Tale

Isn't translation and graphics wholly a tanget of the discussion you and I are having? They were interesting characters. Localization, the particulars of the dialogue, and whether or not it's FMV are irrelevant in that regard. If you're not sensitive/obsessive, you can ignore it. VIII had Barret with his story about how he lost his arm and his best friend. Vincent's relationship to the love triangle between the mad scientist and the woman who bore sephiroth. Cloud's true story and how Tifa helped show what it was and that Cloud's story was actually Zack's. The backstory connections between Zack and Aeris. Yuffie wasn't too interesting in her story, but she was slightly fun. Red XIII's story was emotional. Cid just wanted to go into space. VI had little interesting stories for Shadow and Terra. They're the only ones I truly recall, but they were good. Edgar and his brother, but I don't recall much of that. The other female and her father and how she ended up alone and attempted suicide was fairly dramatic.

Because they sometimes were. With their own little stories to tell. Same thing that made Baldur's Gate II superior to I. Which is why I like VI and VII. IV I like, but I can't really say too much for many of the characters. The characters managed to make themselves stand out in other interesting ways. Travel the world, meet new people... watch them die. IX also had some interesting characters, but my memories of it are none too fresh.

THE HARUHI DVD EPISODES ARE IN ORDER! RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!

Storyline, schmoryline, the characters were all a bore. Same background, same backstory, and a villain that doesn't even bother to have that much. At least Sephiroth was himself more than a MacGuffin.

I'm never quite sure why some people prefer VIII. Though, Amentep, the numbers who do aren't quite "few." They may be a minority among the overall fanbase, however. I thought it was amazingly dull. Except Laguna.

Last of the season. Second season starts in October.

I'm talking about the kind of thing that was just nonsensical. Not just the kind of thing you dislike. Instances where you're near instantly sucker punched with a game over without even a hint that you're doing something "wrong." Or where the game becomes cheap or frustrating to the point where you want to fling a controller.

At least many of those kept your character moving freely and not according to an invisible grid. Or alternately, they had the default left and right movement be at the diagonal. I've seen both, and both of those are far tolerable than defaulting to the straight on a grid with diagonal paths. Don't make me work up a diagram.

Inspired by another forum, let's talk about moments in videogames where horrible design wrecked the gameplay experience. Whether it be enemies that were difficult for ridiculous reasons (not simply by virtue of design to be difficult) or even so much as horrible control schemes. I'll start. Baldur's Gate. The wizard assassin in front of the Friendly Arm Inn. Who will proceed to hit your level 1 or 2 character with Magic Missle almost every single time you play this section, instantly killing your character. The Breath of Fire PSOne control scheme. Moving left and right when all the paths are diagonal. Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat 3 (at least in the SNES version). He will ram you repeatedly with no variation and nothing you can do about it until you fling your controller clear across the room.

I'd be heavily surprised if the portable version played anything like the full fledge. Has anyone read up on it?

I love Beyond the Sword. I hate that I suck at it.

I ended up purchasing a Cowboy Bebop set and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I've already seen them, but they were worth buying. I really wanted to get Black Lagoon instead of Bebop, but since Geneon's closed down, volume 2 is nowhere to be found at a reasonable price.

Too late, already purchased the DVDs a month or so ago. Well, for the first season.

Note: The machinima is actually superior to the game in some ways. It includes audio such as music that was unfortunately unable to be included in the final game. Edit: Or so I once read, but can find no citation for that currently. And supposedly Machinima.com is looking to do a hi-def DVD release.

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The Kingmaker retail release had to be packaged with 2 (technically 1 since Witch's Wake came with one of them already) other premium modules to justify the price tag (it was larger than $10). Though you're right that it was pretty cheap. I'm kind of curious as to how well it sold, too.

It won't sell that way. Budget games do not sell except to housewives looking for the likes of bejewelled. It's a notorious little fact that helped put Ritual Entertainment under (along with several other things). At $10 on a shelf, it won't get any decent shelf space, it won't get decent exposure, nobody will even look twice at it. I like to call it the "**** bin effect." People have a tendency to think price tags are a measure of value. Cheap things are devalued and often considered worthless in their minds as a result. This way, they at least save on packaging and don't have to worry about logistics. How many copies do you think Best Buy will order of a cheap game that probably won't sell? They don't know how many to order. So they'll probably guess low.

And then you'd have to find a new category for Broken Sword and Dreamfall. Because they play nothing like Anachronox.

Good thing none of that defines a computer/video game RPG. Yeah. Except not. Except so. I can name several RPGs that have little or none of that.

It may surprise you to know this, but people were actually tortured in this fashion in history. Even among atheists, it's generally accepted that this happened.

Counter-Strike

You've inspired me to replay this game. God, I loved it so. And it has one of the best soundtracks in gaming.

Good thing none of that defines a computer/video game RPG. Actually, it's come to mean "RPG made in the japanese style." There's a critical difference. It's a reference to a style prominently coming from that location, not an RPG in general coming from that location. That's just silly. Trying to claim JRPG means RPGs made in Japan is like trying to say that Chinese food has to be prepared in China. As it stands, the Chinese I eat is prepared locally here in Texas by Hispanics. (Note: this does not make it Tex-Mex) It's slightly ironic, because the JRPG style is supposedly inspired by Wizardry.

hi-five! I just beat the "final boss" of Lunar 2. I put that in quotes because he's the main bad guy, killing him gets the credits and the ending, but it's not the final ending. It's a bittersweet ending and then there's the epilogue where you do a couple of more dungeons for the true ending. I think I'll probably just youtube the second ending. Edit: Now that I youtub'ed that, time to figure out if I should throw Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, or something like Golden Sun on my plate.

You should play a Warlock. I have it on good authority that they're fun.