) Just thought I'd put that out there:P

Twilight
(of the broken start button)

Hi Josh.

All of my friends know that I play videogames. I only have one friend who actually plays them, though. Still, one is enough to split this RPG season 50-50 (I'm getting Valkyrie Profile and Rogue Galaxy, he's getting Okami and FFXII, I'm also getting XGIII since he doesn't like it). It helps to share the burden.

As to flaunting it in public... Well, next week we'll have Geekfest 2006, which isn't really called Geekfest. It's a convention called Icon every year in Israel regarding sci fi, fantasy and all that stuff (lots of table top gaming and so on). I usually spend a day there. More this year, since Neil Gaiman is coming. I'm so happy. :-) I don't go dressed as a Klingon though, if that's what you're asking.

I'm really enjoying XGIII right now. I love the story, they're doing somereally cool things which I hope will be solved logically by the end. How long is the second disc? I heard there are 10 episodes and I'm at 7, it's still on the first disc. Maybe I heard wrong.

If there's one thing I'll change in the entire series is how tedious it is. For example in XGI and II, travelling between places took a long time. Many times you have a menu asking you "enter shop?" and then "which shop to enter?" etc. Why not just do one menu with "Shop 1, shop 2, cancel"? But it's not such a big problem. I think the game isn't as deep, strategically, as the second one. Probably because I save boosts for special attacks and almost never use them, and because there's no point in chain-attacks.

Zohar Gilboa

Rock 'n' roll Martian, rock 'n' roll Martian...

For some odd reason, your response last week makes me think you just don't LIKE Sakura Wars. Where could I have gotten this impression? I don't know... maybe some enlightenment from you is in order?

As for myself: I'll admit to not having gotten very far in Sakura Wars, but it's oddly engrossing. Whenever I do start it up again I'll doubtless play for several hours on it.

This week, I took down Light Crusader. RPGamer doesn't list it yet, complicating my intentions of writing a review. A quick take is this; pretty short, not exactly the greatest Action-RPG ever, and not a match for Treasure's greatest output, yet quite diverting. The 3/4 overhead view is damn annoying though, as it makes for some hard-to-judge jumps, and many pushable objects are overly sensitive (you damn stupid rock! I BARELY TOUCHED YOU yet have to leave the room? Argh!). I understand LandStalker is prone to complaints from the perspective also - I'll learn soon enough. And right now I'm unexpectedly engrossed in Sword of Vermillion. Ever heard of it? A 1990 Genesis RPG - so we've got some expected advancements in technology that are not incorporated into its framework. Hell, I'm gonna give it a little dissertation right now (I've invested 8 or so hours, plenty to give it a preliminary rundown).

An amazingly irritating thing is that while towns feature the standard form of movement (press in a direction, move in that direction, although very slowly), the world at large and dungeons do something different. Up moves the character forward, down moves him back, left or right turn him around. It's a setup that frequently makes me forget for a moment what I'm doing, causing a few wasted steps - and in a game with a quite high enemy encounter rate, no more is needed to bring up an encounter.

Also, there is the odd decision to make maps mandatory. Sure, I COULD move through the entire world right now - but in any world area for which I don't have a map, movement looks remarkably like that second-to-the-last portion of Dark World in Super Mario Bros. 3 - I can see a very small area around my character, and not where he's been or where he's going. This serves quite effectively to reign in my tendency to explore as best I am able, since getting lost is a very real risk. Maps, by the way, are obtained from people in towns - exactly which people is seemingly ungoverned by any rules, necessitating talking to everyone until a map is garnered.

Then we have battles, which are an odd beast unto themselves. They look kinda like battles in 2D Zeldas, only the control sucks and there is no way to pause. My character has a sword and swings it up and down (looking more like a wind-up toy than a warrior when he does this) and has to be very close to enemies to hit. There are as many as eight enemies onscreen simultaneously, although they are always one type. Most enemies are pathetically easy to kill actually, as they have no ranged attacks and provided I keep swinging the sword in their general direction will eventually walk into it, then back off and come back for another helping. Enemies that do have ranged attacks are incredibly painful to fight against unless I'm overleveled (which is what I am now, thanks to fighting 99% of what comes into my path). I do have magic, bought in towns, but it's usually faster to beat enemies down with a few sword strokes than to use my fireball-circling-me attack. The lightning magic that shoots across the screen is useful though.

Oh, and bosses are really weird. It shifts to a side-scrolling view, where all I can do is swing my sword and move around (no jumping, no magic). The boss is one big thing that either advances and swings at me or just spits a magic attack of some sort a certain distance from itself. So far this means I have to get in and whack at it while hoping it's between attacks, then back off.

With all of this said - I'm for some reason compelled to keep playing. I doubt I'll ever pick this game up again once I'm done, but it's striking some chord in me that must be played.

This is not to indicate that the music in the game is compelling, because it isn't. I have played many Genesis games with memorable music, this is not one of them. So I boot up iTunes and give a listen on random select. Speaking of memorable Genesis music... heard this one before? http://gh.ffshrine.org/soundtracks/776/16 You can probably track down its origins easily enough - but play a guessing game with me!

This is mostly a note to Arros Raikou and whoever else has played Tales of Phantasia: track down the 4 part OVA, probably via Bittorrent. It makes a BIG difference seeing the characters full size as opposed to their little squashed sprites in the game. And Claus has the voice of Kakashi (in Japanese) which I find really cool.

The game itself I haven't made much progress on so far, I'm in the middle of making pacts with Spirits before I can go deeper into the Morlia mine. My problem appears to be getting sucked into my console games, and that leaves me precious little time to play ToP. I did get in a few hours last weekend until I got stuck for a bit and stopped....

Now then: FFV comes out in about 5 weeks or so. I began playing it in ROM form and in Japanese on my Super Nintendo, then stopped both. What awaits me when it's released on GBA?

Another title for the venerable GBA that NO ONE seems to be talking about is Yggdra Union. Why is this?

I have for you, Ouro-Sensei, a quest. Information I desire and you can quite probably unearth via your undisclosed sources. I seek the best method of making my Dreamcast play imports without having to put a mod chip into it. I have heard of both the Gameshark and the DC-X Adapter being tools to enable this. Now seek for me, if you would be so kind!

Actually while you're about this: can you find anything on Langrisser Millennium on Dreamcast (clearly never brought to English speakers...)? I have heard in passing that it sucks compared to the 'real' Langrisser titles of earlier years but have yet to lay eyes upon a proper review.

Speaking of Langrisser; it seems Der Langrisser features the same hidden battle I mentioned, with our fey friends from Choaniki. And they apparently pop up in later Langrissers too. Your procurement of screenshots (tame ones by the standards of that series, believe it or not!) is to be... noted. Yes, I definitely noticed those pictures. I need mental preparation time before playing another Langrisser title....

I'm gonna put up another Genesis music link because it's also quite good: http://gh.ffshrine.org/soundtracks/3002/29392 If you have in fact played this game, kudos to you. But can you beat it?

Aaaaand - about that permanent death attribute I mentioned, I am in fact aware of how very sad it would make people. Or how prone to resetting it would make players. Which is why I suggested it. Definitely it would prompt some changed playstyles, eh?

Get out of here, you disgusting worm!
JuMeSyn

Luca Blight charges up.

Arpijy casts a spell!

Forgot:Slimey moves to Tile 17.
Bainick moves to Tile 12.
Slimey moves to Tile 19.
Draconn moves to Tile 22.
Slashlen moves to Tile 28.
JuMeSyn moves to Tile 9.
PureLunatic moves to Tile 24.
William.T moves to Tile 23.
Arpijy moves to Tile 20.
Vicissitude moves to Tile 15.
JDX moves to Tile 18.
Aurelius moves to Tile 24.
Tabor moves to Tile 23.
Sundoulos moves to Tile 8.

You're all in for it now...feel my power!

Answer to #L14: A. Honshu
The Grand Shrine of Ise is in Ise, Japan, on the island of Honshu, dedicated to Amaterasu Omikami!

#L14. I hope "Lady Luck be kind" to this guy.

A. Setzer
B. Ronfar
C. Cait Sith
D. Bart Fatima
E. Taloon
F. Tingle

Be good to Slimey, as it's his anniversary at Q&A! Woo! Also, be prepared for some changes from him...I think you'll like them. Have a good week, loyal readers!

***Josh will probably have to one-up Matt.