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I think a lot of people I know need a resolution that states "I will make more solid plans!" Every one I know seemed to wind up doing next to nothing and I was left in the wake lol.

Happy New Year anyway. Here's hoping 2006 doesn't go by super fast... there's too much to do.

:buh:

My holiday went very well, overall. Every one seemed to like the presents my girlfriend and I got them and I was actually surprised by how much I received. It was nice to see every one again... I'm finding the older I get the less I care about the presents and the more I like just being able to have fun with every one and mess around with the stuff my brothers were given.

From what I understand, the PSP title is a prequel and involves Lenneth's sister or something to that effect.

Yeah, I never heard of either of their new projects before they appeared on the main page. I don't really keep up on stuff in Japan as much as I used to. I'm actually more interested in Steambot Chronicles from what I saw of it, but who knows how good it actually is. Atlus has this weird penchant for releasing games that really just don't seem all that worthwhile (Samurai Western?).

I enjoyed the first one, but I feel like it's one of those titles that winds up getting hyped up because it's not very easy to find. It's a very good game, mind you, but I don't know that it's worth the $100 or so I sold my used copy for.

I am interested in any new ones, however. It did have some interesting character usage and the dungeons were entertaining because they were kind of a strange platform/RPG hybrid.

Most people I have to buy for don't really care about stuff that's hard to get around the holidays. It's not like I need to buy a Xbox 360 or something. I'm only going to two parties... my parents and my girlfriends' parents.

There's honestly not much I can think of to even ask for. I keep getting asked, but nothing comes to mind. All I am interested in is the new Animal Crossing and I'll be trading in stuff for that. As you get older that aspect of it seems less and less important... for me at least.

I touched upon it on an earlier post, but basically English voice overs have been added to any of the major cutscenes... which turns out to be more often than one might initially suspect. The Japanese one had no voices whatsoever.
 
All the voices are European in some way. Most of the characters sound British (including regional slang), but there's some French and Slavic accents in there as well. This actually applies to the text translation as well... They've gone with "armour" and so forth... that would be spelled as "armor" in the US.
 
There's a couple of NPCs I found to be a bit grating (this blonde teenager at the start of the game), but aside from that I have no complaints. It's very cartoony, I suppose, but it definitely fits the style and atomosphere. I can see some people being annoyed by the king's voice, but the main characters outside of him are pretty damn good overall and rather well timed.
 
I've also read that the music in the original Japanese version wasn't orchestrated. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's definitely orchestrated in the US release. It's really great to hear Sugiyama's music in all its glory in a DQ game finally... I'm done with MIDI. Perhaps this is part of what made the FFXII demo soundtrack less memorable, I don't know.

I actually was surprised that the price is reasonable... I figured a "not high" price for an import of that size would be double that at least. I guess the days of ripping importers off aren't quite as horrible as they used to be.

Definitely interested.

It's just absolutely excellent in every way I can think of. The demo was fun, but the game is definitely far better than it let on. My only "complaint" was that the demo is basically the first two hours or so of the main game, aside from an opening scene. You're basically stuck playing through the same stuff again, but really, it's not as bad as it sounds since it's still enjoyable.

Obviously the game is just plain gorgeous. Level 5 did a phenominal job with the engine... it's obviously similar to their work on Dark Cloud 2, but Toriyama's art manages to set the two titles apart in this sense. This is definitely the first time his style has been utilized perfectly... The last few Dragon Quests had some amazing 2D battle animation on the part of the enemies, but it's nice to finally see the main characters getting the treatment as well.

The sense of scale thanks to this engine is just absolutely insane as well. I've not seen it this well utilized since Skies of Arcadia on Dreamcast, personally. A lot of games have big things in them, really, but utilizing it to leave a lasting impression is not that common. Dragon Quest exceeds at this so far.

Anything else to that effect was mentioned in my post above. What I can say is that after several hours or so, the game just keeps getting better. The battles, while simple, are fun and have a sense of uncertainty to them since enemy HP is somewhat randomized. The plot is not award winning, but, for that reason, it doesn't succumb to a lot of the melodrama you see in FF titles and other modern RPGs. Really, the characters shine here because they're just fun to play as.

I'm very happy with the purchase.

Yeah, you use the right stick to control the camera like basically any action based video game or Dragon Quest VIII. It still is intelligent enough to move on its own, more or less.

The music was decent. I wasn't all that memorable and I have to say I wish it sounded a little better. Something about it felt very synthesized at points, but my memory of it is fuzzy.

I imagine in a demo they'd not even bother to go over them in English, particularly because the game isn't even completed in Japan. There wasn't any actual words or anything, but just some yells and grunts during battle. They sounded Japanese, but I doubt anyone would care lol.

Yep. It was incredibly easy for me, personally. I just ran MKDS, picked WFC Settings and chose "Find Wireless Access" (or something similar). It found my router right away, I entered in my WEP code and that was that. It's worked fine ever since.

The first night was a pain because so many people were trying to get on. Today it ran really well though and I've had good fun with it. It's funny bringing it into a random room nowhere near all my other video games and still being able to play against someone else across the country.

So I picked up Mario Kart DS today and, needless to say, it's great. I set it up to connect to the internet with no problems, although Nintendo's servers are getting hammered and it's pretty hard to join a game. Obviously this will even itself out over time (and they'll probably be expanding them anyway), so it's nothing major. When you do connect, it runs beautifully. It's nice to play some good players for once (no one around me really cares about Mario Kart; except my girlfriend and Double Dash lol).

In any case, the game gives you a code to indentify yourself and build a friends list. My number is 536930 385196.

Is anyone else playing?

I've not really bothered to keep up on it. I recognized the artwork from other things in the past... I like the style, but it's really repetitive after all of this time.

I'm surprised the voice work is that bad considering Atlus's track record recently.

Is there any major reason why any of these were changed? I assume just so they could be easily decided between in menus on the fly... It's easier to remember what Null Attack does as opposed to Master Canceller. In my opinion, anyway.

nilivanili > Lucifer's Call, as said before, is the same as SMT Nocturne.
Also, Ubi soft made a great job with the localisation, you can choose to play in 60hz and there are multiples langages (french, deutsh, english, and maybe more ?), the translation is good (at least for the french one).
So if you live in Europe, go get Lucifer's Call :guitar:

The translations are good? I had heard bad things... but, then again, I think that was only about the German translation, which you wouldn't be using heh.