DMJewelle - "25:13" (yes, it's late) EST

BECAUSE Q&A ALWAYS NEEDS Asian female gamers to make it all better!

Hi, you may have seen me in sporadic letters sent to Google or my name in the SOCK scoreboard. I'm from the country slightly above Singapore, where the games are abundant and time is short. My dad and I play a ton of PSX and PS2 RPGs, I work as a lab technician, I also like anime, manga, and a bit of cosplaying, so apparently I just need to be Japanese to be everyone's dream girl. Or actually enjoy science-fiction, one or the other.

It's been one of my personal goals to get a co-hosting spot - now I've gotten it and offended the entire gaming population, I'll be darned if I don't keep on going! Grab a comfy chair, you're not leaving till I'm done!

Hi! First time writer, long time reader (not of your Q&A, but of the english language in general)

I kid, I kid, I've been reading the Q&A off and on since the days of Thor, but I guess I just never got around to sending anything in. Forgiveness Please!

First, a be-lated congrats on your 1 year hosting anniversary. I have to admit, that over the course of time I've been visiting this site, you've certainly left your mark (for the better!) on the Q&A section.

Now, for my question! I've noticed how you keep praising the spheregrid in FFX. I really don't understand where you're coming from. The sphere grid is, IMO, the lamest skill/leveling system in a FF game. The only thing it does is make you have to use like 10 button presses to advance when you level up. For 90% of the game, it's pretty much a straight line, with only the slightest of possible detours. Then, in the last 10% of the game, it opens up completely and we have the possibility of having every character learn each others skills, thus removing the uniqueness of the characters. Anyway, the game's so easy, I can't imagine it being necessary to even use the grid near the end, unless you kept your party underleveled up to that point.

The whole thing just seemed like an illusion of customization, when in reality, it's pretty much a more time consumming version of the classic level up=stat bonuses which are the norm in rpgs.

Anyway, just curious what your take is!

I'd agree with the time-consuming bit - the party would gain a sphere level after every battle, and I can't stand leaving my charas undeveloped, so I'd go to the menu, go to the sphere grid, gain a new skill/stat, and then resume. Doing the same thing with six people got tedious.

In fact, the whole game was tedious - I kept on playing because a friend reassured me the story would pick up from all the temple-hiking, and I gave up sometime before the Suteki Da Ne scene (which was nice, granted) for three years before finishing the game. It's the first time I've done that for an FF, and I hope it never happens again.

Thanks for writing in!

Hey Matt!

Long time no write. I know how the 300k occurred. Devishly evil, but fully legal. You have to plan for these things in advance... unlike Square with the Vanish/Doom trick...

On Friday night my parents had friends over for a dinner party. Later in the evening their children joined the group – aged 13 and 11. They come downstairs and look around – PS2, GC, N64, 2 PS1s and 2 PCs are there for them to see. What do they ask me? "Can we play something?" No, they ask me "Can we play GTA?" When I told them I don’t own junk like that they called me several things, none of which I was happy to hear.

Why am I expected to own junk like that? Why should I feel the need to explain to underage kids that I don’t play that crap, and that they shouldn’t be playing it either? And their parents ask themselves why their kids are violent... Sigh. It was not a fun evening… at least until they left.

I don’t have much problem with violence in games or movies. Too excessive or stupid, and I don’t watch/play them. A game that rewards the player for running over the elderly or throwing babies off of cliffs into the waiting jaws of sharks is not for me. Why am I judged for not embracing these games? Anyways, off of this topic before I get depressed.

I turned down the opportunity to pre-order a Wii this morning. There is no point in owning one now, when I only really want one game at launch. The rest come out "later". I bet Final Fantasy XII will keep me busy for a while anyways... The one problem with this decision is that my reputation will be sullied. My family expects I will have EVERYTHING that comes out. Come Christmas, I will be expected to have a PS3 and a Wii, if not also a 360. Come our annual cocktail party, the lack of any or all of these will be noticed as the flock of cousins need to force themselves to play the inferior technology. Who knows, Santa might be kind and gift me one, but I am not holding my breath.

This weekend saw a great amount of gaming. I have several games on the go, which is not usually the case for me. This season has been a bit expensive so far without system purchases, and leaves me with quite a bit of backlog.

Valkyrie Profile 2: I am enjoying this game, even though I find it too difficult at times and hard to collect the items I want. Also, some levels I find I go into the dungeon, then when I want to beat it, I just run from everything...

Dark Age of Camelot: Double XP for a month? Had to go back for that. I am level 42 (of 50) in a week, so not too bad. I’ll be 43 tonight for sure.

Guild Wars Factions: Finished this one last night. It was enjoyable and had a decent ending for what it is.

My portable gaming has been on hold for a couple weeks (reading more now instead).

I’m sad to see SOCK go, and wonder where the rest of my donations will end up now. Maybe I can run my own competition for them? Who knows... ^_^

I did something the other day which I have never done before. I bought a Dragon Quest 8 Action figure. Not only did I do that, but it is sitting in my office at work. Not only that, but it is posed in such a way that when I look up, I see a scowling Angelo staring down at me at rapier point. He gets a lot of attention.

I find it surprising how many fans there are of game music. It is very common for me to just mute whatever game I am playing. I guess it might be because I play in a room with others who watch tv, but I hardly ever hook up headphones to my DS either...Unless I see voiced sections coming up, I keep it quiet or muted…. Weird, eh?

Now I am going to plug my favorite anime/manga series. Everyone give Death Note a read. Or download the shows. You won’t regret it. The plot? One bright high school student + a notebook that kills people + a penchant to become a god by killing off all the world’s criminals + a pinch of super detective on his trail = mega fun! It has hooked me and many others!

It makes me feel like sending you a couple volumes just to hook you! ^_^

Matt – if I recall, I sent you a DVD full of random anime episodes. Did I? And if I did, have you watched them?

Now, before I become JuMeSean, please allow me to ask a couple questions.

1 – If you knew that by completing a certain next-to-impossible objective you’d get something really precious, would you do so, even with the knowledge that it might take 50+ hours? We’re talking pretty early in a game, not at the end.

2 – Do you find it to be a requirement to beat a series in order? Such as... can’t play Suikoden 5 until I play through 1-4!

3 – My birthday is coming up as it usually does at this time of the year. Should I act mature and ask for a winter coat or something boring like that, or for something gaming related?

Well, I am gonna sign off now. Good luck on the thesis and hope it all goes well!

Later!

~Sean~~

Psh... Christmas isn't fun without games under the tree, or at least in my family. Go for the games, and go shopping to spend your money on a coat you actually like, rather than receiving something you pretend to like because a family member gave it to you.

Thanks, Sean!! I hope to hear from you again soon.

Q: About 4 months ago, I finally broke down and bought FF11. I had fun at first, but recently quit. I just found it taking up way too much time, working way too hard to accomplish anything in the game. It didn't seem like I was 'getting anywhere'. Plus, I didn't like that you pretty much HAD to be in a party to gain experience. Well, I guess this was more of a rant than a question, lol. What are your thoughts?

FirstTimeCaller

Hi there FirstTimeCaller!

I've never played FF11 (currency conversion has it cost about $50 per month here), but from what I've heard parties are the only way you can explore later areas.

I think "not going anywhere" is the case with MMORPGs - if you go faster than they add content, you'll get bored and stop playing, and you can't stop playing because they need to pay for rent and utilities, so they make sure you don't level up fast enough to go too fast, and then you get so sick of not going anywhere you give up anyway. It's a horrible challenge to ensure the balance of the force, indeed. Korean MMORPGs are probably the worst offenders around, if Ragnarok Online is any indication.

Thanks for writing!

"When your world is full of strange arrangements, and gravity won't pull you through, you know you're missing out on something, well that something depends on you!
All I'm saying - it takes a lot to love you!
All I'm doing - you know it's true!
All I mean now - there's one thing, yes one thing, that turns this grey sky to blue!"
Name the song! I cut out the lyric right before it hit the chorus, so it's not TOO easy.

Y'know, I think that pinball game you mentioned seeing on Turbo Grafx-16 might be Devil's Crush. For whatever reason several publications think it's the pinnacle of TG-16 games. Let us not forget, however, that the first two Working Designs-published RPGs were on the Turbo CD. There's Cosmic Fantasy 2 and... something else I cannot remember.

I find it odd that no one is mentioning Baten Kaitos Origins. After all, it's a new Gamecube RPG! How often do we see these, especially when it's the final one for the system? The game has been out for a week as I write this and no one appears to have posted a review - even at GameFAQs where the loonies are notorious for writing up reviews of games that haven't been out in English yet!

Did you think I'd reached the bottom of the barrel with my obscure titles? Not so! Do yourself a favor and research Zillion for the Sega Master System, Matt! It's kind of like Sega's answer to the original Metroid, with the proviso that every room has a password to enter and exit it - written in symbols that I got pretty good at copying down rather than resetting the passwords repeatedly. Any Q&A readers ever own a Master System? Mine was sold about 10 years ago but I still have memories.

And with respect to the one title that everyone reading knows about on Master System - how the hell would I have ponied up $70 for Phantasy Star back when I owned the system? I didn't have a job until much later. I did play some of it on the Phantasy Star Collection for GBA but never finished it - I just started to get motion sickness from 8-bit first person adventuring. I'm not entirely joking here, those mazes were laborious to pick through!

Now then Matt, I'm going to pose a hypothetical question. This is intended to gauge how you would have reacted in the same sort of scenario that Shining Force III found itself in, with YOUR personal favorite series as the guinea pig. Suppose that Dragon Quest 5 had, in fact, been released in English - but only the first third. The other two parts were released separately - and never brought across the Pacific. What would you do? And now I feel like just proclaiming that I would gladly buy a TMNT RPG. I've always wanted to explore the Technodrome, and the only way to do that would be with an RPG really. Not to denigrate the classic TMNT games, because they're still a lot of fun when I want to smash a bunch of foot soldiers into the dirt (every other day, seems like).

Now then, Matt. I ask of you this: why have all but the most recent anime representations of Sakura Wars, along with its manga, been brought to the English-speaking world when the source of all the spin-offs, the games that originated on Saturn and went to Dreamcast before Sega put them onto the PS2, have never been translated? I welcome your input actually, because I would really enjoy Sakura Wars 1 more if I didn't have to look at a FAQ detailing exactly what the conversations onscreen are about. You may want to take a quick Wikipedia look at the series prior to answering. I'll wait.

What, my experiences with the game thus far? The characters seem to be fun to talk with, since that's what a lot of the game is - thus my frustration at not getting what they're talking about. As for the strategy portions, they move pretty slowly (the mechs don't just warp from place to place, the have to clank around) and pack very little challenge. They're still fun. And here's something ELSE I forgot to put in about Fire Emblem: until FE 4, the weapons triangle did not exist! Same with the magic triangle.This appears to make axes less useful in FE 3, which I will get to soon; axe users tend to have a problem hitting smaller, more accurate units in my experience.

Where's an RPG set in World War I? This is my favorite war to study, actually! And I don't mean around the war's events as Shadow Hearts apparently does, I mean in the trenches! Watching as all of your friends get gunned down by machine guns while you get stuck in barbed wire and are promptly gunned down in turn! Watching the rats eat the corpses of your former comrades! Grabbing a gas mask when the chlorine comes in and hoping it didn't get into your lungs! Hearing the neverending artillery duel and hoping one doesn't make it into the trench! Dreading the rain because it makes a muddy morass of corpses and neverending death stench in your trench! Feeling the lice crawling over your body because there is no way to bathe! And that's just the WESTERN Front! The Eastern Front is even better, what with the Russians running low on armaments after 18 months and telling soldiers to stick with a buddy; once the buddy gets shot, take his gun! Or the Turks with their killing nearly 2 million Armenians just for the hell of it! How about Gallipolli, where the Anzac Corps got to feel the joy of their superiors keeping them right on the beach so that the Turks could grab some soldiers and keep them stuck on those beaches for the rest of the campaign! The Italian front where the Isonzo river became the scene of 11 bloody offensives simply because it was the only front the Italians could attack onto!

Y'know, I think I understand why WWI isn't used in games. It's just not fun to go over the top and get shot. Because that was what would happen unless you wanted to get shot for desertion. Catch-22 don'tcha know.

And it's time for our Shining Force III voice acting Hall of Shame moment: http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/shiningforce3/clip10.mp3 It's Noon again, with his comment whenever he makes a physical (he's a wizard, getting him in for a physical attack usually isn't his best use) blow. Poor fellow.

Now for a subject I'm rather curious as to your views on: reviews of games. I'll always remember Gamepro giving a 5 out of 5 to every aspect of Super Mario RPG, which really seems to inflate the game a bit too much. This would be the same Gamepro that gave FFVI a 5 in every category except graphics - anybody think the graphics of FFVI were less than stellar (considering the SNES capabilities, mind you!)? I have a subscription to EGM, and even though I don't really care about a lot of what they cover it's still quite useful (especially when my grandmother paid for it!). Dragon Quest VIII got a Silver award from them, FFX got a Gold. Actually Kingdom Hearts 1 got a Silver and 2 got a Gold - interesting. Of course the elusive Platinum award has never gone to an RPG unless the N64 Zeldas are considered RPGs.

DMJewelle Your grandma pays for EGM? How much money does she make a month? O_o Game reviews tend to be a cliche themselves. I make it a point to follow Gamespot's annual game awards, and I find myself being more accurate each year. It's obvious that FF = Godly, KH is becoming the next best franchise, and Everybody Loves Zelda And Mario, so if any of these gets less than fantastic, heads will fly and blood will fill the rivers. FF6 getting top marks in every category in this day and age can only be given by someone who absolutely despises new-school graphics, since back THEN it was beautiful, yes, but most GBA games have better sprites than FF6, so there's really not much excuse.

Matt Agreed. Game reviews reek of bias these days. I find it difficult to trust most reviews because of that very fact that DMJewelle mentioned: If an abysmally bad Final Fantasy game were ever released, it would never, EVER receive as abysmally bad grades as other games might. Another problem comes into play when you read RPG reviews that are quite evidently written by people who are not chiefly RPGamers, or who have not played RPGs outside of the Final Fantasy series. It rips me to pieces whenever I read a review for an RPG like Xenosaga or Dragon Quest that accuses them of having dull battle systems because they aren't "fast-paced" or "in real time". This is also the reason that I can't stomach more than thirty minutes of G4 at any one time. Did I mention that they pretended Nintendo never made it to E3 back in May? *explodes*

I seem to recall EGM also giving BoF: Dragon Quarter a 6 and two 8's. How would you grade it on their 10 point scale?

And now for ANOTHER obscure game no one ever mentions; Tokimeki Memorial. I can understand actually why it never garnered a translator, but from what I can tell it seems pretty well done. Not sure how much it would appeal to you, Matt, but at the very least it might offer some amusement. Then again it's apparently quite repetitive. I've never played it, anyone want to field the call for some expertise?

Godzilla or Gamera?

Now here's YET ANOTHER GBA title I wonder about. Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars. As an earlier title on the system I doubt it's exactly the best demonstration of the hardware, but in a fit of laziness I cannot be bothered to find anything else out. Your turn, Matt!

Dare ni mo jama wa sasenu!
JuMeSyn

Oh noes, I have disturbed you! D:

Even though it took me two hours, I really enjoyed answering your letter, thanks for writing in! ^__^/

And now you know... what it's like!

Thanks, JuMeSyn, as always!!

I've spent a horrific twenty hours on campus over the last two days. Definitely painful. I will make it through though! December is only a few weeks away! I will persevere! I will k*splat*

Zzzz...zzzz...zzzz...

#348. b) Materia - 1,600 points
Yup. Here's how the numbers shook out:

a) Espers: 5 votes (17.2%)
b) Materia: 4 votes (13.8%)
c) Junctioning: 8 votes (27.6%)
d) Crystal Points: 7 votes (24.1%)
e) Sphere Grid: 5 votes (17.2%)

Interesting, huh? And then we had this one...

Reader-Submitted #350:
Which Tales of Symphonia character is never depicted in a battle during the game's opening video? (1,000 points)

a) Colette
b) Genis
c) Regal
d) Kratos
e) Sheena

Sorry to those of you who tried to get in to duel BLG, but Draconn beatcha.

The people that get both of these questions right will be eligible to win a Ribbon. Good luck!

STRAGGLERS:
(people who I love, but who still need to check their e-mail or somehow get in touch with me because they have unclaimed items- if you fall off the list after a week, it's TOO LATE FOR YOU! Check your spam/trash folders for my messages if you're not getting them, and I'll check mine, too!)

• none to speak of!

I'm whipped, people. I hope tomorrow night's doesn't go as late, but school is just killing me these days. I'm glad I can get anything done, columnwise at all!!

Thanks, DMJewelle, for a fantastic job. And please, all of you, come back tomorrow for some more Q&A!