Googleshng:
The whole simultanious movement thing in VH2 takes a while to get used to, but you can pin it down after you've been playing a bit. If it's any help, it uses the EXACT same AI as the original, and will just about always go for the quick stab in the back on the closest character right away. As for the artwork... yes. That style bugs me too. Moves are learned by weapons, not by characters, however you can move skills from one weapon to another. It's a really bizzare way to handle that sort of thing honestly. Finally, I'm pretty darn sure just about everyone agrees that the original VH is a MUCH better game.

Googleshng:
Well, like you just said, for the same ammount of money, right now, you can either get a DC, a VMU, and 3 RPGs, or a PSX2 with, well, no games and no memory cards. That isn't exactly the hardest choice to make, especially considering that there really aren't any RPGs worth playing on the PSX2 at this point, and by the time there are, the price should have dropped a bit. Why Shenmue is called Shenmue is a pretty good question, which I'm sure will be answered in one of the sequels. Finally, while there isn't that much information around about any of the FF remakes, I honestly can't see them doing anything REALLY impressive with them considering how many they plan to crank out in such a short time frame.

Googleshng:
For the record what I snipped was a bit of raving about Tuesday's lack of a column. It's really odd, but there's always been this strange phenominon about RPGamer Q&A where when the weekend person and weekday person switch shifts (So, Tuesday and Saturday's columns right now), there's always this HUGE dip in letters. Evidently most people for some reason just insist on sending letters only to the person whose column they just finished reading. Remember that though for the record, on those two days you have a much higher chance of getting stuff printed. Now then, getting back to the question at hand, I honestly think people in general are way too harsh on FFT's translation. Aside from the occassional odd choice of phrase, the actual dialog is just fine. The "bad translation" everyone always refers to is always found in the more out of the way areas. Job reports of course are the home of such amusing phrases as "I had a good feeling!" and "We opened the ore." The long versions of spells are often just plain odd, like "Strip the ground with glistening blades! Bolt!" There's the occassional inconsistancy with a name, like Rich and Clops, and then of course if you actually check out the tutorial, some stuff in there is just plain weird. Still, none of the myrad little things in there really hurt your understanding of the game, so in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty good translation. Now Illusion of Gaia, THAT'S a bad translation. Constantly changes tense and person every other sentence and stuff like that.

Googleshng:
I would have bought Paper Mario by now if not for the little problem of being flat broke. A few other staffers have it though and I've been hearing generally good things from them. The Arc collection is coming along pretty well I believe, in fact we should be getting our preview copy of the first game shortly, so you can look forward to reading that. Square doesn't have an exclusive contract with Sony by any means, and in fact seems to be very interested in doing stuff on Nintendo's new systems. Nintendo however seems to be taking a stance along the lines of "So, come crawlin back eh? Well maybe we don't want you back!" Presumably that attidute is just for the purposes of humbling Square a little bit and they'll eventually drop it to usher in a new wave of wonderful goodness, but then again they might not. We'll all just have to wait and see. Finally, yes. Shockwave Critic is odd. Shockwave Tick would be pretty interesting, however, sadly, The Tick is being reincarnated in the form a a *shudder* live action series on Fox! Little Wooden Boy must be spinning in his grave... except of course for the little detail of being used to start a fire in a whale rather than being buried, but you know.

Googleshng:
To put it quite simply, you DON'T beat Recumen. No matter how cool the Harpoon Cannon may be, a rinky dink little fishing boat has no chance of destroying an ancient Mech that more or less destroyed the world. The way to get through THAT little fight is just to stay on the defensive and poke around the thing to prove that there's simply no way you can touch it, then get the heck out of there and, well, I won't spoil it for you.

Googleshng:
Well, that's one of the most tech-savvy corrections I've seen in quite some time, thanks a lot!

The world is a torus? Is that what your hidden message was supposed to be? The world is a donut shaped object? INSANE!

Seeing as I have AOL, would I be able to get, say, netzero, and play PSO with THAT? Or am I destined to never enjoy PSO? -Traks

If the world's donut shaped, why hasn't someone attempted to put frosting and sprinkles on it? --Rico

Lunar 2 rules :)

~Zaph

What's the difference between a # and a ~ (becides how you say them) ?

Bean

The Last Laugh: