When I'm not trying to help FEKA USA to a schmup-them-up championship I have been playing Tales of the Abyss. Great game and every needs to buy it, support Tales in the US! Hopefully Namcot will release that sick looking Tales of Destiny remake here.

I'm playing Tales of the Abyss as well.

More retrogression for me on the Nintendo 64 with classics like WinBack (a sleeper-hit extraordinare) and Perfect Dark. I'm really just waiting for the Wii at this point.

I'm slowly making my way through Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, in between playing the import Final Fantasy III on the DS.

This is generally categorized as a "Gaming Discussion" forum topic, but anyway.....

I've been putting an ungodly amount of playtime into the Japanese version of Final Fantasy V Advance -- which is something I really didn't want to do, because I wanted to make the domestic release of the game my definitive version to play.  But of course, FFV is just SO crazy addicting, that resistance was clearly futile.  If FFIII DS's reworked job system comes anywhere close to the perfection of FFV's, I'll be having one heck of a ball in the coming months.

Since my PS2 memory card data bit the dust, I'm forced to start Okami over again from the beginning -- and I'm feeling the sting of the slow blocks of text.   Does the game have a speed text option or scene skipper after you've finished it the first time?

The incident has also given me an excuse to replay Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence again.   The games do lend themselves to being "completionist" experiences, especially when you're playing them the second time around. (Or in my case, the nineteenth or twentieth time.)  Special weapons, dogtags, facepaint, camo uniforms.... there's definitely a wealth of bonus stuff to earn and unlock.  It does feel strange, however, from a gameplay stance, playing both games at the same time.  For instance, I'm mistakingly trying to perform CQC on enemies in MGS2.

Regaining all of my five star rankings in Guitar Hero.  I want to see if I can do it before GH2 hits. ;)

Gyakuten Saiban 2 / Phoenix Wright: Justice For All beckons next week.  If, at this time last year, I had said that one of my most hotly anticipated games was a lawyer/adventure-text title, I would've called myself nuts.  But now I believe.

I'm playing a game called "Accounting I"...Very cool, you have a whole bunch of stuff given to you and you have to put them in the right columns and the right slots in the gameboard and then make sure they balance out. Kind of like Tetris. Also has these Brain Age-style tests, where you have to perform a bunch of rapidly paced, but timed minigames and get graded on them. Think I've logged about 70 hours on this game already since it came out at the end of August...It's a lot of fun. Just wish the strategy guide I got for it wasn't mandatory and a bit shorter (and cheaper). And I thought Final Fantasy Tactics was bad in that regard...whew!

Inbetween that, sporatic bouts of VP2, Ace Combat 5 (I started over from a save half-way through, since I hadn't touched it in awhile and it's a blast) and the New SMB minigames (the shyguys and trampolines mostly).

Also, that Goat album gave me the urge to play Castlevania 3 again a few days ago. Got to Alucard before the cartridge froze. So many ideas in that game that have gone untouched...What a shame.

World of Warcraft.  =o

I just finished VP2.  Waiting for FF12.

Playing* Chain of Memories. Still. FF10. Still. Cooking Mama -- well, I've opened the box, at least. Ditto for KH2. In other words, status quo from the last time I responded to a thread like this.

* Playing = Attempting to play during the 2 free waking minutes that I have in a day, heh.

Late as always with English releases, I've just started Xenosaga III.  I decided to go for that first instead of Okami since the longer I wait, the more likely I'll accidentally run across story spoilers.

I should probably start by going into what I'm not playing...I've been borrowing a friend's XBox for over a month along with some marquee titles: Halo, Fable, Ninja Gaiden Black, and a copy of (just plain) Black he accidentally left in the tray when he lent it. At this point, I'm disgusted with Fable, frustrated by Gaiden, and completely indifferent to Halo (Black has, to this point, not been touched). The deck has spent the last five days completely disconnected, and I don't even miss it a little (interestingly, neither does my friend, who is looking to sell three of the games he lent, and isn't especially interested on when he's getting it back...he will want it back eventually though, as it's a Transparent-Green Limited-Edition Halo 2 Deck).
To my brother-in-law's consternation, I am not playing the copies of Xenosaga, God of War, or Silent Hill 3 he lent me, as they have been incredibly tedious affairs for nearly all of the time I've invested in each.

Now, to the active list.
On Dreamcast, I'm playing Bangai-O. The XBox friend mentioned above found out I owned it but didn't love it and made a desperate trade offer (which I turned down, as I don't sell/trade anything). It sort of surpised me he cared about that one so much, so I decided to give it another shot. It's a bit better than I remember, but stil not wow-worthy. I'm fairly confident I've improved to the point where I might finish it this time, provided of course, that I can get past Black Riki before I grow old and grey.
On Gamecube, I'm playing Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Yes, still. One of the things I appreciate about the game is the ability to play a little bit every few days and feel satisfied. It's not quite the game the first PM was, but it's close.
On PS2, I finally started my copy of DQ8, after sitting on it for so long (the aforementioned games-I-don't-care-about-anymore being the chief reasons for the delay). Cute little game, and it was almost sort of refreshing to get my ass kicked by the first boss for being underpowered. Almost. Also, I can understand the dedication to the old ways to a point, but would a MemoSave option been too much to ask? Still, should be fun in the long run. I enjoyed myself prior to the whuppin'.
On DS, I wrapped up Aria of Sorrow with 100% finally and started Dawn of Sorrow. Damn good stuff, and I like the anime style a bit better than Ayane's look, for some reason. The game plays very well, of course, but after so long with the GBA controls, I keep jumping when I mean to attack. Game's good solid fun, though, and that second boss is flatout cool. Musically, well...the Wizardry Lab theme is neat, but there's nothing on the scale of Castle Corridor or Clock Tower from Aria yet. Maybe later.

So yeah. Back to playing for my own sake and loving it.

I love that game! I'm about a third through it (and have stopped for a while) but the characters and situations never get old. I particularly love the Bowser segments.

Believe me, after having to power level after EVERY DUNGEON, you won't be thinking the game is cute (or little) for much longer.

While I'm sorta working on Okami and TotA, I'm thinking I need to start MGS3 before Angela kicks my ass.

I just beat Yakuza, and Fatal Frame 3 (the latter with my girlfriend, we played together). Now we're wending our way through Okami, and I'm going throug Shadow of the Colossus with my younger brother. With Marc, we're going through the PSX Final Fantasy games, since he missed those, and after that, we're waiting on Final Fantasy XII, and the Wii, whereupon we will be engaged in playing Twilight Princess and Chrono Trigger by downloading it (he missed out). After that, he wants to go throug Xenogears and Vagrant Story with me.

When I have time, I need to finish Megaman ZX, Dragon Quest VIII, and Suikoden series. I haven't even oped Valkryie Profile 2 yet.

I hear you on all points.  I had started the game myself earlier in the summer, and made it to Askanta before calling it quits.  It's a gorgeous game, and the fusion of old school game mechanics and modern trimmings made for a nice 'wow' factor.  But like Wanderer says, there's a lot of tedius level grinding to be to done, which ultimately veered me away.  I enjoyed the weapon leveling system, though - it felt incredibly balanced, and quite fun.

Had a similar problem, but of course you know that the controls are fully customizable, right?  I had to put it back to "A" jump and "B" attack myself.

Heh, no pressure.  Actually, I sort of wanted to wait to play MGS2 and MGS3 again in November, since it's become kind of tradition for me to beat these games right around Thanksgiving time.  I actually finished the original MGS2 and MGS3 on Thanksgiving Day, 2001 and 2004 respectively. ;)

Working through FFXII for the second time, this time with my trusty Ultimania, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than before. Already clocked in around 66 hours, and I still have a whole BUNCH of Mobs and optional bosses to fight.
The final boss is definitely going to be a breeze the way it's going now though.

Also playing FFI Dawn of Souls on GBA and enjoying it a lot more than I expected, and a lot more than any game with such an INSANELY high encount rate should make me enjoy. I guess I like that old-school FF stuff after all the changes that've been happening on PS2.

Okami is at the top of my list of next purchases. I've been meaning to get it for a while now, but after reading all the wildly raving reviews just about everywhere, I'm prepared to lay down a bit more money for it than I originally intended.

I'm not exactly a fan of the super feminie Ayane style, but I really dislike the anime style they used in DoS and are using in PoR.  It just looks like cheap Saturday morning stuff not fitting of Castlevania (and the dubbing in PoR is just as cheesy).  It's not a big deal, I just think it takes away from the image of the brand.  Oh well.

Right now, the only game I'm playing is Okami.  I was originally going to do both Xenosaga III and MMZX first, but the former I'm not really in the mindset for right now and the latter didn't grab me initially though I plan to go back to it later.

In Okami, I'm currently about 30 hours in and around halfway through the game (I think).  I'm loving it, but I really hope I finish it before Zelda comes out.

I'm on a retro spree (though to be honest I'm pretty much always on a retro spree), making my way through the Metroids and Castlevanias. I just finished Metroid Zero Mission, which was 3/4 genius and 1/4 disappointing frustration. Onto Super Metroid now. I should point out that apart from a few cursory minutes I've never played a Metroid game before.

On the Castlevanias I'm running parallel through Symphony of the Night and Circle of the Moon. I'm really enjoying CotM even though I owned it when it came out and didn't like it much at all back then. I guess I just wasn't in the mood...

Today, I'm playing the Powerstone Collection on PSP. That first Powerstone game really is excellent and is as good as I remember it. I'm getting a real DC nostalgia fix.

I just started up an SCC (single class challenge) of White Monk on FFTA....I never actually played too far into FFTA, but I've played FFT enough I shouldn't have /too/ many issues (plus I'm playing it in emu, and technically breaking the save-state rule, but only for recruiting purposes so far)

-Joshua

Well, since FFIII was the first game to use the job system, its FFV that actually expanded upon it.  Case in point, in FFV when you raise your job level you gain skills that can be later equiped even if you are using a different class.  In FFIII, class skills are locked to that class.  For example if you want, say, high level white magic, you must have a designated White Mage.  The major drawback to this is it creates classes that are basically useless.

Take the Scholar for example, his special skill is Peep, which lets him look at an enemy's weakness.  The only real time you would ever need to use this class is against a certain boss who switches his elemental weakness every few rounds.  Due to the way this is, I have not even used the Archer, Thief, Geomancer, and Caller classes.  And Red Mages only seem to be useful for the first couple of game hours.

The trade off (if it can be considered one) is everytime your job level goes up, the base stats that your current job affects rises too.  For example, my Monk now has a job level of 62, so each round, she usually goes first, hits about 16~18 times for aproximately 1500 points of damage.  And she is fighting barehanded too.  Conversely, I had one character as a Black Mage for several levels, now that he is a Dragoon, some of his stats are lower than my other Dragoon class character, who had only been training in offensive jobs.  I'm pretty sure FFTA worked along these lines as well.

What some people fail to understand is that FFIII is not "new" per-se.  It has the same play mechanics, story, etc as the original Famicom release, just with some new elements added (FFIII Famicom, all the characters were male, now one is a girl; story sequences now often center on one of your particular heroes, in FFIII Famicom they were all nameless, this is being done presumably for character developement) a re-arranged soundtrack, a pretty polygonal facelift, and a cg intro which is quite impressive considering it is playing from a DS card.

Another thing that really annoys me is that Phoenix Down is really rare to come by.  I'm currently 20 hours into the game, and I have 7 to my name as it seems like they cannot be purchased, only found or won in battle.  The game tries to make up for this by having fountains placed in certain towns that will raise your character for free.  But when someone dies and you're in a dungeon, and out of downs, its a real pain to have to leave, find a fountain, then go back.  Would it have been so hard for your character to come back with 1 hp after battle?  Sheesh.

Despite all this, I don't consider is a bad game, its just a real big retro blast to play.  If you go into it expecting it to play like the newer FFs, you might be dissapointed.  I reccomend keeping an open mind and trying it out.

Lol, yeah, I actually shelved my import copy awhile ago and I'm waiting for the US version.  After putting in 178 hours and getting my main team (Basch, Ashe and Penello) into the mid 70's (everyone else is 50 something) the only things I had left to do were the last two mob hunts.  I then tried to hunt down the materials for the best equipment in the game, and utterly failed at it.  Stupid random item drops, grrr....

Unfortunately, the last boss isn't too tough against a high level, well equiped party.  Kinda reminds me of Sephiroth from the original Japanese release of FF7, but at least this guy isn't quite that bad.  One shot of Knights of The Round would topple Sephy in the original release.  So I just hope they tweak the difficulty in the US game, like make the strength of the bosses proportionate to your average party level or something.

Yikes on the FFXII spoilers there!

I'm not bothered but others might be.

16 Ton!

Currently?  I'm working my way through Enchanted Arms, Saints Row, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (being one of the few people that never played the original VP), and most recently Lumines of all things.  You don't want me to start talking about the backlog from hell...

Yep, I'm aware of what FFIII is about, but I wasn't sure if the job system went through any sort of refinement for the DS release.  At its core, it does seem like it more or less works the same way as the original Famicom version, so..... maybe I'm just *wishing* it was refined to be more like FFV. ^_^  One good thing I had heard was that they did away with the capacity points, so that you can switch jobs at will.

Guitar Hero at Best Buy >_>.

Whoops!  Sorry about that, I've tweaked a bit, so I hope its a little better now. 

@Myaje:

Wow! You actually bothered to level up other characters outside of your main team?
I hardly ever do that, I have a party with Vahn and Ashe reaching 70 and Fran just at 60 (I only have two of those Double Exp. accessories ) and the rest is at 15 or something, haha.
As long as you give them all their Mistnucks they can pretty much kick ass at any level.
Levelling up actually does very little to improve your status, except for max Hp and Mp, equipment is definitely the gist of your strength.

I think there's the paranoia that the game will force you to play characters outside of your main team. It JUST happened to me with TotA (but that game fortunately levels up all the characters, even if they're not in your main party).

Given my family's traditional buying-freeze come November 1st, I went on a bit of a buying spree before it was too late. Picked up Okami & Shadow of the Colossus for the PS2, and Megaman ZX and Nintendogs for the DS.

Okami is pretty good. The Viewtiful Joe-style approach to battles is a bit unforunate, and MY GOD are those the worst speech SFX ever made, but the basic game design flows well and has plenty of potential. I certainly see it through because the charm is there (it doesn't hurt that the wolf itself is pretty damned hilarious, even without any dialogue).

Colossus is also pretty good. Made it past the first one, and am suitably impressed with the execution of the whole thing. I think I'll keep at a pace of one a day, so it'll last.

Nintendogs came at my sister's demand; she's been coddling a Retriever for three days now, and insisted I share the love. I'm raising a Welsh Corgi named Mario, who loves to be scratched on the belly and is terrified of the barking ball he found on a walk today. Wierd, but cute wierd.

ZX will be tried later tonight - I usually play my DS most often in bed. I'll add comments about it then.

Add this to all the previous ones I mentioned (save Bangai-O - I finished that. Terribly unfulfilling when all is said and done), and I've enough to make it 'til Christmas easily. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to see if Mario wants walkies.

People may remember my initial negativity on Megaman ZX, in no small part because it looked like another 're-imagining' of an older MM series like Battle Network was (and let's just say BN is uh, not a favorite at this point). Well, I must say, ZX has turned out to be the most delicious crow I've ever eaten...it's not a new series per se, it's the next in the Zero series really, and it's absolutely glorious.

Everything that sucked about the Zero games in the past has been fixed or scrapped, the form system is brilliant, and the difficulty is just right. As an example: Zero 1-3, you could only get a boss' skill if you'd cleared the previous stage with a high rank (ensuring easy times for those already adept, and squat for those who need it most), and in Zero 4, only by choosing unfavorable weather conditions (just plain annoying). In ZX, you get the skill in any case, but hitting the part of the boss where the skill is located will 'damage' it, necessitating the use of money to bring it back up to full strength. So the incentive is there to eliminate the boss the hard way, but there's no irreversible penalty for just rubbing them out by any means necessary. It's perfect.

The sound is up there, too - very nearly at Zero 2's level in many ways. Far and away my favorite piece is Trap Factory, the 'special' boss battle theme (also, said boss characters are my favorites so far), and lead contender for my Track of the Year.

Basically, after 5 years of false starts of varying degrees, Inti Creates has churned out not only the best game of their team's history, but the best MM game in nearly a decade. How's that for praise?

Finally got round to buying Valkyrie Profile Silmeria.

Blimey.

Some ESPgaluda II and making my way through Wild Arms 4.

Pretty much every shmup on the Dreamcast, Ultimate Spiderman and Worms: Armageddon on PC.