The Shrine

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Bought it used a year and a half ago, and only now just started playing it. Looks to be made by the same team as FFT. The graphics and interface have the same feel to it. With all of these games labeled "Squaresoft" (or now "Square-Enix"), it would be interesting to figure out which team did which games, since you're talking about a company with thousands of people.

It was pretty hard to figure out the fighting system, and why I wasn't doing damage. Also, after figuring out the combos, I thought that I should be doing them all of the time, but that raises your risk. (For a while, I thought Risk was somewhat good, because they say it increases your chance for a critical, but honestly I don't see anything except the to-hit percentage loss, and spells like Heal are better. I also thought that you LOSE risk when you do the combos, but that's not the case.) The good side is that because of all of my comboing, I've already got Crimson Pain, and happily doing Crimson Pain/Heavy Shot (or Crimson Pain/Raging Ache) combos until they die.

You also have to have a good selection of weapons on hand. I have 7 good weapons, depending on the enemy. (Basically "themed" on the gems. For example, Evil Dead is my awesome dagger weapon with +45 to Undead, +20 to Evil, and +32 White damage.) The whole crafting system is nice, though with the really slow saving to transfer items to/from the chest, it can make the item creation take a good while. But, with the right weapons, you can do real well. Like FFT, it seems more like a tactical action RPG, if there is such a thing, because you have to switch around the weapons all the time to match the enemy type. Managing risk can be a real pain in the ass, too. (There should be a spell to remove risk, like the Vera Bulbs.)

Overall, I'm hook on this game, and I think I'll put as much time into this one as I have with FFT (which is kinda scary).</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I still never understood the appeal of it, but the interface/weapon swapping was too goddamn annoying for me to get past.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>You only need 3 weapons: Piercing, Slashing, Blunt. Use the elemntal spells to get the right kind of element if needed. I was still using the Rapier I started with at the end of the game.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>Also: yup, Yasumi Matsuno headed up the team that made VS, as well as FFT, and Tactics Ogre, and now FFXII, and I think that he's my hero. Swoon!

Also: have a look at Zy Nicholson's FAQ for VS. It's probably the best FAQ ever written (small wonder, as Zy wrote for the best magazine of its generation, Super Play).</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>It's a technical appeal that not everybody would appreciate. After all, not everybody likes strategy games.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>It's not the strategy. I understand the strategy just fine. The interface is just a clusterfuck that requires me to menu hop almost as much as run, jump, and kill enemies.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>If there was a way to add the equip change into the L2 menu, I don't think it would be so bad. Otherwise, it's only a minor annoyance.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>You don't have to kill everything. Just stick with one weapon that can kill most things and leave the others alone, and if you really want/need to kill something, then switch.</div>