Role-Playing

Cute, but deadly

HIGH "All of Tera's towns are so impressed they're giving money!"

LOW Being one space away from a doorway and spinning a two. Then a four. Then a six.

WTF The walking undead should not make me go "Awww!" and want to pinch their cheeks.

I try not to whore myself out too much, but I'm a sucker for a good Atlus game in general, and doubly so for Shin Megami Tensei games in particular. In lieu of my regularly-scheduled blog content, instead nibble on this preview for the upcoming Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor coming to the Nintendo DS.

Think it can't get more oppressively dismal than D.C.? Welcome to Pittsburgh.

HIGH Going to a completely different area of the destroyed nation.

LOW The 100 item collect-a-thon quest is a tedious drag.

WTF It's not clear where your stolen stuff can be retrieved at quest's end.

Developed by Sting Entertainment, Dokapon Journey is a "friendship-destroying RPG" (slash board game) where up to four players can compete to save towns from monsters and to make themselves rich. It can also be played single-player with CPU-controlled opponents, but where's the fun in that?

The friendly folks over at Atlus were kind enough to share some preview information about their upcoming game The Dark Spire, and so I'm passing it on to you…

If you like your RPGs old-school, and I mean old-old-school, this game should definitely be on your radar.

Another sneak peek at upcoming Atlus goodness, this time around I've got some shots and info on Super Robot Taisen OG Saga Endless Frontier. (Whew, that title is a mouthful.)

I don't have a lot of dirt on the game at the moment, but what I do know is that it's an RPG with a sci-fi setting, most of the female characters are ridiculously endowed (sold you right there, eh?), there's tons of sexual innuendo, and the combat system takes place in real-time—I've heard a few people compare it to Xenogears in the way that each battle plays out, but I cannot confirm or deny that. I can confirm the cleavage, though.

This week, Polish developer CDProjekt announced, boastfully, that their 2007 role-playing fantasy game The Witcher had cracked the top 100 of the all-time best-selling PC games, having sold around 1.2 million copies. A reworked version of the game, called The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf, is on its way to consoles this Fall as well.

I had actually intended to do a review for The Witcher long ago when I first bought the game shortly after its release in October of '07. Unfortunately, after spending many, many hours with the game, I re-installed my operating system and accidentally deleted all my save games. I shelved the game for a long time, as it's tough to find the motivation to re-start such a deep and complex game, but CDProjekt's release of the "Enhanced Edition" content—which was a free download for all owners and is now the de facto version of the game—provided a nice incentive to do just that. But unfortunately, by that time I was quite backlogged with numerous other totally new games that I wanted to play. I've plowed through most of that now, and have been re-playing The Witcher with the new enhanced content. I may still do a comprehensive review one of these days, but for now this humble little blog will have to suffice.

A legacy worth exploring

HIGH Getting to finally see how Adol Christin became a cult icon in the world of gaming.

LOW Wandering the temple at the end of Ys II for hours on end because it's so easy to get lost.

WTF Half of the items you find in the game are useless unless you're bored and want to screw around. I never once found a reason to use "magic of stop-time".