Pick 5: JRPG's I'd like to see make a return

I've been playing a lot of JRPG's lately. Mainly because I missed the Japanese style and concept. While I was playing Final Fantasy XIII-2, it made me look back and think which series would I like to play again? Better yet, what series would I like to see make a return as next-gen. 

I was first exposed to the genre through Final Fantasy VII, and from there on, anything RPG I picked up. Back in the PlayStation One and PS2 days, there were tons of JRPG's in the console, with the western RPG's dominating the PC platform. But now, JRPG's are quite rare. The market isn't what it used to be, making it a big risk for most developers. Some still continue like Square Enix with Final Fantasy, but even they are struggling to stay afloat. But not all is lost. The latest JRPG released was Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch receiving good reception all across the board. Ni No Kuni shows that there's still a market out there. With the  whole industry slowly converting to the next generation, I'm hoping to see some of these JRPG series to make big return. All you can do in the end is hope really...

Breath of Fire series

This series has always been great. Breath of Fire is well known for it's recurring characters. Each game has an entirely different story, but always have the dragon shapshifting silent protagonist named Ryu and Nina, a girl with wings. The latest release for the series was Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, released in 2003. Since then, nothing new came out. Capcom has forced this great series to go on hiatus, Why? no one knows for sure. Maybe it's the now crowded RPG market making Capcom think it's a bad investment, or the lack of confidence that the series would be well received by the modern crowd today. Whatever the reason, if Capcom would stop thinking like a business for 1 second and just give a go signal for a new game, I'd buy it in a heart beat. Imagine a Breath of Fire game with Capcom's new game engine for the PS4?

Chrono Trigger

A true RPG classic. Chrono Trigger is considered one of the best JRPG's of all time. Actually, some might even consider it one of the best games of all time. With its multiple endings(around 12), memorable characters, and having a two dimensional world, it left a lasting impression that was hard to shake off until now. Even some of the endings were quite shocking as a kid. Time travelling is tricky to pull off and Chrono Trigger had a story that was actually good. Chrono Trigger were the many games that embraced the ATB(Active Time Battle) system and is the game that had the exact art as Dragon Ball. There has been no new title for the series after Chrono Cross. That's 13 years Square Enix, get to it!

Suikoden

The one thing I haven't seen lately in current JRPGs is a lot of playable characters to choose from, and I mean a lot. That was Suikoden's trademark feature - 108 playable characters. Suikoden gave players the option to collect playable characters and I remember getting hooked because of it. Talking to every NPC I find in hopes to recruit all of them for my army. The strategic war battles is also something that I miss - A part in the game were it becomes a strategy game, with the protagonist commanding his newly formed army to go against the enemy nation. There was also base building. It had a fairly simply turn-based gameplay, but everything else made it unique. The series is still alive to this day, but now lives in hand-held devices such as the PSP and Nintendo DS.

Jade Cocoon

This is probably a personal favorite. Not many knew about Jade Cocoon back in the day. I myself had no idea what it was all about, but with me addicted to anything RPG at the time, I picked it up and tried it out. After a few hours I was already a fan. It was Pokemon with a more tribal setting. Come to think of it, Ni No Kuni is somewhat similar to Jade Cocoon - having the ability to summon monsters to fight your battles. It had a sequel in 2001 on the PS2, but after that, gone. From what I know the series did not die from failure, but rather the studio Genki decided to focus on another genre, racing games.  Not even sure if the company still exists.

Wild Arms 1 and 2 

This series is pure nostalgia. I remember those late nights of me trying to figure out the puzzles as a kid and humming to the Wild Arms intros. The Wild Arms series lost steam quickly after the second game, making me consider that the series only have two titles(It actually has five).  There's a lot going for Wild Arms - The western setting, the anime cutscenes, gameplay focused on guns, and the damn good sountrack. I'd love to see Wild Arms get a new face for next gen though, and if they can make me hum while playing, it will be worth every penny. Instead of just posting gameplay footage of the game, I'll just dump one of the game intro's below and if you get goosebumps from hearing it, you know you want the series to return in a big way.

Wild Arms 2 intro

What about you? What games would you like to see make a big return?

Recent Buys: Episode 5 - Slow motion shooting and the early days of 3D gaming

Most of them items I'll be mention in this post aren't exactly new but this isn't called "newest buys", this is called "recent buys" which the whole "recent" aspect of it applies to myself and my wallet.

I'll be going through these items chronologically since 2 of them I got almost 2 weeks ago. Those 2 would be PS3 copies of Vanquish and Just Cause 2. Vanquish is another game by Platinum Games which involved a futuristic power suit with a design that I would say resembled the suit in P.N.03, design wise, where you can power slide while jet boosting. That plus guns, right-stick aiming, slow motion powers and a lot of explosions. What more could you want?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr1RzIr0Rzc[/youtube]

Just Cause 2 was more of an impulse buy if anything. I was originally looking for a copy of Blur and hopefully a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Blur was out of stock but they did have 1 copy of X-Men Origins however that copy had a nasty gash on the side of the disc and was still going for 700php in the shop so I decided to drop that and spotted a Platinum release copy of Just Cause 2. Back before I got a PS3, Just Cause 2 was supposed to be my go to sandbox game but DataBlitz only ever had R2 copies and the game was going for 30$ (roughly around 1300php) on PSN. This one was 700php and worked like a charm. I decided to shell out the money for it since I might not see a disc copy of that game for a while. I haven't played it yet because there's a bug in the game that forces you to both press the Cross and Circle button at the same time to confirm, jump and even grapple. This is a problem since for Asia PS3s, Cross is cancel and Circle is confirm. Apparently there's a patch online that fixes this but since I still don't have internet at home (damn PLDT) I'll put this game on the back burner and finish Bayonetta and Vanquish first.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kjs-SC70Wg[/youtube]

For those of you who don't know me personally, my birthday is coming up and friends got me a little something (Shoutouts to the iAc Ninjas). They got me a brand new copy of Battlefield 3 Limited Edition. I only played a little bit of the campaign mode which hasn't impressed me but this game is all about the multiplayer and once I get my internet back, game oooon!

Time for the biggest purchase for this episode. I've been craving to play a lot of old Original PlayStation games like the Bust A Move/Groove 1 and 2, Chocobo Racing, and especially Mega Man Legends 1 and 2. Since PSN doesn't seem to want to add these awesome games to their PS1 Classics library, might as well take matters into my own hands. I wasn't the only one who had the PS1 craze as Tupasheep was also bitten by the nostalgia bug. He did a search on http://www.tipidpc.com/ and found 2 sellers of the original fat PS1, one of which was a recent ad and the other was a fairly recent one. Both were hovering around the 2000php mark and looked to be in good condition considering it's a 16 year old system. I got mine last Saturday (3/31/2012) from the seller retrogamerPH (Kuya Ed). The controllers were a little beat up and the open button for the disc cover gets stuck from time to time but other than that the PS1 works like a charm. It couldn't read some of the PS1 games I still had but that might be the problem of the discs themselves and not the system. I need to get my hands on some other PS1 games to test it out further but other than that I at least got my Bust A Groove 2 fix over the weekend. Fever Time!

Oh and while digging out my old PS1 games, I found this. I forgot I owned one. The Original Soundtrack for the first Metal Gear Solid game.

This is the first track from the disc.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqqq8uqSDnk[/youtube]

RGP # 18 - You gotta do what?

Random Gaming Post # 18

I gotta believe! Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind! If you wanna test me I'm sure you'll find that the things I teach ya is sure to beat ya but nevertheless you get a lesson from teacher now KICK!

A blast down nostalgia lane. PaRappa the Rapper was my first ever music game and the 2nd game that I ever played on my original PlayStation. One the most bizarre video games I have ever played and no doubt one that I will forever cherish.

Its bizarre gameplay and scoring system lets you play the songs, win or fail all the songs get burned in you mind forever but somehow you never get tired of hearing it over and over again.

PaRappa the Rapper got rereleased on the PSP with some added songs in multiplayer mode. If you missed this gem of a game and you own a PSP then there is no reason for you not to pick this game up.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eZcV1UuUzI?rel=0&w=425&h=349]