The Gamer's Quarter

friedchicken · . Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 496 Location: Port Land, OR

I'm not sure what's wrong with me.

A few weeks ago I picked up some cheaper games that looked good or that I had heard were fun or otherwise well done. So, I came home with Under the Skin, Super Monkey Ball for the Xbox, and Phantom Brave. I was initially pissed off because I wanted to get the special LE Phantom Brave with the soundtrack, was assured by the EB guy that what he sold me was the LE despite the fact that nothing on the package indicated that this was the case, and got home to discover no soundtrack. Great.

So shortly afterward I got involved with God of War and it sidetracked me from the other stuff. That happens a lot around my house with cheapies-- I don't feel bad if they sit for a while, since they weren't that expensive to start with.

That said, I decided to give Phantom Brave a try yesterday morning.

What can I say? I'd heard folks at the other place sing the praises of Nippon Ichi Software, of Disgaea, and generally of SRPG's, but I never expected this. So, I played from 7:00am until 11:00am, and then again from 2:00pm until 6:00pm, when my wife arrived home and asked me why I hadn't started dinner. I can't recall the last time I put that kind of time into a game in basically one sitting.

Well really, what's not to like? The colors are bright, the Japanese voice acting is excellent, and the gameplay is just great. It makes Final Fantasy Tactics look both limited and dated. Maybe it's God of War shellshock or something (that's something for another post), but it's... it's love. I just can't put it down. I played a bit this morning, before I left for work. I just don't do that kind of thing anymore. I regret that I didn't call out sick today.

So what is it? What's that quality that makes Phantom Brave so fucking incredible? I'm not sure, just yet. But I'd welcome any discussion that anyone wants to have about it while I get my thoughts together.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Well I don't know if it is Phantom Brave that you should seek the answer to this question from. I belive it is the company Nippon Ichi itself.

I will get more into this for the magazine, so I am going to withdraw from the conversation to avoid being redundant in the future. But it does deserve discussion.

TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

As the world's number one Nippon Ichi fan (well, I'm in the top ten, anyway) I've been thinking about this very question for quite some time. Although there are tiny details that make this game good, I've pinpointed two features that help make Phantom Brave so much fun: the "Confine" system and the intense character development. The Confine system, for those of you "not in the know" works like this: your characters must be summoned into objects such as trees and weapons on the playing field, and the character gains or loses stats depending on the item. If you want a weaker, faster character, you would summon onto a weed, if you wanted a heavy defense/attack character, you would summon onto a rock, etc. Characters also have turn limits that they can stay summoned before they dissappear. While this limits the number of strategic options you have, this limitation increases your creativity. If you haven't overleveled, you have to use your brain to carve out a good strategy for each map. You learn early on that summoning all your best characters at once isn't a good idea, as they'll disappear before they can move in to kill everything. You have to patiently wait, summoning 2 or 3 characters at a time, and carefully wait for the enemies to come near the objects on the field before you slaughter them. In Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea, you could easily school a map with one character and a healer, but that becomes, essentially, a mechanical, passive experience. It's move, attack, heal, repeat. In Phantom Brave, you must recognize the trade-offs between position, time of summoning, and number of turns left, and the game as a whole becomes an "active" experience.
The second attribute I talked about, character customization, comes into it's own the longer you play. Like all strategy RPGs, each character has certain points that make them unique: stats, moves, inherent abilities, etc. Through the Fusion system, however, you can customize your characters' traits to a great degree. Want to transfer your Amazon's Drill Kick to your Merchant? Fuse away! Want a slime that's a walking time bomb? Fuse a Prinny and a Blob together! While customization is nothing new, the ability to do so many different things overshadows FFT's Job system, which felt to either be variations on three different base "jobs": stat upper/lowerer/healer, warrior, or mage. Phantom Brave's Fusion system allows you to seemingly "break the rules" of the game, instead of allowing you to create pale variations on the same tactics.
Also, this game allows you to use exploding peg-legged penguins and walking, talking bottles with mail inside. How cool is that?

friedchicken · . Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 496 Location: Port Land, OR

TOLLMASTER, I'm now officially the world's number one TOLLMASTER fan. Or at least I'm in the top ten.

Yes, you're absolutely right on every count. BUT! you've forgotten to mention that objects (not just weapons) can also be leveled up, which increases the complexity significantly.

Yeah, that's what I love the most-- just how much you can do.

Speaking of the walking, talking bottle, GODDAMN IT how do you manage to get it? I've tried stacking everyone on the roof, but can't jump to the top of everyone. PM me if you can provide any hints.

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

Okay, this isn't quite on topic, but anyway...

I still haven't played a NI game despite Phantom Brave and LaPucelle being only 20.00 new and Disgaea being fairly easy to find. I've resolved, however, that the next game I get...or at least within 2 months or so...will be a NI game. Let's say I can only get one though, which is pretty much the case for a while. Which one would it be?

Or, perhaps, which one is your favorite and how do the three relate to each other?

SuperWes · Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 12:43 am Post subject:

I've got all three and I can say for sure that Disgaea is not only my favorite NI game, but also my favorite tactics game of all time. I like the characters and story the best of the three, the gameplay is a well defined mixture between a puzzle game and a tactics game, and picking people up and throwing them is the most useful and well thought-out mechanic ever introduced to the genre.

As for how they relate to each other, I'm pretty sure there are just crossover characters and they take place in the same general universe. You don't have to play them all to appreciate any of them individually, so don't let that stop you. And if you don't like one of them you probably won't like any of them!

-Wes
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TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

friedchicken: Yeah, weapons and objects can be leveled up too. I didn't include it on purpose because once people figure out how to use titles and the levels of weapons to their fullest extent, the game becomes broken. I didn't want to ruin the game for the other people here by giving them a "spoiler." It's something that is best discovered for yourself, when you've already beaten the game and you find the secret bosses and are asking yourself "how in the holy heck do I beat someone with over 3 million HP?" The ability to complete these extra challenges is there, but the ways and means can be abused early on, ruining the challenge of the original game.

And nico, it's kind of hard to explain how to do it when you're not before the training chapter. Your best option is to throw weapons/objects you've collected on top of the house in a spiral pattern (like half of a DNA's double helix structure). Then you can jump from one object to another (long swords work best for jumping; split them apart if you have other stuff in your pile) and just jump up. If it's high enough, you'll get a bottle mail with a random name.

Your other option is to have a dungeon monk create a dungeon with "Weird" enemies. It's an extremely rare type of dungeon, however, and some people claim you can only get it if the dungeon monk is over level 50 (I've never had the same problem). Then, inside the Weird dungeon, kill at least 20 bottle mails, exiting, returning, and exiting again if you don't have enough floors. You can also find Prinnies and Eringas (the shroom doods) on these floors, and they're good classes to get as well. Once you've killed 20, you can freely create them with Marona. I suggest giving the Bottle Mail a crystal as a weapon, as they can become useful (albeit short-lived) fighters with them.

friedchicken · . Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 496 Location: Port Land, OR

Thanks for the info TOLLMASTER. I'm still working on the damned bottlemail, but I'll get it eventually. I stack shit fairly high and then throw something on top, only to have the whole thing slide to the ground. Oh well.

In another direction, I happened upon the last remaining brand new copy of Disgaea ever anywhere this weekend. I might try firing it up to note the differences between it and PB later in the week. I like the character design even more, so far.

TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Mister Toups · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:26 am Post subject:

I don't really have time for anything longer than 10-12 hours these days. I've been trying to plow through Phantasy Star II for the past month and a half on nights and weekends. It's just too long.
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SuperWes · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:38 am Post subject:

I personally prefer a game that's short(ish) but has plenty to do after the game is over. You say that you spent 70 hours with Phantom Brave, but how much of that was actually spent on the main storyline? Phantom Brave isn't neccessarily a long game, but it leaves plenty left for you if you enjoy the game. Good stuff.

Nintendo seems to have adopted this policy in their games. Pikmin was a short 6 hours for me and then it just rotted on the shelf. Pikmin 2 is around 10 hours before you get the ending, but when you're finished you can continue to play to try to gather all of the items. I haven't actually done so yet, but I'm glad that the option is there if I feel like returning to it. Resident Evil 4 also gave you more to do once the game is over. I finished that about a month ago and decided that it was the perfect length (maybe a bit too long), but just last week I went back and played through a few of the Mercenaries Missions.

I would also like to use this thread to make the statement that I hate random dungeons with all of my heart and soul. It's just making a game longer without actually adding content. Trash.

-Wes
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

SuperWes · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 12:54 pm Post subject:

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Well actually I thought it was horrible from what little I saw of it. I was just being sarcastic.

SuperWes · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 2:11 pm Post subject:

But you gotta respect the scope of the game. It's a long game with a lot of stuff to do that isn't half-assed in its implementation (I'm looking at you GTA!).

-Wes
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dhex · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 2:52 pm Post subject:

i'd take gta over dark cloud anyday.

i'd take a lot of things over dark cloud though. like not playing games for the rest of my life.

SuperWes · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:17 pm Post subject:

Dark Cloud 1 or Dark Cloud 2? It's important to make the distinction. Dark Cloud 1 is pretty much terrible but does a few neat things and Dark Cloud 2 is still mostly terrible but does enough neat things to make it easy to ignore the terrible.

I... I just really liked taking pictures and combining them to make stuff.

-Wes
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Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

I'd take GTA over a lot of things, but then you all probably knew that. I can't dirtbike off a mountain range, parachute into a small town, then enter cheats that turns the entire population into Elvis impersonators in country pickup trucks with rocket launchers and a penchant for human blood in Dark Cloud so it has little interest for me.

Also, Dark Cloud doesn't have dildos and gimp suits either does it? Thought not, negative points on that.

SuperWes · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject:

You know what else you can do in GTA? You can also play a basketball game that has less depth than Atari basketball, play wannabe genesis games that are worse than the worst arcade game I've ever played, and spend all of your in-game money pimping out a car that tips over and blows up immediately after purchasing it because it hit a curb in just the wrong way.

GTA has a lot that you can do, but most of it is so sloppy that it's almost not even worth trying out. That was kind of the point I was trying to make.

Dark Cloud 2 lets you create and evolve a town any way you want to and immediately zoom down to ground level to see what effect your changes had on it. I'll take that over wantan bloodshed any day (not that GTA isn't better than Dark Cloud, it's just that Dark Cloud actually has good implementation of its ambitious features).

-Wes
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Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

I know what you were saying. I was just being fatuous.

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

I thought Dark Cloud 2 was garbage. I did a rough outline of a handful of my thoughts on the IC forums a couple weeks back, so I'll just copy that over to here since my hunches proved to be true upon further playing and it will save a bunch of time coming up with a comment again that would just be very similar.

I picked up Dark Cloud 2 a couple months back because I found it for a great price and it looked interesting enough. I've been putting off playing it until winter was over since it seemed like a game that would work much better under pleasanter enviromental conditions. And, well, the time has come, and my hunch proved to be true. It seems like the best way to enjoy this game is to kick back with the sun beaming outside and a fruity drink at your side and just relax and go along with the breezy adventure.

Oddly enough, the game takes itself and its story far to seriously and has flaws that in sum should cause me to write the title off immediately...yet thus far I have been compelled...charmed even...by its world, specifically the lovely graphics and...I don't know...carefreeness of everything.

One thing that's intrigued me was the character's nonchalantness about saving the world. All he really wants (so far at least...and I'm not much into it) is to be with his mother and talk about her in humorously sexual langauge, and, well, if the world is going to end, he'd better stop that from happening then.

But now that the initial infatuation is starting to wear off and the actual mechanics of the game are becoming more and more apparent, I really don't like it much. Combat seems to consist of one of two moves with little variation: you can attack the enemy or you can backflip away from the enemy. The randomly generated dungeons are boring, tedious, and, well, randomly generated. The difficulty curve was surprising as well. I blew throug the first chapter with no problem at all, but then died in ONE HIT from an enemy in a dungeon of the second chapter. Hell, even my robot lost the majority of his health in a short amount of time against this common, run-of-the-mill guy (a giant plant with a mean face).

This game, even more than most other games, treats me like I'm a fucking moron. Why the hell should there be a tutuorial on what it means to "invent" something?!?

Worst of all are those movies. As I said, I'm still very early in the game, so I'm hoping that they'll become less frequent once the groundwork is set, but still...they suck. The dialogue is shitty (an origin is a beginning...like a flower!) and the frequency and legnth are driving me crazy. The story in general isn't too hot at all. But I feel like I can't just skip the cinemas because I'm anal like that. Besides, I want to have some kind of context for what I'm doing.
At least I can enjoy the unintended sexuality that keeps showing up. Like that clown guy straddling his giant gun...Freud would have a field day!

But, I mean, Dark Cloud 2 has a whole lot of potential. I haven't played it enough to judge whether it succeeds or not, but I really hope it does. I especially love the aspect of inventing things and (probably) the georama system. I kind of like the ability to customize weapons, even if it could be done a little better and more naturally.

The dungeon system coupled with the "overworld" sequences and especially the georama system has interesting effects. The dungeons are a very videogamey thing to do, and completely arbitrary and maybe even dumb at first glance, but I think that this might not be the case. Or at least, there's more at work there than meets the eye initially. But I'd like to play the game more before I come to any conclusions on what I think about that...

The point of this game seems to be about the nature of creation. And, unlike, I don't know, FFX, it often comments on this through the gameplay itself. Or maybe not...like I said I haven't played very far into it, and the game could completely prove my expectations false by the time its over.

But here's my problem: I don't really want to play the game to completion. Hell, I don't really want to play more than another couple hours. The combat and dungeons are starting to bore me, the movies drive me crazy, and weapon custimization (among other things), though interesting, is a bit too tedious for what I'm in the mood for right now. I mean, why couldn't they have just streamlined it into one step to upgrade your weapon? It's just little things...and big things I guess...like that which are ruining this game for me.

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

Also, I never even mentioned the FIND THAT PERSON! segments. Damn. Those were what caused me to give up...they were so frustrating, tedious, and boring. And the fishing. And all the other mini-games and missions they threw on top of Dark Cloud's already wobbly framework to try to give the illusion of depth and an ridiculously long legnth.

Speaking of game legnth, I've always thought that 12-16 hours was perfect as a base legnth for most games. I don't have enough time to devote 45 hours or more to every game I play. It took me all winter of playing nothing but Deus Ex just to beat it. It's one of my favorite games now, but more time certainly did not mean more fun. After the Paris Catacombs I started praying that each segment was the last. The end made it more than worth it, though...

Ico is a great game, but I wouldn't like it nearly as much if it were more than 7 or 8 hours. It would just get old. I don't ever want to play it again, either. But it was still one of the best experiences I've had playing a game and I feel I got my money's worth. A lot of it had to do with the context I played it in, but still...

TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

But is "fun" itself a constant? That's what is assumed by a model where length is the standard games are compared on. If I spent 35 hours on Final Fantasy VI and 35 hours on Choro Q, it might be assumed that they were equally "fun". That strikes me as odd since it seems everyone would prefer one over the other.

friedchicken · . Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 496 Location: Port Land, OR

Well, I think it's nice to have a game where you can finish it in X hours, but then go back and play it Y additional hours if you feel like it. Sometimes games get either X or Y wrong (or both, but we're not talking about them), and you end up with either a too short main game, in which case you wish they had just put a little more time into it, or a basically meaningless bunch of tacked on extra crap. Or some combination of those. What I hate the most are games where there's some collection aspect that has you running all over the place, but doesn't reward you at all for your trouble, or rewards you with something dumb. It's amazing how many games get it wrong.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Hmmm... I have something to say on this, but it may end up coming across as rambling at one point so bear with me

While I can appreciate a good game that is longer, I am not always in the mood for one. I have probably put more time into certain STGs than certain RPGs. ESPrade is the best example I can think of off the top of my head. I have easily put almost 60 hours into the game. As of the last time I played it seriously I was about 40 hours away still from getting to the point of where I wanted to be. If you were to take the game and credit feed it until you saw the end it is only about 35 min. Hell, even if you beat the game with all three characters that still leaves you with less than two hours of game time. I could have easily packed in 100 hours or more had I stuck with it.

With FFX I am done. I know that I am inches away from beating Sin and the end of the game (I glanced at the strategy guide and there are only 2 pages left in if from the point I am at). While the fights are fun and the maps were streamlined I hit a point where my characters were making little progress and I did not care enough about the story. Both of which are important factors for a RPG.

Jak 3 was interesting. While the frame rate sucked and some of the controls were difficult to control I found myself enjoying it for a long time because it was always fresh. The last two or three hours really dragged out though as there was nothing new introduced to the game. It felt too long at about 18 hours.

Morrowind is a wholly different beast. The first time I played it I stopped playing at over 150 hours. There was still so very much for me to do and I really wanted to create a new character to do it with, yet I knew that it would ask another at least 100 hours out of me. Yet here I am 3 years later and installed the GotY edition on my PC which adds 40 – 80 hours to the main story of the original (which I may add that I hardly even played the main story of the game my first time through). I have already put about 20 hours in the game again and wish it was much more.

You mentioned R-Type Final as a short game. I find that interesting. I stopped playing at about the 40 hour point. It became too overwhelming for me. I was up to level 5’s boss on one credit at that point and had a little more than half of the ships unlocked. I just knew there was so much more to do and go through with the game and it felt so clunky at times (they had to make parts balanced for all the ships and in doing so made certain parts too easy and others too drawn out). So I just stopped.

Then there is PN03, which I talked about above.

There is a wide variety of times that games are playable for and not a single element of time makes them either better or worse because of it. R-Type Final was too long for me. Jak 3 is too long. I don’t have enough time for Morrowind. Devil May Cry was too brief. Silent Hill 2 is too heavy to inspire immediate repeat playings. Disgaea is on the PS2, which I have not used in a long time and really want to get back to.

I hope that I was not too confusing.

dhex · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 8:46 am Post subject:

i don't have a lot of time to play games anymore (5 hours a week?) if want to sleep, not get fired or pass my classes and get in some boxing. or spend time with teh wif and friends or finish my ep and the like. or read. so i appreciate a short runthrough. ikaruga, which i still suck at, is my waiting for people to show up for whatever. 10 minutes, 15 minutes...perfect.

morrowind is a different story, but i'm having some RSI/tendonitis issues at the moment which is sort of fucking with everything (except typing)

i can sum up dark cloud 1 and 2 like this - at the time i was both unemployed and smoking tons of weed, and still found it too time consuming and ridiculous.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

SuperWes · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 10:27 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:00 pm Post subject:

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

I think you misunderstand. Perhaps if you had continued listening... Wink

I really only spent one paragraph talking about the story, and it wasn't even that disparaging. I found it to be unintendedly humorous, just not that great. Believe me, the story is one of the best things Dark Cloud 2 has going for it. That says a lot about my thoughts on the game, though...

Of course you're correct in pointing out not every game has to tell a story, in the watch this cinema! read this text! sense, but, you know, Dark Cloud 2 DOES tell a story that plays a central role in the game. And not a very good one. It's certainly a valid criticism to point out how I didn't like it.

This sums up my problems with the game perfectly:

SuperWes · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 2:27 pm Post subject:

I guess I just don't see what's so bad about it. I don't think it's the best game ever made by any stretch of the imagination, but other than the random dungeons, which work a lot better in part 2 than in the original, I thought all of its parts were at least interesting. It seems like one of those games where you've got understand what the game is trying to do and actually be interested in the concept to enjoy.

I'll admit that it was extremely boring to trudge through the dungeons after you've figured everything out, but the game was interesting, deep, and compelling enough to make me want to try to figure everything out, and that I respect. I think I stopped playing it after three or four georamas.

I sort of regret that I never got far enough to do the golfing.

-Wes
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nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

I can see an appeal to DC2...especially as a time-sink...but I'll never recommend it to somebody or play it any more. And I really liked the game at first, so perhaps I'm coming down too hard on it here, but its many flaws just became too much for me to take.

Mister Toups · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 6:04 pm Post subject:

I should play it. I know I will hate it. But I should play it. Every epic hero needs a descent into hell, after all.
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nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

It's only 15 bucks or so at EB now. So it might be worth getting if you're a collector type. That last sentence can be read two ways...

But I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

Mister Toups · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 7:52 pm Post subject:

You wouldn't recommend reading it in two ways or buying it for $15?

ha HA
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nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

Haha. No, what I meant was, it might be worth getting if you're the collector type. As in, if you like to collect videogames or like to collect things in videogames.

SuperWes · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 8:55 pm Post subject:

I would reccomend buying it for $15, but not if you're the type of person who wants either instant gratification or doesn't enjoy games unless they finish them. It's a fun game to learn, but as I've said before, it gets really boring after the first few levels.

-Wes
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Mister Toups · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:38 pm Post subject:

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

I got Phantom Brave as part of a buy 2 get 1 free deal today (along with R&C: Going Commando and Otagi: Myth of Demons) so I'll check it out later tonight. I might report back with my opinion after a while...

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

Going Commando is indeed the second one. I've played it a bit with my friend's copy, and it is very fun. Up Your Arsenal (3rd one) seems to be better, though, because some small things were tweaked such as having two weapon screens and leveling up weapons many times while the game design remained largely similar.

The R&C games are probably my favorite platformers of this generation. From what I've played of the J&Ders, if they're not boring me they're pissing me off. The demo to Sly 2 was really fun, and one of these days I want to get it, but it doubt it'll be as good as R&C.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Mister Toups · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:47 am Post subject:

Ratchet and Clank is fucking boring.

I played halfway through the first one. And then stopped.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

I can understand not liking R&C. Despite all the ways they attempt to mix things up, especially in the 3rd one, it's really just about killing all the enemies and moving on. It's worth noting, though, that the 1st game is much worse than the latter two. Especially in depth and variety if I remember correctly.

SuperWes · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:28 pm Post subject:

Yeah, the second game really evolves what Ratchet and Clank can be. The first game was all about setting up the structure and the engine and the second game was about playing with unique weapons that must each be used in its own unique way to progress. What's interesting is that the weapons aren't made so that you have to use specific weapons to get past specific areas.

I have all three of the games, and I've gotten to the last boss of the first one, about half way through the second one, and haven't touched the third one. Not sure if that means they're getting stale or that my time is becoming more precious, but I can say that I enjoy the games themselves more than their characters or stories.

-Wes
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