We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

If I'm not mistaken, you have to actively sabotage your relationship with the male characters to get a girl-girl ending in SO:SS, otherwise your relationship points or whatever won't be high enough. IMPLICATIONS. It's kinda funny though.

I never actively went for endings, so I wouldn't know. Preventing a relationship isn't hard, though; there are books you can write on Disc 2 that immediately set friendship or relationship points to 8 regardless of what they were before, and that's not high enough for an ending.
(Yes, there are two separate sets of points. I don't remember why.) So you just use them before the final boss fight.

The first time I saw FFT, my friend was grinding to level 99 in the first area of the game because "the bosses don't scale". But mechanically it looks pretty solid. I guess I should play this one first.

Yeah, you can easily destroy the game through grinding if you want (and grinding is actually somewhat fun because you get Exp and JP for every action, so it boils down to "render the last enemy helpless while using Accumulate or attacking your own teammates or something") but you can also avoid grinding and just try to push your way through the game. Really good for varied playthroughs of trying different strategies.

Sting's games tend to have unusual mechanics, but that's what I like about them. On review I decided that Evolution is not actually a bad game. I like equipment-based RPGs that let you change your attacks and playstyle à la Paper Mario's badge system.

Yeah, I just rarely manage to get through the unusual mechanics long enough to really get into the game. That's not to say I'll never play through it, I've played and enjoyed some games that felt awkward mechanically at first, but it's not something I've done often.

I find it surprising that someone who is so into RPGs isn't big on Fire Emblem. I never got what the big deal was and I thought it was just me. There really isn't anything interesting going on in those games from what I can see.

There's some appeal for me, but it mostly boils down to the similarity to Advance Wars. (As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, I absolutely love that series.) I played a fair way into Fire Emblem 7 (the one that's just Fire Emblem here) and it wasn't bad, but wasn't amazing either.

I'm still kind of on the fence on Radiant Historia. I have been burned by too many games everyone I know liked in the past couple of years, especially considering I'm basically 0 for 3 on DS games I actually enjoyed so far. Those among you who are not superdorks may not be aware that the game initially sold out very quickly, and is still the victim of internet price hiking even after Atlus pressed another run, so it's not exactly a budget buy or something I want to get if there's a decent chance I won't like it. I mean, I guess there's a decent chance I won't like TWEWY either despite being interested in the mechanics, but that's just my luck. RPGs are the genre I am least confident in judging my potential enjoyment of based on videos online or even trying them out for a few minutes. DF is An RPG Man and he knows what he is talking about.

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I actually forgot to ask about Tactics Ogre. It may well be a great game, but there aren't many games I'm willing to drop $100 on. The only game in the series that isn't super expensive seems to be Ogre Battle 64. Is it any good?

I haven't managed to play OB64, sadly. I understand it's mechanically similar to the original Ogre Battle, which I enjoyed a lot (says the guy who named himself after an obscure side character in it). The PSP remake of Tactics Ogre probably won't be as expensive,

I don't think I've seen Legend of Legaia before. The setting is interesting, and the idea behind the mechanics is interesting, but the battle menu looks pretty convoluted. I'm not sure how fun I'd actually find it. Kind of reminds me of Vagrant Story in that way. It looks like the novelty might wear off several hundred battles in. SUPER ARTS!!

You get used to the battle menu quickly, you can set it up to just redo the same attack sequence you used last turn.
I liked it but I'm big on turn-based in general and I know you aren't, so it might not be your thing. I mainly mentioned it because it's really good on atmosphere and that struck me as something that might interest you.

I've already bought it and not started it yet, but I'd be interested to know what your take on Legend Of Mana is while I have your attention, since you seem willing to waste a great deal of time on me.

Legend of Mana is hilariously easy. There are these complex systems for "create a golem", "raise a monster", "craft weapons and armor" - and there's absolutely no need to do anything with them because you just breeze through every battle. I found it fun but not especially deep because of that.
There are higher difficulty levels you can access after beating the game, but those have the opposite problem - they make the enemies so strong that every fight becomes a slog. I don't know what it's like if you've sorted through the intricacies of equipment crafting, maybe that's actually a reasonable balance.
Also it requires a ton of advance planning if you want to get every quest in one run through the game. I wouldn't recommend being too concerned with that on a first run,

I doubt you've played it, but Foto Showdown? It's one of a very small number of DSi-exclusive titles and is basically Barcode Battler/Monster Rancher but with a camera and is based on color balance or something. It's not that great a game, but it's such a great gimmicky concept ...

Yeah, haven't heard of it.

Parasite Eve? I really like the combination of real time RPG combat and survival horror. Looking forward to playing that ...

I played through it once and found it pretty neat, but that was quite a few years ago so I don't remember a lot of details.

Odin Sphere? I have Some Issues with Vanillaware's character designs (everyone who lost their shit over Dragon's Crown didn't know Muramasa existed, I guess), but their earlier actiony games look pretty cool, and the animation is gorgeous/weird.

I have it but never got very far in it and don't remember anything about it, so I can't give a particular opinion. The one Vanillaware game I've played extensively is GrimGrimoire, which is essentially a side-view RTS that I found pretty fun. (The maps have stairways for ground units to climb.)

3D Dot Game Heroes?? This is basically one of the only original games on the PS3 that looks anything close to good.

Half-Minute Hero?

Haven't tried either of these, so I don't have a comment.

Secret Of Evermore?

I really enjoyed this and played through it several times, it's not as grindy as Secret of Mana because weapons only go up to Level 3 (and are constantly replaced with stronger weapons) and keeping magic levels as high as possible isn't as important. Also it doesn't devolve into "spam magic on the bosses and win in about three seconds".

I really want to play Moon Remix RPG Adventure but considering the fanlation is still in the works I assume you haven't played it either

A correct assumption! I haven't even heard of it before.

And I haven't played Monster Rancher either.