Get a DexDrive. Now. I just got one and it's the best 3rd party peripheral (sp?) ever created. Get one now at ebworld.com. They're the cheapest retail ones you'll find! They're worth every penny (25 bucks w/shipping). I have nearly unlimited memory card space now. No more raping old saves. Get one or suffer the agonizing terror of sending your favorite saved games to the netherworld for the rest of your life. The best Star Ocean 2 save on the net, created by the one and only me
I bought Grandia, and it's the most shaggadelic game ever, baybee. So go buy it right now. You'll thank me later. Yes you will. YOU WILL BUY GRANDIA. You will also buy a Dreamcast for Grandia 2. Yes you will. YOU WILL BUY A DREAMCAST. THIS IS AN ORDER.
If you've got a DexDrive, here's my save that has Feena's Wind/Water LV.99 spell.
Valkyrie Profile was rated in FAMITSU (Japanese gaming mag)! It got a 9/9/10/7, so all together it got a 35/40. It was also game of the issue or something like that and also got a "Platinum" award (better than gold/silver, obviously). The guy who gave it a 7 was a Next Generation (US gaming magazine) guest because he felt the 2D graphics were dated or some stupid crap like that (??? I don't understand, they blow FF8's into the dead sea!). Either way, 35 is an _great_ score and VP really sounds like one heck of a fun game! Anyone know Famitsu's score for Star Ocean 2, or how about Star Ocean or Tales of Phantasia if they were around then?
Namco sure seems to be entering the RPG scene well, even without their former team (aka tri-Ace with Tales of Phantasia!). I believe they are now developing 3 or so RPGs now. One is Tales of Eternia (This had better make up for the mediocre Tales of Destiny), another is Kamurai, and I forget the other one. Kamurai sounds like it's going to rock. From what the GIA says, it's like a fusion of Grandia and Star Ocean. The overall game DESIGN is like Grandia (2D sprites, 3d polygon backgroud, battle setup, emotion portraits for the dialogue boxes, etc), but it plays like Star Ocean! From the Star Ocean side of things, it'll have realtime battles, a Private-action like system, and did I hear about emotion levels? Namco couldn't have picked two better games to fuse together. If the storyline, music and character quality in Kamurai is that of Grandia, but the gameplay quality of Star Ocean, I think I'm going to have a new favorite game.
Santa's coming to town, hehe. Yayayaya... whatever. I only asked for games since I missed out on so many this year. I asked for Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy Anthology (might be replaced with Suikoden II though since mom can't find it! Oh well, I want SII more anyways) Thousand Arms, and finally LUNAR: Silver Star Story Complete. After waiting a couple months for Gamecave.com to send me my copy of Tales of Phantasia for PSX, I cancelled it, and JUST won it on ebay for a price more than $20 cheaper than LameCave! Amazing, a cheap winning on rare ToP PSX. It's the original version, not the Asian, yay. Sigh... RPGs are coming out at ridiculous rates nowadays, even in Japan, I think. I have tons of games to catch up on for 2000. Valkyrie Profile import (limited ed. hopefully), Legend of Mana, SaGa Frontier 2, Dragon Quest VII, LUNAR: EB, Kamurai import, Tales of Eternia import... the list goes on forever. Hell, I may even pick up an imported PlayStation2 to play my imports on if I have any cash...
Shiznit:
- All game pages have been updated and undergone the changes and improvements found in the Tales of Phantasia section, except the characters section.
- Added some more misc stuff to Tales of Phantasia's section, and Suzu's character profile, thanks to Kuronue for the files!
- Tales of Phantasia Midi BLITZ! 110+ Brand new Midis! The Midi collection is almost completed but still missing a few more. I don't believe I've seen a more complete midi collection before (besides the FF7 PC rips)!
- Changed the song order formatting in the Tales of Phantasia Midis to the ordering on the Tales of Phantasia remake OST
- Added some new misc stuff to the Star Ocean The Second Story section and removed endings
- Added the portraits of the new revealed characters for Valkyrie Profile
- Finally, a Links page was created (and it's rather large too, so check it out!)
- Ripped some Tales of Phantasia (SFC) sprites and created a .vs Dhaos thing above the logo, which includes all the characters and the intro characters (sans the dead girl, since part of her sprite was missing...)
- Valkyrie Profile has been delayed until December 22th. Which is good for me...
- Valkyrie Profile has been reported to have 3 difficulty levels like SO2! I think they are selectable right away instead of meeting any requirements...
- I actually updated the VERGE Section with the game I am currently working on, which is a Dragon Quest clone that I hope I'll be able to get out some time.
Vewy sowwy fo not updating lately. It's been a combination of lazyness and bizzyness, dood.
Mod Player's gonna die soon. Tales of Phantasia .SPC->.ITs sound like complete crap when compared to the real thing. The converter even leaves out some samples. I'll make it even better later by replacing it with RealAudio (not right away though.) songs from the remake OST.
10/6/99
Not much happening here, but anyways, the Tales of Phantasia section is really in buisness now. (sans screen shots for now). To kick it off, I planned to make a few secret links to the Tales of Phantasia remake OST, but the evil doers who hosted the files found out about them overnight and killed the account! (mp3s of copyrighted stuff is illeagal, ya know). Indignition on their asses...
Obviously, I just got ahold of the Tales of Phantasia remake soundtrack, which marks the first game soundtrack that I've ever bought. Expensive stuff, but I think it was really worth it. The remade tracks are much better than I expected! Since the remake was made by the Tales of Destiny team, I was scared that it would have a hideous synth, one reminicent of ToD. But wow, this one actually has one of the better synths on the PSX. If you liked the SFC's version of the soundtrack, prepare to go nuts over this! :) Even some of the silliest tracks from the SFC version actually sound pretty cool on this... and it even includes a special, Japanese vocal of Arche's theme! ;) Damn it, now I need the game. ToP PSX will definitely be the next game I buy.
9/22/99
That was not a typo in the subject. Some very tiny info about the third Star Ocean game has been leaked by SCEI. It won't be a launch title, but it'll be an early PlayStation 2 release! You probably already know that the system will launch on March 4, 2000 Japan, so of course, the game'll probably be released a few months after. Expect screen shots awhile after Valkyrie Profile is released. Since I'm getting a job soon, I'll be sure to import it. (I may even put this page on Simplenet!) It had better get an American release (minus a mediocre translation) later on! :) though. Oh and Valkyrie Profile's Japanese release has been moved down to November 25, 1999, rather than Winter of the '99 fiscal year...
Like Star Ocean, the Tales series is also becoming a trilogy, with "Tales of Eternia." But since only Phantasia is a true tri-Ace creation, Eternia won't be covered here.
(yes, I relize a lot of this news is a bit old, but I just haven't been able to keep up...)
Additions/changes to the page:
oCountless number of FAQs added to the Star Ocean the Second Story section
oMany new midis added to the Star Ocean and Star Ocean the Second Story sections, thanks to Musasabi
oAnything "new" in one of the game sections has been marked with everyone's favorite NEW! gif, so if you feel like collecting the new files you'll know what they are.
oSo much news and new stuff about Valkyrie Profile has been released ever since I last updated about it. I redid the Valkyrie Profile section quite a bit, so it shouldn't be as tedious to navigate (The other sections will undergo the format changes later too). I added all the current known character artworks, and I had also added _some_ of the new screen shots that have surfaced. I may add more later, but I'm not a fan of excessive, uneeded screen shots. Don't forget the read the GENERAL INFO FAQ that I created myself! It contains a _lot_ of compiled info about the game! I honestly think it sounds like it could beat SO2 into the ground!
oTook down my sale/wanted pages, since they were a failure because I never got any responses to them.
oRemoved all the offline songs from the music Jukebox, since they were taking up a lot of space when selecting a song. They may come back if I ever get the time to finish converting the SPCs. (which WILL be a long time, mind you)
oTales of Phantasia section now openable, but it really isn't ready yet...
If you haven't read the message board already, I made an update some time ago without updating this main page: I made some quick new logos for the VERGE, Old News, and the ROM Hacking sections. They suck, but they're nicer than the old HR lines with big ugly type as the title.
Oh, and with my Final Fantasy VI Hard Type hack coming along smoothly, I had also made a MAJOR overhaul on that page. New Screen shots, new info, and updated the progress! And with all my efforts on this project, combined with all the new stuff I've found that has no use to the hack, I'm constructing a document about the game that will show you where all data in FFVI (based on FFIII US though!) that I know of is located! It is so comprehensive that it will blow you away! It's not ready yet, and it won't be released until some time after FFVI Hard Type is released (I feel it would make my hack look bad if I released it beforehand).
Lately in my game playing, I started a replay of Xenogears (haven't finished, but I'm on disc 2), I finally finished Tales of Phantasia (Super Famicom version), and it was pretty cool, though not extremely hard. I also dusted off my copy of Tales of Destiny which had been sitting on my shelf for around 7 months or so unfinished, and since finishing ToP, I had the motivation to try ToD again. Well, I finished it, and it's... a terrible "sequel." It doesn't have the Phantasia feel and the sountrack has gotta be THE worst I've ever heard in a JRPG... bad melodies and a TERRIBLE midi synth = BAD BAD music. There were only a few decent tunes. The game was easy as hell too, I only died once, and that's because my healer was being an idiot. The final boss was pathetic too, I just used Stahn's "Dragon Blade" (or whatever) over and over again, but he only got a few good moves on me, but that was it. No strategy there. At least Dhaos in ToP was more chanllenging than that. And ToD was LOADED with numerous, long (some weren't that long, but some were long enough to get on your nerves from being so boring!), boring dungeons. What's next? You then (most often) have a lovely, annoying puzzle to solve around the end. Fun huh? (eh, mind you, I really don't like puzzles).
Unless there is a real good incentive (A hard mode anyone!? Like ToP?) to play Tales of Destiny again, I may never play it again. Though I credit Namco for attempting an RPG without tri-Ace, but wasn't so much a success. I just hope the Tales of Phantasia remake isn't as mediocre as ToD was (though I'm told the opposite, that remake beats the original into the ground!), and I hope they learn their lesson with Tales of Eternia. Anyways, I'm off to go and replay Tales of Phantasia again in Hard Mode. (This sucker's almost like Universe Mode in SO2...)
I rambled on about my modem in the last update, but ya know? My hard drive just recently died, too. My Compaq has gone too far in screwing up on me. I just replaced the old 6 gig'er with a great 210 meg'er. I have no net access on that PC either, because my replacement modem does not get detected anymore. This is the end, I have to update this page on my crippled PC and transfer the files that need to have uploaded on disk over to my sisters' junker so I can update the page. But I'm getting a job soon and in a few months I'll have enough money for an awesome HOMEBUILT Athlon machine, which'll knock the socks off this piece of crap. Remember, Compaq really sucks!
8/20/99
I guess as you can tell I never updated the page, like I was hoping earlier. Well, it just so happens that when I got home from my moms place, I find out the hard way that my 56k modem was screwed up for the fact that it never got a dial tone. I couldn't connect to the net with it. So then I dug out a good 'ol crappy 14.4 that was lying around the house, and that's what I'm using to update this page right now. It's too slow, and I've got a *LOT* of things to update for the SO2 section. I have mounds of FAQs, loads of new midis, and am going to open up an ending section. Over 4 megs worth of stuff, and uploading on 14.4 is a PAIN. These slow suckers take 20-30 minutes to upload a simple meg, so I'll only be updating parts of site at a time, for every few days or so.
I'm getting close to releasing my Final Fantasy VI Hard Type ROM hack. It's in the process of some beta testing by me and 5 other people. A public release should be available by the end of summer. I know it sounds off topic to people who come here for tri-Ace game info, but hey, that's just the main attraction; it's still my homepage. ;)
Nothing new about Valkyrie Profile. Is there anyone out there who knows Japanese that could translate the Valkyrie Profile discussion at tri-Ace's website for my page as an exclusive sorta thing? :) I'm interested in knowing what it says, but I don't understand it... I can even recall seeing "SO3" in there somewhere, and I'd really like to know what that is! :)
There's a movie that shows Koei's PlayStation 2 title called "Kessen" that's absolutely mind blowing! I almost creamed my pants when I saw it! It shows the actual gameplay, and you know what? It ran smoother and looked WAY better than any PlayStation 1 FMV! Anyone remember those PSX2 demos that sony showed off about 4-6 months ago? They weren't extremely impressive, but uh, this game blows them away a hundred times over! And you know... Enix has 6(!) games already planned for that system, and you can bet one of them is tri-Ace's Star Ocean 3. After seeing that incredible display of graphic power seen in Kessen, I wonder how much I'll be able to hold my sanity once Star Ocean 3 shots emerge...! If you would like to see the movie of Kessen, it is located at Core Magazine.
Anyways, I've created a little button for Valkyrie Profile, made a nice new tri-Ace themed logo that I made in Photoshop in about an hour (I'm a newbie to Photoshop, so direct all your criticisms to me. :)). Then I made the main portion of this viewing quite a bit bigger, too. Hopefully that will make the people who thought the viewing area was too small a little happier. ;)
And yes, I am making an endings section for SO2. I'm not kidding. I'm going to get all 86 of the games' mini endings! In 4 playthroughs I've gotten 31. I still have all my saved games, so I'm going to beat all of them, tape them, and then go over them and stick all the text, character reactions, and setting info in a neat little text file; it's the best way for me to go back and 'look' at old endings while I go for some new ones.
8/6/99 (update #2)
Valkyrie Profile section now open! There are 22 screen shots and one piece of artwork available.
*sigh*, I won't be able to make a button for it until I get home, though.
8/6/99
WOW!! This game looks INCREDIBLE!
See more screenshots! Go to: tri-Ace's homepage!
8/5/99
No, it's not Star Ocean 3, but tri-Ace has announced a new RPG entitled "Valkyrie Profile" for the PlayStation:
Based on Norse mythology, Valkyrie Profile casts players as a rogue valkyrie. Rather than serving the gods like a normal valkyire, your valkyrie battles against them: in an unusual twist on traditional monster-breeding gameplay, you'll select and raise the souls of dead warriors, then send them to battle the Norse gods in Valhalla.
Like all of Tri-Ace's games, Valkyrie Profile will feature an action-oriented battle system. The difference this time is that each character is represented by a single button on the controller; hitting that button causes the character to attack, while pressing several buttons unleashes combination attack.
Looks like I'm gonna have to add a new section soon. I'm not at home right now, so I can't really make any large updates to this site, at least for another week.
7/16/99
After about month, I update my homepage. :D. Yeah, I'm lazy, but I've been really busy as of late. I've been playing a LOT of Star Ocean 2, still. I've spent over 155 hours on the game in only 4 weeks. Yeah, I guess you could say I'm an addict. I've beaten the game twice; I still have yet to finish the bonus dungeon, and defeat Gabriel (Indalecio) without his limiter in my first game (I'm 50 hours into that save). I did however, manage to completely beat everything in my second time through; the bonus dungeon, Survival mode in the arena, and even the seemingly impossible Gabriel without his limiter! That save took about 96 hours to completely finish. BTW, the best party combination is... Crawd, Dias, Ashton and Rena! Now I'm on my third time through, 10 hours in so far, and I'm playing it in Galaxy difficulty. I've been cheating the game a little so it's not really showing up to be hard. (I built up to level 34 before going to the Lacour continent, and even used the Treasure Chest to get a Marvel Sword for Crawd! 1100+ to ATK!). This game is just fun, by far the funnest RPG I've ever played, hands down. It'll be a long time until I get bored... ;)
Not a whole lot of other stuff... some RUMORS are stating that Star Ocean 3 is being developed for the Dreamcast, but I wouldn't find that likely since Enix does not publish for SEGA.
In some other news, I've SO2 was pulled from shelves awhile ago to fix a MAJOR typo in its manual, supposedly one of the phone numbers was to a phone sex line instead of support. :) I've heard that it was also pulled to fix the friggin freezing bug, that occurs during loading phases (usually after battles). For people having problems with SO2 freezing, I have learned some techniques that really seem to work well, one is to flip the PlayStation UPSIDE DOWN while playing, AND when a battle is over, LET your characters throughly say their lines before exiting the battle (ie don't close the box telling you how much EXP of Fol you've gotten). I've gotten noticeably less freeze ups using this method, in fact, the only time I ever DO get a freeze up is sometimes when I accidently exit the battle early from not letting the characters finish their lines.
The Star Ocean The Second Story section has been majorly updated, tons of new stuff, including UPDATED Ian Kelley walkthroughs, which contain the bonus dungeon. Also, on a note, Ian Kelley has said that he has begun work on converting his FAQs to reflect the english version of SO2. Those will be added as soon as they become available. There have been some misc updates elsewhere too, too many little things to mention, just have a look around.
I'm rather dissappointed with some of the reviews I've seen of SO2. Has anyone seen how ignorant FRITZ FRAUNDORFs' review (on the GIA) is!? He claims that SO2's gameplay "fails to impress", and saying the gameplay is weak, and is remnicent of Super Mario RPG. PLEASE tell me, what is wrong with him?! SO2 by far has the best gameplay a console RPG has ever seen, and isn't remnicent of Mario RPG at ALL. The two games have NOTHING in common. I countered his review THROUGHLY on their SO2 message board. And he didn't even reply to the meat of the thread... There's another terrible review I've seen elsewhere that's even worse, but I forgot the URL. SO2 is a great game, whoever rates it low, either doesn't care about gameplay, or just doesn't understand how the game works...
For those of you with USENET newsgroup access, a STAR OCEAN newsgroup has been created; alt.games.star-ocean. My cruddy news server doesn't carry it yet, so yours might not either... if it doesn't, you could get an account at Deja and post to it from there.
6/16/99
(this contains NO Star Ocean 2 spoilers)
I bought this game 3 days ago, and I'm 28 hours into it already... *sigh* (playing for around 10 hours per day, tch). I have not been this addicted to a game in so long! I don't even know exactly where I am in the game, but I don't think I want to know yet, either.
I expected this game to be much, MUCH better than the original, and it is, but it ALSO exceeded my expectations, by FAR.
First off, I was not expecting this game to have a great story at all. Well, it seems from all the time I've been playing, it's been turning out to be much, MUCH better than I was expecting (for those of you still in the beginning, the plot gets MUCH better). I think the story IS great, but not AS good, as say, Xenogears (obviously). I like the major plot twists, I think they are very good, and REALLY liven up the bland early game story. The story doesn't seem to be as clitched as I previously thought, either. It also has, unfortunetly, a couple corny moments though (suffers from the "There just MIGHT be another way" to get X back or to defeat Y syndrome).
As for characters and such, the only characters who really have development are the two mains ones, Crawd and Rena.
Rena has to be one of my all-time favorite characters in any RPG. Her development is EXCELLENT, IMHO. She herself has her own unknown past (and it has nothing to do with amnesia, the now common Squaresoft clitche). I like her as a character to the story, and I find her to be one of the most interesting characters. I am REALLY attached to this character. And to think, I've never been like that with *any* other RPG character in the past. Her music theme is a masterpiece as well, IMHO. I use Crawd and protect her at all costs during a battle... heh. I really hate it when likeable characters aren't real... and sometimes I hate RPGs for this very reason. :P
Crawd isn't bad, but I don't think he's nearly as interesting as Rena, though. He does have his own complications during the game, though...
Then throw in all the excellent gameplay and replay value... I really like this game. Definitely my favorite game EVER, hands down (and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a LOOOOOOONG time).
I'm still not done with the game, and I'm impressed. This game is truly the godsend I thought it would be.
I wonder what tri-Ace is working on right now... SO3 (is truly for real?)? Or if we're lucky, an SO1 remix? It doesn't really matter which... SO1 WAS a great game, but if they can remix it and make it even better, and make it even LONGER, It would be so awesome...
So far, my views are likes this:
| Graphics | 9 |
| Music | 9 |
| Challenge (via normal mode) | Medium-Hard |
| Gameplay | 11! |
| Replay value | 11! |
| Storyline | 9 |
| Atmosphere | 9 |
| Total % | 97% |
This "update" was just quick to give some of my personal views on Star Ocean 2. Nothing has been added to any sections.
6/9/99
I hope you've all got cash, cause today marks the Star Ocean the Second Story release! After waiting 15 months, it's finally out. It probably won't hit my retailers for a few more days :(. So I won't have it for a couple days, but for those of you who are lucky and got the game at places such as Electronics Boutique, I really hope you enjoy the game! We missed the first game, but at least the second one is now here. Time to rejoice! And pray that *if* another sequel is released, it will come out here too, or heck, any new tri-Ace games will do just great...
Yeah, for those of you who used to come to my site before, you know the site has been redesigned. But for those new, and looking for some extensive Star Ocean, and General tri-Ace coverage (such as Tales of Phantasia), look no further! I hope you enjoy my site. Be *SURE* you run in at LEAST 800x600 resolution, though. There's also a mod player down on the bottom, with some Tales of Phantasia songs I ripped myself, but not all are online yet (ripping an SPC, and looping the songs takes lots of time I don't have!). You need a modplug browser plug-in to hear the music (available at www.modplug.com). Do note that the Tales of Phantasia section is NOT yet avaialable, sorry.
My deepest appologies to Shira, I promised him/her that I'd have some things done by his/her request by the next update, but it just didn't happen yet, sorry, I won't have it fixed until a few more updates...
All sections are not in RPGamer format anymore... well actually, they are in a sort of "hacked" version of the RPGamer format, but everything's on one html file, and makes it worlds easier to update.
The site changes are basically obvious, check around, I don't have time to list everything. This update is not as complete as I would have liked, but I had time restraints; I've been busy, and I wanted to update on SO2s release date.
For people who use the message board for on-topic STAR OCEAN 2 discussion, *MARK YOUR SPOILERS!* I cannot stress that enough, cause if I get spoiled, I'm going to be very upset with you.
5/3/99
Whaddya think of those pics, eh? Nice if I say so myself! Yep, it really is true, SO2 for North American release... six more weeks and it will be here... but alas, it doesn't go without it's flaws, I've already noticed some translation errors (minor ones, though). Eh, they've screwed up on Crawd's name and they call him Claude! I've heard in in the Japanese Star Ocean 2 that his name is spelled out as C R A W D in plain English. How could they get that wrong? Then they screwed up on his last name too... it WAS "Kenny", now they've messed up and called it "Kenni". Heh, well, the translation isn't done yet so anything can happen until then... something this little isn't going to prevent me from buying it, so I really don't care. It's not that hard to change a characters' first name anyways.
Site Changes:
oAdded 24 new screen shots to the Star Ocean the Second Story section! 8 of these are from the English version!
oAdded 2 Star Ocean the Second Story Movies
oAdded 1 Star Ocean the Second Story Midi
oAdded the front of the North American packaging
4/28/99
Site Changes:
oTotally redid my views on all the FF games in the FF section by replacing them with personal ratings
oAdded some Star Ocean the Second Story Official Art and some more Fan Art
oAdded Crawd and Rena's walkthroughs and fixed the link to Ian Kelley's FAQ to Star Ocean the Second Story
oAdded bunch of new Game Shark codes for Star Ocean the Second Story
oAdded comments to most images on the site... (hold cursor on image for a second)
oAdded a friggin profile of me self, d00dz. No pic... yet.
oMisc typos fixed...
oResized the frame, added Tri-Ace logo and link to their homepage, blah, blah...
oRevision to my Final Fantasy 6 US/Japan difference FAQ. Nothing really new in it, though. (See Final Fantasy section for the FAQ)
Oh yea, I got ICQ. UIN: 21109163
4/25/99
Rom Hacking section updated, with screen shots and more info for Final Fantasy VI 'Hardtype'.
4/23/99
Surprise surprise, an update. w00.
Added to the page:
oSome fan created polygon images from the Star Ocean 1 intro)
oAdded some new midis to the Star Ocean 1 page
oStar Ocean: Second Story page up (WAYYYY the he11 better than RPGamer crappy SO2 section.).
oNew message board (post! now!)
Star Ocean, the Second Story, has been confirmed for US/Canadian release, by SCEA, not 989 (yay)! Tell me, what could possibly be better? US/Canadian gamers will finally be able to see the awesome power of the great RPG series, Star Ocean. I am so convinced that this game is going to be the greatest game EVER created, for the fact that the original reigns supreme as greatest RPG ever (because I haven't played SO2 yet), and that the sequel, boasts of nothing but IMPROVEMENTS over the original! Everything that I've seen of the game, is absolutely awesome. Here are some of my impressions:
Graphically, this game looks BETTER (to me) than Final Fantasy VIII, yet it was released months earlier, and then the character sprites... gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, (see the screen shots on the SO2 page for details!). This game is being released on June 15th, and if you don't buy it, I've got an axe with your name on it, >;)
Gameplay? Almost looks too good to be true, but even SO1 DESTROYS PC RPGs in terms of gameplay, and SO2 is nothing more than additions and IMPROVEMENTs of what the original offered! Private actions, the deepest skill system you'll EVER see, item creation, the GREATEST battle system ANY RPG has EVER seen, it's also the funnest and even more innovative than Tales of Phantasia/Destiny's (from SO1's point of view, but SO2's are reportedly better than SO1s... by a LONGSHOT). Oh, and if that's not enough to tickle your fancy about gameplay, that's about only half of SO2 has to offer... and the worlds look big, so there should be a load of exploration :)
The music is fantastic! Very well done (I've already listened to the mp3s >:)). Definitely better than SO1s ST. The normal battle theme is probably one of the greatest battle themes ever...
Stuff. This game has two main quests, not one, but two, with each one having a different main character, one character is Crawd C. Kenny (a male), son of Ronixis J. Kenny (a character from the original Star Ocean), and the other is Rena (a female). Ian Kelleys' walkthrus are HUGE (350-400kb) for each quest! His walkthrus for SO1 combined only equal 230kb! Thus *possibly* meaning that EACH quest is about TWICE as long as the original game altogether! And there're two quests, so this game could be around 4 times longer all together :D! Wonderful :). Altogether, this game should be longer than Xenogears... Oh yeah, and the characters are ORIGINAL, check 'em out, most of the main cast are a totally original races (besides Crawd, he's human.)... ahh that reminds me, Tri-Ace is proabably the only console RPG company in the world who can make RPGs totally original, and they do it RIGHT. Expect SO2 to the be the best console RPG you've EVER played. People who've imported it can't get over how awesome it is, even if most of them can't read it! (Hey, I enjoyed even SO1 in Japanese!). Buy this game or die, this is your only warning. And to people who haven't imported the original, DO IT RIGHT NOW, cause you won't have any appreciation for it 'soon as you get pampered by SO2 first (it's a sad fate, and I've seen it from EVERYBODY who decided to play it AFTER SO2...). >;)
Misc stuff...
Final Fantsy VI Hardtype rom hack is being continued some more (got that rom hack motivation back again), so far it's all going smooth.
Aaron, *formerly* of RPG-O-Rama has lost his page, thanks to Stupidnet (Simplenet) for shutting him down (again) and further cancelling his account for no apparent reason. What all this means is that, this is the reason the message board died just one day after I put it up! Oh well, I got a new temp board, hosted by Bravenet, and their boards are basically the type I like (wwwboard/webbbs style), so thats all good.
And thanks to Luke Drelick for giving me back my old midi zip of my Star Ocean 1 midis from the old page (That's where all the "new" mids came from).
3/28/99
Woohoo! Xoom now offers FREE unlimited webspace (but that doesn't mean it doesn't have any conditions... look above...)! So, I moved here and stuff. If I get my job, I will most likely get my very own Simplenet.account, it's only 10 bucks! 10 bucks for fast, reliable unlimited space :D. Anyways, here is what is new:
oTemporary Message board now functional*!
oSome tinkering with the ToC...
oFinal Fantasy section added.
oThings more descriptive in the other sections...
* Aaron of RPG-O-Rama (my former host) and I have discussed sharing message boards awhile ago, and we decided that it be so, at least until I can get my own up and running. Until then, we are sharing "Post-O-Rama" for now, as temporary. So go there, talk about anything on, or off topic :D.
The Star Ocean 2nd Story section will be up in a bit... most likely during the week, It isn't quite ready yet (lack of knowledge on the game)! I've begun a little a work on it...
3/9/99
Spruced the site up a bit (not much tho). Added the good 'ol 3d-blocks background back from my old page... I'm trying to find some new images... ones that won't interfere with the text color like on my old page (you know, with the big EVA pics with lots o' colors, also added a counter to this page (note: The first 100 or so hits are from my buy/sell/trade only site, before this one came). Also aligned the links on the left frame to the right.
VERGE 2.0 has been DELAYED, AGAIN! And they said it wouldn't get released unless the world had officially ended. But that is not the case, obviously ;p. What happened was that last Wednesday (no, not today!), a huge bug was found... but it took THREE days of non-stop work just to discover where the bug was, as vec notes, it was almost IMPOSSIBLE to find, and if not found, VERGE 2.0 would not be released--ever. Currently, now that the bug was found and fixed, they are making up for the lost days of creating the pack-in demo. It should be completed by this weekend (this is _my_ personal estimate!).
New just in! VERGE 2.0 pack-in screen shots have just been released! And they look GREAT, the battle one, especially is the most impressive one! Go to VERGE's official home site to see them!
To familiarize myself with VERGE 2.0, I plan on attempting an absolute DIRECT port of Final Fantasy 1 to it! Whee, I've already began ripping tiles from FF1(j, of course) ^_^.
This is just a quick little update... not exactly the "big one" I was intending...
3/4/99
Well, if you followed the link from my previous page to find yourself here, then you already know the story... go see it here: I have moved...
Stuff:
I didn't want this update to be nothing but excuses, so I recreated some sections. Go click on the links in the left frame.
And sorry, this page is a bit rushed right now, so all sections will be DULL. Oh well, fast loading :D
Anyways, here is what is currently on the page (not much):
-My buy/sell/trade site is integrated into this one! I buy/sell/trade imported and domestic video games, anime, and video game/anime music CDs (I only buy originals! No Son May!). Please see my lists if your are interested in dealing with me! I have a lot on my want list... Since I also like to trade stuff, let me know if you'd like to trade.
-Thine own infamous Final Fantasy 6j / Final Fantasy 3US differences doc (V 1.5 still, sorry)
-Final Fantasy 3(US) Hardtype romhack patch (my attempts at making this game harder! But the patch is FARRRR from being complete! I need help with this project! Check the readme.txt for what has been changed.)
-My first VERGE production at last! It's really nothing special, it just has vecna running around a stupid island with a gay "story", and you get to talk to the clam! How fun! Read on to learn more about VERGE:
Over the time, I've finally started picking up on VERGE again, and now, this time, I can now actually make things work now (see my demo). What is VERGE? VERGE stands for "Vecna's Extraordinary Roleplaing Game Engine". It's like those RPGMaker games you've probably seen for the on the Super Famicom and PlayStation systems, but VERGE, is actually _much_ better. It can do anything the RPGMaker games can do, and much, MUCH more! The core reason why? It's ULTRA flexible. What makes VERGE so flexible you ask? It's scripting language, called VergeC. With VergeC it's possible to do almost anything you could possibly want to do. And yes, I know the fact that you must do some programming may be a bit of a turn off to many, but actually... it's VERY, VERY simple to learn! In fact, it's easier than BASIC! And if you have programming experience, it's even easier to understand, especially if you know any type of "C" programming (it's structured VERY similarly, that is why it is called "VergeC", hence the "C" in the name. Making RPGs are a sure time consumer but it's very fun. But PLEASE don't expect Squaresoft (etc) quality games from everybody! It's VERY irritating when people make such posts on the VERGE message boards, flaming people cause their games "suck". If that's how you feel, and you think you can make better, then I challenge you: DO IT!
Can you make a kickass battle system? Can you really compose good original music? Think you can design awesome graphics using a simple tile editor? Write a Xenogears quality storyline? Come on! I challenge you, if you think you are so good! Point yer browser (it better be Netscape...) toward VERGE Official Homepage. Oh, and VergeC is so powerful, you can even create non-RPG games with it! But it's original intentions are for RPGs. To see the most kickass (IMHO) non-RPG game I've ever seen with VERGE, go to HardRockin's Page and go download Block Buster Quest demo, it's AWESOME!
Upcoming:
-Graphics, music and stuff to spruce the site back up
-Details on my upcoming VERGE game
-Star Ocean section will return (*possibly)
-Anything else that may come up
Announcements:
-I need more webspace! If I'm to bring back my EVA section, I am going to need more webspace than a Geocities account. If you can provide some free webspace, I'd be grateful as ever. Please note that I do have a Crosswinds account, but their FTP has many problems, such as being very slow, and failed file transfers are commonplace (aprox. 1 in 2 chance for me!), and they are often very busy, so it's nearly unuseable.
-VERGE 2.0 is COMING! This Saturday! More features! *MORE* flexibility than ever before! And so much more! The wait definitely seems well worth it!