Well, I got good news and more good news and bad news. The good news is that I'm out of my gaming slump, all I had to do was play some NES games, the more good news is that I found Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in my mail box. The bad news, however, is that It's really really hard. I think the reason I'm having so much difficulty playing it, is a combination of needing to level-grind, and my reflexes being weakened from monthsofplaying turn-based RPG's.

Other than that Castlevania is great, but the voice-acting is laughable. "Have at you!"

For some reason, I'm bored with most of the games I bought recently. So yesterday, after I got bored with Tales of Legendia,I put in Final Fantasy Origins and started a new save on the original Final Fantasy on normal mode. I found out normal mode is merciless to a party containing two black mages, a red mage, and a white mage, so I played on my older Final Fantasy save. So I ran around Mt. Gulg for thirty minutes, beat the boss, and felt absolutely no satisfaction from it. This has been happening to me with a lot of the games I played recently, Kingdom Hearts, Tales of Legendia, Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land, all of them are boring to me now. Am I tired of video games??????

This will be the last post in this series of blogs, in the comments please give me a suggestion for what to blog about next. The Battle systems in this post will be from the best to the worst.

Tales of Legendia features a battle system that is fairly enjoyable.

The Tales series has always had a great real-time battle system. The system is basically four party members that can move around, jump, and attackjust like in a side-scroller.It ends up being fairly strategic since your front row characters can stop enemies from advancing to the back row. It's simple, and fun.

Eternal Sonata has an interesting mix of real-time and Turn-based that ends up being a little crappy.

Eternal Sonata gives me mixed feelings, at first it's great but later on it's crappy. This goes for the battle system as well, which gets a little bit more difficult as you progress through the game. The battle system is real-time, but you can only hack and slash and run around for a limited amount of time. The time you have to attack and run around is illustrated by the blue bar on the left side of the screen. The blue bar begins to go down as soon as you start moving around the battlefield. As you attack the blue bar goes up a little then keeps going down, and each hit you land on an enemy makes that bar go up just a little more. You can use special attacks as well that seem to be free to use. You have a different special attack depending on whether you are in the light or the dark. Unfortunately this system gets extremely monotonous after a while.

Final Fantasy XIII has an abominable battle system.

FFXIII had a colorful world and a good storyline, but one thing it didn't have, was a good battle system. The system in XIII is theoriginal ATB system with some minor tweaks that make it horribly boring. Tweaks such as how you don't really have to select your attacks and you can just press the auto-battle button every time it's your turn until the battle is over. You don't really play the game you just watch it play itself. However, there is one interesting thing about the system, the paradigms.The paradigm system is like the job systemon the go, you can switch them in the middle of battle and have a party that can devastate enemies. The only problem this makes is that it makes battle last forever. In the end, this is a battle system you'd best stay away from.

Well, that's that, no more RPG blogs for a while. Thanks for reading guys.

Oh, and some randomness for you, it's my birthday! But I feel sick, :( oh well. It's still a good day.

At last, part 3 of a three part blog series is here! In this blog we will discuss the affect a good battle system has on an RPG.

The battle system is a pivotal part of an RPG because of the fact that you will be going through this process over and over and over again, until the credits roll. What a battle system is, is the engaging of an enemy, through a random encounter or what-have-you, and the process of fighting that enemy until it is defeated and you gain some loot and some experience points. The following games are in order of best battle systems, to the worst.

Lost Odyssey's turn based system is tweaked slightly with the Ring system

Lost Odyssey dosen't bring anything new to the table, but then again it dosen't really need to. I personally think the coventional turn-based system is perfect and dosen't really need to be changed over the years. However, Lost Odyssey tweaked it and made it slightly better, by using the Ring system. The Ring System is, of course, a ring you equip your character with, but this changes battle just slightly in how you have to hold the RT button and release it when a ring on the screen (seen above) goes within another, smaller ring. If you get it just perfectly right, it will add the effect of the ring into your attack.

The ATB system is great, but is a step away from theconventional turn-based system

Final Fantasy, the game that fillsevery RPG gamer's mind with epicbattle music and visions of random-encounters. Most of the Final Fantasy games after IV had the ATB gauge. A simple yet effective way to increase the excitement of battles. All that the ATB system is, is a bar beside each party member's name, that shows when a character can attack. When it's full it is that person's turn, it's incredibly simple but it makes boss battles much more stressful since enemies can attack while you are choosing an action. However this takes away your ability to catch your breath in a Conventional Turn-based system.

Rogue Galaxy's battle system is real time with a hint of turn-based

Rogue Galaxy features a real time battle system where you have a limited number of attacks, if you run out of attacks you have to wait a few seconds or succesfully block an enemy attack to be able to fight again. In my opinion it holds your interest for 30 hours of gameplay, but it isn't anything special, since you can't do any combos or anything like that. All you can really do are some special moves that hit all enemies and a few damage boosting abilities, all of which have cool little cinemas you can watch, but cannot participate in.

Well that's all for now, part 2 will come tomorrow.

Sorry for the delay guys, I don't have an awful lot of time to blog.

This blog will go in the order of "Best character advancement systems to the Worst".

Diablo has a fairly unoriginal stat progression system, but it serves it's purpose.

Diablo's character advancement system has been done so many times before, that it seems kind of boring. However, this sytem was an early example of customizable character advancement. It more or less boils down to "You level up, you get stat points that you can distribute to any stat you want" simple, right? Well it involces a whole lot of thinking before you blow those stat points on your strength. Do you need more HP? Do you need more defense? It is a helpful system that makes you really think about your strengths and weaknesses, ultimately helping you make the perfect character.

It's a total copy of FFXII's License board, but manages to be better.

Rogue Galaxy completely copied the License Board, but with a few differences, made it perfect. You use items you find in your travels to earn abilities, what could be simpler? It is a little on the linear though, but it is coupled with the traditional 'level up' system for added stat boosts.

The License Board is a confusing mass of...I don't know.

FFXII's License Board gives you the freedom of customizing what abilities, magic, armor, and weapons all of your characters use, it's a little too much freedom though. Everytime you kill an enemy you earn EXP and LP, EXP will eventually level you up, LP (License Points) go to the license board to unlock a 'license'. You can get a license for magic, abilities and any kind of weapons or armoryou want. However it gets unwieldy after a while, and it will confuse the crap out of you. Not to mention if you get a license for magic or an ability, you have to go out and buy that spell or ability. Making you run out of money, which forces you to grind like crazy. But, it gives you a insane amount of customization, although that customization is it's downfall.

Well that's my blog, hope you like it. I'll get on part three as soon as possible.

This is part 2 of a three part blog about elements that make an RPG enjoyable. Part 2 will be about thecharacter advancementof an RPG.

Every RPG needs character advancement. Character advancement is the system used to increase the stats of your characters. Much has changed since the NES days when Final Fantasy made it's debut on the system, it used the classic "level up" system that allowed the party to advance through 'levels' obtained through meeting an experience prerequisite. Experience was earned by slaughtering helpless goblins and the like, and this was all fine and dandy until the PS2 era. In the PS2 era, RPG'ers wanted more options for character advancement, they wanted more freedom.

The sphere grid is possibly the epitome of character advancement.

So, Final Fantasy X gave it to them with the sphere grid. The sphere grid revolutionized character advancement by giving players more freedom then ever before in an RPG. The sphere grid was fairly simple, it consists of an enormous amount of nodes that all contain some sort of stat boost in them. After killing enemies and gaining enough AP you earn a sphere level. Sphere levels can be used to move one space forward, or four spaces back When you have moved at least one node away from a stat boosting node, you can use a sphere to activate it. Although it is a simple system, you could upgrade your party anyway you want. You want Auron to cast Thundaga? Take him through Lulu's sphere grid, you want Tidus to hit the damage limit? Take him through Auron's sphere grid. It would seem like the possibilities are endless, but in fact, there is an end, the sphere grid can and has been completed by people. It takes a lot of work but maxing out your stats is do-able.

Trinity Universe's character advancement is great at boosting stats but is very limited.

Trinity Universe used a fairly simple character advancement system. You start off with three empty planetary rings, you can then place meteorites in each of the nodes on the rings. The closer to the center the node is, the bigger the stat boost from the meteorite. What really makes this system interesting is that it is coupled with the traditional 'level up' system, meaning that no level grinding is needed to earn meteorites. However, you need plenty of materials that you get from dungeons, which happen to contain copius amounts of random-battles. Still a great system.

There are still a few character advancement systems to discuss in my next blog.

This blog is the continuation of the first blog in a series of blogs. In this continuation we will refer to RPGs that don't have a good party.

FFIX has one of the most weird and downright strange parties ever.

FFIX's party is the most random group of people in any Final Fantasy, there is a ton of conflict between them, and you just never know what insult they're going to say to one another next. There is a knight that is something short of cool, a womanizing thief, a hot princess, a weird frog-eating thing of indeterminable gender, a failed cool guy character that ends up being a total dork, a weird rat thing with a spear, and a black mage who's back story will make you cry. However weird they are, they still suck you into the story and make you care about them. This party will keep you guessing, and make you care,evenif it is pretty crazy.

Eternal Sonata has the crappiest party of any RPG I know of.

Eternal Sonata's party helps bring the story along, which is what any party can do. With the main character not even feeling like a main character, and the real main character hiding in the background most of the time, makes everything seem scattered. If the focus of the story was on Chopin and not Alegretto, it could have been a good game, but instead the party brings the game down.

Well that's my blog, thanks for reading.

This is the first of a three part blog on what an RPG needs to make it entertaining. This blog which is focusing on the party of an RPG will be seperated into two parts.

In almost every RPG there is a party of 6-8 misfits, you guide these misfits on an epic journey through a fatnasy world. You may like some of them, you may hate some of them. This blog will discuss imperfect, and a few of the perfectly constructed parties in RPG history.

The basic construction of a party is simple, you need a well balanced group of men and women with variaties of attacks, abilities, and spells. However, there is more to a party than their character classes. A good party will have a lot of conflictiong personalities. A pary needs to have a young, male character that you guide throughout the game world, it also needs a love interest for the young male. Don't forget the awesome looking cool character, and the slightly annoying loudmouth. This group needs to at first hate each other or at least not be comfortable around eachother. Eventually they will bond, and the group will be pretty tight. This needs to be a group that will keep you interested until the final boss battle, and give you fond memories while the credits roll.

Final Fantasy X is a shining example of the perfect party

Final Fantasy X has the greatest example of a party ever to grace the PS2 console. All the members have their own stories, there is a lot of dialogue between them to keep you interested, and this party has one of the coolest characters in Final Fantasy history, Auron. In truth, if it wasn't for Auron being in the party, the game would be a lot harder, and a lot less fun. However Final Fantasy X has a pretty good party even without Auron. You feel sorry for all the characters and what they're going through. All-in-all this is the model party for any RPG.

Rogue Galaxy's party has a good amount of variety but still isn't on the same level as FFX

Rogue Galaxy has a decent party, it has the cool guy (Zegram) the young male main character,(Jaster) but instead of making one character SLIGHTLY annoying, they made two character very annoying. Steve, and Simon are just a little too annoying for the party to be excellent.

Part 2 coming in a day or so.

Sup, guys! So as you can see I'm not as active as I used to be, my blogs are starting to become rare and I'm never seen on the forums anymore. But I'll try to be a little mor active in the future. Anyways, as you can see by the blog title, I found a good anime. Now, all my life I've been your average American that looks at anime and says "Lulz, Japanese nubs lmao!!!111" but I kinda got sucked into One Piece. I had watched a few episodes a few years earlier, and said, "This is cool." but never continued to watch it. But after seeing it forthe first time in forever, I felt like I was addicted and needed to watch another one. The show is somehow light-hearted and serious at the same time, and manages to be really funny sometimes. The characters are all really unique, and my favorite would have to be Sanji,He's justMichael Jackson bad.

In other news, I've sent an order to Amazon for Close Combat III: The Russian Front, it looks cool, got a high score on Gamespot, but....it's not here yet! It's been over a week and my other order got here about five days ago. Where are you game? I'm also trying to chang my user icon, but its not working right, any suggestions on how to make it work?

Ciao.

I'm not sure about you guys but have you been flamed in the comments by weirdos who hate people who voice their opinions? Have you flamed anyone for their opinion/facts? I tell ya, it's a warzone in the Sephiroth vs. RAAM poll, don't forget your flak jacket.