Finally beat this today (after being stuck on the final dungeon for most of a month, due to CoD4 & a disinterest in powering through random BS deaths). It's pretty good! I think I like it more than Persona 3 because the social system is far less grindy, and because the game as a whole isn't quite as appallingly long (Persona 3 FES took me over 100 hours - and that's without a lot of the social grinding, which I did on my vanilla P3 playthrough before restarting on FES for the extra content). While not everything about it is superior to P3 (the fact that you can manually control your party means that bosses are tuned with the expectation that you'll control them, plus you need to grind in dungeons more/at all), in general, it refines that game's formula and makes dozens of incremental improvements. Recommended with reservations (it's a JPRG, and is long - I'm honestly not sure how much longer my tolerance for 60+ hour games is going to last).
So, apparently, the collective mass of D&D fandom (or at least its most vocal internet contingent) is engaging in that most classic of gaming fan activities: Bitching. This is obviously not new (see pats_quinade's sendup of prior bitching about 4e here), but I personally find the most recent round of complaints basically nonsensical. To quote mearls:
Many of the changes we've implemented have been asked for by gamers, or at least are changes to features that people don't like about 3e:
1. Generating numbers for NPCs is like doing (really boring) homework. 2. The game seems to function best at about levels 5 to 12. 3. High level games are cumbersome and difficult to run. 4. Low level games are swingy. 5. The CR system is confusing and produces wonky results. 6. Spellcasters outclass everyone else. 7. Multiclassing works for only certain combinations. Classic tropes (warrior-wizards) need new core classes because the core system doesn't work. 8. Characters have too few skill points. 9. Monsters are unnecessarily complicated. 10. You don't get enough feats. 11. Attacks of opportunity are confusing. 12. Magic items are really important, but it isn't equal. Some items are critical, others are complete chaff. 13. There are a number of weird little subsystems that introduce unnecessary complexity, like grappling.
Every single one of these issues is real (okay, "you don't get enough feats" is largely a matter of opinion, and the result of every new book containing a zillion new feats), and as far as I can tell, the changes that 4e makes to address them are positive, mechanically. Fluff-wise... well, hell, unless you're playing some kind of canonical Realms or Eberron game where the social contract of your playgroup requires you to take every new supplement as "reality", why do you care about someone else's fluff? Make it up, or play with the old fluff that you like.
I know that people get hung up on narrative elements, but D&D's narrative components aren't the important part of the game, except in that the narrative of your game makes it more enjoyable for you and your friends. It's the mechanics that are key, and the glimpses of 4e's mechanics we've seen suggest pretty strongly that it'll be a more enjoyable game overall, with less mechanical tedium involved. And seriously, having played RPGs for almost 2/3rds of my natural life, I could do with a lot less mechanical tedium.
Picked up two new games today. It should've been Advance Wars & Burnout Paradise, but the Gamestop two blocks from my apartment failed to get their shipment of Advance Wars in today, and against all odds, they had a copy of the PSP version of Riveria, so I picked that up instead as a part of my attempt to keep current on the cream of the niche RPGs that Atlus has brought over to the US. This may be a difficult proposition, as I tried to pre-order Rondo of Swords and it wasn't even on their list of upcoming games (though that may be a side effect of it having been announced, um, last week).
I got Burnout Paradise from the store at work, and... yeah. Still not convinced about the "World as menu" thing. There are upsides and downsides to the new scheme, but the biggest downside from my perspective is the decision to take out Burnout: Revenge's cartoonish (but completely *awesome*) traffic checking system, which let you send cars that were going the same direction as you flying, and make you crash every time your car touches pretty much anything. Because, y'know, Revenge only went Greatest Hits on PS2, Xbox, and 360, which clearly meant that the next major installment in the series needed to be harder, more hardcore, and less fun.
On the upside, the AI seems to cheat less. Though it could be that I'm too busy screaming "Bullshit!" at my car crashing because I brushed a wall or ran over a pebble to notice the cars it controls running into walls head-first and not getting totalled.
I don't want to overstate my annoyance with Burnout Paradise - despite what I perceive as its flaws, it still manages to be a fair amount of fun (ironically, I think the part of the game I enjoy the most aside from the Road Rage missions is exploring the open world). It's just that every time I drive past a row of parked cars in Paradise City, I think how awesome it would be to smash through them in Traffic Attack, and then have to force myself not to ram my junker into them at full speed.
Riveria is an odd duck of a game, and while I'm guardedly optimistic about it so far, it's got some odd design choices, like the system where you earn exploration points by doing well in combat, which you then have to use to, well, explore. Like, at all. The game gives you plenty of opportunities to screw yourself, too, either by expending points on trivial side conversations or by falling into traps that permanently mess with your stats. The in-game English voice acting is actually fairly decent, though, and I think the main character's familiar is voiced by the actress who voiced Etna in the original Disgaea, which is a definite plus. And the core combat is weird and interesting enough that I'll stick with it for a while longer, just to see where the designers go with it.
To continue the unnatural union/synergy between Etrian Odyssey and Lucky Star in my posts, I will note that I just cleared level 6 of the dungeon in Etrian, and that once my party levels up once more I'll be able to teleport back to town and raise characters from the dead under my own power. Given how vital (and savagely expensive) raising dead characters and buying teleport items has become, this prospect brings me great joy.
Also, the Lucky Star theme song is insanely catchy, as well as hyper to the point of incoherence.
When philiptan asked me what I thought of Etrian Odyssey yesterday, I realized that I hadn't actually posted on it yet, so for your edification, I'm going to give you my preliminary impressions of it. (I say "preliminary" because I just cleared the first Stratum/5 levels of the dungeon, and as such I can't comment on anything much past Fenrir.)
In the same email, Philip also reminded me about the Lucky Star anime, which is still in the process of being released. I don't recall if I've talked about this before, but if you enjoyed Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star is quite similar in feel (they're both derived from 4-panel gag strips), and has an MMO-playing, anime-watching geek girl as one of its protagonists. It's intended for a Japanese audience, so a fair number of the specific references may fly over your head unless your knowledge of anime, games, and doujinshi culture is truly encyclopedic (I know I don't "get" all the nuances of the karaoke sequences they run behind the credits), but despite the show being a little less consistently amusing than Azumanga, there are moments that almost make me cry with laughter. If you're interested, I'm sure you can find fansubs somewhere on the internets.
I would ask if my enthusiasm for drawing my own dungeon maps with the touch screen is nerdy, but I suspect that the answer to that particular question is self-evident.
Given that it just got featured on Penny Arcade, I'm sure that all the usual suspects will already have heard about this, but Odin Sphere seems like it could be really cool. I mean, a quirky JRPG with detailed 2-D graphics released by Atlus?
Actually, I have to say that Puzzle Quest soundspretty cool, especially given my compulsive fascination with games like Bejeweled and Super Puzzle Fighter. I may have to find a copy for my DS.
