Now playing...

[ForceCube]

Speaking of Star Ocean, I'm replaying SO3 now. I never really thought it was as bad as everyone loves to say it is, but this replay is making me like even some things I used to hate about it. The dialogue* seems a lot less stupid now that I've turned the voices off and the battle system became a lot more enjoyable once I stopped getting frustrated by its stiffness and weird skill usage and tried to like it for what it is. Since I beat Radiata Stories not long ago and loved every minute of it - and Valkyrie Profile 2 has always been a personal favorite of mine -, I can safely say Tri-Ace has become my favorite developer from the last gen. Now I want an XBox360 for Infinite Undiscovery.

*And speaking of dialogue, this is my biggest gripe with SO4. I haven't played it yet, but I've seen some PAs on Youtube and the conversations between characters looked AWFUL. Like, Shadow Hearts 2 awful. No, like, Digital Devil Saga awful. That and they seem to have abandoned the dynamic text bubbles SO3 had and gone for voice/subtitles only. If the voice acting is bad and the conversations are too simplistic, I won't like the characters. If I don't like the characters, I won't like the story. And if I don't like the story, I won't like the game. >_>

[DuskShark]

Recently finished my 2nd playthrough of Persona 4 and stared a third. I am addicted. I've also started playing Trauma Center: New Blood. My skills are rusty. It doesn't help that I'm  perfectionist. One mistake I: Either restart the operation or kill the patient on purpose out of frustration.

And I found an FPS for the PSP that actually caught my intrest: Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. LOL, I suck as FPS. I often play CoD 4 at a friend's house and I'd get clobbered.

One more thing: Finally got some willpower to continue my 2nd Playthrough of Chrono Cross. Just recruited Leena.

[lonerurouni187]

Just finished Riviera The Promised Land, and Yggdra Union. Can't say I was too impressed by Riviera; the story was OK, there were humourous parts here and there, but the battling system was far too dry, and god awfully repetitive.When I got too bored of Riviera, switching over to Yggdra Union was a breath of fresh air.Union had better art (tho a little bizzare at first), more engaging gameplay, and a slightly better story. I hope the next installment in Sting's collection lives up to Union.

[Cless]

My main problem with Riviera is how painfully (and pointlessly) slow the battles are. I like the game otherwise...

Anyway, I downloaded my first Xbox Live Arcade game today-- Shadow Complex. It's a damn good 2D Metroid clone (something we've been badly in need of...and no; handheld Castlevania doesn't count). I've gotten pretty far. I can't say it's quite up there with Super Metroid, Symphony of the Night, or even Zero Mission, but it's still a damn good game in its own right. I like it more than Original Metroid, Metroid 2, Metroid Fusion, Dawn of Sorrow and what I've played of Portrait of Ruin.

Main thing that bothers me: background/foreground aiming is a bit weird. I'm not very good at it. The game tends to auto aim which is fine when there's one enemy but when there are more enemies you need to do it manually. Metroid Other M appears to have something like this and I hope it's easier to use when that game comes around.

Minor problems: The framerate is a bit wonky and there's some screen tearing. I hope there'll be a PC version. If there is I'll get it. Also, the graphics are so shiny and stuff that I actually find them a bit distracting...I actually wouldn't mind some Super Metroid-like simplicity here.

[Kogahazan]

I have an urge to go on a Zelda binge. I'm currently replaying Majora's Mask, but am paranoid about the collector's edition freezing problems which happened to me twice before. After that I want to replay wind waker and the gameboy zeldas, but nothing else. I played ocarina of time enough times to be sick of it, and too lazy to go back to the older games. I'm looking forward to the gameboy games again (Link's Awakening, Oracle of Ages/Seasons, Minish Cap) since they're inherently replayable seeing as they are portable games.

After that, I want to finish up the Baten Kaitos games. They're my last gamecube games that I haven't finished and at this point, I don't want to be a completionist anymore so I'll start them from scratch so I remember the story and just go through without guides to get everything like I would have wanted to do years ago.

Also, I was thinking whether I should get Skies of Arcadia Legends. I played the DC version and I couldn't get into it at all. I thought if I wanted to get back into it, I may as well get the GCN version with the extras, but it just seems too slow and boring for my taste. I don't get what everyone sees in it, or it's just I can't go back to these old turn based games. I saw one for $25ish but I'm sitting on it because I don't know if I want to play a game I can't enjoy just to say I played it. I barely played any of it, so maybe I need to play some more of it, but I just remember I couldn't get into it.

[Shawn]

Spent the last few hours grinding to get higher-level Media skill in Persona 3: FES to beat Sleeping Table.

Amazing how much of a pushover it is after getting that.

[Goshi]

Xenogears again. Playing it again since I just finished my latest playthrough in Breath of Fire 2. One of my favorite SNES RPGs. I was playing the retranslated version which I personally think did the game justice.

Also 7th Dragon again. Its pretty much the best game on the NDS, IMO. Though it is easier than the EO games... >_>

I hope the next installment in Sting's collection lives up to Union.

I assume you haven't played Knights in the Nightmare. Its gameplay is... unique, its not to my liking but others seemed to enjoy it. Also Sting is making Yggdra Unison which follows the same storyline but has different sort of gameplay involving the stylus.

Also I agree, battles in Riviera are dull. I liked everything else about the game though.

[Cless]

I finished Shadow Complex with 96% of the items and 98% map. Now back to not really playing anything (unless editing the ToP script and testing it in-game counts).

I'm pretty much dying to give Persona 3 a try, but I guess it's just going to have to wait...

[DuskShark]

I finished Shadow Complex with 96% of the items and 98% map. Now back to not really playing anything (unless editing the ToP script and testing it in-game counts).

I'm pretty much dying to give Persona 3 a try, but I guess it's just going to have to wait...

Is Shadow Complex an Indie game?

[Cless]

It was developed by Chair, a subsidiary of Epic Games. It's about as far from indie as you can get, I guess.

[Goshi]

Dissidia: Final Fantasy which in case you didn't know is a fighting game about Final Fantasy >_>
Not bad as far as PSP fighters go (I should get around to playing Tales of Vs.). Out if all the characters I've played as so far I think I'm likely to have Cecil has my main.

Also Tears to Tiara which is a RTS game by Leaf. Main reason I'm playing the game though is for the storyline which is lighthearted and amusing at the moment which is pretty much what I expected (First h-scene is pretty silly). The actual battle system is done much better than Utawarerumono's one which is nice to see though since I'm bad at RTS games so its unlikely I'll play on higher difficulties. (Though the PS3 one has a TBS battle system)

Also still playing Xenogears.

[DuskShark]

Isn't Dissidia supposed to come the day after tomorrow?

[lonerurouni187]

I assume you haven't played Knights in the Nightmare.

Yeah, thats actually the one I was refering to(psp only lets me type so much >.<). It looks good, but I cant try it till I can my hands on a DS.

Wasnt aware of a new Yggra coming out    If its anything like Union I'll definitely get it

[Goshi]

Isn't Dissidia supposed to come the day after tomorrow?

YOU SAW NOTHING

>_>

<_<

>_>

Wasnt aware of a new Yggra coming out If its anything like Union I'll definitely get it

http://www.siliconera.com/2009/07/22/yggdra-unison-unites-on-the-ds/

[DuskShark]

YOU SAW NOTHING

>_>

<_<

>_>

Cecil's my main too. I'll leave it at that.

ANYWAY, playing Gunstar Super Heroes. I don't remember the stages being this hard.

[Cless]

Playing around with Metroid Prime 1 on the Metroid Prime Trilogy collection (currently the best gaming deal in the universe).

The GameCube original was my second favorite game of last generation (trailing only Resident Evil 4). The game, as expected, controls brilliantly with MP3:Corruption's scheme.

Things I noticed:

Flaahgra was easier to me with the MP3:Corruption control setup (playing on Veteren; the same difficulty mode as the original). I was sort of expecting this. Other than that, I haven't noticed any major difficulty differences. Corruption's scheme just makes targeting other enemies more fluid, but doesn't necessarily make the actual combat easier. RE4 got a bit easier with its Wii remote scheme, but no serious differences I can tell besides Flaahgra. If anything, I'd think it could even be slightly harder in general, since the original's lock-on pretty much meant you'd never miss unless the enemy was really fast.

Thanks to the addition of Prime 3's Spring Ball, you can cheese through some of the morph ball stuff. There's this one part where you need to double bomb jump in the original, and if you missed, you'd break the block and have to start over. Here, you can just waggle, lay a bomb mid-air, waggle again at the right time and accomplish the same thing as a double bomb jump, but without breaking the block. On another note, the Spring Ball makes it possible to clear parts entirely in third-person mode pretty seamlessly since the jumps have momentum.

I love the hell out of all three of these games, really. MP2 is only very slightly behind the original as far as I'm concerned, with MP3 trailing another couple steps behind that.