Monthly post time! I lied about adding pictures to the other post. Maybe I’ll do it for this one soon.

Let’s see… early in the month I finished up Monster Hunter Tri with Scin, after putting in about a good 230+ hours into it (single player & farming included). Seriously fun stuff, even though searching for some of the High Rank materials can get pretty grindy.

Beating Alatreon for the first time was 40 minutes of pure intensity.I think all of us were pretty much out of potions by the end. As we went on and did it for the other members of our hunting group, we all got better at fighting him and only dipped into our regular potions every subsequent attempt (except for our last one where you could just feel everyone was a bit tired, so some bad shit happened there).

I found it a bit odd that the mission to hunt Deviljho came after Alatreon, since Alatreon kinda requires a lot more focus. I know you can encounter him during other quests in the previous tier but honestly, who is going to go out of their way at that gear level to fight him alongside whatever random monster unless they’re desperate for his gear? I think adding one of his regular quests into the end of the previous tier as key quests might have made a bit more sense.

I’m not that big on playing MMOs in foreign languages (actually subscribing to them anyways, as opposed to just beta testing) so I hope Capcom continues to consider setting up Monster Hunter Frontier over here. They’ve got a lengthy post detailing why it’d be pretty costly to set up but I think eventually when the fanbase is built up even more, they could do it successfully. That means make more console versions and localize them, Capcom!

But enough about that, let’s get on to the major news this month- XSEED is bringing a ton of Falcom PSP games over to the States, starting with Ys Seven! I totally forgot the order they’re coming in, but other games being localized include Ys I & II Chronicles, The Oath in Felghana, and the entire Sora no Kiseki trilogy. It’ll be really nice to finally play Sora no Kiseki full translated, even though it’s going to be on PSP. I’m still pretty sad that Seven hasn’t been ported to PC yet (will it ever be? I could have sworn they said that was their intention in one of the initial newsletters announcing it),  but honestly at this point I will take whatever I can get. More people will be exposed to the awesomeness that is Ys, and maybe this will help fund a transition to HD console games (Adol battling bosses in HD 3D, can you imagine?).

One of my other favorite Japanese developers, Gust, has already made a great transition from PS2/PSP to PS3. While initially they did not take full graphical advantage of the system with Atelier Rorona, they’ve stepped it up a notch with Ar Tonelico 3. Both games have seen decent success – enough to fuel Rorona’s localization and Tonelico 3′s soon to be announced. Now they’re taking it even further with Atelier Totori, which just looks so absolutely beautiful I get goosebumps thinking about it. To be able to recreate the character designs like that is what every cel-shaded game should aim to do. Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt that they have some great designs so ripe for recreation in the first place. Rorona and Totori are so cute! It”s pretty tempting to import Totori but I guess it’d just feel wrong playing it before the localized version comes out – not to mention that by the time it’d get to my house it would no doubt collide with….

…Deathsmiles!　A horizontal Cave shooter OMG! I’d like to point out right now that I am in no way, shape, or form actually good at shooters (i.e. being able to 1CC them with total ease) but maybe that’s because I don’t put in the effort and practice for long enough to get good at them. I usually get into the mood for shooters and I play it non-stop for a while and then some sorta RPG gets released and steals me away… when I end up getting back to it I’ve pretty much unlearned everything. Despite that, I still find them to be great fun and I’m extremely excited for Deathsmiles. I kinda forget what else comes out in July aside from SC2 Retail at the end of it, but more than likely I’ll be dedicating the whole month to beating every mode of Deathsmiles with the magic of online co-op. I hope this option comes as a standard to all 360 Cave ports, but oddly their most recent releases just don’t have it. Vertical shooters have it tough in the age of HD widescreen awesomeness I guess. I’m getting chills just thinking about playing it on my 60″ HDTV.

Anyways, with all that being announced I’ve decided it’s time to actually GET a PSP, probably sometime early next month. There’s a tiny dry spell between when SC2 beta ends and Peace Walker which will be perfect to get into one of the many PSP games I’ve never played. Or so I thought, I wrote that before they announced that the beta would be extended. I think I’ll just considering it ending on the 31st anyways; I’m satisfied with the amount I’ve played over the past couple of weeks.

Expect some streaming to happen with some of that PSP stuff later~!