What are you playing on your 3DS/DS right now?

...well Takumi didn't write Dual Destinies, but that's still some excellent gameage. Have fun, look forward to reading about it.

On a similar vein to your Gintendo series, expect some Ace Attorney audio goodness in the near future...

Also, I'd totally forgotten the first witness was called Frank Sahwit.

I'm floating between two games, and will be for a long time to come: Dragon Quest VII and PW:AA Spirit of Justice. The former's first MacGuffin was a pilchard sandwich, which is typical DQ madness. As for the latter, I've finished the first case and am hungry for more. Pilchard sandwiches, maybe! No, just kidding - they're appalling.

Having finished AA6, I'm now into JRPG Heaven/Hell, with DQVII and Stella Glow on the go. Slow starts. Slow slow starts.

Are you on VII too, Balla? I hear it's two hours before the first battle. The game may well last me until 2020...

I am, and so far not hugely impressed with the fishing-village start thing.

I'm going between AA6 (third case now) and DQ VII. Where yeah you don't see any monsters until the 2 hour mark

Tried my hand at the late game single player quests in Monster Hunter Generations last night & ooft! that Advanced: The goliaths quest was really tough, I had to abandon it twice as I was about to run out of time but this was more frustrating on the second one as I had the last monster limping and it somehow got away from me in last 10 seconds.

I done it on my third attempt though as I brought all the healing items I could plus materials to make more but even then it took 44 minutes.

shanks wrote:

I'm going between AA6 (third case now) and DQ VII. Where yeah you don't see any monsters until the 2 hour mark

Even back in the day, whose decision was this? Surely somebody must have recognised - surely - that this was a tripe idea? Or was that the norm, and JRPG players were so poorly catered to that they were expected to put up and shut up?

Once again, Bravely Second has shown how such things should be done. I really can't think of a better example of a turn-based hands-off-combat RPG.

The third case is a banger, hope you're enjoying it.

DQVII came out in the year 2000 - as it must always be called, by law - so I wonder how much voice fans would have had at that stage. A strongly-worded letter to a magazine, or a rant on a nascent RPG webforum? Either way, it does suck a little. The game's struggling to pull me in as it should.

Yeah it's a bit annoying having nothing really happen in the first couple of hours.

As for Ace I'm really liking the third case, now upnto day two of the investigation after "not seeing that happen"

I finished it yesterday, wasn't much of a fan of the final case, felt a bit long and overly/unecessarily complicated. Enjoyed the game overall, just last case started to feel like a slog.

I much preferred it to case 4.  Final case may not have been T&T or JfA levels of brilliant (the anime has just hit the latter one, and it's tremendous stuff!), but it far outpaces DD's (creepy picture aside) or AJ's (breakdown aside). To say nothing of AAI...


Four identical plate-pushing 'puzzles' to get four items?  F**k me.  This is the sort of artificial game-extending shite that gives JRPGs a bad name.  More than once I've been thinking about Cappa's complaints that JRPGs simply aren't fun, and thinking that this is the sort of stuff he's referring to.  Get it in the endless ocean.

Not sure how long I'll carry on with this, right now Stella Glow is looking by far the better option.

The DQVII thing is weird with the slow start as the PS1 is by far the best system for JRPG's and Square / Enix have most of the best ones as well also 2000 is rather late for a PS1 game but hey a slow 2hrs in 134hr game doesn't seem to bad.

Imagine getting to the end of the slow start only for the game to crash and for you not to have saved since before you gave the hermit the book!

...has that just happened to you Andy?

Yup, had a couple of weird legs when joining up with Keifer, but always rectified, left that one for 10-15 mins in the end and it just didn't fix itself...

...bloody hell, my sincere apologies. I'm not sure I'd be able to plough through it again if I were you, get Stella Glow or something instead. I've not had any crashy problems myself, but I shall be sure to save frequently.

Incidentally one of my friends had an AA6 bug, whereby one of the necessary points when you're rotating an item didn't show up! We restarted the case, and after some nervous minutes and tedious text-skipping, all was well again. Serious heart-in-mouth moment though.

Ouch. Sorry to hear that, Crumpington Andrew... That's one of my big DQ gripes - the saving. You've just got to be able to save wherever you want in a game that big.

It's going pretty quick without the reading, already got the artifacts again. Not sure saving anywhere would've changed anything, no enemies meant I wasn't worried about dying/saving!

I'm sure I should be getting Bravely Second over Stella Glow!

I've got to the first battle in DQVII - and in a mere 90 minutes! Pish to that two hours rubbish I was spouting earlier.

On the other hand, the battle system felt more fresh on any of the DS DQ games. Also, I'm saving as often as possible.

Bravely Second: rpg of the year

Stella Glow: a game the self-proclaimed biggest weeb on ngg decided to pass over


Just throwing my two cents out there! I mean if Balla can make a case for it I might chase it up, but everything I've heard sounded like another meh jrpg with ott fanservice and pandering.

...honestly the fanservice is pretty off-putting, but I played both the Luminous Arc games so I kinda know what to expect... It's still creepy having the hero push his sword into pre-teen girls (oh I wish I was joking) though. I wouldn't recommend it to yourself because you're a FE fan (and therefore probably not Andy either), but the strategy is substantially less punishing and therefore my level of fun.

Why did I recommend it again? Oh yes, because it's still better than DQVII. Meanwhile BSEL is JRPG of the year and in my top 5 3DS games probably, get it flipping played.

Yep, definitely skipping it. Sounds like it's exactly the sort of "anime" I avoid like the plague.