World's Worst Man

70 hours just for the main quest? Or including side quests? Because most big time RPGs routinely take at least that for the main + side quests. Hell, FFXII took me 82 hours to finish, and only a bit of that was doing side quest stuff. Of course, I can see people finishing it much quicker if they just rush through the zones without bothering to fight anything. But still.

Just stick to playing games with an emulator on your PC. It's free, the games are readily available, and the emulators don't require any sort of quality PC to run.

FFXI just wasn't even a good MMORPG, especially compared to something like World of Warcraft. The game was seemingly designed for power-gamers in big guilds, as you needed big groups of people to actually do anything in the game. In WoW you could at least get somewhere solo, but FFXI not a chance. And really, it's an MMORPG, so if someone doesn't like those games, there's no point in playing it and expecting a "real" Final Fantasy. The game was just a waste of a number.

The seamless battles should be the way of the future. Not that turn-based needs to go or anything, but the battles happening on the field map needs to become a staple. Random battles should just go away entirely, it's an outdated and completely unnecessary gimmick at this point. Re: Tone of the game - I hope Square just starts alternating between typical fantasy type stuff and more character driven drama, as I enjoy both. And who knows, maybe they are. FFVIII was a heavily character driven story, FFIX was a throwback to the old days of RPGs, FFX was another dramatic, character driven story, and now FFXII is more of the old-time fantasy stuff. FFXIII looks like it might be a futuristic kind of game, but who knows what the story will be like.

Looks fine but the frames per second gets bad in places.

If you don't want all that crap, you get the $500 model.

I wish more games played like Vagrant Story, as it was one of the best RPGs I've ever played. Square needs to really make another game using that exact system (or there abouts). On Vaan - The character development in general isn't very good. That is to say there is hardly any. So I never thought he was a typical whiny character, but I never thought he was much of anything really. Balthier, Basch and Ashelia are the only characters who I really got into, and even then, there wasn't the level of character development that FFVIII or FFX had. Fran was awesome from an aesthetic viewpoint, but outside of that didn't have much personality either.

You can't really move around to avoid hits, like you can in something like PSO. If you try to dodge or move away, the enemy will just chase you and hit you regardless. You can run away from enemies, they'll just hit you a few times before you get out of range.

You technically could let the game play itself, it just wouldn't work very well, nor would it be fun. All manual baby

The combat is more action-packed than a regular turn based RPG. Whether that's good or bad depends on the person. I'd be fine with the FFXII system or a standard RPG system, I didn't really care. I was just glad they didn't put in a god-awful "true realtime" system like Star Ocean 3 or the Tales games. The "real time" factor in FFXII is relegated to being able to manually move your characters around, all actions in combat are still determined by an ATB bar. The game gives the player the choice to either use party AI or not, and provides the means to play it manually should the player not want to use AI, so any criticisms about the game "playing itself" are entirely irrelevant. I'd say the Penny Arcade strip was more of a parody rather than attempted criticism anyway.

Any game that reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story at the same time has to be pretty damn good

The d-pad buttons not being connected makes it difficult to play fighters, especially ones that are in the QCF style.

Unless Sony was going to put 6 buttons on the right side of the controller (ala Sega Saturn) and fix the awful d-pad, they should leave their controller alone.

The single player is apparently a full-length RPG itself. It's similar to the original PSO where you basically go through certain areas and fight a boss, but this time you have AI buddies who help you out. Online costs $9.99 a month, and you get 15 free days. Time will tell if it's worth the money. I can say that even though I liked the original PSO, I would never have paid to play it online, because there just wasn't enough content. PSU is quite a bit larger than PSO though, and Sega will supposedly release new content for the online game, so it could be alright.

Is anyone else playing Phantasy Star Universe? I'm doing the online thing with a few friends. The PC version pretty much looks as good as any next-gen game, and why not, considering how much stronger a PC is than any of the next-gen systems. The gameplay seems much more interesting than the old PSO1&2, as the cities are larger, there are more of them, there's special attacks for melee/ranged weapons, they've setup a good system for switching to different weapon combos on the fly, and a lot more that I can't be bothered to type out. I'm not very far into the game, but it's looking great so far.

Good to hear about TP, although it just pushed my Wii purchase back by a few months, hehe. Even if Nintendo is lacking the PS2/3 franchises, I hope they have a bunch of exclusive RPGs this time around, even if they're low-key releases. Stuff like Baten Kaitos for example, which was a Gamecube exclusive RPG, and quite fun. There just weren't enough titles like that. Nintendo should get NIS to make some games for them

Both statements definitely apply, although my biggest gripe with both consoles is the software. The PS3 problems are quite a bit more of a downer than the Wii though, and the only thing that keeps me from being completely negative toward the PS3 is the knowledge that some great looking games have already been announced, along with the expectations that some the other PS2 series' will be making their way to the PS3. So anyway, what's the final word on the Gamecube version of the new Zelda game? I've heard it's only going to be sold online from Nintendo, but the newsbit I read only mentioned Japan. Will the game be available in stores in North America, or will it be online only like in Japan? The PS3 has more potential, if that counts for anything. It's the game developers who have to get the full potential out of any hardware, and that may not happen for 3-4 years.

Viewing those videos, the Wii gimmick seems pretty silly, truth be told. I'm also skeptical about how well it will really perform in some of these sports games. I'm thinking there won't be much control over what's actually going on. And by that I mean the margin for error will be so large that it wont matter what you do, unless you're making a completely different move than is required. The only games I'm interesting in playing with that remote are first person shooters, where aim is the issue, and the controller could provide a neat experience. But even still, the PC is still the primary place I'd want to play FPS games. As for PS3 vs. Wii, I'd rather play, you know, good video games. If I want to golf, I'll go to the golf course where I'm actually playing golf and I have total control over what's going on. If I want to hit baseballs, I'll go to the batting cage. If I want to play the video game version of golf and baseball, I want to play the video game version of it, not imitate the sport in a pauper's version of the "real thing". But anyway, if one system has better games than the other, that's the superior system in my eyes. I'll certainly be getting both systems, mostly likely the Wii first, but the overhype and condescension regarding the Wii is really getting old.

The bloatware version is $599, the basic one is $499.

"At Gamer's Day 06, Sony revealed that the PS3 will not be packaged with component or HDMI cables. The official HDMI cable will retail for $50.00. Other HDMI cables will also be compatible." So wait a minute, PS3 is just using a standard HDMI -> HDMI cable, and won't require a silly PS3-exclusive HDMI cable? Hot damn. Now I won't have to shell out $30 or $50 for a PS3-exclusive component or HDMI cable.

Three Wii launch titles? I shudder at the thought.

Mitsuharu Misawa. Most of the great 1990's AJPW matches involved him. If I picked Kobashi or Kawada, I'd be losing out on the other's matches with Misawa, along with the Jumbo matches. Picking Misawa means I get them all.

I don't see the PS3 launch title list to be any worse than the Wii list, personally. This is based on Zelda being available on Gamecube as well, which kind of defeats the purpose of buying a Wii specifically for that. I guess for someone who doesn't own a Gamecube, the launch looks more appealing though. Although, if Nintendo is only gonna sell the GC Zelda game online, from their own site, that kind of forces some to buy the Wii version. Either way, I don't find either launch lineup to be good enough to make me want the system.

So I beat FFXII. There was very little character and plot development. It's like they listened to the whines about the amount of cut-scenes in FFX, and intentionally kept them to a minimum in this game, which is unfortunate. Luckily, the gameplay was incredible, so it kind of made up for it. But if the story had been developed better, this may have been a contender for the best RPG I've ever played. As it stands, it was "merely great".

Kingdom Hearts' gameplay was the shits, certainly. Kind of killed the game for me. It would have been ok even if it had some completely vanilla, dime-a-dozen RPG gameplay, like say Chrono Trigger. But when the gameplay is actively bad, it ruins the game for me, even if the RPG elements are ok (story, enviroment, etc).