What Are You Playing? (Spring, 2016)

[Diff-chan]

Those games are such trash. Total waste of a good idea and cool technology.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

There are far more crap Star War games out there than there are good ones, but I've put a few hours into this and it's ok.
Just took out the junkyard boss. He was a pain in the ass until I figured out how handle him.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Been chipping away at Etrian Mystery Dungeon for the past couple months. Once the dungeons get big enough for multiple and strategic fort placement, the game actually gets really good! You get juuust the right amount of money to put you in difficult and meaningful decisions about whether to buy that new piece of equipment, build a fort deep in a dungeon to bookmark progress, or build a shallow fort to help keep a DOE from reaching the surface.

I maxed out a weapon's attack stat and am moving through the final branch of a few characters' skill trees, so figured I had to be getting close to the end at ~30 hours. I peeked at a guide to find I'm only on the sixth of twelve dungeons. That deflated my enthusiasm quite a bit, but I can see myself playing it a half hour at a time for a good long while. It's much better than Izuna or Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.

[Finch]

Is that 12 dungeons before or after the credits roll and the game says "here are some bonus dungeons"?

Pokkyman Super Mystery Dungeon is pretty good, if only because it's the god damned most charming thing ever, but people who know better than me said it's good too.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Ill try Super Mystery Dungeon at some point. Too many tapes right now, though. I haven't even started FE or Xenoblade and have barely scratched the surface of Legend of Legacy.

[koda]

I've been playing Baldur's Gate quite a bit over the last month or so. I started back up following the Siege of Dragonspear and patch 2.0 launches, though instead of SoD I played BG2 again first... twice. I thought about starting a brand new play of BG1 as well but I think I'll just import my most recent Final-Save file and dive into Siege from there.

I've been kicking around the idea of doing video reviews for computer RPGs for awhile now, and I think I may start with these games, since I've had so much time with them recently... but on the other hand it might be odd to be covering such a pinnacle of the genre right out of the gates. Part of me feels like I should start off with something a bit more modest.

Dunno.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

Grandia!

I played and beat the Saturn version a million years ago, and have attempted to go through the Playstation version a handful of times. I always lose my reserve about half way in. The voices are just soo bad.
But I'm going to do it this time. I really, really love this game. It's the kind of JRPG I like to play. Bright, cheerful, and the main character is excited to explore the world- not because there's some impending doom that's going to kill everything- but because it's there to explore. I like the little touches like pressing x next to household items to make them move, the tons of lines of dialog - you should never only speak to an NPC once, and how the developers wanted to make full use of a 3D world. If you aren't spinning the camera around, you're going to miss something.
I'm only a couple hours in; I just finished the mine quest to get the steampass from the old dude. The mine cart exit had me smiling. As I watched it unfold it made me think that a modern game would ruin it with stupid QTEs of jumping tracks and garbage like that.
I feel like this is the perfect followup to DQIII.
But these voices...

[GohanX]

That sounds fun! I've played Grandia 2 a couple of times but never the first.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

and I didnt even get into the combat, which is splendid (which you already know, having played G2). I love ruining enemies' day by countering them just as they're going to attack. Also love No Random Encounters! Also love that underpowered dudes will run from you so you dont have to bother with them!
One of the reasons I liked TitS so much was that it felt very much like an extension of this game.

[bVork]

There's an undub of Grandia floating around out there...