July 1st: VGLog Update

To be fair, it's technically July 2nd already, but I wanted to start this at the beginning of July and forgot that yesterday was the first.  That being said, I'll be cheating this time around, so let's just pretend that right now it's still July 1st.  HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

Games I'm currently Playing:
PS2 - Grandia III
NDS - Megaman Starforce: Pegasus

The Grandia series of RPG games has always held a special place in my heart.  They're all brilliantly made and hard to hate as long as you know what you're getting when you go into it.  Ever since the first game on the PS1 (Sega Saturn really, but I didn't play it until I rented it on PS1) I've loved the series for as long as I can remember and continue to look forward to future games in the series.  Out of all four of the games I've had the liberty to play, the third one has always stood out in a weird way from the rest.  Most of the other games have cutscenes that use the voice cast to their maximum potential, but this time around the cutscenes are... actually FMV's (Full Motion Video) which is an interesting change, but much different from other games in the series.

The battle system is barely changed, which is good because it's a system that has worked well over the years.  I won't go too deep into details because it's fun to learn as well as use, but basically it's a turn-based RPG where, rather than having your entire team stand in a straight line and fight a row of enemies who are also conveniently standing in a straight line, you all are spread out in an open field and fight while the game runs everyone around.  If certain allies or enemies are in proper range of each other, certain attacks or spells could affect more than one person.  The bar at the top of the screen has icons for each person involved in the battle, once an icon reaches the COM space, you can issue a command to that person and, depending on the command, it will either be performed immediately or you'll have to wait a few moments until the icon travels from COM to ACT.  If you don't want to be hit by a powerful attack, you need to use a critical blow on a target who's icon is inbetween the COM and ACT spaces to break their concentration and remove their turn.  It's a cool battle system and one of my favorites for RPG games to date.

So far I'm only about 6.5 hours into the game, I've been going at it pretty slowly and I have currently aquired my first ship from Sky Captain Shmidt (I think I spelled it wrong).  I'll be plugging away at this one until I finish it again, so expect to be hearing about this one for a while.

Other than Grandia, today I've also been having some fun with Megaman Starforce for the Nintendo DS.  One of my friends on MSN recently told me he bought both of the Starforce games, which made me want to go back to the first one again.  I don't actually own Starforce 2 just yet, but I'll probably be getting it when I get paid later this week.  Hopefully I either finish it before then or else I might not finish it before I put it back on my shelf.

That's pretty much all that I had done today, other than a few friendly matches of Brawl with my roommates and an online buddy.  Ciao~