Arc Rise Fantasia

[Tempest]

Anyone else playing this one? I just started it today and so far it's not bad. The voice acting is horrendous to the point of making me cringe whenever someone opens their mouth (which don't match the words anyway) and the graphics are decidedly Gamecube quality, but the battle system is nice. It reminds me of a turn based Tales game (not surprising since they're made by some of the same people). I think I may turn off the voices and go full subtitles, I suppose then it really would remind me of a Gamecube game.

Tempest

[Swamperon]

It's currently on my 'Interested in' list. Watched numerous clips and the VA is truly horrendous. I saw a statement from the publisher who eventually acknowledged how terrible it was and basically said 'deal with it'.

I'm hoping it will be similar to Skies of Arcadia in terms of quality, as my Wii collection is currently missing a really good JRPG (unless you count FE: Radiant Dawn). Sadly a release for EU has not been confirmed yet.

[Tempest]

The price of it is right ($39 vs $49 or $59 like most new releases are). I hear it's also a rather long game (60-80 hours for the main quest) which is a welcome change. I guess they can make the game longer when they don't have to pack in all the fancy graphics.

The voice acting isn't really bothering me anymore. I'm pretty much pretending that it's a bad MST2K episode, which makes the voices very appropriate. Some characters are better than others as well, so it's not 100% cringe worthy. The combat system is more than making up for the games flaws which is what counts in my book.

Tempest

[Tempest]

Finally beat this tonight. I had to take a few months off due to my degree. The game starts out kind of slow but picks up towards the middle. After awhile though the plot gets convoluted and nonsensical, but it's still a fun game. It's definitely the most challenging game I've played in a long time, I actually had to use some serious strategy to beat the final couple of bosses. It has more than it's fair share of WTF instant death attacks, but that's part of the challenge I suppose.

Tempest

[heybtbm]

Finally beat this tonight. I had to take a few months off due to my degree. The game starts out kind of slow but picks up towards the middle. After awhile though the plot gets convoluted and nonsensical, but it's still a fun game. It's definitely the most challenging game I've played in a long time, I actually had to use some serious strategy to beat the final couple of bosses. It has more than it's fair share of WTF instant death attacks, but that's part of the challenge I suppose.

Tempest

How long did it take you (in-game time)?

[Tempest]

60+ hours (63 or something like that). Of course that includes a lot of grinding for WP and XP plus I did all the side quests which in retrospect were mostly a waste of time. If you went straight through the game and didn't want to over level like I did I suspect you could do it in 40-45 hours.

Tempest

[Beefy Hits]

Got this on one of the Xmas time deals on Amazon and haven't played it yet.

[Tempest]

A word of warning. The voice acting will turn you off from the first scene, but if you stick with it you honestly don't notice it after awhile. Yes it stays bad throughout the entire game, but I guess you just start expecting the characters to sound like they're reading the script for the first time.

Like I said, the challenge of the bosses made the game worth while. I guess I've gotten a bit soft from all these new RPGs that hold your hand throughout the entire game. I like the weapon/ability customization, but the best abilities took up too much space (you'll understand when you play the game) and were acquired far too late in the game to be useful. I pretty much stuck with the same weapon/ability setup from the middle of the game all the way through to the end with only minor variations for special bosses (damn you Marshmallow!).

Tempest