Strange, funny and heartrending...

[A Black Falcon]

Now ABF, I know you collect pretty much any game you find cheap. You seem to indescriminately gather really terrible games as well as good ones, so don't tell me you wouldn't pick this up for a good deal.

If I through some miracle found a copy for $5 or something, sure I would buy it... but I don't know of many stores around here that would actually put it in the shop, as opposed to EBaying it for far more money. I mean, Earthbound is not a cheap game! Just watch those two auctions, I'd be surprised if either sells for less than $60-$80 or more. And there's obviously no way I'm paying that kind of money for an SNES RPG.

The NES game is the Famicom game. If you want to hunt down the english prototype, good luck with that. It's even rarer than those copies of the World Series cartridge people pay ridiculous amounts for. Fortunatly, most collectors don't seem to realize that yet so the prototypes are relatively cheap if you ever find them (still outside my price range).

Emulation...

However, let me put it this way. If you finished Skies of Arcadia in spite of youur hatred of random enouncters, consider Earthbound a major relief.

I think that it's not just that I hate all random encounters. I mean, I played how many hours of Etrian Odyssey... I mean, I don't like them, but there are other things I like even less, like not knowing where to go in a game with random encounters (or infinitely spawning enemies, same deal). I like knowing where I'm supposed to be going, so that I feel like what I'm doing has a point -- wandering around in a maze lost with no map while fighting battles constantly is the kind of thing that quickly gets me to quit games. Give me a map, an obvious goal, a questlog, etc. Save anywhere is a huge plus too, save points are a huge pain... (yes, I like the fact that all Lunar games have save anywhere... :)).

Oh yeah, and as I've said many times, I definitely prefer strategic combat... which is a big part of why I often lose interest in JRPGs (and RPGs in general really), the combat systems are often not too interesting or deep, or if they are you don't usually have to do much more than mash A repeatedly.

I mean, sure, sure, Grandia has a pretty good, fast-paced and somewhat strategic battle system... but what use is it when all I have to do is repeatedly press A and I'll win almost every fight? What use is all that depth when it's unused? It's frustrating.

But that, I think, is why I've said for many, many years now (14 or 15, perhaps?) that strategy games, not RPGs or anything else, are my favorite genre. And before then it probably would have been platformers, not RPGs, a genre I barely ever played when I was younger.


On that note, Lunar Legend and Skies of Arcadia... why have I beaten the GBA version of Lunar, widely agreed upon as the worst version, and one which DOES have random battles, and not, say, the PSX version which I also have, and which doesn't have them... um, "I had the GBA version years earlier" is all I can come up with. It wasn't great, and I'd never have played through the whole thing without save anywhere I think, but I wanted to play a version of Lunar because I'd played and liked the Sega CD versions in emulation, and without a Sega CD or PSX at the time, that was my only choice...

As for Skies of Arcadia... yeah, that's one I've debated with myself about for years, about why I love it so much (it is my favorite JRPG by far, after all)... I'll try again later. :)