Tales of Phantasia (DeJap's translation)

Tales of Phantasia on my PSP (via Snes9Xy??.... Please note the text :)

New blog member!

I'd like to welcome my good childhood friend "darukkumun" as he joins the blog..
Expect some posts from him on games for the DS/GBA..

Welcome, Darkmoon!!

Firmware Version 2.0

There's been a lot of talk about the new fw version coming out...
I think it's a shame how lots of people are willing to sacrifice the ability to play homebrew applications, just to have a web browser..
Heck if it comes to it, I'll write a webbrowser (or port one) myself.. I should be able to, I'm a "software engineer" and write code for a living after all.....
Maybe I'll start another blog to report on my progress :)

Funny Images

There's a couple funny scenes in both ToS and ToP that I wished I had my digital camera around when I saw them so I could post them here.. I'll try to remember to have my camera close when I play games from now on :)

Tales of Something-ia...

Not amazingly, I found that Wikipedia also has a page for Tales of Symphonia!
(Which again, is the main game that I'm playing.. I know this is supposed to be a PSP blog.. but no one really reads this blog anyways.. right?? I'll just keep pretending that people magically know about it and come for their daily fix of RPG news [specially about PSP, but also maybe about GC o_O]...)
Anyways, I stole a pic from them (they're free so technically it's not stealing.. but somehow I still feel bad about getting it from their article...):

Tales of Phantasia

I started playing ToP on the PSP (using the snes9x port by 'y', and the translated rom)..
It's really good!! I can see how Tales of Simphonia (The one I'm playing on the GameCube) takes lots of elements from this title. Most likely all "Tales" games are like this, but I wouldn't know, as I've only played this two..
The menu interface is like any RPG, but the battles have a semi-real-time interface, where you only control the main character, and the rest of the party is controlled by the AI.
What I didn't like about ToP is that it has random encounters, and I thought it was a little more fresh the way it's handled in ToS, where you can see monsters, and most time evade them (Like in the "Chrono" series, but also in the world map)...
Here's a screenshot I grabbed from WikiPedia:

Kingdom of Paradise (again!)

OK, enough of this sidetracking and procrastination!! I need to learn more about this game..
Off to wikipedia!! For those of you that don't know about it, Wikipedia is a Wiki powered, and completely open online encyclopedia.. I've become addicted to it (I recently signed up and made some updates to Naoki Urasawa - sensei's article, I earlier made some additions anonymouly too)..
Anyways, Wikipedia returned nothing... It's time to get serious....
IGN, PSP411, CircuitCity, Amazon, I even tried Walmart!!!!, but nobody seems to know about this elusive title... could it be an error on gamestop.com's website??
Gamestop describes it as follows: "Three hundred years ago, the known world consisted of nine continents spread across a vast ocean. Ohka was the center of this world, ruled by five martial art houses, until Sema, one of the continents threatened their rule. Once considered an outcast, Shinbu returns home and defends his clan, the Gate of Seiryu. After learning that he and a girl name Suirin are the only two living clan members left, Shinbu joins her on a journey to defend their clan and return the balance of powers in Okha."
And continues: "As he travels through Tenchi no Mon's world, Shinpu will collect more than 150 different kinds of Sword Sheets, which allow the martial arts fighter to use certain techniques. By combining these sword techniques, he will gain access to chain attacks. Another option to attack enemies in the game are deathblow techniques comparable to magic spells. If the player finds out the elemental weakness of an enemy, he can exploit it by using the corresponding deathblow technique to deal a massive amount of damage to his foe."
I gotta say... WTF???

Back to that Kingdom of Paradise

I got sidetracked by the Legends of heroes, while looking for Kingdom of Paradise....
A quick google search returned nothing!
Then I tried using Gataga, you know, that GREAT search engine that uses social bookmarking services to return results, that unlike google's and the other engines, are not generated by machines (bots), but rather by people... and it seems, that it's gone..... ?? You can read the blog there.. They don't really explain what happened?? Did MS or Google buy them???

I get sidetracked again!.......

Legend of Heroes

According to GameSpot, "The Legend of Heroes" is "a single-player turn-based role-playing game featuring more than 100 unique characters to interact with, over 50 hours of gameplay."
Well, this sounds exactly like the games that I enjoy so much (I'm not fond of MMORPG; particularly because I don't have the time/money necessary to embark in such journeys)..
But this description is just to general, I'm sure there's gotta be some more info on this title somewhere else.. let's keep looking...

A-Ha!!: Over at PSPWorld, they have the real scoop!
It turns out that this "The legends of heroes" is the 'famous' "Eiyuu Densetsu Gagharv Trilogy: Akai Shizuku". Yes!! One of the titles I thought were never going to come to the West is finally at hand!!

According to PSPWorld:
The Legend of Heroes: Is coming out as early as September!! This is great news...

Upcoming titles

The release dates of the two RPGs that are coming out for the PSP this year according to different sources:

According to ebgames.com:
Popolocrois: 8/23/2005
Ys: The Ark of Naphitism: 10/1/2005

According to gamestop.com:
Popolocrois: 8/23/2005
Ys: The Ark of Naphitism: 11/1/05

I guess there's at least agreement on Popolocrois now (This used to be false a couple months ago); and who knows when Ys is really coming out....

There's also mention of another RPG over at gamestop, something called:
Kingdom of Paradise, they say it's coming out 11/18/05... I'll do some digging on this "new" title...

Tales of Symphonia

Nowadays I'm playing Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube...
I tried playing Skies of Arcadia.. And probably played for more than 10 hours.. But then I bought TOS, and it's just so much better...
As a grownup with a son and another baby on the way, I don't seem to have as much time as I did for playing games.. This makes me a lot more selective and critical.. I can only afford to play so for so much time..
This is another reason/value for the PSP for me.. It allows me to take advantage of every small free time I get.. BUT!! Where are the RPGs for the PSP???
Ys: The Ark of Naphitism is on the way. I've heard nothing but good things about this game.. I mean, with a name like that, IT HAS TO BE GOOD, right??? But nobody seems to know when the release date for the PSP port is!!
Popolocrois is now scheduled for next month here in the US. But I believe it's a strategy/rpg, and I don't enjoy these kind of rpgs as much as the "regular" kind... I'll probably still get it, just because it'll be the only "decent" PSP RPG available... I'll report on it here.
There's so many good RPGs out for the PSP out in Japan, though!! I'm just gonna have to learn Japanese.. It's the only way!!

So much stuff I want to talk about...

There's just so much stuff I want to talk about!! My hope is that the comunity will help fill the holes, so that we'll all be more informed on what's going on...
Let me start by talking a bit about myself...
The first RPG (and I really mean CRPG, but I like the RPG acronym better) I remember playing was Origin's Ultima III (http://www.uo.com/archive/ultima3/). I remember thinking, "wow this looks really fun, you have the ability to really explore this virtual world.." It gave me a feeling that no game had ever given me.. A feeling of freedom.. But the controls were really clumsy, and not being exposed to the genre before, I remember dropping it after like 15mins.
Next came Ultima IV(http://www.uo.com/archive/ultima4/) (I was like 15 probably), a friend kept telling me how good it was, so I decided to give it a shot..
I got instantly hooked. The interface was so good (although a joke by today's standards).. I played this game for months, and finished it!!
Next came Ultima V, VI, VII, VII-part two, VIII... I never played IX or X, or whatever the last one was... I had moved on by then..
At the same time Ultima VI or VII was out, I also tried a different kind of RPG, The Eye of the Beholder. I finished II and then I. They were different, because they were first person, and 3d. (But not like moder 3rd person shooter games, the EOB didn't have smooth scrolling; rather, the character moved one "block" at a time, and made 90degree turns..)
I never owned a SNES system, so I was first introduced to Final Fantasy on an emulator. It was the translated FF V, the version that never came to America. And it became my favorite game of all time. The story and the music were so good...
After FF V, I played VI on the emu.. And I was prepared for VII....
I had to wait until VII was ported to PC, as I didn't own a PlayStation.. But it was woth every second of the wait. Final Fantasy VII pushed V out of the throne and became my new favorite game. Sprites had been replaced with real-time vecorial renderings!! The music was better, and the story!! What a plot!! What twists!!, It was better than any movie I had ever seen.
I then played FF VIII, and IX, but only X was really good enough to capture me like VII did.
In parallel I also played other Square games like Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. And I think both are fantastic games too..
But three years ago I came across a gem... I don't really understand how I missed it before. But Xenogears, is without doubt as good, or better than Final Fantasy.
Two years ago I played Xenosaga, Episode I. But it was not nearly as good as Xenogears. (Xenogears is supposedly like episode III or IV in the saga.. I'm not sure if they'll re-make it, or if it was just used as a base to build upon and create a whole new saga)..
(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Blogger

This is my first blog entry, ever!
I started this blog because I'm frustrated with the fact that there are no RPGs for the Sony PSP console.
I know, I know, you're already saying, how about Untold Legends!. Well, I started writing "no good" RPGs, but you know what?? For me Untold Legends doesn't count.
I'm into japanese-born RPGs, like Final Fantasy (really almost anything from Square(Enix), except Bahamut Lagoon..)
I guess this is enough for a first post, I'll elaborate in another post. I want to see how my blog looks!
PS: It's 11:08am but this thing wants to post as if it was 7:59am, what's the deal with that? Any ideas??
PS2: I already figured it out... O_o...