That's the biggest selling point to me (outside of it looking gorgeous and being pretty fun) is that it's shorter. Hell, for my money it could be even shorter. I just don't have the desire to play a game for 60 hours like I could when I was younger.

I probably won't pick it up until after the holidays as my gaming plate is already pretty full. But I certainly look forward to playing it.

I was getting read to rent Dead Rising and give that a try until I learned they never released a patch to fix the text. I'm now retroactively pissed! I'm still some months off from an HDTV, and my 360 is suiting me fine on my SDTV, so I'm just gonna be over here in my corner grumbling. You would feel my pain if you know how much I love the zombies. I should play some Zombies Ate My Neighbors to soothe the burn.

Yup. Five of them to be exact. Hopefully I'll get there early and get to choose.

Go get Stubbs the Zombie. It is backwards compatible and really fun.

I concur. That game was a blast.

It is also one of the few video game soundtracks i own. The music was great in that game.

A shame it got so ignored.

It's the ONLY videogame soundtrack I own.

I actually have Stubbs the Zombie. I just haven't gotten around to playing it yet. Maybe I shall do that then.

About how many hours is it?

8-10 maybe? It seemed like a pretty short game but remained fun the entire time.

edit: The only other video game soundtracks i own are the Jed Set Radio (well JGR) and JSR: Future.

I haven't picked up Blue Dragon yet, still trying to decide between it and Eternal Sonata. Been so wrapped up in WoW the last few months that I don't have time to tackle 2 RPG's. I'm leaning towards Sonata since I enjoyed the demo more. Thank God Mass Effect got pushed back to November otherwise I'd really be hurtin'.

I'd say Eternal Sonata too as long as you go back and grab Blue Dragon at some point. Blue Dragon has THE BEST implementation of a job/class system ever and it has easily my favorite RPG soundtrack since Final Fantasy VI (III US).

Have you played many of the FF games? Reason I ask is because some of them have amazing job systems. If you have played them and still think Blue Dragon is better than I'll definitely have to play it at some point. Although the story was worthless, the job system in FFX2 was good enough to keep me playing it for close to 80 hours. FF Tactics Advance had an addictive job system as well.

I've played most of them.. not X-2, mind you. Blue Dragon's job system is very similar to the one in Final Fantasy V.. except good. There are only nine well-balanced classes, not thirty with twenty unless ones. You can equip multiple skills from leveled classes on new one, not just one. There's even one class that expands your ability to use more skills from other classes. That's just my opinion though, I prefer balance and playability over a numbers game, so you might prefer something that has thirty or forty classes, etc.

Not at all. Like you said, it's not the number of classes but how they're implemented. That does sound like the one found in FFV where once you reach a certain level in a class you can equip skills from it when you change to another one. A few questions:

-Can you select any class at any point or do they get unlocked throughout the game?
-Can you change classes mid battle (FFX2 had this and it made the battles a lot of fun)?
-I'm assuming that your class determines what types of weapons/armor you can carry?

You start with the basic classes and then you unlock more at level intervals (level 5, 10, 20, etc.). You get to pick from the rest of them though, so nothing is unlocked later in the game, so to speak. You get to carry over three skills to other classes at the start but can open that up to ten skills (technically eleven, but one slot has to hold the "Skill +8" skill). There are no weapons, just accessories that affect you attack/defense and those are not limited to class.. however there are bonus accessories that the same class that earns you extra skill slots unlocks bonus accessory slots. No, you can't change class during battle (though there wouldn't be a need for it).

I never could understand the draw to "turn based" RPG's. I prefer hack-n-slash games like Diablo/Oblivion/Baldur's Gate DA. Are there any good Anime style hack-n-slash games? I did play Record of Lodoss War on the Dreamcast which was pretty good.

PLENTY! It's my favorite genre.

Kingdom Hearts Series
Tales Series
Ys Series
Shining Series (the PS2 ones, at least)
Mana Series

Just to name a few as I'm getting ready to go home.

Eternal Sonata is turn based hack and slash.

The Blue Dragon demo was terrible -- the game itself is much better.

Stopped by the store today and saw that the Eternal Sonata faceplates came in...yay. Here they are:

www.adamhamil.com/stuff/sonata.jpg

and here are all my faceplates incase anyone cared...


www.adamhamil.com/stuff/faceplates.jpg

So, yeah, did I say Medal of Honor: Airborne sucks? I played through on Normal (there is Casual, Normal and Expert). So I beat the game on normal. I got those achievement points. They didn't give me casual like they did in CoD2. Yet another reason why EA sucks donkey balls.

From my experience, it's about a 50/50 chance that any particular game is going to give you the lower difficulty achievements for passing a harder mode. I hate it.

I would if the faceplate wasn't vertical. There is no way in hell I'd ever put my system vertical and have the thing get superhot and have the chips fall off. I wish there were more horizontal faceplates, but I guess MS wants your box to break.

Totally agree. I have had my 360 set horizontal since day one.

That's good to know, I took the game off my wishlist once I played that demo, it was really bad.

I will probably wait to pick it up especially with all the other games coming out. Probably a next-summer type pickup.

Eternal Sonata, is a game I am looking forward too, love the visuals.

I heard BestBuy is selling the Halo Edition 360 tomorrow, and you get a $50 gift card. Anyone know if it's true?