CUTE RPGS FOREVER

*BAM*

That is the sound of me beating Wild Arms Alter Code:F. Finally. But it was a very fun, entertaining game with a unique charm to it. It's funny because all the reviews basically said "well, you'll like it if you're a fan of the original.." and I never played the original but still loved it. So... there!

Wild Arms 5 now comes with a preorder bonus of an artbook spanning the whole Wild Arms series, so I'm just forced at gunpoint to preorder it. You bastards.

On a more classical note, I recently downloaded Shining Force on the ol' Virtual Console. You know, the game that isn't as good as Shining Force II but you play it anyway because it's fun. I actually got to play these games and Phantasy Star and many others on SEGA CHANNEL back in the day. Man, that was a kickass service. You got it through your cable company, plugged it into your Genesis (with a coaxial cable plugged into this weird cartridge kind of thing) and you got to pick from 30 or so games every month. Back then this was quite an awesome thing, even though if your cable went out your game supply got cut off. (And if there's nothing on TV, playing games is the next logical thing to do, right?)

Considering I was a SNES kid and my brothers only got a Genesis because 1. I wouldn't share my SNES with them most of the time, and 2. My parents didn't let us get two SNESes because we were supposed to share, and yet got a Genesis for them because it was different, this was a great opportunity for me to sample Sega's finest. Good times, man, good times.

Aaanyway, Shining Force. Yeah. My first Strategy RPG. Actually I played the second one first (because they offered it up on Sega Channel first for me) but both of these games got me addicted to the genre. I think it was also one of the first (if not THE first) games I played that had anime-style art in it, which is very commonplace nowadays. A game of many firsts for me! Here's hoping SFII comes to the VC soon as well.

Also I'm still mad that Tales of Legendia doesn't have any voice acting during the second half of the game. This is the most retarded thing ever.

*slight spoilers, nothing specific*

Basically once you "beat" the game and the credits roll, there's a whole other half of the game to play called Character Quests. I guess the localization team thought it was just some random sidequests which they didn't need to bother with, but it's actually a whole huge chunk of the game. So suddenly everyone's silent, and it's just kind of lazy on their part and it sucks. It's bad enough that every freakin' Tales game gets its opening song cut out of it *shakes fist*

This makes me very unmotivated to play the rest of the game, because I actually quite liked the voices in this game and it was very nice to see so MUCH voice acting instead of just reading text. I'm going to miss Moses' "y'all" ;_;

You guys, they had two copies of Star Ocean 1. And the Super Famicom versions of FF4 and FF6. It's awesome to see them up close. They had the Japanese versions of some DS games for sale too, like Xenosaga I + II and that.. Jump Superstars orgy game or whatever. They were trying to sell Greatest Hits versions of some PS1 games (US versions) for sixty bucks though, wtf.

Cosplay as you would expect. If I see one more Roxas... at least I saw an Eight (DQ8 hero) cosplayer. Stupid me forgot the camera today, but I'll take some pictures tomorrow for sure.

Got to see some Saiyuki Reload Gunlock. Episodes 3 and 4, the board game episode (lolz) and that episode with the redheaded woman with boobs. First time I've seen this series at all. It's pretty interesting, moreso than I thought it would be. Too bad they were only showing eps. 1-4, because the next episode had that demon girl with boobs in it that krile was telling me about ;_;

It was lots of fun, though, I'm looking forward to tomorrow and the next day. I've never been to any of those HUGE anime cons so something like this is a big deal for me. My loot today consisted of a nice KOS-MOS figure and a Dragon Quest V figure (I got lucky and got the hero). krile mostly splurged on Tales of Phantasia and Tsubasa Chronicle stuff, which she will most assuredly detail in a post soon.

KOS-MOS
DQ5 Hero
The day's loot