Portable RPG Goodness…

JDR13 said:

The middle part of the FF series was great though imo, take a look at IV, V, VI, and IV.

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Squaresoft's best!

And make sure to also play IV, my personal favorite!

(I also think FFX and FFXII were great... flawed but still great... much better than the overrated VII and VIII (IX wasn't so bad).

I purchased the FFXII CE last year but just never had the time to play it. It's one of many PS2 RPGs I own and never played, along with DQ 8, Tales of the Abyss/Legendia, and the entire Xenosaga series.

There's also the upcoming game Fighting Fantasy : The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, for those who want a RPG that is not a JRPG.

JDR13 said:

I purchased the FFXII CE last year but just never had the time to play it. It's one of many PS2 RPGs I own and never played, along with DQ 8, Tales of the Abyss/Legendia, and the entire Xenosaga series.

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You should really give it a try, it's entertaining. The combat system is a lot of fun and there are no random encounters. The game also has a completely open world (and it's HUGE), feels very MMORPGish.

I love DQ8 but both times I've played, I get to the same town (about 15 hours into the game I'd say) get stuck and forget about it.

Xenosaga... been playing it for the past year on and off. About once every 3 months or so. After an hour of cut-scenes I save and don't touch it for another few months. No joke, I think I've played a total of 30 minutes and watched at least 4 hours of cut-scenes. What were they thinking/smoking/drinking?

Have you picked up Persona 3 or 4? I highly recommend 4 - it's one of the few console RPGs I've played the last few years or so where I was completely hooked and had absolutely no complaints about. The story, gameplay, combat system, characters, music, even the graphics (very unique and stylish art design) were top notch.

So many RPGs for the PS2, even in it's last couple of years.

txa1265 said:

jRPG's by their very nature have teens leading the world, while simultaneously acting like … teens. It is what took me so long to get into them. Even the very best of them - things like FF VII, have an overwhelming amount of teen angst and random silliness running through them.

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Possibly best to keep them low on my list for now then, shame, there's enough of them that it'd have been good if I did like them.

I do wonder what it says about different cultures.

The japanese teens like their escapist fantasies to include the same confusing teenage angst they have to deal with in every day life. Our decadent western teens just want to be so totally kick-arse hardcore that all the (ludicrously over-endowed & scantily clad) bitches are all over them without them having to really talk to them or put up with any of their crap.

In theory the JRPG approach sounds like the more mature one, but in practice my god the games felt childish. Probably just because I've gotten used to ignoring heaving, barely concealed bosoms in western RPGs so don't even register the childishness there any more.

Relayer said:

Not sure about the latest FF Tactics DS game though, I got the first one for the GBA and hated the story and characters.

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Well, no one over ten years old should care about the story or characters in - deep breath - Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. The two DS 'RPG tactics' titles I've played, FFT A2 and Disgaea DS, appear to be aimed at an even younger audience than standard JRPGs. They trade pretentious teenie angst for ultra cutie comedy. Of the two, I found the gameplay in Disgaea superior.

Etrian Odyssey and Dark Spire are still the best reasons to own a DS though.

Sorry if these guys have been mentioned already; I recently downloaded a game called 'The Quest' and it's old-school, but pretty well done IMO. They do games for hand held PDA's and stuff, and have a few things on PC.

http://www.redshift.hu/

Sir Markus said:

Sorry if these guys have been mentioned already; I recently downloaded a game called 'The Quest' and it's old-school, but pretty well done IMO. They do games for hand held PDA's and stuff, and have a few things on PC.

http://www.redshift.hu/

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Thanks for the info.

I've been playing the demo of the PC version. Very nice rpg.

I love The Quest - they have done a great job updating it since initial release. Not sure if I got that one in one of my last handheld articles.

I'm playing a couple DS RPG's now:
- Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road - surprisingly good setup and execution
- A Witches Tale - excellent setup with a dismal follow-up and gameplay

I'm doing a few reviews here or there, mostly at either VGBlogger or GearDiary ... I've lost the gusto to keep up on the DS RPG treadmill ... though I play most PSP stuff since there is so little!

I remember reading a preview in Play magazine about that Wizard of Oz game, looked intriguing. Haven't seen it in any stores though.

Playing Etrian Odyssey at the moment, what a totally unforgiving game! Finding a bit of a need to grind just to keep the cash rolling in faster than I need to buy resurrection & resting.

For those who've played it, what's with those couple of other locked classes? Samurai & something else.

The Hexer and Ronin classes eventually become unlocked through a couple of story related events. Unfortunately by the time they become available it's too much hassle grinding a new character up to the party's level. Although they're both good classes to start out with in EO 2.

"Hexer : A class of people which are able to work with computers".
Sorry, couldn't resist …

Relayer said:

…for JDR13!

If I recall correctly, you weren't a huge fan of the DS's tiny screens, right?
Well, new DS will have a much bigger screen….

http://www.destructoid.com/elephant/photo-m.phtml?post_key=153494&photo_key=119767

http://www.destructoid.com/nintendo-officially-reveals-the-dsi-ll-153494.phtml

May be a nice upgrade from DS Lite - it's basically the DSi with larger screen.
Would be pretty awesome actually especially with all the RPGs currenty out (and coming) for the DS, not to mention all the existing GBA RPGs.

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Actuall the DSi and this one are OOB incapable of playing GBA games as they lack slot-2, which is where you would have place your GBA carts or your flash cart for playing GBA games.

Now if you cough up (IIRC) $40 for the iPlayer flash cart there is an app available now allowing you to play GBA games w/o slot-2 equipment on the DS, DSi, and DSXL or whatever it's called. The cart contains a third ARM9 CPU, memory, and firmware and is also capable of decoding a variety of video and audio formats, but apparently still chokes on H.264 but it IS nevertheless a HUGE improvement in the multimedia capabilities of the DS. It also allows use of various other homebrew applications and games, but CANNOT be used to play commercial ROM images ATM. i.e. you'll need another flash cart for those, e.g. Acekard 2i, EZ-Flash Vi, Supdercard DS 1i, etc.

Note the GBA game play app isn't 100% compatible yet, but does have a number of nifty features that regular old slot-2 equipment don't/won't/can't give you, e.g. save states, video scaling functions(the GBA screen was slightly lower resolution than the DS screen), etc.

I'm thinking about grabbing one of these iPlayers for the GBA app and multimedia alone if only for convenience of not having to convert video files to a special format, e.g. DPG4 for moonshell 2 which is reportedly strongly competitive to this cart's features but requires conversion of video files to DPG4 format.

The iPlayer, of course, supports SDHC microSD cards -> up to 32GB of storage, although I've only seen up to 16GB readily available ATM and they're still WAY WAY WAY overpriced IMNHO. 8GB uSD SDHC cards are the sweet point ATM c. $15 a pop.

[EDIT]
I own a DS Lite, Datel Games'n'Media cart(nearly useless), Cyclo DS Evolution, Supercard DS One, and an EZ-Flash V 3-in-1(slot-2(GBA), the others are all slot-1(normal DS)) carts. I use the carts as it's MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to carry one slot-1 and one slot-2 cart and one or two uSD cards than it is to carry around a crapload of slot-1 & -2 commercial cartridges, plus their boxes since I don't have a good way to keep them safe otherwise.

DSi and the other: Slightly faster processor(ARM9), ARM7 is same speed as old DSes, but all games will only run at DS/DS Lite speed for compatibility. Most of the download stuff seems to not make use of any of the extra power either, so I'm waiting for a real upgrade to a brand spanking new handheld console hopefully finally with graphics accel from nVidia, even more DRAM, and a MUCH faster CPU(s). (Actually they could just do a single CPU as even now games rarely use the ARM7 for anything other than sound and controls maybe, if even that so it's pretty much wasted unless you play GBA games, and had Nintendo wanted they probably could've gotten GBA games to run directly off the ARM9 anyways as they're mostly binary compatible, but apparently Nintendo hw designers aren't quite up to snuff, then again niether are Sony's or M$'(which is kind of expected here from a software company).)

Games! You forgot to mention the DARK SPIRE. It's almost a direct ripoff od Wizardry, the old ones. It even has a wireframe "oldskool" playmod...
[/EDIT]

cutterjohn said:

Actuall the DSi and this one are OOB incapable of playing GBA games as they lack slot-2, which is where you would have place your GBA carts or your flash cart for playing GBA games.

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Yeah, that's why I later added: "Forgot though, it probably won't have GBA compatibility (like the recent DSi) which sucks."

Interesting to know there's an adapter though.

Not a problem for me, I'll still keep my current DS Lite (and I still have a GBA on hand for some older GB Color carts I still play once in a while).

To be honest, I'm' still on the fence. I kind of agree that maybe waiting for the next true successor would make sense... but that may change when I see the new DS (the big one) in action.

But what they should have done with the DSi was make the screen just a little bigger in the first place.

DS is 3 inches... DSi 3.25... new one is 4 inches.

Should have just released the DSi with a 3.4" - 3.5" screen which would have kept the machine compact and been more of a justification to upgrade over the DS Lite (combined with the better processor which will hopefully be utilized, and the gimmicky camera which I don't really care about).

I just ran across this video, for a recently released DS RPG in Japan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqVvR55JYns

Apparently, it came out a couple weeks ago. Looks pretty spiffy. I wonder if it has an English text option, or perhaps will be localized by Atlus or a similar publisher.

3D dungeons... hmm... I like.

Might and Magic Clash of heroes seems to be good.

http://au.ds.ign.com/articles/105/1050825p1.html

8.5 Presentation
The visuals, audio, story, and gameplay mechanic all blend together into a great new series for DS owners. The characters could be aged up a bit.
9.0 Graphics
2D doesn't get much better than this. Animation is slick, colors are rich, and the world feels full and immersive.
8.5 Sound
Might and Magic's musical score is impressive, with few weak or repeating arrangements. A few more battle songs would be nice, but well executed overall.
9.0 Gameplay
An amazing display of pure strategy, blended with an RPG feel and huge world to explore. There are a few moments of luck or trial and error, but amazing overall.
9.0 Lasting Appeal
The single player experience is well over 30 hours, and its filled with some great moments and lots of variation. Multiplayer is nice, but online is needed.

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