fable, tales of symphonia, paper mario
i was playing fable for a couple weeks, it’s a pretty good game. not the best RPG ever to be made, as molyneux said, but it’s pretty fun. I played it through as good, and had a nice halo and butterflies and motes of light floating around my head when i’d stop. i also had 4 wives, all in different towns. apparently polygamous relationships are a-ok in the world of fable. the figiting isn’t the most complex, if you are just a fighter it might get kinda boring. But i was a “spellwarrior” so i used half magic and regular swords (or a giant hammer) which made it more interesting.
It’s not a really long game, especially for an RPG, but honestly i was ok with that, cause I probably wouldn’t have wanted to play it for 50-80 hours, since my videogame attention span is shorter than it used to be, what with having a job and all, and also there being so many games. It was probably around 20-25 hours, but i didn’t do all of the sidequests or open all the demon doors and all that good stuff. I might go back and play through evil, but i’ve got other stuff to play
for example (like that segue?) i got Tales of Symphonia last weekend; i picked it up used from gamestop. it’s a japanese style RPG, which i had been wanting to play for a while (the genre i mean). since xbox has no JRPGs and I don’t have or want a PS2, it was all about the gamecube. ToS is pretty good, not quite your typical final fantasy game. it’s cel-shaded anime-looking and really quite pretty. the story is typical jrpg: “the chosen one,” a girl named colette, has to regenerate the world which has fallen to evil, and she gets her friend/crush lloyd and his best friend, and a teacher, and a mercenary to go save the world. it’s got random religious undertones, but they’re really just a means to an end. the fighting is what’s different, it’s not turn-based fighting (menu->fight->pick enemy, repeat). instead you pick a creature as your target and then you can run up to him and swing your sword, or use “tech” (special moves) or magic or whatever, and you can dodge backwards, and chain up combos. it makes it more interesting and it’s been pretty fun, what i’ve played so far. also you can get up to 4 people playing in battle, each controlling a party-member. i haven’t tried that yet, since most of my friends don’t play games all that much, and the ones that do live in seattle.
I also picked up Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door on thursday. Fry’s (electronicas de fry) had it for $39.99 but i didn’t want to drive all the way down there, but i managed to price-match it at circuit city so it worked out well.
Paper Mario is really fun, and also really nice looking. Like the name says, everything in the game looks like it’s made out of paper, and acts like it too sometimes. You’ll hit a switch next to a ravine, and a big swatch of paper will tear out, revealing a bridge behind it. and you can turn into a paper airplane to fly across big pits, or turn sideways and squeeze between cracks.
the gameplay is fun, it’s a lot like Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, except bigger and prettier, but it works pretty much the same way. you can jump and use a hammer and use your allies’ special moves to solve puzzles as you’re walking around, and then when you fight someone, it’s turn based, but you have to do actions to make your hits more powerful, like hit A when you’re about to jump on the enemy to do a double hit, or for the hammer you hold left on the control stick until the meter fills up and then let it go to hit harder. little thigns like that, to make battles more interesting. I’ve been playing for about 5 hours so far, and it’s pretty fun.
I think I’ve got enough to keep me busy for a while, probably until Halo 2 comes out in 3 weeks. my xbox will have sit quietly unused until then, and mr. cube is coming out of retirement for a month or so.