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"More RPG goodness"

Lover of all things RPG that i am (apart from anything with Final Fantasy X or X-2 in the title) i thought i'd bring to your attention a couple of more great RPG titles in the wings that will hopefully reach the shores of Europe (if not ah well i'll have them anyway :-D)

First on the list is Radiata Stories done by the folks at Tri-Ace who did the great Star Ocean 3. It keeps the same battle system from SO3 and you can see the enemies before they attack so you can decide whether to charge in or save your energy and give them a miss.

It apparantly has a playable cast of characters of around 150 characters although whether it'll be like Suikoden 3 where quite a few of them were only support characters and not actually fighters remains to be seen.

Speaking of which it does seem to have quite a similar graphical feel to Suikoden so should be quite impressive visually if that sort of stuff determines whether you buy a game or not.

Release date is January in Japan so probably be waiting a while for that one :-D



and next to bring your attention to is the successor to the great Shining Force series on the Megadrive - Shining Tears.

First off graphics zealots (damn censors) may as well go now as you won't be getting ultra realistic 3D graphics with this one, instead you get the far better cartoony style graphics which are very crisp and smooth (i prefer this and sprites to the FFX style graphics anyway)

Big selling point i think of this is the co-op 2 player mode, so if you and a mate have about 40-50 free hours you can give it a blast :-D

One thing putting me off slightly is that they've done away with the strategy elements of the previous games and gone for a more action orientated style of fighting, but then i liked it in SO3 so maybe i'll like it in this.

Release date is March 2005 for America so at least there'll be a english version sooner then Radiata


and lastly the grand daddy - Dragon Quest VIII (Dragon Warrior in the west)

again using cartoony, cel shaded graphics my favourite RPG series finally comes onto the little black box. Still has pretty much the same battle system as old so basically it's good old turn based combat with random encounters although larger more powerful enemies appear on the screen (kind of like Ruby weapon in FF7 in a way) follows the traditional RPG mantra of head into town, talk to people and buy stuff, leave town, beat up monsters until you get to another town. Lovely :-D

big improvement though over the old games which may seem small and quite a weird thing to mention in this day and age is the fact you can now speak to characters with a press of a button instead of having to go to the menu and selecting 'Talk' very glad they've added that in, it was the only thing i hated in the previous games.

January/Feb American release date for this me thinks. Again can't wait.

Yar, just need to get there though ...
And at the moment there's no way I can get a vote with a 700 majority to open up the Caves.

hehe, nah with Cave of Ordeals map 3 when you're powerful enough to wipe them all out in one winged slayer you can gain about 30 levels at a time once you're near 1500, (you shoot up about 120 levels from level 1, then after that it goes around 40 until about level 1000 then slowly down to 30) so it's not as scary as it sounds

*faints*

Not long for me to go then ...
Level 60! Woo!

Had about 110,000 stored levels and had a current level of around 6000 i think after i had got my legendary Cosmic blades on 3 characters

Heheh, quality.
What level were you when you actually won?

FinalFantasyFanatic wrote:
> It was kinda 'Right ... here we go ... oh ... er ... bloody hell ...
> er ... bah ... screw this.'


That was pretty much like my first encounter with the big hidden enemy of the game

*Bah i wiped out the other sub bosses easily this is going to be a walk in the park. Right Laharl go and hand his ass to him .......... *Nightsever ........... 0 Damage* ......... ermmmmmmm ....... RUN AWAY!!!!!*

Kawada wrote:
> :-D Quite alot eh :-D
>
> Ah well couple of winged slayers from a powered Laharl soon wipes
> them away

It was kinda 'Right ... here we go ... oh ... er ... bloody hell ... er ... bah ... screw this.'

But I will return!
Eventually ... and Winged Slayer their asses into oblivion.

TaMi-Jr wrote:
> next GAD i win im going for disgaea =)

Nice optimism there.

:-D Quite alot eh :-D

Ah well couple of winged slayers from a powered Laharl soon wipes them away

Indeed indeed.
On to Ep. 13 now and things are getting a bit tricky.

Opened up Prinny Land as well - did the first two levels easily, but didn't even bother attempting the third after seeing all the enemies there.