PixlBit

The Tales series probably has the best combat of conventional RPGs. FFVII and FFXII would rank right behind them.

Were tactical RPGs discussed for ths article? Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, and Valkyria Chronicles would all have been worth a mention. Valkyria in particular was a nice step up from previous generations of grid-based tactical RPGs even if it could have used a bit of tweaking. That game has been my favorite of the whole generation.

I liked the individual skills that VI had for each character, but I also found that the characters were seriously overpowered to the point where there was really no wrong character for any situation, especially with a couple of choice relics. I made Gau, a character everyone else usually hates, into a damage-dealing bastard quite easily. I once killed Final Kefka in five attacks! V did have a good battle system, and I've grown to appreciate the game more and more over the years. but I think it showed to much better effect in Final Fantasy Tactics than in FFV.

Great to see the FFXII love here. It is my second favorite FF title as well, surpassed only by VII.

Mr. Mime is the only clown that comes to mind.

Yeah, I spent time in Arizona seeing family, then I spent 3 days in San Diego and 3 days in San Simeon, which is about halfway between L.A. and San Francisco.

For your pretend birthday present, you get a date with the Amazon. How's that? :)

Happy belated Birthday! Sorry I missed it. I was on vacation on the West Coast at the time.

On Chronicles of Mystara, I was interested in getting it and would have gotten it EXCEPT for the fact that it came out far too close to Dragon's Crown, and Dragon's Crown is a far superior game (however, George Kamitani did work on D&D when he was with Capcom.)

Castle of Illusion kind of interests me, and I will probably pick up Hatsune Miku as a curiosity. i like it when we get off-the-wall titles like that in the US.

That cake was pretty nice, BTW. Kudos to your coworker for the nice birthday surprise.

It isn't just gaming, bud. Read any Wall Street Journal article about Apple or Google. The discourse in the comments there makes gamers look like Abraham Lincoln debating Stephen A. Douglas.

Moderator: Please disregard my accidental clicking of "reporting." Wasn't paying attention, sorry. :(

One thing I hate about game scores is Metacritic. Metacritic is a beast that needs to die in a fire, and then the fire needs to be thrown into the sun, and the sun then needs to be flung into a black hole. :) Hyperbole, yes, but it's sad that some shitty hole in the wall website in the Czech Republic can tank an otherwise solid game's MC scores. That kills sales and studios. Obsidian, for instance, missed out on a huge bonus payment promised to them if Fallout: New Vegas merited an 85 or greater on Metacritic. It got an 84. And I thought that gameplaywise, it was far superior to Fallout 3 (Metacritic 91). Obsidian lost their bonus in spite of the fact that New Vegas went on to sell millions.

I do think that ad hominem attacks, like the cheap shots at Ms. Petit over her transgenderism, are out of line.

Cat Lady kind of reminds me of a 1990s point-and-click game from Empire Interactive, Dreamweb. You were tasked by the keepers of the Dreamweb to kill seven people who would be responsible for a nuclear war, but the way the documentation and the background story was written, it was ambiguous as to whether you were saving the world or were just a serial killer driven by paranoid delusions. The game ends with you walking into a police ambush and being gunned down.

Dreamweb also had an excellent soundtrack from Matt Seldon.

This sums it up perfectly. The publisher got all the money they're entitled to from that copy, per the First Sale Doctrine of the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 109, which is a critical consumer protection. For my part, I have never had a used copy pushed on me at GS. They've always given me a new, factory-sealed copy unless the game is completely out of print.