Andrew:
The only reward for fighting in the monster arena, as far as I know, is the warm sense of well-being you get when your party rains copious destruction on its foes. This, on the whole, is good for making long train rides less dull, but other than that, has no useful purpose.

Andrew:
I'm gonna have to go with the PSX, despite my old-school roots. Looking back, most PSX games have better depth than most SNES titles have to offer. Granted, nostalgia does tend to colour my stated favorite games, but on the whole, the PSX is just a better console in terms of technical merit, variety, and the depth of the games. Still, the SNES does have a number of games that I've played to death, so it's a close victory.

Andrew:
The name Castomel comes from my old pen 'n paper days, when I was a kender of some repute. I owned my very own tavern, I did, with a gerbil colony in the back which kind of got out of control -_-. Somewhat further back than that, it's stolen from Dragonlance, those shameful novels that most of us have probably read. You can find it in the Dwarven Chronicles, if you're a glutton for punishment (actually, though, Dan Parkinson is one of the better authors TSR keeps(kept?) chained down, in my opinion, so it's not all that bad.)

Andrew:
Ah, SO2... If only I could summon up the interest to finish it. I actually managed to get around to getting to disc 2 a few months back, but then FFX came along, and I rather quickly jumped ship. Now, I'm not too sure what type of item you're referring to, but I wouldn't worry too much; items in SO2 are a dime a dozen, and what's the worst that could happen- you give a character a skill. If you want my advice, just use it on whichever character you've been beefing up, and you probably won't go wrong. Of course, in the event you do happen to suffer some sort of hideous meltdown, feel free to hunt me down and destroy me- but I reserve the right to a three-day head start :)

Andrew:
Vagrant Story has a New Game+ feature? Egad... Who would ever want to play that game through twice?

Andrew:
Heh. I knew my diatribe yesterday would land me at least one flame, but I stand by my opinion- VS is painful. Normally when I hate a game, I have a review of it kicking around explaining why, but I haven't finished it yet, so no dice there. Guess I'll have to go the not-lazy route and toss up a few opinions here(and this is just my opinion, mind you):

• First, if that's one of the best books you've ever read, you need to expand your horizons a little. There's plenty of literature out there that does better, and I've played several games that do it better too. This isn't to rain on the plot, which is, from what I've been able to make of it, pretty good. However, there's a small problem with the plot: playing through the accursed dungeons in the game is such a time-consuming bore that the time it takes to progress from one chunk of plot to the next totally destroys any flow the story might have.
• The battle system might be like Secret of Mana with depth in theory, but in practice, it also takes way too long to get anything done. The beauty of Secret of Mana was the ease with which you could operate, and Vagrant Story seems determined to be counterintuitive in every way possible. From the ridiculous button pushing required to do any decent damage to the stupid, prohibitive Riskbreaker gauge, to the annoying-to-navigate menus to the limited magic system to the nearly pointless weapon creation to the seemingly extraneous special attacks, I really couldn't get used to the battle system because it was poorly implemented. Again, there were some good ideas, but the execution was bad bad bad.
• The dungeons are dreary and repetitive, and who the heck wants to do a freaking block puzzle every other screen?
• The music's mediocre.
• The graphics just don't do it for me- jaggy anti-aliasing, the artistic style (why must every character have ass-patches in their pants? Sure, it prevents wedgies, but at what price?) and the general feel of the visuals just weren't up to par, even for their time.

Andrew:
I'm pretty sure our own music section has some of the sheet music you're looking for, but it's currently being renovated, so I can't give you a link at this point. A search online should turn up what you're looking for, since what you're asking for is in fairly high demand, as far as videogame music goes.

Andrew:
There hasn't been any confirmation one way or another at this point. Square has trademarked the name "Chrono Break", but this doesn't really mean anything one way or the other; companies often trademark names just in case.

Andrew:
Sony didn't include a web browser with the browser, but some third-party developers have indicated that they are working on browsers. Of course, these announcements are by and large well over a year old, but since there are browsers available in Japan, it makes sense that you should be able to find one sooner or later.

Andrew:
The three best other RPGs... Well, Goog would kill me if I didn't recommend Shadow Hearts to you, and I'd also be sure to pick up Suikoden 3. As for a third... Well, that's pretty much a toss-up. Most recently, there's Wild ARMs 3, and if you're a fan of the Summoner series, you could pick up either Summoner or Summoner 2. Or both, if you're not too keen on Suikoden / Shadow Hearts. And then there's Baldur's Gate II, if you like dungeon crawling. I can't really vouch for the price of any of these, though; aside from the Summoner titles and possibly Shadow Hearts, everything I've mentioned is a fairly recent releases, so it may end up costing you a pretty penny however you decide to go.