Matt Demers - 22:39 EST

I CAN'T HARDLY BELIEVE the sheer amount of amazing RPG news there has been for the DS over the past two days. Some of these things are absolute dreams come true. Fire Emblem DS!? It was practically written on the wall from the getgo, I think, but it's so awesome to finally know that they're working on a game. We also got news of a new DS Monolith Soft game, as we hypothesized just a couple of months ago, and a couple of other new titles as well.

Crap, I was right than I thought when I said that the DS would be the next system of choice for RPGamers. I just didn't realize exactly how right I was. Instead of sitting up here in the useless intro section patting myself in the back, let's turn to your letters and see what you have to say!

"Yeah, so, what's happened while I was away? A few new screens, and that's all, it seems. Meh."

How can you say that?! They announced Etrian Odyssey 2! ETRIAN ODYSSEY 2!!!! My game of the year so far gets a sequel, and all you can say is meh?! I know RPGamer didn't post the screens until after your column, but I emailed you on Friday about it, so you have no excuse (I'll let you off the hook on Fire Emblem DS, though, which is also awesome news). Not only that, but the screenshots show more symbols for mapping, including arrows, which were the main thing I really felt the lack of in the original.

Oh right, there was that, too. Yeah, that did happen over the weekend, so there's no excuse for that oversight. Actually, ha ha ha... there's really no excuse, and if you want evidence that your Q&A host is somewhat brainless or simple, you can mosey on over to the message boards and notice that I actually put in a reply to the news story thread. So, it totally slipped my mind.

While it isn't AS exciting of an announcement for me as some other things (Fire Emblem, DQ, ...), it's encouraging to see that the developers want to create a better and more balanced Etrian Odyssey. If the original game is unattractive for one reason and one alone, to me that thing would be the lack of balance. If that element were improved, I'd be all over the sequel. Well, I'll be buying the sequel regardless because the original was good in many other ways despite this- I'm just happy that it's apparently being addressed.

So yeah. There's ANOTHER reason to get excited about your DS. Again.

If I could write myself into any RPG, it would have to be Tales of Symphonia. Being a mid-twenties teacher with a middle school aged sibling, I can completely relate to Raine. Not to mention she's hella attractive. I could be her love interest since Kratos obviously wasn't written to be so. We'd be a match made in heaven. And am I the only one who thinks it's sexy when she goes on her obssesive giddy fests over her archeological finds? Ahh, I think I'm in love. I think I also just answered the old topic of hottest game characters.

Speaking of old topics, check out 1up's review on The Orange Box here: http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3163584 So much gaming value for your dollar has never been matched, but you do need a next-gen system. Get One!

Jonezy

You've very likely guessed (correctly) that I've never played a Half-Life game, given my general disdain for the FPS which, of course, has been discussed ad nauseum to this point. Orange Box looks like it's packed with goodies though- it's one of those releases that we've been hearing about for a long time, but "somehow" the general media buzz centered around Halo 3, and I kind of forgot about this brand new release until I read your mail. Maybe I'd have paid more attention to it if I had a next-gen system, but the games just don't grab me in the first place. Anyway, for all you FPS fans and PS3/360 owners, the game should be newly on shelves, so go out and blast what you will!

Dear QnA Writer,

Never having done this before - or even written into a site as I'm doing now before - I have no idea who'll get this or what to expect... That, and I don't have any idea what this SOCK business is all about. I took a quick squiz and I was awfully confused (a net RPG?).

But now that that's out of the way, I'm going to answer some of the Hot Topics in Matt's QnA column (mainly because it's open in my browser at the moment, heh.)

1) I could do the cliche and choose somebody with attractive companions (male or female) so that I could hit on them, but that's far too cliche for my liking. Though, I think I'm going to have to go with Edge Vanhite from Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm. Why? Because I like the idea of going on quests. It just seems like an awfully fun thing to do. Also, the characters in that game are all awfully cute and fun so it'd be a blast hanging out with them all. Using his various weaponry would also be neat.

2) Hmm, my answer for this may perhaps seem rather lame but I really like the Dragoon's "Jump" ability. I just like the thought of being able to avoid attacks before striking randomly.

3) Yep, all the time. Though I'm only a Grade 12 High School student so it's not as bad. I once spent a week and a half playing video games while I had the recent bout of influenza Queesland was suffering from (I'm from Australia, BTW).

4) I just think having the ability to fight enemies would be fun (or at least interesting enough). I mean, you can use all sorts of cool skills, fight neat enemies - and bosses - and eventually level up to become stronger. Also, having an invisible "backpack" to keep huge amounts of items in would be cool (as most RPGs seem to have). Oh, having background music playing even during the most mundane of tasks would be rather cool!

Normally, at this point, I'd go on a tangent about something that interests me at the time (usually a rant of some sorts, most like about how PAL gamers get screwed over) but I'm not sure about the word limit, so I'll end it here...

Hopefully next time I write I'll have something more productive to say!

Kind regards,
CruelGenesis

Not at all, your letter was entertaining, and that is productive in and of itself. Glad to hear from you, CruelGenesis- and maybe I'll hear from you again before my time at RPGamer is up?

Hello,

When given the option to change your party leader in a RPG, do you ever use it to walk around as anyone other than the intended main character of the game? I just can't do it. For some reason, I can't help but think that by walking around as anyone but the primary character, I will stumble upon a bunch of strange NPC conversations. This is because, I always feel that no matter how many characters are in my party, all of the NPCs are talking to the character I am walking around as.

-thinkfreemind

Heh, that is kind of strange- but in some games, it makes a big difference as to the information you're told. Take Xenosaga III, for example. Depending on who you have in the lead, you can actually hear entirely different things from the NPCs around you. So, if you always run around with Shion, you'll certainly miss out on some potentially valuable information!

On a bit of a related note, my brother Chris highly, HIGHLY enjoys it when a main character leaves the party. That time in FFVII when Cloud is incapacitated? Yeah, he totally goes and gains a ton of levels while Cloud can do nothing about it. He hates main characters to the point where sometimes I wonder whether he has some strange kind of RPG disorder.