What are you Playing?

[usamimi]

Wow, that's a great find, llj! It could be it gave someone a red-ring of death, so someone thought it was useless and chucked it. My ex got a red-ring on his old 360 and instead of trying to see what was wrong, he was just gonna throw it away. So I asked if he minded me taking it instead and he begrudgingly gave it up, reminding me several times "now remember...it doesn't work." Joke was on him, though--I guess he didn't think to try turning it on one last time before handing it over--I set it up after cleaning it, worked just fine! Free 360, whoo!


So has anyone picked up Smash Bros for the 3Ds? Nitro and I got a copy. I haven't played a ton yet, but it's pretty fun so far!

[llj]

Been playing this about 1-2 hours a night for the past 3 weeks. Odd cover. Flynn, the blonde dude, is hardly in the game and never even becomes an official party member. The main character, Yuri, is the bishounen dude on the cover (who for years I actually thought was a girl when looking at this picture). Ironically, he is actually one of the "manliest" lead characters in a JRPG I've ever played. I had to think the Namco were starting to try to target female JRPG gamers by this point with having Yuri basically being a hunkalicious pretty boy who's SOOO cool and SOOO mature, and Tales of Graces (which originally came out on the wii close to the same time) is as close to being a shoujo JRPG as I've seen.

As for the game itself, it's okay. It's a bit of a slow burn and the pace is pretty laid back. I'm about 25 hours into the game and have only fought about 5 boss battles total and there isn't even a clear FINAL Villain emerging yet. If you've played any Tales game before it's basically the same old here. I'm a bit at a loss as to why fans seem to rate this so highly and are starting to tear down Symphonia. I mean, every Tales game since Symphonia has essentially been the same engine with minor tweaks. Not to say I'm not enjoying this. It's probably a better game than Tales of Abyss, which was plagued with a crappy overworld, poor loading times, and some of the worst game world jargon ever in a video game. (If you gave me a nickel for every time someone in that game mentioned the word "fonic" I'd be a billionaire in less than a day)

[greg]

I really enjoyed Tales of Symphonia on the GC. Too bad they didn't dub all the dialogues that the JP version had. I had started playing the fan-translated SFC Tales of Phantasia emulated on my Xbox. I wasn't amused with the unnecessarily raunchy humor that was forced into the translation. I got stuck in a dungeon and lost track of the game. that was years ago. This Tales of Vespria interested me when it came out. I watched a bunch of videos on it. I don't have a 360, though.

[llj]

Oh yeah, the skits in Tales of Symphonia weren't dubbed, were they? I wonder if they dubbed it again on the PS3 HD release, although I'm not in the habit of buying HD remakes of old games.

All the skits in Vesperia are dubbed though, so that's kind of cool.

[usamimi]

We finally got a Wii U and have been playing with it a lot lately. It came bundled with Nintendo Land and Mario Kart 8--Nintendo Land's ok, but MK8 is a LOT of fun. We also got a few virtual console games, including Earthbound. I'm really excited about that one--I haven't played it since I was in jr high, I'm pretty sure!

[llj]

Earthbound was one of those SNES games I bought for $9.99 or so when my local video rental stores were trying to get rid of their games. It's a loose copy, though. Amazingly, the battery still works last I checked. My sister just loves that game.

[greg]

Typically I am disappointed when a game is dubbed in English and would much rather have the original Japanese voice acting with English text, but the dub actors for Tales of Symphonia were top notch! I'd rank it up with the likes of Metal Gear Solid.

I never got to play Earthbound. I saw a video of the final boss in the game. Wow, for such a cute game, that is one of the creepiest things I've ever seen! It's somewhere between a nightmare and dropping acid! The graphical effects for that boss are very impressive, too.

[usamimi]

Typically I am disappointed when a game is dubbed in English and would much rather have the original Japanese voice acting with English text, but the dub actors for Tales of Symphonia were top notch! I'd rank it up with the likes of Metal Gear Solid.

I never got to play Earthbound. I saw a video of the final boss in the game. Wow, for such a cute game, that is one of the creepiest things I've ever seen! It's somewhere between a nightmare and dropping acid! The graphical effects for that boss are very impressive, too.

It did give me the creeps a little when I played it back in the day, which I wasn't expecting at all! One of the reasons I enjoyed it.

[llj]

Earthbound's oddball humor and weirdness factor is definitely a big reason for its cult appeal. Its random enemies can range from out-of-control taxi cars to bag ladies to annoying old businessmen to hippies, just to list a few of the funnier enemies. So the game definitely has a unique flavour.

[greg]

There is another Nintendo-made RPG that's for the DS that people say is somewhat in a similar vein to Earthbound/Mother, called Magical Starsign. I own the game, but have yet to play it. I haven't played any of these games, so I can't say why it is considered to be similar.