The beginning of my November was dominated by Dragon Age: Origins. I picked up the PS3 version. I worried about the interface differences between the PC and console ports, but the controller scheme grew on me quickly and I blew through back-to-back playthroughs of Hard and Nightmare with a Human Rogue and Mage. Thank god for the skip button.

Mmm… not much else on my mind at the moment.  Tales of Graces is coming pretty soon, so that’ll likely be the next topic.

Valkyria Chronicles! Did I mention I bought this and a PS3 a while back and beat it? There really isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said unanimously by reviewers around the universe. It’s a great game and it deserves the all the praise. Can’t say I’m happy with the sequel being announced for PSP though. What were they thinking…

I’m also watching the Valkyria anime which is kind of fun to see how they diverge from the game. It could use more Edy though. And less Faldio getting in the way of Welkin x Alicia!

This should have been mentioned a long time ago, but I’m pretty happy Gust made the move to the current-gen with Atelier Rorona. Yeah, I do love the Atelier series. But that’s not what’s really significant about it. What it really means is… Ar Tonelico 3 could be next to make the jump!

I’m being serious about this – it’s not like they didn’t leave any hints at the end of 2. I distinctly remember reading something on their Ar Portal site that mentioned the staff is working on the next title in the series. So, yeah! Something to look forward to in the seemingly distant future. Also, I’m still waiting for someone to announce that they’re porting Rorona to the US. /stare @ NIS America

That reminds me, Mana Khemia 2 is out today (or rather, shipped yesterday). I could have sworn I had a little tidbit about this already when I was making the draft for this post but apparently not… Anyways, I played a few hours of the JP version back when it came out and I had fun. If you’ve played the the first entry then you know what to expect. I picked Ulrika back then and god, she gets the weirdest characters. Not exactly how I expected the characters to split but I’m still going to try that route when I pick up the NA version. I’m desperately hoping for a party merge later on though…

I’ve mentioned having played FF11 a couple of times here. Or at least I think I did. I was definitely very fond of the game – maybe too fond. Eventually the glaring flaws of the game started to claw into my brain and I started playing WoW instead. I still have fun talking about it and what was so good about it though, so you can imagine my surprise and joy when they announced FF14. There is still a lot to be skeptical about though.

For example… and I think this goes without saying that this is the most important thing that needs to be answered by Square Enix: Can we trust them to learn from their mistakes that they made with FF11?

I had a bit of a rant going about how Blizzard actually communicates with their customers that I decided to omit. The point will still be brought up – it took forever for SE to get the hint that maybe something was wrong with they way they designed certain things that made them a miserable experience. HNMs, anyone? The changes came too late, and some weren’t enough to solve anything. Then we’ve got the recent new ideas – things like Wings of the Goddess and subsequent mini-expansions. Apparently they’re nothing short of utterly horrible in terms of actual content. Will SE know what is fun and what isn’t this time around? I certainly hope so…

More to come in a few days…

On the other hand, if things don’t work out – then the search for something new to ease my boredom is on.

I guess I’ll update this later when I don’t feel so angry. Until then~

Anyways, getting straight to what’s on my mind – I suddenly became very disinterested in completing Fragile. Why? They killed off the awesome robot backpack AI already. WTF? There was so much potential there. I may go back to it somewhere in the future but for now, my focus will be shifting to Ar Tonelico 2.