Topic: Nintendo Life Playstation 3 Fan Thread

Oh, that - that's your spell list. You can only have two spells assigned at any one time. To swap them, you pull up a menu, select the spell, and off you go.

The "castle" is one such spell - the most important one, since growing the castle is key to finishing each level. Protecting it from swarms of enemies can be difficult, too.

@WaltzElf... well I think you have finally talked me into it lol. Im am going to wait until next week to get it though, as I also went by the Local Vid Store that is closing and picked up Disgaea 3 for $21 USD and going back Sunday as they will start selling all there New Releases then. lol.

You won't regret that one. Even now, some 15 years after I first played it on PC, I sometimes pull Magic Carpet out for a whirl. Classic game.

Has anyone tried the Yakuza 3 demo yet? Love what i'm seeing of the game so far and will most likely get it next month.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/locations-trailer-yakuza-3/... pretty lame localization trailer but it's all good. The combat was alot deeper and responsive than I had imagined from a game like this. Anywho, game looks great and can't wait.

Darksiders Demo on PSN tonight as well as the Uncharted 2 DLC of course and Grandia. Really looking forward to Darksiders to finish downloading.

@Fikraag.... I got to finally play it, I downloaded it from the Japan store months ago and loved it. The first two games are great.

So far on my PS3 I have the following:

Star Ocean 4 (A+)
The Darkness (B+)
Dante's Inferno (A+++++++)
Sega Mega Collection (A)

And then for downloads:

Lilo and Stich PS1 (My partner loves Stich)
Yeti Sports (Awesome $4!)
Dracula: Undead Awakening (Good, but I doubt I'll touch it again, now I have the DSi version. This game is better in portable form)
Puzzle Quest: The-one-that-isn't-Galactix (it's better than Galactix)
Valkyrie Profile Demo (I think that's the name): Didn't convince me to buy the retail game.

Having a great time with this!

Huh, I didn't realize PS3 had Star Ocean yet, Waltz. I'll need to look into that.

Anyone want to break down Grandia for me? After being super disappointed in FF7 and 8, it's hard to justify splurging on a PS1 RPG again, but this one does look a lot better.

Adam: http://au.ps3.ign.com/articles/107/1070407p1.html

On the European PS-Shop,each DLC mission pack for Fallout 3 costs 10 euro.
Maybe its more Expensive on XBL. I dunno. lol

@Waltz..... lol well you have convinced me Also, great choice in games too. I bought Resistance Fall of Man right off the bat and was a little dissapointed. I got to tryout Dantes Inferno myself. Fixing to fire up Darksiders Demo.

Yeah, Star Ocean 4 was a great game, from what I played of it. IMO, the English cast was as bad this time around, and it comes with the best feature ever to appear in a video game: the option to mute individual characters all together! What's that annoying Japanese girl? That is the sound of silence. sigh

I wish Star Ocean 3 had that option. I would've muted more than half the cast in the end.

The God of War and Darksiders demos were exceedingly dull. I'm surprised mindless button mashers have survived this long. Darksiders is at least quite colorful, which is certainly uncharacteristic of games such as these on HD consoles.

Couldn't find Star Ocean at Blockbuster, but did take home White Knight Chronicle, which I'd also forgotten about. Hoorah. Time to check it out.

Update: Playstation 3 is no longer a guaranteen, but I have not ruled it out yet, since there are so many games I want for the system. The main reason is because I want to be able to focus on the Wii and eventually the Nintendo 64 for a few months after I get it. I'll start saving up when junior high school year for me starts.

However, there is a small possibility that I might get it sooner. Given the recently diminshed support for the Virtual Console and fear of cancellation of the service, if Nintendo were to canned the Virtual Console service, I will sell the Nintendo Wii and save up money to buy an Playstation 3. But don't get your hope up on that happening, thankfully.

Well, God of War isn't a mindless Button Masher, to be honest. There are multiple combos that you'll have to utilize, especially later on in the game. I mean, you can play it as a mindless button-masher, but then the problem lies with you, not the game.

Glad you enjoyed the show! You got me in the mood for Sevendust so I've been listening to them this past week but I still gotta get the new album.

I haven't tried Darksiders but the demo for God of War 3 was amazing!

If you can play it that way, then you don't need the combos, do you? I don't have a problem if I realize all I have to do is mash the attack buttons and the game is so poorly designed that this is all it requires. It's unrealistic to expect players to learn a combo system that is pointless.

I understand it's just the beginning of the game in the demo, but if the demo is supposed to make me excited for the full game and this section is not representative of the whole, then that is a problem with the game, not with me.

@WaltzElf: I'm pretty sure you mean the demo for Valkyria Chronicles. It's a pretty good game, but I really haven't played it much at all since I bought it at release. There's just always something else that seems more interesting.

@Adam: I agree to a point that Darksiders' combat is unappealing, but how far into the demo did you play? The dungeon itself is awesomely Zelda-esque! I probably wouldn't give a crap about the game if the combat was all it had going for it, **cough*Bayonetta demo*cough** but the total package is good enough to put it on my "get later if I find a good deal" list.

Similarly, the God of War 3 demo was lacking in the non-combat-centric parts of the series. That's not all there is, folks! Also, button mashing in EITHER of those games is liable to get you killed really fast after the first hour or so (unless you play on the easiest difficultly, maybe).

@Stuff... I agree man, the Darksiders demo I thought had a great Zelda vide myself, and playing around with the deep combat sytem was quite fun as some of the moves are pretty crazy.

@Adam.... GoW actually has a small but deep combat system, especially if you play the game on the Hard setting (not GOD, that is just crazy). I pull off 200+ combos constantly. So many people just button mash through the main combos, instead hit 2-4 times then roll out and then repeat until you get a clear shot with no enemies behing then combo out or into a more poweful move, roll and continue the combo. If you keep you combo multiplier up you will gain a lot more essence to upgrade everything with. True you can put the game on Normal and button mash through it, but you will completely miss the depth of the combat system. You simply cant just button mash your way through it on Hard like you can on Normal, I dont recommend Normal on GoW for anyone with any kind of Fighting Games Experience at all.

@SilentJ.... New album drops 4/20. I thought he said 2/20 lol. It was insane loud as it was in a small bar that only holds 1000 people. Great great show, and their drummer is so totally insane its unreal.

Short version - Grandia is very, very good.

Long Version
I've started Grandia, and so far, I'm loving it. It's got a lot of cheesy and poorly done PSOne-era Voice acting, with a cute and charming storyline filled with likeable characters, and the combat is weird, but pretty interesting. It's a little too basic at the start, but I know it gets better as time goes on.

The most I can speak for is the combat. Basically, it's got a guage that's a lot like the time-guages in Final Final Fantasy, in that a character's portrait will go across it at varying speeds depending on the character's speed statistic and whether or not the character is stunned mid-battle(happens a lot, I've noticed). A character cannot act until their portrait has reached the end of the guage, in which the action pauses while you select a certain command. Once you do select a command, the character will act automatically depending on what you selected. Of course, you could always set the game to automatic using the tactics command, and they'll automatically select their own commands depending one the party tactic you've selected. Please not that the battles will be twice as fast when in automatic mode, and you can only regain control by pressing the circle button. If you don't, in the next battle, you will immediately start on automatic mode.(theoretically, an easy way to grind is to weigh down the d-pad while leaving it on automatic mode)

Now, the most interesting aspect of Grandia's combat is that it's one of the few turn-based RPGs that I know of where the characters actively(albeit automatically) move about the combat arena. While they cannot move or attack until it's their turn, one given a command, they'll chase down an enemy and can even strike multiple times. Meanwhile I'm pretty sure enemies can attempt to run away from attackers(I think that's what they're doing, at least. Maybe they were just chasing a guy who was chasing a different enemy), and I have noticed some attacks miss. At the beginning, It's mostly aesthetic, though, but at the very least it does a good job of making battles look a tad more interesting. Later on, you'll have to use enemies positions to properly time the use of magic attacks and abilities to ensure they won't be interrupted, and to ensure that the enemies are in the right position to maximize the damage of certain ettacks(or perhaps to ensure that you can get away from certain attacks). There's also a chance that your characters might dodge an attack by jumping a ways to the side, though other than look cool and prevent damage, I can't see how that would be of much use.

Again, I think the whole characters and enemies moving mid-battle is more just for looks than for any really strategic purpose like in Chrono Trigger and Lunar, but it's still one of the more unique aspects in the game. Of course, I'm probably just not far enough in to appreciate the strategic value of it yet.

Oh, and another nice touch is having all the enemies out in the overworld and try attempting to rush you if they see you, A La Earthbound. Of course you can run away from them using run button if you need to, though I think it makes it easier for them to notice you if you do use it. Naturally if they catch you from behind, it's an ambush and they act first, if you catch them behind, you get a free turn. If there are multiple enemies in the area why you make contact with an enemy, they'll appear roughly where they were in the overworld.(not sure if that applies to single enemies, though. It seems like they just appear in random spots)

I guess I outta give a briefing on the level system, since it's my favorite part of the game: Apart from gaining experience points to level up, you also get skill points to level up your proficiency with certain typs of weapons, and they are earned based on how much they're used. This basically encourages you to utilize different weapons, as well as to make sure you balance out your battles a little more and making sure one guy isn't the only one killing all the enemies. Now characters can only use certain weapons, but their roles during battle can change quite a bit during battle, such as changing a character from a close range fighter to a long range attacker. Well, actually, since it doesn't actually change any stats other than speed and attack, I suppose it really doesn't change much, but I do like that the game encourages you to try out different weapons with different characters. Also, I don't think it really changes what skills or spells you can learn and/or use either, but I'm not really far enough into the game to verify that yet.

Also, I'd just like to mention that while the story and setting are very interesting, don't expect much beyond what you'd find in an old anime of the day. Also, the voice acting is terrible(albeit hilariously so. Seriously, I have heard better performances in a Middle School play. It's really bad), and it seems as if the voice actors are just reading the text as it appears in the game with little to no rehearsal time, and the text appears to be timed to the Japanese version, so you get a lot of random, unnecessary pauses. Also, you can tell there was an extremely small cast, because a single voive actor will often voice multiple characters in a single scene, making it sound like someone with multiple personality disorder is having a conversation(or argument) with himself.XD

Oh, and a complaint I haven't mentioned is that the camera can kinda be annoying at times. It's not that big of a problem, and it's rare that games of its time even have munipulable cameras, which make it easier to find treasure you might have missed. Still, I just wanted to put that out there just in case it might be a deal-breaker for you.

Oh right, and the difficulty - Grandia is a very easy game. I didn't do much grinding at all, and I can already tell I'm overleveled. If you're worried about it being a grind-fest, don't, it's not. If you're looking for a challenge, I highly suggest you run away from as many enemies as you can, because it's very easy to over-level in this game. Just with the basic equipment and leveling up only twice with each character(weapon skill for each character was only lvl 3), I managed to defeat the first boss before it could even move. I only used three special moves, too. It was shockingly easy. Most of the enemies along the way died in one or two hits, too.

Uh...I think that's all I got to say at the moment, but hopefully that's all you'll need to know to make your decision. I mean hell, I'm only 3 hours in, anyways.

Dude if you would have bought Resistance 2 you wouldnt need fall of man. Its so much better dude, fall of man is horrible and im a die hard resistance fan. But seriously sell it and get R2 , if you ever do buy it i will help you level your characters up and show you the ropes!!!

@mickeymac I'm loving Grandia so far. Honestly i think i like Lunar 2 better though, graphically that its. I'm not far in either games but the battle systems kinda feel the same and felt lunar 2's battle system just looked neater. But all in all this is a solid rpg.