Malaki-LEGEND.sys

I wouldn't say it's a flop per se as much as it's Nintendo making a gross miscalculation in their adoption rate predictions and misreading the market. I'm not sure they've realized that most buyers of the Wii/DS weren't really concerned with that audio/visual "pop" of your standard HD console and were more interested in the novelty of shovelware and stuff soccer moms and 5-year-old girls could get into, and like a commenter on the Joystiq story pointed out, now smartphones are filling that niche for casual games. So what we have now is a Nintendo that has to start catering to the audience that made them grow in the first place, but with all the bad decisions they've made in the past 5 or 6 years, they're going to be facing an uphill battle. With the PSVita on the horizon, lowering the price of the 3DS drastically during a general dearth of new and interesting games is pretty much the only thing they could do to stay a contender. It definitely makes me more interested in the system, if only by a bit.

What are the system reqs on this thing? If they aren't as low as WoW's and this game doesn't come to consoles, I think EA is going to have a hard time getting significant returns on their investment. But then of course there's the whole problem with the game looking like a blocky cartoon, which a lot of people don't really expect from a Star Wars game. Other than that, the Star Wars fanboy in me is hoping for the best.

I agree with Arek. They went way too nuts with the shaders on the characters, and until they release info on characters I'm interested in like Sakura/Karin or Asuka/Lili(and yes I know they're kinda teased at, I'm not too interested.

So I've noticed that my server(Fabul) has a few new faces here and there. Guess word is already spreading that patch 1.18 has been a good show thus far. I've started a new character(can have up to 10 and right now it's free) to try all the new stuff from beginning to end, and I've gotta say that I'm liking the improvements thus far, especially the dungeons. I was able to get my old LS up for the rank 25 dungeon, Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, and everything from the intro to outro cutscenes to the epic boss battle(which was one of three possible choices) felt really great and not at all like a snooze-fest as the game used to feel. We wiped the first time obviously, but man was it epic. Soloing isn't totally obtuse either with levequests(sort of like WoW dailies I guess) rewards making more sense, gaining SP by killing mobs AND completing the leve based on difficulty, mobs outside of leves actually giving decent SP, and of course SP rewards for completing sidequests, storyquests, company quests and dungeons is also great. If anyone is on Fabul, hit me up. My characters are Malakhim Albrook and Illysa Marduk, both from Limsa Lominsa. Long live the Admiral and the Maelstrom!

Yeah they're pretty crap, but take heart as one of the things they're doing for patch 1.19 is reworking a shitton of ability animations. They've already fixed a bunch for melee classes like Halone's Fury for GLA and Doomspike for LNC in 1.18. Basically, 1.18 is a base and 1.19 and beyond are going to be filling in a lot of things.

Patch 1.18 added a lot, such as 2 dungeons, auto-attack, the beginning Grand(public) Company content, new settlements and beastmen encampments, as well as balanced a lot of things like guildleves, battle classes, etc. There's plenty of stuff for those starting out in the game to do, but most of the bitching on the official forums is coming from people who've already hit rank 50 on most if not all of their classes, so naturally they're going to get bored and annoyed fast. As for being ready to play? Well patch 1.18 was a huge step in the right direction I think, but it still isn't enough. We still only have 7 combat classes and 5 major zones that hardly have anything in the way of minizones in them. Patch 1.19 will be adding the materia system and other balances/additions to crafting, more transportation systems like chocobos/airships, and more battle fixes. By the PS3 release, there should be a general expansion to accessible zones, the missing genders from roegadyn and miqo'te will be playable, private companies, company-owned housing and ships should be up, etc. So basically you're doing fine waiting for the PS3 release.

The whole thing still leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, but I guess if it means an online mode that isn't a pain(and maybe a PC release down the line), then I guess I can stomach it. Time to trade in my first copy though.

...Who the hell are the monkeys running this company...?

I think my biggest problem with this is that it hasn't even been a year since MvC3, and they're already coming out with the expanded edition. I know it's probably pointless to mention at this venture, but seriously. This should have been thought out as DLC.

Looking to see a pretty dismal showing from all Japanese developers at this year's TGS. Hell, maybe the drought will actually inspire people to cover SE's games.

So Jeremy Parish, one of the only people in game journalism whose opinions I really trust, gave the game an A, heralding the fact that it's a mature game as a game with the mature rating should be. I am excite.

I think Jeremy Parish may have inadvertently predicted the future when he said that Mega Man Dash 3 Prototype must have been quietly taken out to pasture because it must have been so terrible as to have lost its eShop release.

I also should have mentioned that the game looks really, really great in HD.

Funny thing about the Catherine demo is that it made me want to grab Persona 3 and 4 immediately after playing it, and so I did. I REALLY love the modern style and setting of the games. A serious breath of fresh air from what I'm used to, even though there's a lot of what I consider to be cliched Japanese high-school drama sprinkled through out. No biggie though. Anyway back to Catherine. After playing what bit of the game the demo contained, I really think the story was written for me. Obviously minus several key parts, but the theme itself is something I can relate to extremely well and the conversation between Vincent and his friends seems like crap my friends and I would talk about from time to time. The puzzling aspect is also pretty addictive, even after I thought it would wear off. Definitely considering picking this up, especially if it means another Persona is in the works.

So I guess it may be time for a necro bump. As many of you know, Final Fantasy XIV launched in a pretty dismal(being nice) state. Over the course of it's nearly one year life, it's had several updates that fix a few things, it went free to play indefinitely, and even had a producer/director change. This Thursday(July 21st) will be the release date for patch 1.18, which is supposed to be a rather large patch that is to set in motion ALL the changes that the newly rerolled dev team has been working on, such as needed changes to the battle system, fixing the actual game engine(which allegedly was a disaster to balance/work with), and so on. If anyone wants to check out the particulars, you can hit the game's main site The Lodestone and check out the particulars yourself as well as maybe read up on comments by Yoshida(new Producer/Director) and other members of the dev team as translated by community reps or other posters on the official forums(if you can stomach the idea of going to an official forum, of course). Just thought I'd toss that one out there.

Two words: Ivy Valentine.

3rd movie's probably my favorite. Went plumeting downward afterwards. Haven't seen either part of the finale though, so that might be good.

So the book was total ass then?

Ditto. I'm going to grab the PC version, but I won't have any actual spending cash until about Augustish. I WILL get it though, so we'll definitely be able to play some.

I'm pretty sure the rule is that "as long as it doesn't suck, it's in." insofar as genres.

I swear to God if you don't have the ending theme to Link to The Past in some form present in this wedding, I will not give you my blessing.

I'm not expecting either good nor bad acting. What I want is notihng but giant robots blowing the shit out of eachother, but I keep getting scenes with Shia Lebouf and other humans. It's more like Micheal Bay's Explosion Extravaganza with special guests The Transformers.

To be fair, it's more on the publisher rather than the dev side, as they're usually the ones who make the most absurd decisions(obviously with some developer input of course), but the point still remains.

I can vouch for both games being fun though. Just can't get much farther than the first few chapters due to lack of more Japanese knowledge...

We ARE talking about JRPGs on the Wii afterall. That's already two things working against them in the U.S. market.