Phantasy Star Zero: Some Early Impressions

For the last week or so I've been playing some Phantasy Star Zero, and it's a pretty fun little distraction. It has plenty of loot to hunt down, mags to grow, interesting characters, and it's really good for some pick up and play action. About the only thing that I really don't like about it is that the camera is kind of blah. I'm also terrible at using spears, but that's more me than the game.

Anyway, after playing for about seven hours, so far so good. I'm playing as a Newman right now, and their story is pretty neat. It means I have to talk a fair bit with Sarisa because we're in cahoots as we investigate the humans, and complete our people's mission. It seems a straightforward story so far, but the characters bring a lot to the table. They're darn charming. I've spent most of my time adventuring with Kai and Sarisa, and like them quite a bit. Kai is very easy going, with only a very subtle bit of cockiness to him. He seems the sort that would be fun to hang out with.  Meanwhile, Sarisa is very kind and just wants to do her best to contribute to the team. It's hard not to like her.

It's actually pretty hard
to find decent screenshots
for this game. >_<

I've spent a lot of my time just wandering around different zones as they're opened up, smacking around monsters and collecting loot. There have been a few useful items that I've found in my travels but most of them have either been used to feed my mag so it can grow big and strong, or sold off at the market for profit. It makes for a nice way to kill 15 or 20 minutes here and there while still being productive in the game. I can see this somewhat breaking the experience, though, because my character has leveled up quite a bit by doing this, and some of the recent bosses I've faced seemed a little on the easy side. I can't see this changing, though, unless I hold off on farming, but it's what I enjoy most about the game, so I'll need to somehow reconcile having easy bosses to accommodate the enjoyment I get from mindlessly smashing monsters.

In any case, I've enjoyed the game quite a bit up to this point. My character has a snazzy claw that she's using now to tear up monsters, and her mag is slowly getting stronger. I'll need to consult a guide to see how I want to go about evolving the thing, though. Right now it allows for a strong charge attack, but it looks like there a bunch of other interesting attacks available that could be worth exploring. In a lot of ways, it feels like I'm playing a portable PSO on the DS. Now if only the handheld supported WPA so that I could actually try the game online...

7th Dragon: Will We Ever See It in the West?

I first saw this game during a trip
to Japan a few years ago, and have
been fascinated with it ever since.

Sega is one of those companies that leaves a lot of people scratching their heads with some of the business decisions that it makes. I'm not going to start talking about all of them here because that would take a massive blog post unto itself, but I do want to look at some of their recent choices, or I guess lack of choices, in games that they've localized for the West. Really, I just want to rant a bit about how 7th Dragon has never seen a release outside of Japan because it seems like such a waste.

I know it's a bit of a niche game, but it's not like companies such as Atlus, XSEED, and NIS America haven't found ways to turn a profit on such games. Why can't Sega find a way to do the same? From what I've read, some publishers seem to think that the game was too challenging for a Western market. This seems silly, and like an excuse one would have heard in the early 90s as to why a game wasn't coming out here. There are plenty of people who like tough games here, so I find it difficult to believe that challenge would be an issue. According to Hardcore Gaming 101, there may also have been tensions between Kazuya Niinou and Atlus, which prevented Atlus from localizing the game for the West, which is a shame if it's true.

There was a futuristic sequel on the PSP that we never got either.

I'm not going to describe the game in detail here, there's a decent Wikipedia page discussing it, and an absolutely fantastic article describing the RPG at Hardcore Gaming 101, so check those sites out if you want to learn more about the game. I'll just say that it's a really snazzy overhead RPG with a bit of a who's who of JRPG developers involved with it (Kazuya Niinou of Etrian Odyssey fame, Reiko Kodama of Phantasy Star and Skies of Arcadia, and composer Yuzo Koshiro).

It's probably too late to hope for the DS game to come our way in anything other than a fan made English patch (probably the same for the PSP game), but with recent news that a new install is being shown in an upcoming Famitsu, it's gotten me thinking about the series again, and what a shame it is that it never came to the West. Sad Jejun is sad.

So Many Games That I Still Want to Play

I think the next game I'll try and finish is Dungeon Siege III. I'm already
seven hours in, and the game isn't that long, so I might as well.  It's pretty fun too.

For the longest time now I've seen my backlog of RPGs build and build. It's feeling like quite the daunting task to actually get around to finishing them, but I've finally decided to buckle down and put at least a dent in that backlog. A big reason it even exists is from all the years I pretty much just played nothing but World of Warcraft, and ignored everything else. When I finally pried myself away from that game I realized, "Hey! There are a bunch of really fun RPGs out there that I haven't played yet!" and from there I started loading up on them. I guess the nice thing about that was that these games were getting older by then, so they were really cheap. Mountains of games were picked up at Steam sales for $5-$10, then I got to thinking that I should collect all of the DS RPGs, and most of the worthwhile current gen JRPGs. That's when my backlog ballooned. Now I've probably got a good 40-50 RPGs I need to get through, and these things are pretty meaty, so I suspect it's going to take a while to complete them.

This has actually gotten me thinking about my consumption of games. For the longest time, I would watch release schedules and just get games as they came out. I think that this is a pretty normal thing for quite a lot of people, but now I'm more inclined to wait. It's not just because I have a mountain of games before me that really should get around to completing, but also because I'm just so much more aware of how quickly game prices drop if I wait. This is especially true on the PC where Steam has lead the charge in aggressive price points, but even on consoles it's much more worthwhile to wait. Why should I fork out $60 for a game at launch when I can wait six months, and more that likely get it for half that? Heck, some games can be had even cheaper if one is patient. I got both Tales of Vesperia and Lost Odyssey for about $10 each, and that was a great deal.

Phantasy Star Zero is another one
on the to-do list. I'm a sucker for
space cowboys.

Granted with some games, if I wait too long, they'll disappear, and be really tough to find later on. Thankfully these are easy to spot because it's mostly games from Atlus, XSEED, NIS America, and I guess Aksys that tend to have more limited print runs. So, if they're putting out a game that I'm interested in, and it's physical release only, then I know to give it a lot more thought about buying the thing quickly lest I have to pay a premium for it down the road because of scarcity.

Collecting and payment strategies aside, I've also realized that simply looking at all of the RPGs that have come out over the years up to this point that there are a massive, massive number of amazing games out there that I haven't played. I could pretty much stop buying new games now, focus on older ones, and be very well served for at least a decade, perhaps longer as I try and play through all of these games. There are still plenty of 8 and 16-bit games I haven't played, several on the PS1, the PS2 has an absolutely massive number of RPGs I still have yet to play, and just browsing through the stuff available at GoG.com, there are countless DOS RPGs that I know I would like to spend time with as well.

Last Remnant is
another game in my
backlog. If only Rush
wasn't so annoying.

I'm not really swayed much by graphics, so I'm okay with visiting older games as well as newer ones, so I could see myself making an effort to play a lot more of these older RPGs going forward. I think the industry, thanks in no small part to marketing, has conditioned gamers to always move forward and consume the next big thing, ignoring older stuff, and leaving it in the past. I guess that sort of behavior is good for business, as it keeps people putting down money on recent projects, but I want to take time to enjoy my favorite genre in all of its eras to this point.

There are just so many RPGs out there, and only a limited amount of time that I can put towards them. Now I want to take the time to check out all of the games that I missed during my time with WoW. It looks like I'm going to have a busy five or so years ahead of me getting through them all, but I'm up for the challenge. Thankfully we're heading into a relatively quiet period of RPG releases, so I do have some time to actually play these games without being interrupted by other releases. How about you all? Do you have a backlog of games that you want to get through, or do you actually complete each game before getting a new one?