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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.

Coin wrote:
> Power levelling?

Just a term used to describe levelling up your characters and items to crazy levels

>
> Also - if you start again, how the hell do you get up to outrageous
> (9,999) highs?

There's no real point to go that high as then when you transmigrate the gains won't be as big, plus it takes far too long, like i said i go up to about 2500 then transmigrate

> And... Ever need to use the "Make Enemies Stronger"
> proposal?

Yup, this is how you get those insane levels. One of the secret maps has a battle containing 9 of those metal real large defensive stats beasts which you may have seen in the story or in the item world sitting upon red geo panels which have 100% experience attributes. If you pass the make enemies stronger bill until that maxes out and coupled with 300 statiticians (sp?) on an item you'll be getting up to about level 2000 in about 25 minutes. If, like me, you are totally in love with the game and want to max out everything it has to offer you better get used to seeing that map :-D

Power levelling?

Also - if you start again, how the hell do you get up to outrageous (9,999) highs?

And... Ever need to use the "Make Enemies Stronger" proposal?

Coin wrote:
> Heh.
>
> Man, you reply damn fast :D.
>
> What happens when you complete the palsy 14 Episodes?
>
> Episode 12 - 2.


You just restart with all your weapons and stats and characters, it's called New game+ so you can make mincemeat out of the story battles, quite funny taking a squad of level 150 characters into battle against poxy level 3 weaklings :-D

And you can work on getting the 5 other endings and the 5 or 6 special maps

That is when the power levelling begins :-D

Heh.

Man, you reply damn fast :D.

What happens when you complete the palsy 14 Episodes?

Episode 12 - 2.

Coin wrote:
> Huh? So when you total 185,000 does everything reset to 1? (As one
> site stated.)
>
> and by not continue at all, is that with all characters? Does the
> save get unplayable? Or is it just the character stops in all
> totality.

Well i've never done it or read anywhere of someone who has so i wouldn't know for sure however i'd presume it'd just be like in FF Tactics when you get to level 99. You'll still carry on gaining experience and playing the game however that character won't grow and will just stay on those stats he's on

Huh? So when you total 185,000 does everything reset to 1? (As one site stated.)

and by not continue at all, is that with all characters? Does the save get unplayable? Or is it just the character stops in all totality.

That's the very upper limit, as soon as you reach that you can't go any further at all

How cunning. But then whats that 185,000 cap thingy?

Just keep a record of your transmigrations and add them up, i usually transmigrate every time i hit level 2500

So how would you work out, for instance, that you were level 160,000?

*Dies*