The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.ff12.com/">http://www.ff12.com/</a>

always exciting at the prospect of a good game.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I watched the trailer, and it didn't spark my interest as much as previous trailers have. Although me purchasing this game when it comes out is a forgone conclusion.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>I like the FFT team a lot and it seems like maybe, just MAYBE, they might actually take FF in a new direction for once...though I'm still gonna wait and see.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I think Konami will be the future of RPGs, not because the RPGs they made are good, but they haven't been making RPGs long enough to get stuck in the medicore model like Square.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Well i sure enjoyed FF10's battle system a hell of a lot more than 6-9. Being able to take the time to plan your moves is always a plus in any RPG. If you think too long with that ATB crap the computer will get a few moves to your one.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Well i sure enjoyed FF10's battle system a hell of a lot more than 7-9.  Being able to take the time to plan your moves is always a plus in any RPG.  If you think too long with that ATB crap the computer will get a few moves to your one. So lets hope they atleast continue that turn-based style.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>What I liked was being able to switch people into battle. Battles were much more fun.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>That and you didn't get neglected character syndrome.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>I agree 100% with your first statement, though I prefer BoF to Suikoden. Does Konami have an RPG series that I don't know about?</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Very much so.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I played all of BoF, BoF2, and I stopped halfway through BoF3. I found them all to be exceedingly mediocre. I really can't argue much with FF being devoid of innovation, but man, the BoF series doesn't even try.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Granted, that's just a battle engine, but a good battle engine is a good start. I've decided that no one really knows how to tell a story anymore (though all the RPG guys should pick up Kinoko from Typemoon, who directed and wrote the script for Fate/Stay Night), so might having a good battle engine is at least a good start, and only Konami's system allows a reasonable degree of *difficulty* without being tedious (since of course you can make anything *hard* by giving it more HPs and whatnot).</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Granted, that's just a battle engine, but a good battle engine is a good start. I've decided that no one really knows how to tell a story anymore (though all the RPG guys should pick up Kinoko from Typemoon, who directed and wrote the script for Fate/Stay Night), so might as well ignore plot and focus on what people can actually improve on, and thus a good battle engine is at least a good start. Only Konami's system allows a reasonable degree of *difficulty* without being tedious (since of course you can make anything *hard* by giving it more HPs and whatnot). The funny thing is that it isn't even all that complicated compared to some of the weirder stuff Square has dug up.

I really like the concept of limited abilities. Take the idea with Suikoden but apply it game-wide, and unlike say, Final Fantasy, make it such a way there is a reason to use up your limited abilities rather than hoarding it for the last battle, ala the "Last Elixir" (Megaelixirs are actually called Last Elixirs since no one ever uses them until the last battle) syndrone. To prevent people either screwing themselves over by using these abilties up way too early or saving it too much, make it a requirement that you must use these abilities for certain key battles. For example if we take Suikoden 3 as an example, let's say you can only use True Fire rune 20 times in the entire game, and battle against Sarah will automatically count as using it up 5 times.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>ATB just means computer slaps you while you're choosing your commands if your reflexes are slow. I have yet to see any compelling reason why RPG should be real time besides punishing people who select commands slowly.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I think FFX's ability to integrate all characters into dialogues as opposed to 'your party + extras' was responsible for getting around this problem. I never actually used Lulu or Kimarhi, but they didn't feel like 'extras'</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>BoF3 was good though, I thought, despite not being particularly groundbreaking. It was a total Chrono Trigger clone (they even ripped off the CT soundtrack!), but I'd say any Chrono Trigger clone is a good Chrono Trigger clone :)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Ah. Yeah, that's true. Though I think BoF5 took that limited abiltiy-use idea and vastly improved upon it.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>And I actually never once thought "Chrono Trigger" when I played BoF3.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Plus, there was no penalty for the character switch. OInce you switched its not like you lose that persons turn, i thought that was very surprising, very un-square like, but great nonetheless.</div>

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>4 was pretty good. I enjoyed it a lot</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>This is going to be an ACTUAL sequel to FFT, BTW. Storyline looks nice, and as always, neat shit in the costume dept.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Gee...you think? The FFT team has brought us the two greatest Square games of all time: FFT and Vagrant Story.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I never liked it myself. More strategy involved in actually taking the time to choose your commands.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Though I really like Suikoden, I wish they would focus their efforts into other things. Vandal Hearts was really nice, but was otherwise a dumbed down version of FFT. I think they can try to focus on more complex RPGs, and make a name for themselves. Castlevania RPG, maybe?</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I think I stopped when I heard the church music in BoF2. The game wasn't any fun when I had to turn off the music. The gameplay itself is pretty lame, too.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>The Suikoden series is still too easy, especially 1. The Soul Eater rune was overly powerful.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Konami has yet to get a normal, non-GBA Castelvania game right since SotN. A Castlevania RPG would frighten me.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>I thought they denied that actually.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>What do you mean denied that? GamePro talked about the tie-in with Ivarice (sp!) about 3-4 months ago.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>It's all of the bullshit with 3D. They need to stick with the 2D. Nobody would bitch about the lack of 3D at all. Imagine what kind of game a 2D would be on the PS2. SotN was already beautiful on the PSX.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>There's nothing inherently wrong with going 3D. Both Zelda and Metroid pulled it off spectacularly. Konami just can't seem to get it righ with Castlevania.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>I know the game is called Castlevania, but maybe they need to find a way to go beyond just dungeons. The Ghosts 'n'Goblins 3-D game Maximo was pretty good and spread all over the place. I doubt they'll ever atain that SotN feel again, sadly.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>GamePro? GamePro?!!</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Lament was well done....</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Metroid was successful, there's not reason for Castlevania not to get it right. SotN was a LOT like Super Metroid, after all, and Prime felt a lot like Super Metroid in 3D</div>

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>Not only that but it's easy to go through all of them just using auto battle</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I guess mediocrity DOES sell.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>It was engaging enough for me to finish, but that's mainly because it was a Castelvania game. The game had no variety.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>That's a good thing not a bad thing. Random battles are pointless anyway. I'd like to see people beating the last battle against Sarah without either trying to burn her down in one round with the True Runes or silence her though.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>It did the whole in-battle-party-member-swapping thing way before FFX (and on the PSX no less). Also it had an intertwining subplot in which you would play as the resurrected emperor Fou Lou (and ONLY Fou Lou) - which was also interesting because very rarely do you get to play with a one-member party in an RPG and still have it be interesting.

The battle/weapon system is also very cool, I think. Each weapon has a power stat and a speed stat, and generally the stronger the weapon the slower it is - so you can bust out a sword that does a lot of damage but it will also miss a lot more often than a smaller sword. There's also weapons that are weak, but hit multiple times in one attack so if you miss one attack you still get a chance to hit with the other and at least pull off about half the normal damage. Missing attacks seems to be a big part of BoF too, which is something I like because it forces you to use the proper characters to hit the proper guys ("This guy's really strong, but he's slow so he should attack that big mutant boar instead of those wasps, and I'll have her hit the wasps because she's got good accuracy").

And on a personal note, I think BoF4 has the greatest character designs of any video game ever (well, it's a tie with CT at least). I mean, come on, a walking, talking St. Bernard who happens to be a ninja? How much cooler can you get?

BoF3 wasn't THAT much like Chrono Trigger, I guess...but they use the forest music from CT (I'm not sure how they were even <I>able</i> to do that, but they did). Also, the background doesn't change when you go into a random battle and the enemies keep moving around which is something that was pretty much unique to CT until BoF3 came out.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>OK, first off, never ever use Gamepro as your source to back anything. Secondly yes, it's the same world, and they're are judges but it in no way relates to FFT plot-wise.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Amen on the auto-battle. Random battles have always annoyed the piss outta me, and I loved being able to toss it onto auto once I got tired of them.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Especially they way they do it where the time frames are spaced far enough enough to make distinctly seperate stories, but they still maintain a history of the game world.

Hell, I'm itching for Suikoden 4 merely in hopes that they might finally explain what Yuber is.

Speaking of that, they do some cool character development too, with the exception of McDohl (the hero) of course, and maybe the hero of Suikoden 2 (haven't had the pleasure of playing that one).

Like you said, they have an edge because they haven't cranked out over a dozen of 'em yet like Squaresoft.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Sounds like I jumped ship too early. But man, after three mediocre games, I figured there was no chance I'd enjoy the fourth.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Considering that the team working on it has a great track record, I'm looking forward to this one.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>As I heard, it was about 100 years in the future, so of course, you're not going to have too much in terms of recurring characters, but you might see some cameos.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>I don't agree with Zelda. The 3D Zeldas are terrible in comparison to how wonderful Zelda 3 was. Metroid only pulled it off by making it a FPS-style.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Heh...my favorite was using the rune combos.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I really hope you're joking. Zelda 3 is Zelda for beginners and has no where near the depth or play value of Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, or Wind Waker, not even close (my favourite is the Master Quest).</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I actually liked NES Castlevania III a lot more than Symphony of the Night, Symphony of the Night just didn't seem as engaging because of low difficulty level.</div>