Radiata Stories.

[Andy]

Give Tales of Symphonia a try.

It's still sitting in my stack of games to play, along with Paper Mario 2 and SMT:Nocturne. The tales of 70+ hour quests have scared me off.

[animegirl]

It's still sitting in my stack of games to play, along with Paper Mario 2 and SMT:Nocturne. The tales of 70+ hour quests have scared me off.

You can either play for 25-30 hours and do the main quest or do what I did and do EVERYTHING and play for 68 hours. It's your choice really. Rocca took the shorter route and enjoyed the game just as much as I did.

[Kbu Chan]

Or Atelier Iris. It's like the happiest RPG ever!

Really? I got no problem with teh happy rpgs, I'm gonna have to give it a rent.

Andy, what would you sell Tales of Symphonia for? I rented it, got about halfway through before I had to take it back, but I loved it and me wants it.

[ssbomberman]

I'm getting it for those same reasons. I'll split my time between this and Grandia III.

So is G3 good or what? You understand Japanese right? Cause I am assuming it is not too import friendly?

ssb

[taloony]

I'll be picking it up later today. I haven't bought a game for a long time, and I'm hoping this one will get me playing again.

So is G3 good or what?
ssb

And I second this question. I haven't heard anything about it at all.

[RedCoKid]

Okay then, GRANDIA 3 KICKS ASS! You heard it from me first.

Let's see... The characters are charming, the music is upbeat & catchy, the battles are largely unchanged from Grandia Xtreme. Oh, and the graphics--especially the sunset backgrounds--are amazing. I doubt the PS2 is capable of any better.

There are only 2 annoyances:

1) The skill & magic book equip systems are clunky because you can only equip/de-equip skills & magic at save points. Also, skills/magic are organized under a separate menu from the actual skillbooks & mana eggs, which you access under the sword/armor/accessories menu. In contrast, skill books & skills or mana eggs & magic had their own respective menus in G2. Game Arts should've kept it that way.

2) The key to easily winning battles depends on cancelling your opponents' attacks. I can't remember how easy this was in the previous games (because I cheated in G2 & GX, but in G3 I'm not), but in G3 it's tough. When your turn is up, you look at the action meter, see you're in front of the enemy, but it's tough to know what to do. There's no way to estimate the length of time from when you select your action until the time you strike your opponent. Your character has to concentrate on the spell/attack (slows down depending on proficiency), then run to the opponent, then wind up, then strike. It's a lot of guesswork. Equipping warp boots makes things interesting, though, as all of a sudden you're whipping around the battlefield slicing them up, and the enemies are missing you.

The rest of the game is good. If G3 comes out in the US, buy it.
G3 site: http://www.square-enix.co.jp/grandia3/

ssbomberman -- I can read katakana slowly but few kanji and no hiragana. With any import, if you're a bright person and someone has written a decent guide to help you along, you won't get stuck.

[Kbu Chan]

Saw G3 on cinamatech and my jaw dropped, it is sooo beautiful. There's no way I'm gonna import it so I'll just keep hope that it'll be released here.

[George]

I'm glad to hear the G3 is not the shitfest that Xtreme was. I hope the battle system is more in depth and not as streamlined as in G2, though. It made things too easy.

Anyway, back on track, I will probably have this game within a week, once I gauge how much I like it through a friend's copy.

[MechDeus]

Nothing short of mediocre? That's what you got from that review?

Well...

[S]eemingly aimed at a younger audience, it relies on fantasy tropes (dwarves, elves and humans don't get along) instead of something fresh or intriguing. [...] Like its hero, however, it's too slow, simple, and obvious to overcome its routine existence. [...] All the same, this adventure is just so slow-paced and slow-witted that it's just not gripping in the way a good fantasy epic should be.

It's not like you shouldn't be able to tell where Rocca got that idea from.

[Andy]

True, I guess if I would've pieced together every negative, out of context point in the review, I could've disregarded everything interesting as well.