Once again, I found myself craving a new and hopefully deep RPG experience. Now, because of my dislike for most JRPGs, I'm significantly limited. I've tried just about all of the next-gen JRPGs on both PS3 and 360 and I never end up getting into them. As for the Western devs, apart from a very select few, namely Bioware, it seems as though they're all too busy developing the next FPS or action game. Take Sacred 2 for example, I find it atrocious that it's the only diablo-inspired action/RPG ever made for next-gen consoles...

We cannot forget the European devs of course, those great folk who bring us titles like the aforementioned Sacred 2, Divinity II and Risen, all of which I've played and thoroughly enjoyed, despite some rough edges. I loved every minute of Risen and I've logged at least 200 hours in Sacred 2 since its release. As for PC oriented RPGs, I still have yet to sink my teeth in Drakensang, The Witcher and a few others.

Enter Resonance of Fate. I've been interested in it since release, but ended up getting busy with other games until now. I read a few reviews, watched a few vid reviews as well, and people seemed to either like it or dislike it. The funny thing is, even the people who didn't really like it gave it a decent rating. Now, obviously I'm not only going to follow official reviews to make a decision. I read a lot of user reviews and even watch some indie game reviewers on youtube; who most often have much more passion for games because they don't have to review them to pay the rent. I find some of the official reviews sometimes miss out on things and are too quick to judge if games try to go against the grain. Games don't always have to be clones of past creations in order to be sucessfull, well, at least IMO.

So at the video game store, it was between RoF and Nier. I'll probably eventually pick up Nier anyways because it seems like a really quirky and dark action / RPG with a ton of subgenres crammed in; surely such a monstrosity must be played, right? Anyhow, remembering what I had read or watched earlier about a deep and complex combat system eventually pushed me towards RoF instead of Nier.

I only managed to play about an hour or so, enough to go through the arena tutorials. I have to say, the combat system seems absolutely awesome. Obviously it's still too early to make any statements about it as a whole, but I really like the music, art style and battle system thus far. Hopefully this weekend I'll have a chance to spend some quality time with the game and hopefully fall in love with it.