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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.

Got Fire Emblem on the GC soon enough.
Mmmm ... griddy.

Heh will on Gamefaqs it's got a EU release down for Winter 2006 so you'll be waiting a while on that :-D


Can't stand real time myself, virtually no strategy involved and is a measure of how fast you are able to hammer the X button. Bores me to tears. Give me a good old strategic chess like grid system anyday

i do like the grid system, mainly because its so underused these days. although, i think real time will always be the one for me :O i remember FFTA's battle system to be kinda slow though, or maybe it was just those damn stupid rules. i think ill get disgaea, i can't deny that im not intrigued(mass double negatives). i just hope it keeps me going till kingdom hearts 2. that got a PAL release yet?

Disgaea had a humorous storyline with characters that you could actually care about, FFTA went the boring done before route of being sucked into a magical world. Nice originality.
Disgaea had the great transmigration system as well as the never ending item world where FFTA had the awful rules of each battle. Both used the strategic grid system which was one of the few saving graces of FFTA for me being a fanboy of that battle system :-D

can u enlighten me on the differences between the 2 games?

TaMi-Jr wrote:
> im not too sure about disgaea though. i know its
> got a huge cult following, its just the things i've seen remind me a
> lot of FF:tactics advance. i enjoyed that,


Did you just compare Disgaea to the crap fest that was FF Tactics Advance, a stain on the good FF Tactics name?

*slap*

Don't do that again :-D

thought this topic had died out :O im gonna play soo many RPG's in the summer, old and new. im not too sure about disgaea though. i know its got a huge cult following, its just the things i've seen remind me a lot of FF:tactics advance. i enjoyed that, i just dunno if i can take another 30 hours or so of that kind of gameplay.
oh, and radiata stories looks sooooooooooo goed.

Foresty one? Is that the last battle with Jaoquin with all the blue squares giving something like Enemy Boost x6? I remember that being tough the first time i went there and i lost. Just went to the item world for a couple of hours, went back and owned the hell out of him :-D

Hurrah.

Forgot you could up classes when you transmigrate.
I must have asked years ago.

As well, back to it. Just got marginally pwned on the last foresty one, so levelling everyone's asses up for some sweet, sweet revenege overkill.

Well you can transmigrate them anyway into the better classes and you'll only really need about 6 strong characters to complete the game. By then you should have unlocked the Divine Maijins and Angels which will own everything. Plus a couple of the hidden characters are good but nothing beats Laharl and your created characters.

That'll take you up to the 10 maximum limit for the hidden maps and maximum carnage :-D