December 8, 2009
Filed under Games, The Role Playing Guy, featured
Role Playing Guy: December
Written by Mark | Contact this author
New this month!
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
Looking at the screenshots I’m surprised the wii hardware can handle this game, we’ll see how it really plays out in the actual gameplay. The Crystal Chronicles games are infamous for its awesome multiplayer gameplay. However this is the first in the series that is meant to be a single player game, I personally think putting a game like this on the wii was a big mistake. Put awesome multiplayer games on the wii, and leave the single player games to the PS3 or XBOX 360. I’m not sure how this game will turn out, but I’m probably waiting for a price drop before I give it a try.
Zelda: Spirit Tracks
It’s Zelda, what can I say? The phantom hourglass was a lot of fun, and this looks to have utilized a similar engine. Those who have gotten a chance to play a pre-release copy of the game have mentioned that it is crazy fun, so I’ll likely give this one a shot myself.
Final Fantasy XIII
Mark your calendars for March 9th 2010 people. After eagerly awaiting this release over multiple holidays, we finally get to see it (provided its not delayed..again..). This is their first PS3 release, so expect it to be impressive! I really hope they do not let us down with this title.
Borderlands DLC:
Borderlands released its first DLC last month, titled “Dr. Neds Zombie Island”, and according to reviewers is some of the best DLC out there, I will hopefully be checking this out over the holidays
Zelda: Spirit Tracks 12-7-09
FFCC: Crystal Bearers 12-26-09
Sands of Destruction – 1-12-10
Mass Effect 2 – 1-26-10
Now here is something I was not expecting to see. The Estpolis series, also known as Lufia in the states, died long ago when their developers went bankrupt. There was a bastardized version that hit the GBA awhile back, but lets all forget about that abortion.
The next Estpolis game has been picked up by our good buddies at Square-Enix, and is in fact a remake of Lufia II, one of my favorite classic RPG’s. Square has announced that the game will no longer be turn based, but instead an action RPG, published on the DS. For some this was an outrage, but I find it rather fitting on the DS, action RPG’s have a tendency to be a lot more fun on the handheld systems.
the sinistral fortress looks amazing...
For those who enjoyed the complex puzzles in Lufia 2, fear not! Square has promised that they will return in all their former glory. There has yet to be word of the bastard dungeon of all bastard-ass-piss-me-off-dungeons, the ancient cave, will be making its comeback in this title.
Needless to say, this was an unexpected announcement that has myself and fans alike cheering Square-Enix on, and hoping for the best in a remake of this very beloved title.
I cannot find a lot of clear media on this game, so please take a look at these scans: Scan1 Scan2
This month the wife and I finally beat Borderlands. This game is one of the best multiplayer/co-op experiences I’ve had, its just tons of fun with tons to do, well worth the price of admission if you are looking for a co-op shooter experience that doesn’t involve playing the same campaign over and over again to feel like you’ve gotten your $$$ out of it.
Dragon Age is also an experience to be had, I’ve plugged nearly 40 hours into this game over multiple playthroughs so far and have not been disappointed, Bioware did a fantastic job once again, I find it sad I only started playing their games now, and there is nothing that scares me more then their upcoming Star Wars MMO release, playing that may cost me my soul altogether, MUST RESIST!!
After getting my fill of playing the aforementioned titles, I have switched back to Mass Effect for my third playthrough in anticipation of its sequel next month, this game is so damn good, the best RPG I’ve played in about a decade.
I’ve also been dinking around with the facebook browser game “Castle Age”, normally i hate these types of things, but this one happens to be pretty intricate and fun, especially when you play with friends, it still has its annoying aspects mind you, but the depth is incredible.
Title: Earthbound
Platform: SNES
Released: June 1, 1995
Earthbound is quite possibly the weirdest RPG you’ll ever play. While the gameplay is somewhat traditional, the story is everything but that. You play a young boy, Ness, who lives in the modern world, who suddenly finds himself face to face with an alien. The alien informs him of the unfortunate fate of the world at the hands of another alien if he does not interfere. Ness’s new alien companion is quickly smashed by his mother when she suspects that he came into the house with a cockroach. After that, Ness embarks on a bizarre journey of self discovery, recruiting several bizarre allies along the way. And in the end is able to confront and defeat this threat (with an interesting twist I might add).
Everything about this game is just weird, from battling with yo-yo’s and baseball bats, to fighting crazy cultists and the “puke” monster, and even odd “scratch-n-sniff” booklet that came with the game that gave the player an idea of what enemies were supposed to smell like.
Burgers... smells like awesome!
The graphics and music even for its time were a little different, but somehow extremely endearing, the psychedelic backgrounds when fighting enemies (somehow fitting when fighting “A Crazy Hippie”), the way they handled the map design that almost made it out to look like a 3d childrens book. Most of the games of that time used an overhead point of view, while earthbound took things at a different and very fresh feeling angle. There was also no world map, so everything flowed quite seamlessly. I kind of get the feeling that the Pokemon games took quite a few of Earthbound’s ideas in terms of design, as the two tend to look eerily similar.
Why do the graphics on a 14 year old game still look better then graphics on a 3 year old game??
Sadly the sequel, Mother 3, never made it to the states. This game is still incredibly unique by today’s standards. Hopefully its presence will not fade with time. Perhaps if people continue to press Nintendo, we’ll see an appearance on virtual console, it still remains one of the most wanted classic RPG’s of all time. If you can get you hands on a copy of this game, prepare for something unique and awesome!
With “Sands of Destruction” and “Mass Effect 2” coming out, January is going to be one hell of a month! I for one, cannot wait for those titles. And you can be prepared to read plenty about them in February’s Role Playing Guy.
Happy Holidays to all!
Great stuff, Mark. I’m actually in the process of replaying through Earthbound (I won’t go into details how, though). Did anyone else ever have the original Big Box version? I still remember some of those awful scratch-n-sniff cards they had at the end of the Strategy Guide that came with it (Hot Dog, Dirt, etc.). Also, currently playing Spirit Tracks at the moment. It’s essentially the same engine as Phantom Hourglass, same control, and even has several returning cast members from previous games (PH and WW, mostly). Many of the gaming sites are giving it near perfect reviews and are even considering it better than PH in many cases. I’ll let you know what I think of it as I get further into it.
For those of you people out there that somehow managed to get a copy of the original Japanese Mother 3 (of course, you legally purchased and imported it, then dumped the ROM yourself); there is a fan-made translation of the game readily available on the magical Intarwebz for the Gameboy Advanced (as in, not the N64 version).
Ummm. Mass Effect. I can’t wait till the sequel comes up in early January that I needed an RPG fix over the weekend. With all my money going toward buying Christmas gifts I haven’t been able to buy Dragon Age yet, so looked in my drawer and saw Blue Dragon staring back at me, the game I have always wanted to like but keep setting down after short play sessions.
I am happy to report the game starts getting fun after the 10 hour mark… Yeah 10 hours. Well I just finished the fist disc and was wondering how far you were able to make it in Blue Dragon and what you think so far. (I know you don’t like the art style, so you can skip that part.)
i think i’m actually around 25-30 hours into blue dragon, there have actually been a couple of cool moments, but right after that, Mass Effect entered my life and i havn’t had the chance to go back (soo many games to play right now)
I will likely return to it someday, i just find the character design really distracts me, and the villain does not compel me enough to really care what happens.
I started Tales of Vesperia, but havn’t quite been hooked yet.
I’m actually in the mood right now for something REALLY dark.. like Xenogears dark.. sadly, there aren’t many games out there that kill off half of the freshly introduced cast in the first 45 minutes like that..
Tales of Vespiria take a little while to get going. I’d say about 8-10 hours in. What is it with JRPG taking so long to hook us now? They use to have such an early hook but recently…. I started both Star Ocean and Infinite Discovery but couldn’t get hooked within the first hour so I haven’t looked back.
I will eventually need to track down Xenogears. Maybe I’ll just wait for an DS release, since it looks like square is working on releasing all of their old games on the platform.
the sad thing is that you can get xenogears on PSN in japan, but they announced so far they have no plans to release it across seas.. no clue why.. its pretty damn popular over here too!