ha ha ha, i just got it too! good good RPG to hold me over till FFX-2.

addicting games bad for coding, have found this out first hand :p

Don't hurt yourself. But you do deserve some R & R, eh?
;-)

LOL! I'm loving it too, but I just have to comment...this is the only game I've EVER seen with a video segment so long that it has a save point in the middle of it. The time stamp shows it 25 minutes long at that point. Cripes, does this game have some movies in it or what?

Ken: Xenogears (on the PSX), which is set 10,000 years after Xenosaga, had the Mother of All Cutscenes. After you won a battle against an enemy named "Omiomorph" during disc 2, you got to watch a cutscene that was 1.5 _hours_ long. And, unlike Xenosaga, you couldn't skip cutscenes in Xenogears.

There is a cutscene early on in Xenosaga that's 30-40 minutes long and has two save points in it, but I haven't run into any scenes longer than that. Yet.

Dave, may I suggets playing Xenogears, the predecessor to this game? You may find it just as enthralling. Plus, there's actually more fighting until you get to Disc 2. The infamous Xenogears Disc 2, which wound up the way it was because Final Fantasy 7 happened and Square didn't want to throw more money at Xenogears.

Xenogears is NOT related to Xenosaga. Xenogears was intended to be the final part of a series of games, however those plans were scrapped.

Xenosaga is a reinvisioning of the same general idea, starting over from scratch.

That's not to say that Xenogears isn't great -- it is, it's one of the best RPGs ever made. But it's not in the same series as Xenosaga.

This I know, Jason. Xenogears is predecessor in release date only. ;)

I haven't played Xenosaga yet, but here's to hoping its English translation is better than Xenogears. You quickly get sick of all the -emphases- on -random- -words-.

David, Xenosaga is all voiceover. No textual errors here, but let's hope they get the voice acting right. :)

Dude, Xenogears is part 5 of a 6-part series. Xenosaga is part 1. Just think of George Lucas and everything will be A-OK.

I have played Xenogears. Why do you think I ran out and bought Xenosaga? :) I've also played FF7-FF10 (and loved all of them except for 8). Yes, I've played Chrono Cross too. There's very little I haven't played. :)

Man, I should go get Xenosaga. I've never played Xenogears, so I should get that too. But I don't have money.

In terms of Final Fantasy, if you haven't played FF6 (FF3 in the US), you haven't played Final Fantasy. Most people say FF7 is best. But they're wrong. It's FF6. I have every single Final Fantasy game except FF8 right now (yes, even FFMQ). I want to get FF8, too, even though it hasn't been very well received generally. One thing I have to say, though, is if you haven't played it, you MUST get Final Fantasy Tactics. That game ROCKS, even though it's a *completely* different style than the rest of the series (every played Ogre Battle? It's that style, but even better).

Man, I need to continue playing FF7, I need to restart FF9, and I need to beat FFX (I'm practically at the end, but I need to get Holy first).

I think a lot of people consider Final Fantasy 5 (only released recently in the US on the PSX in Final Fantasy Anthology with FF6) to be the best Final Fantasy, but I believe most are stuck between the FF5 and FF6 camp. Myself, I'm partial to FF6 because of that evil loveliness, Kefka. He made that game. Plus, I think it has the best music compared to the other FF games.

Final Fantasy 4 (2 here in the US) was great, but it got mangled in the transition. The hardtype version was recently released here (part of Final Fantasy Chronicles for the PSX) and I hear the new translation and the other facets of the hardtype make it a better game.

Final Fantasy really lost it after FF6, IMO. FF7 was okay, but it was downhill after FF6. I bought FFX, but never took it out of the box (mostly thanks to Return to Caslte Wolfenstein on my PC).

IMHO, FF7 kicked ass. Pity my disc 2 is mangled, anyone want to send me it? Please? PSX version of course.

Xenosaga is indeed fun, but Xenogears was better.

The boss battles in saga are amazingly difficult though. I'm currently stuck...somewhere around 9 hours in and I can't leave the area to rest or go to an EVS to level so I'm trying to figure out how the hell I can possibly win this fight without cheating.

Funny, this is usually how I feel when I'm programming, not playing games...

haha! good luck :) remember to tell your loved ones that you will not contact them for about 60 hours cos you're gonna need it to finish the game!

Ok, you guys made me go out and get it ($38 at Fry's Palo Alto, maybe other ones as well, price good until tomorrow). I pick up most of the Square RPG stuff pretty early; wasn't so tuned into this one because it didn't have the Square logo on it, but since it's the same team as Xenogears, I'll give it a try. Never really got into Xenogears (just like I couldn't get into the pre-7 FFs), mostly because of the weird graphics, but I'll keep an open mind. :)

I'm probably in the minority, but I actually liked FF8. True, it wasn't the best RPG I played, but I'm a sucker for long convoluted plots.

And from what unconfirmed news I've heard, I think FF8 was pretty big in Japan. Teenage girls jumped all over Squall, etc.

The best Square RPG of recent memory however, is definitely Kingdom Hearts. The gameplay is really similar to that of a 3-d Secret of Mana. Or perhaps Zelda with less items. But story, voice acting (oh, the voices!), CG, and enemies/bosses/battles are superb.

I played Kingdom Hearts all the way up to the fights in the Olympus world. I couldn't beat them, and I got frustrated and quit and haven't come back since. :(

I beat Kingdom Hearts, including the Hades Cup, which is 50 battles in a row (yes I did them all in a row even though you're allowed to stop), including several nasty battles like Cloud and... I forget what he called himself, it's been a while, but that other guy. Man, that game was pretty cool. However, since I beat the Hades cup and unlocked every world (including the Hundred Acre Woods world) I apparently saw a "special" ending. I want to see the original ending... I hope the "special" ending is just the original with that weird bit on the end tacked on.

Anyway, that game rocks. And when you rescue every single dalmation, you get every single type of gummi block, filled to maximum, so you can build any ship you want to. It's pretty cool.

Dave, go beat Kingdom Hearts. It really is a great game.

"I forget what he called himself, it's been a while, but that other guy."

Sephiroth.

I know what you mean, Dave. In fact, I had a gap of about 2 or 3 weeks between reaching Olympus, and getting past it.

But, it happens to me all the time in RPGs. In Chrono Cross, for example, it took me 3 months (!) to get past the weird impressionist world thing. I just couldn't figure out what to do, and at that point, the game had slowed down enough that I lost interest. Granted, 2 of the 3 months was spent on Grand Theft Auto, but still. ;)

Dan - no, not Sephiroth. He's a different, solo battle, isn't he? The guy that's on your team story-wise but isn't actually on your team gameplay-wise, i.e. is on your side in the story but /only/ storywise.

If that made any sense.

I'm in the middle of Chrono Cross still. I stopped playing only because other games grabbed my attention. I thought it was awesome.

I'm also in the middle of Kingdom Hearts, and maybe I'll come back to it. I just prefer the tactical combat where you can pause to the "run around swinging like mad" style of Kingdom Hearts (the former is easier on my tendonitis-hands). :)

"Dan - no, not Sephiroth. He's a different, solo battle, isn't he? The guy that's on your team story-wise but isn't actually on your team gameplay-wise, i.e. is on your side in the story but /only/ storywise."

Ah, that is correct. The other fellow who was in battle with Cloud is Leon. I was thinking ahead. My bad. :)

Leon, that's it.

Yeah, I beat the entire Hades cup in one go, without stopping. Fun fun :D

I should go back and try to kill the ice giant. The other 3 "special" bosses are even harder and practically impossible to kill. One particularly nasty one, the Phantom, can be reached by going to Never Never land, putting Peter Pan in your party, and talking to tinkerbell. Hint: freeze the hands of the clock tower to stop the Death spell.

I promised myself that some day, some time, I'd go back and _finish_ all those annoying alternate plot and character lines in Chrono Cross. Alas, brighter, bigger games came along, and that promise has been shoved into the space where my other promise to beat all 99 levels of Bubble Bobble lies.

I understand perfectly about the button mashing tendencies in Kingdom Hearts. My controller probably suffered more abuse from that game than from any other. Sadly, when I first played it, I naively thought that once I cleared an area, it'd STAY cleared. But nope, they all respawn with muderous glee.

You know, there's something about Kingdom Hearts that just doesn't click with me. I usually like the "active battle" style -- loved Secret of Mana, Musashi, Parasite Eve, Threads of Fate, etc. but there's something about the control or weapons in KH that just turns me off. I can see that it's a decent game, but really don't understand why people are SO excited about it. Oh well.

Xenosaga is pretty good, though. :)

David... you do realize there's more than 99 levels, right? One of the later levels (I forget which one, but I'd recognize it) has a way to go into an alternate set of levels (not another 99, but the same number as what's left, which is a decent amount). So if you beat all 99, you're still not done :P

Oh for the love of... yeah, that promise is definitely going to remain blissfully unfulfilled. I mean, what does the developer think I am?! Some geek who spends the entire lifetime of the average mayfly playing video games? Hrmph.

I never have enough patience to finish the games with seemingly endless waves of levels or enemies. Unless you count the I'm-invisible-until-the-world-swirls-in-pretty-colors monsters in Final Fantasy.

Here's a suggestion for improving the Bookmarks feature in Safari. To add a bookmark to the Bookmarks Bar place the mouse pointer over the folder of choice and then press Apple-D. The sheet lowers for adding a bookmark with the selected folder as the default choice.

Ryan - that doesn't sound good. I don't want it judging where my mouse pointer is when I do Cmd-D. If anything, that could be a contextual menu option, but otherwise, Cmd-D should default to the default folder (i.e. the menu)

Party foul. Do not talk about Safari features in a video game thread. Go to the previous blog entry for that. This thread is about righteous gaming. Do not pollute it with browser talk.

hey guys when it comes to gambling and role playing games ever played bane of the cosmic forge??? quite old, no console game but whatever in fact one of the hardest ever. :=)

Isn't Cosmic Forge some superstellar entity in some role playing setting? Or maybe not.

Righteous gaming! Heh. I like that.

sure here comes the short description copied and pasted from a web page.. cuz the only thing i was able to remember was that it was sooooo god damn hard and difficult ;) thought that i would never beat up those vampires waiting as a last obstacle before the last fight in game ;))) but anyway here we go with the description:

The Cosmic Forge is a magical pen that has the ability to make anything written with it come true.

Your party of character must Journey into a vacant castle once ruled by an evil King and Queen and Wizard, and find out what became of the Cosmic Forge.

but it was definitly fun..
but anyway the point is today pso arrived for the cube in europe .. also the broadband adapter.. so i know what i#ll do the next days and weeks ;)))) ... have to leave it's gambling time ;))))

The guy in FF7 thats is a solo storyline, and becomes part of u're team, is called Vincent. He looks like a vampire with 2 bangs on each side of his forehead and a cape. There is also Yuffie, the scrappy little girl. The rest I think everyone has to pick up in the game. I am a fanatic of FF7 and know a lot about it. Ask me anything.

There's Caith Sith too, if you want to count all alternate FF7 characters.

P.S.: Star Ocean 2nd Story is still the best (Playstation) RPG I've ever played. I don't own a PSX2, however...

Lunar 2 Etarnal Blue wasn't the best RPG ever but had the best ending. Also, nothing beats a cool anime cutscene thus Xenosaga rules.

Xenosaga is the best RPG in my mind, I may lose my girlfriend over this game....

No game is worth losing a girl over. Unless, maybe, it's Bikini Volleyball.

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