Burny

@relationship-complaints: That's what Bioware games are for.

It just sounded like you were always mainly using Shulk. Now some time after the "Core" I've got Shulks affinity to everyone except for Riki on max and a fair few other characters maxed. On the other hand, I still have a lot of "yellow" affinity lines, because I never go round to using some characters in combination with each other.

Doing sidequests and exploration with different party combinations would have. At least for you, as you were going to do the quests anyway.

Because you want the additional skill-trees for the characters of course.

It's a psychological thing more than anything. The cradle suggests there is a set place to put your 3DS into when you're not using it. People are probably more likely to constantly have the cradle plugged and placed on some shelf than just having the charging adapter plugged in all the time. In that sense, "just dropping" the 3DS on it is indeed more convenient than plugging in the adapter first. Assuming they are using it that way. @Pit\-Jr: You'll be happy, the Vita gets a rather classy cradle. You'll have to buy it separately though.

@Debug_Mode There is one catch though: Who would've expected Angry birds to make the money it did? I see Angry Birds and pretty much nothing else. Where are the other low-cost-ultra-high-return Smartphone games that had similar success to Angry Birds? Is Angry Birds just a social phenomenon or is it actually possible to repeatedly manufacture such a successful title? A far more interesting indicator would be how much revenue the top X of Smartphone games during the last years generated and if that would indeed imply the grass is greener there for devs. As for the general industry progressing towards low-cost development, pretty much the opposite has been the case concerning retail titles. What they save in time and money by reusing engines, they spend on turning games into movie-like experiences with similar production values. Many publishers may take the cheap route with DLC, but that doesn't make the actual game cheaper to produce.

Manual, page 13. It's the blue, three tiered bar in the top left corner. Arts with special effects have to be used so that the effects would apply (strike from behind etc.).

Now that you mention it, I'm expecting it to be the intro before the start screen. And I hope it stays the only prerendered video in the whole game.

That's what time trial mode is for Or you could turn off everything else just for the laughs.

I'm calling it now: If Nintendo manages to keep the 3DS on track and sit through this generation without being torn apart by disappointed shareholders, Nintendo's next system will try to unify their handheld and home console gaming platforms somehow. I can't see them just giving up the handheld market entirely to smartphones. It has been too profitable for them in the past.

Pretty much all quests in Alcamoth I've gotten so far have a "time limit". That includes all quests from unnamed NPCs. If you've still unfinished limited Alcamoth Quests from the first slew, that Quest should also be around somewhere.

Gameinformer has a cover story about Skyward Sword. They're also releasing a couple of videos with new footage. This is the first. For anybody who has seen the E3 footage, this is practically free of spoilers. The music however! There is something that the sweeping music over the clouds reminds me of and I think it's Indiana Jones.

That's exactly the opposite direction they should take with a redesign imo. If the XPeria Play shows anything, than that's how gadgets that can't decide if they want to be a phone or a gaming handheld will end up stuck half way between both, but unable to compete with either. It's too ugly and large to be a popular phone and too limited to be a popular gaming handheld. With the second analogue addon confirmed, the only way forward for the 3DS seems to be an "XL" revision. It's incidentally also the only way to notably improve battery life: They have to build a device with a larger battery, not a smaller one with a smaller battery.

All the tips you need have been given I believe. I really hope you can enjoy it more with your next try! You haven't even started to scratch the surface. Just don't push yourself with the sidequests if you don't feel like it. If there is no clock symbol next to them in the quest list, you can finish them whenever you want - or not at all. If you look into the quest list, the actual story quests have a white diamond shape around the red exclamation mark. I'd actually strongly advice anybody not to do this, unless they enjoy fetch questing for hours on end. There are so many of them, the danger of burning out is actually real. Not to mention that they keep coming, as there are usually follow up quests. I'm not far in (Lvl 36, ~27h) , but from my experience until now it's completely sufficient to just do some of the obvious side quests and explore the map while at it. By the time you've been around the map once, you're more than strong enough to tackle the next story missions. Whenever I feel like it, I go back to some sidequests in earlier areas.

Don't. I watched the trailer a few times when Hero-of-time posted it yesterday. And none of that is really an assessment beyond "there is nothing technically groundbreaking there". I'm completely open to the notion that this might be a great or a poor game. If it is any of those however, it isn't for the sake of the platform it's on, simply because all that has been shown can technically be done on other platforms.

@Grazza: Yes I did want to know, so thanks for posting it! How far have you gone into it? Because I'd argue that things like your complaints about the real time combat sound very much like a case of you just refusing to adapt. It is simply a shame. I certainly know the benefits of turn based combat or hybrid systems like Baldure's Gate where you can just pause anytime. Yet, these systems are not simply "better", but merely different for the sake of different games. I just can't help to point you to functional fixedness. Especially what you say about the party: It's incredibly well handled in Xenoblade imo. You only control one character (and can't change character mid-combat) and the other two are entirely controlled by the AI, which handles the use of their arts rather well. All you do is determine the placement of your character, which arts to use when, as well as which enemy to attack. The only times where you have to control more than one character, the actual combat freezes and you can chose what to do at your leisure. The only times things get actually chaotic are when you happen to fight too many enemies. There are means to avoid it though, which is a tactical element in itself. Bosses won't be bashed into submission just by using your auto-attack constantly.

Ok, sorry! I just thought that was such a popular topic here. In that case I have another suggestion: This is the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing the Zelda theme. They said the soundtrack CD coming with the first print run of the game will contain recordings from these Zelda concerts. What else did they play? I know I would love a more extended song of storms as an orchestral version.

From the brief trailer linked here, I can already assume that it is technically structured like a traditional JRPG: An overworld to travel (a very charming one at that!), towns and other places of interest seem to be separate from the overworld and are entered through spots on it, the camera in these places seems to be at least partly fixed, fights take place in special "arena levels" and seem to be partly turn based. So yes, technically there is a lot to be seen in that trailer and nothing strikes me as out of the ordinary. If it cheers you up anymore, I can tell you that there is nothing wrong with playing over a WiFi connection from my experience. We've got a really slow-ass connection (~45kByte/s down, ~7kByte/s up, latency seems to be decent though) and stuff like Counterstrike and Mario Kart played just fine over Wi-Fi. A Wi-Fi router would be a good investment in any case, if you haven't got one already. You can use it for a Smartphone, for a Laptop, for the Wii and for the PS3 you're about to get (although that has an ethernet port ).

Outlandish expectations - that's wrong with that. Are you blown away by Ni no kuni? I'd be surprised, as it doesn't seem to go technically beyond anything that has been done so far. It's just a well used and striking visual style. And as you are merely talking about the visuals, there is even less left to be blown away by now. Shooters take the crown for visual fidelity and huge RPGs - open world or not - have been and can be done on practically all platforms by now. All that's left to blow us away is making the game especially good. Unless the same game with better visuals makes the difference between being good and being blown away for you. It doesn't for me. Basically saying you don't want Wii-only players to have the game because you don't like the way Wii games look on your TV is also rather selfish. If it appeases you: Given the game is different enough from past DQs for me, I would take the WiiU version over the Wii version any day - for my modern TV, you know.

You'll probably have a hard time finding anyone who would say no to a technically better version of the games they like. It's just downright silly complaining that the Wii will hamper this particular game beyond visuals though. Mechanics in JRPGs haven't gone anywhere where devs cannot follow with the Wii - least of all in Dragon Quest, as you say yourself. If Xenoblade is anything to go by, given the right dev it's much less the case of following, but rather of charging ahead. So its chances of being good will only hampered by S-E, rather than the Wii. The length is definitely not the issue. The way it flows is the issue for me. if I spend 100+ hours on a game choosing when to tackle monsters or simply ignoring them if I don't feel like it or if I spend that time interrupted every 30-40 seconds on the field - if it even is that long - by a random combat, makes a huge difference for me. It's also a huge difference what the motivation behind the grind is and how much grind there is in relation to story content. Newer DQs might be much better, but DQIV had too little story and too much grind for me. On the other hand, I spent a fair amount of time grinding in Infinite Space - even with random battles, but in relation to the amount of story progression, it wasn't actually that much and random battles happened rather infrequently. And whenever Xenoblade tasks you with doing "grindy" stuff, which is mostly optional, it has the grace to give you an incentive for it - often some progressive side story. Knew these people existed somewhere. I would very much like to know what you don't like, because you've been far too vocal about wanting stuff like an open world Zelda to just "not like" Xenoblade, just because. Might be just a bit too far off topic for this thread.

I'm fine with Dragon Quest's style. There's ample supply of other JRPGs though that are horrible in this respect (Tales *cough*). As for DQVIII: I watched some gameplay footage and I have no more patience for random battles and even less for watching turn based fights in 3D games with lavishly animated attacks. I couldn't stand through ten minutes of it. If you want a really good JRPG, you should get Xenoblade.

As an investor, I'd probably want S-E to announce that henceforth Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy main series entries are to be iPhone exclusives. Because I wouldn't have the slightest idea about video games. As me, I don't care in the slightest. I see nothing where JRPGs on so called "high-def" systems have evolved beyond anything that was doable last generation. In fact, as it's S-E, not being able to realize their "vision" properly due to lacking processing power is most likely the least of their problems. Not making the game shit seems to be a far more pressing problem for them and going by their track record on "HD"-systems, that's rather unrelated to the platform their games are on. No, I don't care about the resolution, lack of AA, advanced shaders and the likes. If it helps them to get away from horribly overused cliches, hair-raisingly over-engineered stories, random battles and androgynous characters in their early teens with eyes like ponds, they can make it into a text adventure for all I care. I should also add that - after playing through IV - I don't care much for Dragon Quest to begin with. I liked the style, how the story is rather down to earth for JRPGs and the simple battle system. I strongly disliked the amount of grinding I had to do and the random battles could drive me up a wall. On the other hand, I'm loving Xenoblade and while I might consider an HD-remake of that for the WiiU I wouldn't enjoy the game any more or less for it. So you haven't heard about the monthly fee, yet?

Because it's been developed for some years for that very console now - which has probably still the largest install base of current gen home consoles in Japan. Most likely there are agreements between S-E and Nintendo, too.

As for that Ni no kuni PS3 game: I'd expect a dedicated dev to be able to pull this off on the Wii with accordingly reduced geometry / textures / lightning /possibly less dynamic animation - without losing the visuals essence, except for the image quality. The only thing there that could really be troubling are wide open landscapes, e.g. when they travel by ship or dragon. However it seems that this is not achieved by seamless transition between a location (town etc.), but rather by switching to a separate "overworld level". In that case, it's also entirely possible on the Wii.