Jaraph:
I *might* be human? Strange how merely co-hosting with someone who's gender/species is murky can bring one's own chemical makeup under suspicion. I'm afraid I have to disagree with your "all it amounts to" comments about leveling up. First of all, just because it doesn't require great hand-eye feats doesn't mean it's nothing. Sometimes being able to make yourself just sit there and level-build is quite a challenge (see Dragon Warrior). Second, character development is one of the main points of role-playing. Seeing your little sprite grow to demi-god like levels of power is just plain fun. This is true especially for games with cool class systems like DQVII and FFT. Oh, and I don't think goog was suggesting that you should just level-build your way through Hoshigami. It was merely offered as an option. As for RPGs you can't just level-build your way through, there's Brigandine, for one. Ogre Battle, as well, if you want to have even a half-way decent ending. As for funny deaths, I always thought Aeris's was pretty amusing...

Googleshng:
Here's my philosophy. Games should either A- Have fun complex ability trees to advance at your leisure, like FFT and DW7, or B- Not have an experience system at all and just concentrate on things like challenge. Of course, games where experience is a limitted resource can be interesting too.

Jaraph:
Wow, google suggested being polite, but I don't think I'm worthy of a bow. As you correctly guessed, I have indeed failed to read the mentioned selections, so I'll allow my much-informed co-host to field those Qs. As far as Final Fantasy XI, I will say this: I've played and loved every single Final Fantasy, including IIIj and VIII. However, I will never, ever play FFXI. MMORPGs just don't offer what I consider to be a real RPG experience. While I do enjoy chatting with 'the guys' online, I don't need to buy a $50+ dollar game *and* pay a monthly fee to do it. Oh, and I'm much more of a newbie than you, it would seem. The faithful g has been doing Q&A all the time I've been around.

Googleshng:
Ender's Game is a very good book. Ender's Shadow is a very good book. The sequels to both are good except for that nasty little habit of chopping off the last chapter and turning it into yet another book. So, the next book will be out once all but the last chapter is finished.

Don't remember the context of the FF11 thing, but here goes. I don't like MMORPGs to begin with. In practical terms, they honestly don't offer any advantages over playing a paper RPG with a bunch of friends, or pulling out Secret of Mana and a multi-tap. And that's the high end of the spectrum. There's a few added perks to those too that a MMORPG can never achieve. Like having a GM there to change the world on the fly to suit your needs. Then of course there's the added problems of MMORPGs. Online problems: Lag, bugs, random illiterate losers from AOL, people who hunt newbies for sport, etc. Financial problems: Paying monthly fees, and STILL having to buy expansions occassionally. And then of course the problem that the game keeps going on while you aren't playing, so every second you're not in the game you're falling behind the pack in experience, and paying for a game you aren't playing.

FF11 compounds these problems by being on a console, which adds more restrictions than I'd care to delve into to the experience. More importantly, there's the concept. The FF games are not linked by a common setting. They are linked by common proper nouns (which don't really translate too well into a multiplayer environment), and common game mechanics and special effects, which flat out don't work at ALL in that sort of environment. Consider that in each FF game there is a spell whose special effects destroy the earth. Consider how often this would be cast if you had 5000 people running around with it. You'd get seasick. So, naturally, those would have to get more or less thrown out. Plus the FF series is famous for linear character driven plots, which don't work in this context either. So, honestly, the only thing remotely FF like about the whole experience would be the names of classes, which are used by about 50 billion other online RPGs I'm sure.

Oh, and for the record, I've read every Q&A column ever posted on this site, and wrote in quite often before getting this job. Although come to think of it, when I wrote in it was almost always to correct the host...

Jaraph:
Hiya (Rho? Bren? Ma?), I've admittedly not been much of a Suikoden fan thus far, but III does look cool. As far as I know, though, there isn't even a US release date yet, beyond the ambiguous '2002.' As for yu-gi-oh, I think I heard March 18 or somewhere around there. Oh, and speaking of Konami games, does anyone remember that code that you used to be able to use on all the old Konami games? Sweet memories of yore...

Googleshng:
No I don't. European release dates are nearly impossible to find, most often because they do not actually exist. When they do pop up though, we DO throw'em in our release dates database, which you can check a lot faster than you can ask me.

And...

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A (Select) Start.

Jaraph:
Hmmmm, I love that game, but I'm afraid I can't tell you..

Googleshng:
Yes. Oddly enough, that's what I was quoting too. Have a mutant tilde. ^