Journey of the Cursed Hiro

Well dudes, i finished Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates last week and I must say, it was a great feeling especially for Dragon Quest VIII since I started that like back in October. In total, I spent 75 hours on DQVIII and 13 hours on FFCCRoF. Both were milestones for me actually, it was the first Dragon Quest game I've ever played and finished it and FFCCRoF was the second ever Final Fantasy game finished when I have got so close to finishing the other Final Fantasy games.

One thing i like about DQVIII was that it was a typical traditional RPG with fairly basic RPG elements. RPG nowadays have so much things happening in them that people get confused and are sometimes also borderline RPGs. Probably the last console RPG I enjoyed playing was Final Fantasy X and from there, the Final Fantasy series just started to get confusing with the Licensing Grid, Active Dimension Battle (ADB) etc. DQVIII's battle engine is very simple and sticks to its original roots very closely while giving everything else a major overhaul. The whole world is cel-shaded but it looks very pleasant and clean compared to 3D RPGs which can have everything looking realistic but muddy looking. Theres no CGI or FMVs, all done with its superb cel-shading technics. Theres voice acting as well, a first for the series and the voices have a British accent to it so it feels like a medieval Europe fantasy. It was a long long game and the ending was completely satisfying, especially if you do the secret ending but the original ending is still very good!

FFCCRoF is a real step up from the original Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube. Ring of Fates still have many problems like interface and your party's AI problems that can be totally frustrating but can be tolerated because everything else is awesome. The story that was missing from the original gets a major overhaul here with an engaging story accompanied by the best graphics the DS can offer and voice acting (for major scenes)! This is how Square games should be, high budget productions. Hope they would fix the interface and AI problems for future sequels then it would be the most perfect Action-RPG on the DS! Pissed off that they removed the Japanese song from the ending credits, would've made the ending a lot more satisfying or at least redid the song in English like what they did with the other Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games! Grab this game anyway guys, we need to support third party games like this when so much time has been put into everything that makes it good!

Well thats two major games out of the way, dunno what console-RPG to put my head into atm. Pondering between Final Fantasy XII, Dark Cloud 2, Chrono Cross, Grandia III and Xenogears. All fairly long games but I am not sure if i want to start another RPG for the time being. I do play other other games while playing RPGs but RPGs do take a lot of time to complete so I take my time with them. On the DS front though, I have started with Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, Children of Mana and The World Ends With You. At least with DS, I can use my public transport time to play the DS to death without thinking I'm wasting my time when i could be doing something else :)

Oh yeah, Mario Kart Wii comes out next Thursday, just before ANZAC Day! Long weekend to play it. Anyone that has it, give me their Friend Code so we can verse eachother online! So freakin' can't wait! Screw Brawl!