Seven

Arrgh, not again... I'm addicted to this game again. And just in time seeing as how I had begun to cool off on Guitar Hero. It is nice to know what everyone is saying without having to look at a translation guide, especially when dealing with the license board. This time through I think I will mix it up a little and try to restrict certain skills, spells, and techniques to certain characters to make them a bit more varied and along class types. The first time I played through, I pretty much gave everyone everything and ended up with a very powerful team, which truthfully was useful IMO since some hard boss battles will require you to trade characters in and out, and if you have some weak secondary characters, you'll be hurting. So what does everyone think about the art design and music so far?

The key to the license board is to concentrate on the skills (such as the ones that add HP, MP, or add offensive magic strength first), then only magic and armor/weapons/accessories when you have those items. As for Mist Knacks or Quickenings, at level 10, you should try for having at least one of your characters learn one level one. Techniques aren't incredibly important, as I finished the game without using many of them. The most useful ones that you will need at your level is Steal and Library. You can conserve your LP as much as you want, but I strongly suggest to at least get the ones that add HP, they will make it much easier in the long run. I suggest you set a gambit for one character to steal from an enemy when that enemy is at 100% HP, that way that character will steal from the enemy then the other characters will deal damage to it thus ending that gambit for the stealer. You will build up a lot of drops and hence money this way.

Hey Beltane, did you beat the last clan mob hunt? I put a pretty big amount of time into the Japanese version as well, but left quite a few things for the English version, but who knows if I will have the same interest to keep going to the very end plus all the sidequests.

It is free roam, meaning you can at most points of the story decide to go off the story route and do mob hunts which are side quests. There are points in the story where you are locked into a course, but for the most part, you are free to roam about. The regions are quite large. Some regions are blocked off until later in the story, but once they are unlocked you can travel from region to region without any hindrance. That's what I love about FF12, it is all about giving the user the most freedom in choices - freedom to customize as they wish, freedom to roam, freedom to stay on story linearwise or break off to do quests. And to tell you the truth, the demo that was included with DQ8 was a bad representation of the final product.

Heh, I finished the Japanese release months ago. I've heard some of the English voices and I can't help but be disappointed in how annoying some of the voices are. The good thing is that they added 16:9 support and a deleted cutscene. You guys are in for a treat, for the ones that want to enjoy a Final Fantasy with a different approach to things. The ones that hate change will probably despise this game like no other and continue lamenting the passing of the old times with FF7. A lot of people have been complaining how it has thrown every FF convention out, but thats not true. For example, people state as their biggest complaint that it is real time, when really the difference is that you can select any command at any time, but the time bar still needs to fill before the action is performed. This is in contrast to the old method where the time bar needs to fill prior to you being allowed to select an action. Either way, the filling of a time bar is still there for actions. Another complaint is that they do not like how you have to control the characters movement during battles, which also is not true. The characters will mill about the enemy as in a real battle as opposed to standing there single file like some dumb country square dance or Asian aunty line dance, but you can either move them yourself or not, as they will automatically move around anyways. The moving around an enemy has little effect on the battle per say since enemies will just move closer to you if you move away. The other complaint some people have is the Sakimoto soundtrack, which frankly I am thankful for. I was tired of Uematsu and his synth-rock soundtracks, and a return to a FF Tactics/Vagrant Story symphonic-style soundtrack is awesome. The soundtrack fits the story very well. Just wait until you encounter your first Esper battle - that song is INCREDIBLE, like Duel of the Fates ala Final Fantasy. People also complain about the art style. I'm glad for the more Euro/medieval/Arabian realistic art style. I was getting tired of Nomura's rehashing. The artist (whose name escapes me for the moment) is the same artist who gave us the great designs from FFT and Vagrant Story, so if you like those, you'll like them here. One last other thing is the AI system called Gambits which is really misunderstood. You could program it so you never have to control your characters but that is if you choose to do it that way. You could also turn Gambits off and have to select every action every time, but you will find that gets tedious. You will still find during a hairy battle that letting the AI control your character is not good and there were many times I had to override it to counter an enemy tactic. Finally, some people decry that the license board can lead all the characters to be homogenous in skills and abilities, but like Gambits it is all in how you set them up. If you restrict certain characters to having skills that certain traditional roles like healer, fighter, etc, then you won't have that perceived problem. If you go ahead and give everyone the same skills, then of course they are the same. I do have some criticisms about the game, but I'll save those for later. My tip to you guys as you start out is - you get money from killing enemies and selling off the drops, so sell frequently and don't squander your money. Alternate between the story and going on mob hunts and you'll have a ton of fun. Oh, and stop looking up Ashe's skirt or focusing the camera on Fran's ass.

AAAHHH!! You have exposed me on the internets!!!

Hey JR, I have Robotech Art Book 1, its got all sorts of kewl pics of Scott Bernard, Rand, and the gang. I'm sure you're most interested in the suggestive pics of Yellow Dancer tho.

I'm far from being a biased game system fanboy, but is it my imagination or have there not been a string of bad PR moves from Sony lately that have cast an increasingly bad image on them? I usually don't listen to the rabid usually fanboyish complaints about Sony, Microsoft, or gasp even Harmony Gold, but in this case, everytime I check a game website, there's a new article about something Sony does to piss off the game buying public.

Who? William Hung?

Tell me about it, I've seen plenty of RX7 and Supra owners out of Florida with turbos big enough to suck in racoons. They laugh at our California smog nazi laws.

Ha, reminds me of the "Protect my balls" and "Let's fighting love!" lines from the Fun with Weapons episode of South Park.

LOL, you can try, but it hasn't run in half a year and has all sorts of parts taken out. The problem is that whenever I get it almost running, I either have to take it apart again or install other parts I got tempted into buying. For example, after my latest batch of mods, I got a notification in the mail that I had to smog my car. So then I had to remove everything I just installed. *groan* Now, I've just been too busy to put things back together to go and take it in for a smog.

Seriously, 0 - 60 in 4.8 seconds with a street start 5 - 60 of 5.6 seconds?!!! That's faster than my RX7! Wow, to be blazing fast AND have the German sophistication and luxury... that's great. The pricetag is where it gives me pause, but it looks like you get what you pay for. Oh and Emajnthis, I don't mind at all your criticism of the current 5 series, I do realize everyone has different tastes and at least we can talk about it without resorting to the usual tired internet bickering. It's not like you walked up to my house and egged my car.

Funny how some things haven't changed. Isn't Hugh Jackman an aussie?

I prefer this intro from the original Xmen cartoon pilot from the 80s - "Pryde of the Xmen" - much more classic for my taste. Just as good as when the Xmen guest starred on Spiderman and his Spiderfriends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNgX3wnj-uk

You know, Edwin happens to know a few things. And one of dose tings Edwin knows is - it's not how you stand by your car, it's how you race your car. You better learn dat.

Aaauugh, the indignity!!! - coming from a current 5 series owner. Anyways, my mouth did water when I heard about the sequential twin turbo inline 6 in the new 3 series coupe. That's going to be butter.

I see your point now. I'm just easily entranced with fancy doodads in cars. Speaking about fancy doodads, I'm reminded of that Top Gear episode where they asked to ride with a Mercedes engineer in the new S class to test how great the automatic emergency braking system was in foggy conditions. The car slowed down but still plowed into the back of the obstacle car! You can imagine the smartass remarks from the Top Gear crew... Yeah, the SMG is severely lacking. I hear that VW's DSG system is much more polished.

To change radio stations, all I have to do is click on the + or - buttons on my steering wheel, so that's easy as hell. If I want to toggle the rear defroster, all I have to do it hit the defrost button on the AC panel. If I wanted to intentionally make it harder for myself, I could set the I-Drive to the entertainment screen, then use the dial on the center console to scroll through channels manually. The hardest thing I have to do with I-Drive is setting the climate control, but then again, there are dedicated dials in the AC panel for both zones, so I do have an alternative. So basically, the I-Drive in my car is relatively simple and certainly doesn't force you to use it. I really think people just get intimidated by looking at the screen, which is funny considering alot of the same people can manipulate a PC/Mac with no problems or program their increasingly hi-tech cell phones.

Also, I'm as far as one could say is a Mustang fan. While I can appreciate the attraction that domestic cars have in the raw power aspect, I'm a fan of more "multidimensional" cars in the vein of Italian/European and some Japanese cars.

I really don't understand what the big gripe about Idrive is. I own a 2005 5 series and I got used to and adept with the Idrive in all of 30 minutes. I really think the magazine critics that do the most griping are 50 year old men that also can't program a VCR or figure out a TV remote. And I can't understand how crap and the new M5 are synonymous. It's got a great V10 engine and the interior looks top notch to me. I do understand people's criticism of Bangle and Van Hooydonk exterior designs, I can't stand the Z4 or Z4 coupe.

Now, that's how a stripper should be in a film, unlike prudish Jessica Alba in Sin City. I'd like to say Rose McGowan as a stripper is genius, but she's done it before. Now stripper with rocket launching peg leg? That's genius!

Nip? No no no, you must be imagining things. It's just a shadow... or is it? Her name is Hikari Kisugi. Google and you shall find. Of course I wouldn't recommend doing so from a church or work computer. Wait, how did we go from talking about the first female tourist in space to this? Hehehehe

Wasn't Ansari one of the people that funded the X-Prize, that was won by Burt Rutan and his ship?

It is explained by the professor dude when talking about how the Buster Corps evolved down a very similar path to the space monsters. Simply, it seems that as creatures evolve into space the most efficient evolutionary route tends to take them down the same path as the space monsters, hence why the Buster Corps were going down that path (at an advanced rate due to being self replicating machines) and humanity as well with the emergence of Topless powers. Since the Buster Corps were programmed to destroy any beings with traits of the space monsters, Topless became a target as evolution took its course. I suppose you could imagine that given another 100,000 years or more, humanity may evolve into something resembling the space monsters and less "human" (possibly along the lines of an Evangelion unit? Hmmm...).