Is it really THAT bad in terms of linearity? Will I hate Vanille’s voice actor? Does the apparently awesome battle system make up for both of those things? Time to find out!

…by the way, I haven’t forgotten about the past few games (White Knight, Bioshock 2, etc.). The urge to SC2 has been trumping everything else lately so that post is still on the back burner.

Yeah.

First up, Tales of Graces. I take back everything I said about it before – the game is not as refined and challenging by default. I played about 99% the game on Hard, which really is an appropriate description. Certain sections of the game have really deadly one-shot trash mobs on Hard, so I decided to see what the same mobs were like on Normal Mode. Guess what? The same mobs went from deadly to a minor annoyance.

So yes, Graces can be challenging, just not ever on Normal. It seems obvious when I type it out that Hard Mode should be hard and Normal should be normal, but recent Tales games never really had a Hard mode that was hard. Some did, but it was hard enough that you’d have to beat it on Normal first then take advantage of the Grade Shop bonuses.

Two random nitpicks: I didn’t like the fact that costumes were tied to Aliases/Titles, since you switch them often to keep learning skills. I hope they keep those two aspects of the game separate next time. Also, the game had its fair share of bugs. Bosses unintentionally removing one of your party members from the battle permanently? Ask Scin about that one.

Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed Graces (it’s hard for me NOT to enjoy a Tales game) and would recommend it… whenever it’s slated to come out in the US.

Next up, Bayonetta. I cleared Normal, Hard, and Non-Stop Climax Mode back to back to back and it was a total blast. You’re playing the game and sometimes you think “That was so over the top, they couldn’t possibly do anything more crazy than that, right?”. WRONG. Bayonetta is that crazy, and has the ridiculously fun gameplay to match.

There’s only one thing that annoyed me, and that’s the fact that they decided to combine the Space Harrier level and the final fight with Jeanne into the same chapter. Seriously? Yeah, it’s not a big deal when you’re doing Normal, or even Hard. But on Non-Stop Climax Mode… ugh. Certainly makes doing clean runs much more tedious/difficult.

There is something very wrong with you if you own a 360 and do not own Bayonetta. I don’t care if you don’t like action games! Don’t bother with the PS3 version.

Last but not least, Mass Effect. Yes, I know… I’m so late to the party here. Having only played BioWare’s latest RPG Dragon Age before this, I kinda knew what I was getting into. With Mass Effect 2 coming in just a few days, I decided it was time to get caught up and see what all the praise was about. It wasn’t as backwards as I thought for a game that’s a few years old already.

Before I booted the game up, I asked a few people what would be the most powerful party in Mass Effect and the answer I got was “get someone with Singularity”. It wasn’t really an answer now that I think about it. I decided right there though that I was going to avoid getting anyone with Singularity and just see how it goes without it, as an attempt to up the difficulty on myself.  Once I got familiar with what the heck is what in ME, it was pretty breezy.

I started off on the highest difficulty I could (Veteran) and was a shotgun specced Vanguard, with Wrex and Tali always with me. Anything except a Krogan was just a cinch with a shotgun, going from two shotting early on down to one shotting the weaker mobs with one blast. Pretty fun, but rather bland as I went along. I suppose I could have gone Soldier for that but I enjoyed the Vanguard’s support abilities.

Overall, I enjoyed it. Not much else to say, other than I hope Mass Effect 2 spices things up combat-wise. Also, elevators need to die.

My copy of Mass Effect 2 should be arriving soon~ I’ll be streaming it whenever possible.

Ahh… finally another Tales game has arrived. I was hoping for another on the PS3 or 360 for all that crazy HD glory, but this will do. Namco seems to have really squeezed every ounce of power out of the Wii for this one, showing a decent jump in detail and color from Symphonia 2. Suddenly I miss Arc Rise Fantasia now.

The battle system is pretty interesting so far and is fairly different than the recent installments, promoting timing, combos, and efficiency much more with the introduction of the CC system. I’m only a couple of hours in and it is quickly building up into a fun and challenging system to master.

More to come later, probably when I’m done with the game.

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.