Yep. Good. Huge struggle to get all the split up copyrights (some of which were owned by an insurance company, so yeah). When's System Shock 1 coming? Not sure. System Shock 2 is the better game though.

So there's a new Fire Emblem out. I picked it up a few days ago. There's a new system of "matching up" units together to get awesome bonuses, and it works very well. There's also a whole slew of friendship and romance options opened up (romance is considered inherently better in this game though), and the story arc is LONG, taking place over enough time to play as the first set of character's kids later on in the game. The graphics also are pretty nice for the most part, resembling a first gen Gamecube game (just not Luigi's Mansion).

So there's one problem. The overall story is serious, but the inter-personal interactions between all the characters, and their "one note" personalities, are about as slap-stick as I've ever seen a Fire Emblem. I mean it just doesn't STOP, ever! One character uses big words a lot, that IS her personality. Another is never noticed by anyone. That, apparently, counts as a personality trait all by itself. There are hilarious bits about eating too much of some medicine and destroying one's bowels, but overall it just seems like a bizarre mood shift between serious international politics, world threatening evil and the main character's fear s/he will betray everyone, and slapstick romantic comedy escapades. It is VERY jarring. Imagine if there was a new Saw movie, and in between listening to an audio tape describing how everyone in the room has mini-bombs attached to their internal organs and the doors to the room slowly filling with poison gas will only open when a certain number go boom, two characters suddenly go into an Abbot and Costello routine about who's on first.

I got a Performance Dual Impact Gamepad, aka "Dual Impact Gamepad Colors" even though it's all grey so it isn't exactly very colorful, for the PS1 recently for $6. It's a pretty interesting gamepad -- for the most part it's just a decent Dual Shock clone, larger and not quite as well made as the real thing but very comfortable to hold due to its size, but it's got two unique features which make it a quite interesting controller to have.


Mine looks like this, except it's all grey, instead of being multicolored like that one. It also says "Colors" on it to the right of the logo; this model doesn't. I assume that internally the two are the same, and the button layouts are definitely identical. The key is that little switch in the lower middle. It's got three settings. Left to right, they are Digital, Dual Analog, and Wheel (neGcon). This controller does have vibration feedback, and it works in any of the three modes in compatible games. (Note that there's also Dual Impact 2, which is a PS2 controller, and does not have the neGcon mode. That looks like just your standard PS2 clone pad.)


As for this one though, its unique features are:

-First, there's a neGcon (wheel) mode, so the controller's left analog stick works with games that are neGcon but not Dual Analog compatible, such as Wipeout XL or Motor Toon Grand Prix. That's awesome, it makes Wipeout XL almost feel like a new game! Worth it for that alone. Unfortunately it didn't work correctly with Hardcore 4X4, which is a game that supposedly supports the neGcon/wheel, but that game plays great with the below mode, so there's that at least. That's probably the game's fault, though, given that Wipeout XL, Motor Toon, etc. correctly recognize the pad as a wheel/neGcon.

One very interesting point here is that the Dual Impact's neGcon mode IS Vibration compatible. That means that yes, you can play a racing game in neGcon mode on this pad, with rumble. Cool! :) The neGcon and wheels like the Mad Catz wheel do not have vibration, but this does.

Also, after testing it (see the list below), I found that in neGcon mode, the Dual Impact has a smaller deadzone than it does in Dual Analog mode, which means that games like Crash Team Racing and Wipeout 3 control a little bit better in neGcon mode than they do in Dual Analog. I assume that this is because the Dual Shock has a big deadzone (a flaw the Dual Shock 2 and DS3/Sixaxis both share.), but it's cool that in neGcon mode it's a better stick.

The only real negative about this mode is that the buttons aren't labelled for the neGcon's unique button labels, they're only labelled as standard PS1 controller buttons, so you just have to memorize that in the wheel mode X is I, Square is II, Circle is A, Triangle is B, L1 or L2 are L, and R1 or R2 are R. It's not too hard to remember though. I'm sure a real neGcon might be better than this, but those are extremely rare in the US, so I'd have to get it from EBay and pay a whole lot more than I did... and anyway, having an analog gamepad controller that supports neGcon/wheel mode is pretty cool! See the end of the post for a full list of how the game works in my neGcon-compatible games.


-Second, Dual Analog mode. It works as you expect, just like a Dual Shock pretty much. About the only negative versus a real Dual Shock, apart from the build quality/design changes, is that this has older-style small shoulder buttons, not the larger L2/R2 buttons the Dual Shock added. Too bad. Other than that though, works fine.


-And last (well, first, but I'm going backwards), Digital mode. While mostly this is as you'd think -- decent (non-missing-center) d-pad and buttons -- but interestingly, it's got more than just that. The controller's other unique function is that the analog sticks -- yes, both of them -- emulate the d-pad in digital controller mode. They aren't analog of course, but still, it's pretty interesting, and sometimes good, to be able to play dpad-only games with the stick... pretty unique feature, you see that on PC gamepads of course, but I've never seen it on any console gamepads... a few special console controllers can do that, such as the Sega Mission Stick for the Saturn and the Sega Sports Pad (trackball) for the Master System, but not gamepads... except for this one.

And yes, some games are more fun with the analog stick acting as a dpad than they are in digital mode. I'd ay that about Hardcore 4x4, for instance; the neGcon mode may be sadly broken, but in Digital mode with the stick, it plays quite nicely.


So, overall, yeah, it's an interesting controller. I like it. And yes, even if it clearly doesn't feel as well built as a first-party controller is, it's not too fragile-feeling, and is comfortable to hold, more so than Sony controllers are for me -- I find the Playstation controller too small. The only thing it doesn't have is Dual Analog Joystick support -- you know, the full-sized, twin-stick joystick for the PS1, (Yes, there are some games that only have analog with that; the Sony Dual Analog Gamepad has a mode supporting it, but no other gamepad I know of for the system does that.) -- but apart from that it's got everything else. In the end the Dual Impact is a good gamepad that I'm happy I got, mostly for Wipeout XL (It's SO much better now! Sure I have the wheel, but that's useless for this game.), but also for some other games too, and for the "analog stick usable in dpad-only games" thing too. Interesting stuff.



Dual Impact/neGcon Compatibility List
--
There are(definitely incomplete) lists of negCon compatible games here:
http://www.rolling-start.com/forum/viewt...?f=14&t=26 and here
http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet...t,0/so,0a/
Of those, I list below my results when using the games I have with this controller. Note: I mean US releases of the games, not other ones. Also I would only care about games with twist support, of course; if it's just a "it uses the negcon but just the dpad", it's the same as it'd be with a regular controller.

Games with no Dual Shock support
--
Destruction Derby - Works fine.

Motor Toon Grand Prix - Works perfectly. Good controls this way, the game has no Dual Shock support.

Namco Museum Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 (in Pole Position and Pole Position II) - Works okay, though an actual wheel is better because of the much greater degree of motion -- with the Dual Impact, make VERY small movements if you want to not crash.

Ridge Racer Turbo (on R4 Bonus Disc) - Unfortunately, the Dual Impact doesn't work ingame with this game; the menus work, but it doesn't recognize it once you start playing. To get analog here, you need to use either a real neGcon, or a wheel like the Mad Catz wheel (the game does not have Dual Shock support).

TNN Motorsports Hardcore 4x4 - While my Mad Catz wheel works fine, so the game does have neGcon support, it doesn't work with this controller sadly -- left and right both turn you in lefthand circles, you can't go right.

Wipeout XL - Works perfectly, and is fantastic. This game doesn't have Dual Shock support, so something analog for it is essential! And an actual wheel is far too wide a turning radius for something like Wipeout; that may be better for car-racing games like Pole Position or Destruction Derby, but in a Wipeout game, you really want a stick like this one.

I can't find my copy of the original Wipeout, so I can't test that one. :(

Games with Dual Shock support (you may think that this would be identical to Dual Analog mode, but -- it's not! neGcon mode has a smaller deadzone than Dual Analog mode, so it makes it more precise than Dual Analog mode is in games that work with both. It's pretty cool, though this is more noticeable in some games than others, it's great!)
--
Atari Anniversary Edition Redux - Called "Wheel" mode ingame, this works for analog in paddle games like Warlords, Pong, and Super Breakout. Works fine.
Crash Team Racing - Works correctly in neGcon mode. Smaller deadzone is noticeable.
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 - As with the RR Turbo Disc, it works in the menus, but not ingame. Bah!
Rollcage - Works correctly in neGcon mode. You can tell that the deadzone is smaller.
San Francisco Rush - Works correctly in neGcon mode.
Wipeout 3 - Works correctly in negCon mode. Smaller deadzone is noticeable.
Test Drive 4 - Works correctly in neGcon mode. This is awesome, because in Dual Analog mode, the game requirse you to use the right stick to accelerate/brake, and the left stick to move. I hate this control scheme, I want button acceleration/braking. You get that in neGcon mode. Awesome. :)
The Italian Job - Works correctly in neGcon mode.

etc., I'm not going to test every single driving game I have right now, though I may add to this list in the future as I test more games.

I do know some which definitely don't have neGcon support, though: Street Racer, JetMoto, and Dare Devil Derby 3D are digital-only for sure. Too bad. (JetMoto does have analog support in the PC version, but not on PS1.)

There are also some games that support the Dual Analog controller, but not the neGcon/wheel, such as JetMoto 2, Road Rash 3D, Driver, Circuit Breakers, and plenty more. Games where you need to tilt up and down, like Sled Storm, Moto Racer World Tour, the 1/2/3Xtreme series, etc., naturally also do not support a one-axis controller like this.

As for PS2 games, only a few support neGcon, but I do have Ridge Racer V. Even though R4 didn't work correctly with the Dual Impact, Ridge Racer V works perfectly with it. It's pretty much the same as regular analog control, but still, it's cool that it works.

Yeah, good puzzle games sure are addictive... so this year's game so far has been Picross 3D for the DS. Amazing game.. it's really hard, frustrating, unfair, and sometimes random (sometimes you are FORCED to guess, like, say, Minesweeper, and it's cruel...), but... it's a great, incredibly addictive game! It's a strategic puzzle game, and it's really good. The challenge of trying to figure out which blocks to remove is tough, but compelling. So yeah, I've been playing at least a little of it almost every day for a while now, even though, as the topic title suggests, some of the time I wonder why I am, with how tough and unfair it can be sometimes. :)

So yeah, as anyone who reads gaming news at all knows, rumors for both systems are all over the place now. Sony's supposed to have an event later this month that hopefully will announce the PS4, which is supposedly pretty powerful, and has a controller similar to all of Sony's others, but with a few design changes and maybe a touch thing, like that stuff on the back of the Vita. Supposedly it'll play used games too.

The Xbox 3, or 720, or whatever you want to call it, though... the rumors now say that it might have a required always-on internet connection, will either restrict or completely block used games, and probably won't be as powerful as PS4, either. Um... why does Microsoft think that this is actually a good idea, again? They came so far with the 360 in vastly increasing their userbase and marketshare, but if these rumors are true it could backfire badly... or not, but I don't know, I do think that always-on and no-used-games would hurt them. Or at least, I'd hope it would!

(Both, of course, will be much more powerful than the WiiU.)

Of course, the rumors could be wrong. For instance, Sony could implement some kind of anti-used-games system similar to Microsoft's... wouldn't THAT be fun.

The N64 is still frigging awesome and was way better than PS.

I started replaying LoZ: OoT. I think it's the best game that ever lived.

I hope you all are doing well.

http://earthboundcentral.com/2013/01/ito...ival-site/

Itoi has a very sincere way of speaking. Very interesting person, that one. At any rate, while this is great for Japan, I'm interested in Earthbound (the translated name of the game) getting the same treatment here.

From reading about, it seems that there are a number of sound samples in the game which, while perfectly fine back then, are now legally troublesome. That is, unlikely to result in Nintendo losing big, but Nintendo's lawyers are there to prevent the lawsuits in the first place, unfortunately.

The "solution" would be replacing a small handful of those song references with new music, but to me that would remove a lot of the charm of the game. I hope Nintendo is willing to stick by their art and chance it with a release here anyway.

What I really hope for is a future Wii U update to bring back gift giving. I used to send some of my younger siblings old SNES games I purchased on the Wii shop so they could experience Super Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, and others themselves. The lack of such a feature is really disappointing on the 3DS and Wii U, and it needs to be brought back. As it stands, it's money Nintendo is leaving on the table. I'm not buying Earthbound for myself, as I already own it, but you better believe I would snatch it up and send it as gifts to people I know don't own it in a heart beat.

So Sony has decided to make a game to compete with the unassailable Smash Bros. franchise.

I'll say a number of things right off the bat here. It's not as good as Smash Bros. Not as good by a long shot, but it still can be some fun. If you can, pick up the PS3 version as it includes a download code for the Vita version right in there. That's great, but now the bad news. You can't link the PS3 and Vita versions together for multiplayer. Considering how much work they did to make the games identical, that's a rather stunning deficit.

The character roster is richer than I expected, but there's some real oddities in here. Firstly, the lack of Spyro and Crash Bandicoot is stunning. Sure they're 3rd party licenses now, but I'll explain why that's not a rule for exclusion soon enough. Their history of association with Sony, namely selling PS1s in the early days, should be enough reason to include them. Further, Wander and Ico should easily have been included. Not including at least one of them is like not including Link in Smash Bros.

So what characters DOES the game have? Well, Sony seems to have decided that "anything goes" as far as the roster is concerned. Like Nintendo, so long as the character has been ON the system at least once, it is fair game. Unlike Nintendo, 3rd party characters are less an anomaly than they are a sizable chunk of the cast. As a result, it feels less like a "Playstation" or "Sony" themed game and more just a brawl across a lot of franchises.

Big Daddy from Bioshock is in there. It's hard to really consider the PS3 port of Bioshock as ANY sort of definitive version. I got the PC version, and a number of my friends have the 360 version, but who really said "yeah, the PS3 version, that's the one for me"? So he's an oddity, but they wanted a heavy weight, so he's in. It's cute though.

Dante is in there, in his new rebooted incarnation. That's sort of a mixed situation. I really do wish they'd did what Nintendo did with Wario and provide both the old and new look as costume options.

There's Raiden, in his Metal Gear Rising incarnation. This one's odd. I was under the impression that that game was going to be a 360 exclusive. Has that changed?

They really dredge up a lot of obscure characters as well as ones with a solid legacy. Toro's a weird cat that I think almost no one will recognize. I only recognize him as that weird Sony mascot on my imported Pocket Station box, but apparently he's got a couple of games in Japan.

So how's the gameplay? I'll say what I like first. The stages themselves blend multiple games together. For example, you can go into Hades stage (from God of War) and eventually the Patapon characters from Patapon will show up to kill Hades, which is just hilarious. I'd love to see these sorts of mixed franchise stage mechanics in Smash Bros, like maybe an F-Zero racer flying along Sonic's stage doing loop de loops.

I also think building up a combo meter by hitting enemies and collecting the orbs they drop is an interesting mechanic, at least on it's own like that. Otherwise, the combat is very similar to Smash Bros, since you can knock people around, but, well, I'll explain now.

The big downsides? The stages mostly have boring designs. Generally, they are all big boxes. A few have SOME unique things going on, but mostly it's those limited boxes. You aren't trying to smash other characters out of the ring, you're going for a super move knockout. You see, normal attacks won't defeat anyone. However, if you build your combo meter, you get moves which, if they hit, WILL instantly defeat your opponent (then they return). There is a lot not to like about this, and most of the balance issues stem from it.

You see, there are 3 levels of super move, each one having wider and wider hit boxes. Some characters have a level 3 that will always kill everyone on the screen, every time. Spike is one. Others do NOT have this. There's a balance issue right away. Unavoidable attacks are no good. In Smash Bros, even things like PK Star Storm can be avoided, in principle. There's also the issue of an instant KO. In Smash Bros, even if you get hit by a super smash, it is at least hypothetically possible to survive it, if you are careful about your health level and where you get hit by it. Not so here. Basically the match breaks down to who gets their super meter charged first. That person wins. The other matter is that while I like building up a super meter in theory, there can be some unfair consequences. Smash Bros balances things a bit with the ball needing to be broken. Even if someone gets the smash ball, someone else can knock it out of them.

In short, I've given this game a bit of a try, though maybe not long enough yet, and I'm rather disappointed. The good news is I didn't pay much. The game has already had a major price drop, possibly indicating poor sales. I must unfortunately not recommend this game. Go back to playing Brawl and waiting for the next Smash Bros instead. (Maybe they'll remove random tripping on the next outing...)

So the new Devil May Cry is out, and congratulations! It's a reboot! To date, my favorite entry in the series is DMC3, what with it's style switching system. DMC4 came close, but I spent too much time as Nero in that one, and his demon arm mechanics just weren't all that compelling compared to Dante's styles. DMC2 isn't really worth mentioning...

So what's new here? Well first thing's first, everyone's complaining about his look. I must confess when I first saw it my thoughts were "this looks really generic". Having seen what the rebooted story looks like, I think it works now.

So in the original DMC, Dante is the son of Dark Knight Sparda, a demon who rebelled against the rest of demonkind to save humanity. Dante himself is half-human and half-demon. While DMC4 has "angels" in it, it becomes clear that they aren't true angels but a church's attempt to steal demon power and twist it into what they think a holy warrior should be. As such, the existence of angels is never established in the original storyline. It's just humans alone against a world of demons. Aside from Dante, there's Virgil, Dante's brother who "guides" him through hell and reveals he's decided to join the ranks of demons.

In the reboot, things are very different. First, Sparda lost. He was captured and banished from the world, which demons then took over (indirectly, with all the cultural commentary and subtly you might expect from a show about demons in the 1990's, such as a Fox News parody and a high demon acting as a corporate executive with the president in his pocket, fun stuff but certainly not all that serious or edgy). Humans have no idea they are being ruled by demons. Also, Dante is still half human, but his other half isn't human, it's angel. His mother turns out to be an angel who was killed near the same time his father was banished. As a result, you switch between angelic and demonic powers throughout the game. Dante was more or less homeless throughout his life, living on the streets and occasionally getting put into correctional facilities and foster homes, usually run by demons. As a result, he's a punk. That's why he looks like that. He's still got some style, but he's got major trust issues (his words). Contrary to reviews, this makes the new Dante the "emo" one (the new Dante won't be perfectly catching a thrown pizza or shooting a bullet into pool balls to perfectly break them and send them into demons while saying "Let's get crazy!"). So then there's Virgil. For some reason, while Dante lived on the streets, Virgil ended up in the lap of luxury, going to all the finest schools. He's a lot more level headed and is the "cool and collected" character reviewers call "boring" (I don't get it, what's wrong with cool and collected characters?). Anyway, Virgil has started a resistance movement with the goal of overthrowing the demons ruling the world, and is "guiding" Dante into joining it. (I don't know yet if Virgil is hiding something, but I'm pretty sure he is.)

That's all well and good, it's a nice setting to "reboot" the series into. Sometimes the cutscenes overstay their welcome though, and then there's some rather dumb things they did. Dante was always a lady's man, but this one makes him very hard to like in that category. First, they do a renaissance style painting at the starting screen with angels all around Dante, but they're all fawning over him, a few in bikinis, and with Dante making a symbol with his fingers like he's going to shoot the one in front of him in the head. Um, yeah I really didn't like that one, I shouldn't have to explain why. The opening crawl is oozing with sex, which is all well and good, it's part of DMC's style, but it goes just a tad too far. It's gotta be seen to be believed. The problem is very little of that sexuality serves any purpose. They spend so much camera time on a couple of strippers dressed like angels, and we never see those strippers again. It's just one of those things. Creating a settings is fine, but sometimes you gotta at least make sure your sexually charged atmosphere serves some sort of POINT, and it really didn't for a lot of the opening.

Well, all that aside, once it gets into gear, it works out well. Let's get onto the combat.

The combat is the greatest part of this reboot. I think this is the next step for these 3D beat 'em ups. Devil May Cry originally invented the genre, and then God of War honed and improved it on the field of battle. Devil May Cry now stands to take back the crown with the new developments. In the original, weapon switching was done via a menu. This was clunky and meant you'd generally stick with the same weapon through most of a fight. In DMC3, even with the amazing "styles", you still were forced to pick one at the start of each mission and keep it throughout that mission. In God of War, weapon switching could now be done without pausing. Kratos could now just hit a button and move to lion gauntlets or whatever. However, combos were still "locked", and it still wasn't perfectly smooth transitioning. DmC Reboot does away with all of that. Instead of a "style system", it now just lets you make your own styles in real time. The game throws a new weapon at you every couple of fights near the start of the game. Just enough time for you to get the hang of the last one before getting the next. The big change? You can switch to any weapon or attack you want in real time, mid-combo. Instead of a button being for "switching" weapons, you instead hold down a button to convert your attack buttons TO that weapon. So, you'll be using Dante's sword "Rebellion" for two strikes, hold down R2 to switch in a big ax smash, and hold L2 to swing a scythe around. The circle button converts to a hook shot with those two buttons too. R2 pulls things to you, and L2 pulls you to things. As a result, you can create some incredible combos all on your own by dynamically switching between all your weapons. I've never seen anything like it, and it is style incarnate.

Learning new moves is done as it ever was, by getting red orbs and "spending" them at a statue (this time an angel statue instead of the god of time statue in the original). The biggest change I've seen here is that you can now "try before you buy". Hitting triangle sends you into a pocket space with an enemy to test a move on, see if it works as well as you think, and then decide if you want to buy it. I love it.

All this said, here's a few negatives. The jumping is great for combat, working exactly as it should, but much like God of War, it is clunky as hell for the forced platforming the game throws at you. I hope they do less of that in future installments. Heck, I died a few times in the opening sequence because I couldn't quite jump far enough to clear gaps. Unlike the first one, Dante doesn't automatically switch to a "long jump" when he's near a gap. The story can get a little full of itself at times. It's not bad, and it's got a style all it's own, but there are times when I think I can almost hear the developers saying "Yeah, this edgy commentary on society will shock them! We're the first to ever say this!" which might be fine if it wasn't crystal clear that the only social issue they don't care about is feminism. Probably better if the story focused more on getting from plot point to plot point and kept perspective on itself a bit more.

As far as gameplay, the combat is absolutely solid, fluid, incredibly fun, very likely to change the genre forever, but considering how clunky that same control system is for platforming, they need to tone that down a bit next time. There are also a few fossils from the original series they should have discarded for this reboot. Firstly, I shouldn't need to wait to find a statue to upgrade my skills. I should be able to do that on the fly, just as in God of War. Secondly, also as in God of War, the "stage" structure is a bit antiquated. Stick some save points in there instead of me needing to make a crazy amount of progress just to record said progress between stages. Leave "stages" as something unlocked during progress, to be done on their own for style ranking (after all, I never go for the SSS during my first run through the game).

All in all, I still think it's a solid reboot with some clever ideas and amazing fight mechanics. I just think it needs polishing, and the story writers need perspective on the fact we're talking about a punk half angel half demon killing giant monsters, it doesn't really have the power to be "edgy", so make it over the top, stylish, and just a little drop of the self aware goofy. Other than that, I highly recommend it.

So I got this game the moment I found out Studio Ghibli was behind the art direction. It'd be like finding out Pixar actually developed a game (as opposed to having lame movie licensed nonsense based on their movies).

It's amazing! Here's the deal, it's classic RPG and all that used to stand for. There's an overworld map and actual exploration! It's not tube quest! Sure, it may not be as open as your Fallouts or Elderscrolls, but that's fine. An incremental ratcheting of places to explore still means exploration. From the videos, I'll eventually get a dragon to fly around on, so it's all great.

The story is very childish in a good way. There's heart here. Blue Dragon felt a bit too "by the numbers" in its story, this one does what it wants, even if it still does have cliches. There's also an INCREDIBLE amount of world building. Near the start you'll get a magician's guide, and if you read it you'll find Tolkein-esque levels of description of the world. It explains the history of the runic language that spells use, right down to explaining why there are no lower and upper case and such. The writing is amazing, and the translation is amazingly written as well. The wizard's oath and all the three laws of wizardry are awesome (notably because one seems to be utterly ignored by all wizards, one seems to be an excuse to be lazy, and one is hilariously superficial). It actually reminds me of Penny Arcade's extremely well developed Lookouts world.

Much like some of the best RPGs, this one has no random encounters. Not even on the world map! Unlike Chrono Trigger, you do get into fights on the world map, but they're still all visible and avoidable. If you get spotted, you can outrun enemies, or learn the way they move and dodge them. Like Earthbound, if you sneak up on an enemy, you get initiative, and vice versa.

Further, no save points. You can save your game at any point so long as you aren't in the middle of conversation or combat. They didn't try to force "realistic" inventory management in here (which has never, NEVER been realistic, even if I can only carry 10 items in a tetris style grid, those 10 items are still 10 full suits of armor the size of mountains), and noted it loudly when your funny side kick (the Lord High Lord of the Fairies, that's two Lords) gives you a "bottomless bag" (I want to turn it inside out, put it over me, and walk through dungeon walls).

The combat system is classic RPG with just a little bit of character movement. It won't generally let you avoid attacks or anything, but as you hit enemies, if you hit a weak point, orbs will spill out that restore HP and MP. You can run over these to restore it if you're paying attention, giving something to do between turns. Otherwise, it's a classic turn based combat system, which I'm fine with as long as it allows me lots of strategy.

So that last one's been why it is getting some disappointing reviews. I think this game is amazing, but so many reviewers have written things to the tone of "this is a game that refuses to modernize, so you're stuck with an outdated and clunky turn based system instead of real time combat like people expect these days".

I often wonder if these reviewers get the point here. Turn based combat is a genre unto itself and a perfectly acceptable and fun way to play a game, not a forced concession to poor technology. Not EVERY game needs to be an action game demanding quick reaction speed and combo systems, and I would hate it if it got to that. I played Zelda and Secret of Mana before moving on to Final Fantasy 6. FF6 blew me away, because I felt like I was playing a grand version of chess. In fact, I have to wonder what a modern reviewer would say if they had to review chess for the first time. Would they lament that both sides need to take turns, or the odd movement restrictions? Would they suggest the game would be a lot more fun if you could just pick up the rooks and march them straight down the line and knock over all the enemy's pieces, and they had to pick up some pieces and force block you in real time? It just seems to me they don't understand what turn based combat is all about.

At any rate, this is an amazing game if you like this sort of classic RPG, and happily brings back the vast worlds we used to know back during the SNES and Playstation 1 days.