I mean, c'mon. The Tales of Destiny battle system would be a complete and utter JOKE if it was packaged as a fighting game, but everyone seemed to love it anyway. Think about the Soul Calibur 2 system, with all its intricicies and tactics, and then add the ability to build up your character from scratch, teaching him or her specific combos, special moves, branching out, developing, keeping track of staqndard RPG statistics...

Namco needs to fuse their development teams.

Bai!
- Feep "Just kidding!"

ANDREW Having never enjoyed any of those intricacies and tactics, I'm afraid at this point I'm forced to simply sit back, smile, and nod. For the sake of some entertainment value being derived from this response, please direct your attention to this intrepid rack of baby back ribs. INTREPID BABY BACK RIBS Simmer, simmer... Boy, I sure am tasty!

Ahh, the weather finally is the way it's supposed to be. Granted, Monday totally sucked in which I was stuck outside for 6 hours serving dip'in'dots. Although, I did get about 7 customers, but I didn't get a break again. Well, I'm working from tomorrow 'til Sunday, so that should raise my pay quite a bit. In all, 18 hours, but that'll be something I look upon as a blessing in the future. Well, battle extravaganza!! Ideal system. I'd have to with the good old-fashioned ATB system with a few quirks. Four party battle systems are great and will be included, of course. For battle speed....faster than FFIX and slower than FFX-2, mid-point somewhere between. Character swapping is great as well, esspecially when you want to build up experience. XS's and CC's "stamina" systems are ideal ways of attacking quite a bit and added in as well. Oh, before I forget, 2-person attacks such as "double techs" would be awesome too. Mix it all together, add some creamsicles, and let simmer... The end result? A hodgepodge of things that I don't have the mental cappabilities to disipher at this moment. Rather a recipe for success or complete failure is up to the other readers. It may not even work out, but what the hell, eh? Well, we'll talk more when I faint tomorrow.

Schools almost over, but tests are ahead...may the madness continue on to insanity,

O' Shrouded One

ANDREW As soul-crushing as six hours of dips and dots may be, I would have to contend that a day which started out with my dad scoring two traffic tickets for a license sticker six months out of date (apparently, he's turning into an ornery old man, since he knew the sticker was out of date but refused to replace it thanks to some obscure beef with the local licensing bureau) and then proceeded to involve nine straight hours of soulsucking paperwork, with only two fifteen minute breaks to space it out, is more of a drag. I'm not the expert on this area, however, so let's consult our baby back ribs! INTREPID BABY BACK RIBS Did you know I'm chip-roasted for extra flavour? Damn, I'm delicious!

As you may know, Senator Velella has resigned from the Senate. However, this office will remain open to serve the people of the 34th Senate District. All e-mail should now be addressed to sd34@senate.state.ny.us Please update your records. The address and phone numbers will remain the same.

While we cannot vote on current legislation, we will still be here to help you cut through government red tape. All concerns regarding the State budget or any legislation will be kept on file and given to the incoming Senator or appropriate party.

ANDREW Well, however lousy the world may get, it's nice to know that my rights as a citizen of New York State are protected by a now-defunct senator. INTREPID BABY BACK RIBS I'm made from 100% American pork! That's the tastiest kind! ANDREW The hell it is... Canadian bacon owns your sorry ass, back ribs! INTREPID BABY BACK RIBS We'll see about that... Can you say no to my delicious sauce? ANDREW Why must meat always defeat me?

In response to Derek about shorter, more enjoyable RPGs, yes the GBA is the system. I actually am a fan of the little system and hope that the whole spirit of portable gaming is left intact as we march towards Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Oh yeah, in relation to an old topic, I go with DS all the way. PSP can boast about better graphics and blablabla, but any company with money can have a portable system with good graphics. DS is better in my opinion because it brings something new to the table and that's right outside the box. (compared to the big N's last foray into something new *cough*conectivity*cough*) Of course, everything now depend on how developers will take into acount this new tool.

ANDREW Thanks for sharing, Soul. I'm not so sure about the GBA being the system, myself, if only because the majority of the RPGs I've played for the handheld haven't exactly been top-quality efforts. Sadly, it seems that portable development tends to take a backseat in the eyes of most developers, and until that attitude changes, I'm not sure if we'll get anything better than second-rate knockoffs and whatever Camelot dredges from its toiletbowl in a given year.

In the end, I will probably take both. Altough the PSP will probably have a price tag looking somewhere along the lines of "One PSP in exchange for your first born child" which mean I will probably be getting the DS a couple years ahead of the PSP. Oh yeah, I don't care that the PSP can play special DVD movie on mini disk... if they think I'm going to buy the same movie twice... in two different format, they're mistaken.

ANDREW Pssh.. Firstborn children are overrated, especially if you can score one during a random encounter on a steamy night in Cambodia. Using my highly certified scoring system, such a firstborn child could be easily entrusted to a caring corporation like Sony, embiggening the all of us AND giving you a chance to start over with a clean slate (and the chance to have new and more valuable firstborns for any incidental handhelds Sony might dream up in the future! I mean, once they get addicted to raising your kids, they'll be sure to keep the portable goodness coming!)

So back to topic... sorry oh master of the creamsickle... I have sidetracked myself. I won't do it again, I promisse.

Best combat system... If it's an existing one, I have to go with Parasite Eve. I liked how you used skills to avoid enemy attack. It kinda killed my need to press TV mode on my remote while holding X.

So, my combat system has something to do while in battle. Press X at the right time to double the strenght of your attack... oops, been done. Ok ok, no worry. You get to play Guitar Freak during battles... oh yeah, been done -_- Ok, how about battles are done in a 3rd person fighting mode... ok, Kingdom Heart ;_;

Ok ok, I suck at this. But for sure if I was in charge of creating a battle system, I would expand on the concept of Chrono Trigger. I just loved learning new abilities and mixing them with every character to see what new spell I can do.

On this, I wish you a good week end.

Soul

P.S. I just got Mario RPG factory sealed for 109.00$ USD... that's 150.00$ CDN. I am in insane old fool. Oh well, at least I'm happy

ANDREW You know what? You're right. Chrono Trigger had a perfectly acceptable battle system, and I wish game companies would realize that you don't have to force players to collect sixteen shards of ossified lion turd just to gain that one last ability. The beauty of Chrono Trigger was in its simplicity, and despite the fact that there really wasn't a lot of playing around to do, it allowed you to focus on the game rather than footling about in a murky labyrinth of subscreens. On the other hand, I love FFX too, so maybe I'm just susceptible to lvl 3 Muddle.

I wanted to address a couple of issues from last column. The first is lengthy games. I have to agree, 100+ hours of gameplay no longer appeals to me. I would much rather play a solid 30 hours than 100+ hours of mini-games. So how do we fix this issue. It seems that everyone writes into these columns and complains about the same things, but yet they continue to occur. So what then is our solution? Are there people out there who like the lame fetch quests and mini games? I am all for added content for those who choose to look for it, but it should be done in a way where you find an extra dungeon if you look hard enough, or talk to the right person. It should not mean that if you talk to person A and give them the item you got from person B, then you can get something from them to give to person C...etc. etc. etc. It should also not involve developing a mastery of chocobo riding, or digging, or some other nonsense. I want good solid side quests.

ANDREW The trouble here is that every RPG contains one of these elements, and thus the only real power we have, that is, to buy or not to buy, kind of falls by the wayside since nobody has really come up with anything better. It's kind of sad, given that we've had almost twenty years to punish Enix for inventing the fetch quest(or Sega, if you MUST point out how delightfully antecedentastic Phantasy Star is.)

Here is and idea of what I consider acceptable side quests. Throughout a game you may find some gems hidden in dungeons. There is an area of the game where if you have collected all the gems and place them into a lock of some kind it opens a gate into another dungeon. This dungeon would give you an opportunity to find some really cool stuff. The point is the side quest should be an extension of the gameplay already present in the game. It should not be something unrelated like chocobo digging. This way those who enjoy the game enough can continue to do so with the side quests, while others who enjoy it less, or are in more of a hurry can continue on and complete the story. These quests should also be staggered through the game, rather than simply having the world open up at the very end to a slew of side quests.

ANDREW Wow... it's like the worthless Stardust in LoD, except good! If only you'd thought of it ten years ago and somehow found a way to infiltrate that wretched development staff.

The other issue I wanted to address was the big box website vs. the Mom and Pop website. Personally, I come to RPGamer because I can not stand Gamespot, or IGN, or many of the others. First and foremost, I can not stand the fact that you can not access any of the interesting content without a membership. Second, I find they try to cover way too much stuff and the result is I can not find anything I want. I prefer to look for sites that are small and more focused. The problem is that as those sites gain more attention, they need to become bigger to compensate and the result is they grow too big to be run as free sites. I am curious if that is the direction that RPGamer has been forced into. Has the readership of the site increased, or decreased in recent years? Has it reached a point where it is becoming difficult to run as a free site due to a massive need for resources?

Anyway, them's my thoughts.
Eggman

ANDREW We have grown consistently larger pretty much up until FFXI's launch, at which point our numbers mysteriously started dropping off. Now, I'm not blaming anyone in particular, but it seems to me that Square Enix has some splaining to do, since you'd think it'd be interested in maintaining the overall well-being of a site that indoctrinates... I mean, influences, so many of its adherents. Then again, if there's one thing that Square Enix has shown, it's that it loves the prospect of thirteen dollars monthly much more than any intangible thing like respect, loyalty, or support from its fanbase.