Persona 3 Fes

Sorry I've been missing posts left and right I'll be getting back on track today or yesterday lol

So this weeks random game is Persona 3 Fes for the PS2! Persona has to be my favorite RPG series of all time and it all started with the original Persona 3. The funny thing is I just randomly picked it up at Best Buy one day after reading a review on it, it seemed interesting so I picked it up I must have been 13 at the time and it was my first hardcore RPG. I think it took me well over a year to beat the game and then I learned about Persona 3 Fes about to be released that would explain the rather vague ending.

Persona 3 Fes is a add-on to the original adding new content such as the answer story where you play as Aigis, Which takes place after the main story. Also adding in new social links, personas, events, and a new difficulty setting making an already challenging game even harder.

Persona's gameplay is a very unique hybrid of RPGs and Dating Simulators and they mix really well surprisingly. You take control of the Main Character who you get to name and is silent for the whole game asides from the battle grunts. Your just an average high school student until strange things happen at your dormitory and at midnight monsters called shadows appear and one attacks you. This sets up the mix of RPG and Dating Sim as during the day your just an average student but at night your the field tactician.

The graphics are good for the PS2 but what carries the game is the art style, impressive personas and attacks, and the anime stills for the characters. And the gameplay is unique and fresh enough that it doesn't get old because once you get bored of the action you can go check out social links for a while. And speaking of social links, social links are the dating sim aspect. Social links power up your personas so they're essential to beating the game it's basically you hanging out with friends and wooing girls but its much deeper then that as I actually cared about the characters i was talking to.

Now the Persona's get there own section,. Persona are your other self and they let you fight the shadows every party member you meet has one persona with strengths and weaknesses. But the main character is different he can use multiple persona allowing you to fight in any situation given you have the right persona for the job.

Now the meat of the game the battle system. The battle system is very fast paced and on higher difficulties will just outright destroy you if you go into the fight wrong. fights are turn-based and the main goal of fights are to exploit your enemies weaknesses while covering your own, There are multiple benefits of exploiting the weaknesses. First you deal more damage, Second it knocks down the enemy skipping his turn, Third you get to go again, and Fourth if you knock down all the enemies you get to use the All Out Attack which is a devastating attack to all your enemies. This also applies to you so be careful and if your character dies it's instant game over.

And last but not least the story. The story is very atmospheric and dark and the setting is very modern which is good. Its a relatable story full of drama and the occasional comedic moment. But here is the first and possibly only downside to the game the pace of the story can be a little slow especially in the beginning but it picks up and gets really serious about halfway through the game.

So this is probably one of my favorite games and because it is I give it a 10...but I'll be professional. I give it a 9.5 if you like RPGs you have to try this game out. You can download it off of PSN for 30-40$ I can't remember and for those who don't know Persona 3 is getting a full length movie that I hope the U.S. gets.

You've read one of my tales so come back for more Tales of Gaming!!

Missed posts

Sorry about the last couple of days of not posting I've been busy and didn't have the time to post I will be back on schedule tomorrow starting with the new releases as usual.

Gaming News

I'm back with some news for the week

We officially saw some gameplay with Chief Thunder in Killer Instinct with and the actual design of the character he seems to be a grappler which fits how he looks he's also the only character that would fit the archtype of a grappler so Killer Instinct officially has a grappler awesome. Here's a link to IGN http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/08/15/killer-instinct-chief-thunder-revealed

In older news Luigi was announced for SSB4 not much is known about if they changed his moveset or not but its not too surprising he made it in considering he's been in every smash bros to date but who knows if some series vets will return considering the rumor from brawl that Ness was supposed to be replaced with Lucas. and a link to the official smash site http://www.smashbros.com/us/characters/luigi.html

That's all the gaming news for today see you next time on Tales of Gaming!

New Releases

These are the new releases for the week

Starting up we have Mario and Luigi: Dream Team
System: 3DS
Developer: Alpha Dream
Genre: RPG
Date: 8/11/13
Price: $39.99

Hammerwatch
System: PC
Publisher: Crackshell
Genre: Indie, Action, Co-op
Date: 8/12/13
Price: $9.99

Then we have Payday 2
System: PC, Xbox 360, and PS3
Developer: Overkill Software
Genre: Shooter, Co-op
Date: 8/13/13
Price: PC $29.99, Console $39.99

We also got Ducktales: Remastered
System: PC,Nintendo Eshop, PSN, and Xbox Arcades
Developer: Wayforward Games
Genre: Platformer
Date: 8/13/13
Price $14.99

Europa Universalis 4
System: PC
Developer: Paradox Development
Genre: Strategy
Date: 8/13/13
Price: $39.99

Dream early access
System: PC
Developer: Hypersloth
Genre: Indie, Casual, Adventure
Date: 8/13/13
Price: $14.99

Worms Clan Wars
System: PC
Developer: Team 17
Genre: Strategy
Date: 8/15/13
Price: $24.99

And Space Hulk
System: PC
Developer: Full Control
Genre: Indie, Strategy
Date: 8/15/13
Price: $29.99

You've heard about the new releases so stop by Thursday to hear news from Tales of Gaming!

Random Game

Today I'll be talking about Rune Factory Frontier on the Wii by Marvelous Entertainment.

Rune Factory is a Farming Simulation RPG hybrid and is a spin-off of the Harvest Moon series. Rune Factory Frontier takes place in a town called Trampoli a pretty normal town...that is until you notice the giant whale swimming in the sky. The story is unique but kind of loses steam as the story progresses and the RPG aspects are fun but really grindy especially at the end of the game. But the farming and dating aspects are pretty fun throughout though meeting the conditions to have the people join the village are very vague and I was forced to use a wiki to meet everyone, which is not the way you want to do things, especially when meeting certain people open up new game mechanics that are essential to the farming like the Runey's. The Runey's are probably the hardest part about the game learning about them and managing them are essential to farming, but the problem for me was it was hard to find the time to go wandering around and start the events that introduce the characters, this is in pretty much EVERY Harvest Moon and Rune Factory, while this is a complaint I had with the game its not really a big deal it just makes the beginning a bit more confusing then it should be especially for beginners.

I personally give the game a 7.5 to 8 its a very good game and I like the farming and the dating aspects, the beginning could be a bit more streamlined and unless you like grinding the endgame and especially the bosses are brutal. I recommend this game to anyone who likes the Harvest Moon series or enjoyed the dating simulation from the Persona series. I've told you one of my tales so come back for more Tales of Gaming!

P.S. My favorite was Melody lol

Random Day

Random day I just talk about my week randomly its the whatever day...

So I got Tales of Xillia been playing it whenever my friend or girlfriend are around it's fun and I'll be writing a review for the game soon!

I've also been volunteering at my local Petco taking care of cats, its been about 6 months and I recently adopted a 5 month old kitten. He is awesome but kinda painfully playful...best way I can describe it lol.

But I haven't been doing a lot this week so i'll end it here, I'll be back tomorrow with my random game day.

Gaming News

This week we have new details on Guilty Gear Xrd, and the Tales of Series.

Guilty Gear Xrd has officially gone into the public testing phase over in japan and some say its somewhat more simplistic then previous games. I honestly don't know if this is good for the series or not but we will see. Also 4 veteran characters will be returning this includes Chipp Zanuff, May, Venom, and a newly redesigned Potemkin. I think its a bit odd how Potemkin is the only character to receive a redesign out of the 8 characters that have been announced but there will be more characters to be announced shortly.

Tales of Xillia sold well enough that we will officially be getting the sequel Tales of Xillia 2 next year. I for one am pretty excited because so far I am enjoying Xillia, though I haven't gotten all that far into the game due to my play buddies being unavailable I'll soon be giving my review on the game whenever I beat both the stories.

Check back on Saturday for my whatever day!

New Releases

Sorry I am a little late was a bit busy yesterday but any way here is the new releases for this week

First we have Tales of Xillia for PS3 it's the 13th main Tales game.
Genre: RPG
Release: 8/6/13
Price: PSN $55
         Store $60

Second we got Dragon's Crown for PS3 and Vita by Atlus.
Genre: RPG
Release: 8/6/13
Price: $50 PS3
         $40 Vita

Next it was released early last week Pikmin 3 on Wii U by Nintendo.
Genre: RTS
Release: 8/4/13
Price: $50

Next Brothers A Tale of Two Sons on Xbox Arcade, and soon to be released for Steam and PSN by 505 games.
Genre: Adventure
Release:8/7/13 and TBA for Steam and PSN
Price: $40

Next Divinity Dragon Commander for Steam by Larian Studios.
Genre: RTS and Action
Release: 8/6/13
Price: $40

Guacamelee for Steam by Drinkbox Studios.
Genre: Platformer Indie
Release: 8/8/13
Price: TBA

Spelunky for Steam By Mossmouth
Genre: Indie Platformer
Release: 8/8/13
Price: TBA

Papers Please by 3909
Genre: Adventure Indie
Release: 8/8/13
Price: $10

And lastly Guncraft by Exato Games.
Genre: Action Indie
Release: 8/9/13
Price: TBA

I am really enjoying the new Tales of (kinda the reason I was a bit late).

Random Game day #1

So today's been a bit busy, I'm kinda late but, oh well the very first random game day will be...

Capcom's Aladdin for the Super Nintendo!!!

Pretty random right, well that's the point. So moving on, Aladdin is a platformer back in the days when Capcom did licensed games for Nintendo, classics like Ducktales, Goof Troop, and Darkwing Duck. Aladdin had two versions the Mega Drive version by Virgin Interactive, and the version I'll be writing about by Capcom.

So to start I played this game quite a lot when I was little, I was actually really good at the game, doing no death runs like it was no big deal. I've come to learn that the game really isn't that hard but still I was maybe 4 or 5 so yeah kind of a big deal.

So the objective of the game was to reach the end of levels while collecting diamonds which can be used for mini games which if you collected all 70 (which I didn't do) you get a bonus level. There was quite the variety of levels ranging from running around the streets of Agrabah to jumping around a crazy genie world to flying carpet rides, it was always changing which was nice.

Now I spent a lot of time with this game when I was little and I thoroughly enjoyed the game I personally would give the game a 7 or an 8. The sprite work was nice, the levels were varied, and while the game was NOT hard it was fun I recommend the game to anybody who like platformers. 

Its been a while

Man I haven't posted since May just haven't really been in the mood to post, but I am back and now I have a schedule for things I will be posting every other day instead of every day like when I started.

So starting Sunday I'll be starting back up with my "random game day" where I'll talk about a random game in my collection ranging to the NES era I'll be talking about my opinions on the game and how far I've gone with it...I have quite the collection so it'll be a while before I run out.

On Tuesday it will be the "Release day" basically the release for the week on all platforms, steam, Wii U, PS3, Xbox and PSN.

Thursday is "News Flash" just like the name it'll be weekly news.

And Saturday is the "whatever day" I'll just post about whatever :p

So that's the schedule from now on here's hoping I stay on track.

Fighting games

Today I'll be talking about what I like about fighting games.

What I like about fighting games are the faced paced, twitch reflex style fighter like Marvel vs Capcom 3, or the Guilty Gear style fighters. I especially like Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena I like the characters, and enjoy the fast paced action. I'm not a "pro" at either of these games but I feel I can hold my own in both games and as such when I get the equipment I'll be posting my matches on Youtube. This won't be for a while though as I don't have the money and I need to learn how to edit videos it'll happen eventually.

Now the type of characters I like to play. I generally find myself moving towards the speedy rushdown characters and I am very character loyal so I won't play characters I dislike like in Blazblue I can play the whole cast asides from characters like Arakune, or Hakumen, and especially Tager as I've never liked grapple heavy characters. My mains in Blazblue are Ragna, and Carl two very different characters.

In P4A I like all of the characters as I love the Persona universe and my favorite characters are Minato Arisato (the main character from Persona 3 who unfortunately didn't appear for reasons I won't spoil) and Naoto Shirogane. So being the character loyalist that I am I obviously play Naoto but in my opinion I'm better with Yosuke and Labrys.

I still currently play P4A but I haven't played Blazblue in quite a while and when I jumped on recently I couldn't find anyone which sucks, so I guess I'll have to wait for Chrono Phantasma...

New Games

Yesterday was very busy, and today was a scheduled power outage so I was a bit late on this post...but let's get started.

So new games on the new consoles I'll talk about 3 though 2 of them are multi-platform. They are Call of Duty Ghosts, Infamous Second Son, and Watch Dogs. First up CoD, this years new installment from Infinity Ward who have done the Modern Warfare series was shown off at Microsoft's reveal showing off behind the scenes footage. While it didn't show off anything particularly interesting, and oddly enough why reveal a game that's multi-platform instead of an exclusive is beyond me, But maybe they're holding back for E3. I've never been a "military shooter" fan so I probably won't pick it up. But the main reason why I chose to write about it is because we don't know anything about any of the other games on Xbox One, and I wanted at least one game for the system so I chose CoD. So what do we know? Not much. There is new customization options for multiplayer but really they should have done that years ago, and the dog companion is cool but I think people want to see actual multiplayer footage not single player. Who plays CoD for soley the single player? Not many people. But hey maybe this time it will be the Halo of single player and not be "just there"

Next up Infamous Second Son. Now I think this is going to be the system seller if Xbox One has actual good games as the Infamous series is second to Uncharted, and God of War on Playstation. Now what do we know about this game? Well we know we have a new protagonist known as Delsin Rowe with his smoke abilities, and that it takes place well after the second game. But again not much is known about the story other then that you can make moral choices much like the first two games. Which also poses the question "which route did the story take after the second games ending?" Well we won't know until more info comes in as the endings in Infamous 2 are quite different.

And lastly Watch Dogs. Another multi-platform game much like CoD will also be released on PS3, and Xbox 360 while that's cool and all whats the point of getting the new system. Well a few reasons come to mind. First, it will likely run and look better on the new system. Second, they'll likely have new features on the new systems like in Watch Dogs apparently you can use the touch pad on the controller to control the phone the main character uses which is kinda cool. And third with the new system developers and publishers will likely support the new systems more then the old ones which coincides with my first reason.

Now lets talk about the game, Watch Dogs is an open world, sandbox game much like GTA and Infamous you're a antihero vigilante named Aiden Pearce who is a skilled hacker. You can do whatever you want much like other sandbox games but in Watch Dogs the city is very much a alive and bustling city with "people". From the trailers we've seen the very much alive and bustling is very cool, and every person 'could' be different from the other. Now I bet you will probably find a few people with the same face but if that isn't the case wow that is an achievement in video games and I am looking forward to seeing more.

Future Games

As the title suggests I'm going to talk about future games I'm interested in, that have been announced and are coming to the US. First up Tales of Xillia on PS3 now I don't honestly know much about the game itself but I know the series quite well and am looking forward to the next english tales game. next up Project X Zone on the 3DS I've always been a sucker for crossovers but this one is special it has Tales, Resident Evil, .Hack(too bad haseo isn't in), Valkyria Chronicles 3(which never saw a release in the US), Megaman X, and more. Last but not least Disgaea D2 another game from a series that I adore I've spent a lot of time in the Disgaea series, its quite the time sinker, and while I never did manage to max a characters level (closest I got was 4000) the funny story, and gameplay mechanics always draw me back in.

When I come back tomorrow I'll talk future games on the new consoles.

Xbox One

The Xbox One had quite the disastrous reveal, what with Microsoft putting hardcore gamers in the backseat, and casual TV, and being the center of the living room taking priority many people say the PS4 is going to win the console war. Now I'm not a Microsoft fan boy anything but that. I actually prefer Sony and Nintendo. But there is hope for the new Xbox they have to have an awesome show at E3 showing off their amazing new games and revealing that the 'possible scenario' of always on and DRM aren't as bad as we thought or don't exist at all(I kinda doubt it). If their new IPs are system sellers like the Wii U's upcoming smash bros, or PS4's Infamous, Then they may stand a chance in the new generation. But if Microsoft's E3 show isn't up to the challenge, Xbox One may not do to well.

Survival-Horror

And I'm back a little late this time.

This time I'll talk about survival-horror or just plain horror games. I think horror games are quite rare nowadays with Resident Evil being more action than horror and Dead Space 3 having more human looking enemies kinda makes it less creepy its hard to find legit scary games nowadays. But if you look back to the old Resident Evil's or Silent Hills. Or in the right places on the internet you'll find some creepy stuff like the really popular Slenderman or Amnesia. I may not name off a lot of horror games as I've just recently found I enjoy horror games but for some reason I can't stand horror movies. I don't know what it is about them but I just can't watch horror movies and feel scared, but Dead Space 2 freaks me out I think its the atmosphere and how immersed I get. If anyone reads this feel free to comment I want to hear your opinions.

Action-Adventure

Action-Adventure in my opinion is a very broad term...it covers many different genres and thus is a little hard to say specifically what games I like from the genre but special mentions go to the Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and any hack and slash game like Devil May Cry or the Dynasty Warriors series(two completely different types of hack and slash but whatever they're fun). Action-Adventure was my favorite genre growing up and I still have a soft spot for a good adventure but recently I find the Adventure side has taken a back seat. The only mainstream Adventure game as of late was the reboot to Tomb Raider and the new Metro but I burned myself out on shooters a long time ago. Which is a shame Adventure games have a lot of potential like the sense of discovery from Xenoblade Chronicles or the need to survive in Tomb Raider both of which were amazing. So tomorrow I'll talk about survival-horror and the few games that are actually scary.

JRPG's

Now onto JRPG's I play a lot of RPGs ranging from the Tales series (which my blog is named after) all the way to the Disgaea series. Currently I don't play many RPG mostly because there haven't been any I'm interested in but I'm looking forward to Disgaea D2 and Tales of Xillia whenever it comes over to the US. I may do a video about Tales of Graces and the .Hack//GU series in the future. Tomorrow I'll talk about the action-adventure games I play and am looking forward to.

Fighting Games

I currently play one fighting game mostly and that is Persona 4 Arena. But I used to play Blazblue, and Marvel Vs Capcom 3. While I won't cover them in they're current form I will if Blazblue's sequel is released in the US, and if Marvel Vs Capcom 3 ever gets patched. I don't think I'll be playing injustice anytime soon mostly because of how the game has developed online as a mass zoning game (zoning for those that don't know is when a character attempts to keep out another character with they're move set rather then attack  head on). Now for future fighting games I will play Blazblue Chrono Phantasma if it is brought to the US and I'll also play the newly announced Guilty Gear Xrd. For Guilty Gear fans I highly recommend looking up the trailer as it is very awesome and shows off the new VERY GOOD 3D graphics.

Start of blog

Well I just started this blog so I guess I should say what I'm going to do with this blog. First this blog will be about gaming. Second I'll be attempting to post videos here and on youtube currently I don't have the means to create video content so that will be a future thing. Lastly the type of games I'll be covering. I'll be covering just about anything I am interested in and my interests are kinda all over the place but for the most part I like playing fighting games, jrpgs, action-adventure, and survival horror. I'll be attempting to post at least once a day and once I can create videos I'll post more often.

So lets get started.