Hey Goog,

First, want to say I hope you had a good Christmas, and wish you a Happy New Year. Now, on to business.

1)Remakes usually tickle me more than ports. At least, going by the Final Fantasy Experience, the ports of 5 and 6 (and I guess Chrono Trigger) were all terrible, although 4 was all right without any silly load time problems. I played through Origins and thought it was great, they definitely improved on every complaint I had about the original games. I just got Dawn of Souls, and I'm kinda torn on the idea of adding new dungeons, we'll see how that turns out.

2)Sequels are a tricky business, they can either be really good or really suck. Strangely, I didn't think Zelda 2 or Chrono Cross were bad games. Zelda 2 is actually my favorite in the series, and Chrono Cross wasn't GREAT, but it wasn't bad. I just think people had unrealistic expectations. The only completely different sequel that had me worried were the Castlevania games with RPG elements. I started playing Circle of the Moon and was worried that the level building and item gathering would seriously inhibit the enjoyability of a game in one of my favorite series ever, but it actually made it better in my opinion, improving on the formula I consider them having started with Simon's Quest. But I'm not automatically going to discount a game just because it's radically different than the first game in the series. A game doesn't suck just because it's not EXACTLY like the previous games in a series, but then again how many games have Capcom made that use essentially the same formula as the original? And they're all still good. It really depends on the game, you can't say one way or the other just because it's got different mechanics.

3)Okay, I gotta ask...what were the two RPGs you tossed aside? I nearly did that with Breath of Fire III and Wild ARMs, but out of sheer masochism I finished both of them.

Robust Stu
Gold Reviewer/Swell Guy/IT Technician From The Village People

Ahoy Goog,

I picked up a copy of Phantom Brave over the holidays, and I'm still pretty early on in the game.While I don't have any particular questions for it, I was hoping you'd have some general tips or advice for me.

Thanks!
Angelo

I've been checking RPGamer.com for release dates for some time now. I just looked at the gamefaqs.com website to see if their release date matched yours. Turns out that it doesn't. I was hoping someone could tell me if the release date is your February 7th or gamefaqs.com's April 18th? Thanks, Cameron

Googleshng - December 23 '04- 4:00 Eastern Standard Time

"Anyway though, it really does have to be said that Phantasy Star 2 held the title of Bleakest RPG Ever for quite some time. Until FF6 came out really. First ever instance of a party member being bumped off for good that I can think of, seeing how humanity pretty much completely destroyed their environment between games, the rationalization used for bringing back the dead, the literal world destruction, the ending..."

....I'd like to ask you, do computer rpgs count? Iam asking because Patrus from Betrayal at Krondor dies too, and I think that game's older than Phantasy Star 2. But maybe I'm missing the point...

merry x-mass

What's goin on Dr. Googles?

Yes that's you. My main point in this hapless collection of verbal diharrea is that Final Fantasy I & 2 looks phenomenal. Have you had a chance to play the GBA version yet? I bought the PS1 version last year and beat FF1 in Normal mode...really quickly, and aside from the GBA version being almost laughably easy (I never spent any time leveling up and my Fighter/Knight had 900HP before I even got my class changed! That and I had something like 900,000 gil sitting around by the end of the game...) it looks great. The graphics are as expected, but my area of suprise was the music. I'm playing it with my NDS, but the sound is none short of phenomenal. I went back and played Final Fantasy Origins FF1 and then played GBA FF1 and it's really hard to tell the sound quality apart. Then, for the ultimate test I popped FF1 into my Gamecube GBPlayer and actually direct-recorded a couple songs from each onto an audio tape using my stereo. Aside from quality of the overall music, samples sounded largely the same and the lack of channels in the GBA soundcard was masked really well. I'm wondering why it's taken until now for people to learn how to use the GBA sound tools effectively, as we now have the NDS's N64-superior tools to work with. Leave it to Squeevix....Squainax....Eenair? to wait until a system is dead to release the best looking game imaginable...think Treasure Hunter G...

Ok. Question would probably be have you played it or not...They should really change this section to R&R instead of Q&A: Rant and Response.

-Doby Gillis

• Games you had

• Games you got