Fadedsun hit it on the nose. I wasn't speaking literally. I said "almost" literally because really all you'd have to do at this point is remove the barely there underwear, add tentacles and bam.

If my hyperbole is too extreme then allow me to use a different phrase: Character Assassination.

Might I also add I count "showing some skin" and "having all of your rear minus the actually excrement hole exposed for the world to see for long extended periods of time" to be two different categories.

That is irrelevant because that art was never turned into in game graphics for Parasite Eve. Unless there's some super secret unlock code where you can have Aya's PS1 pixelated rear shoved in your face while running around in game.

And ValendianKnight I think you're missing the point here. It's not a matter of "offensive material". Hell PE1 had some element of nudity but at least that was used tastefully and with purpose. It's that very "immaturity" you cited that's causing issue here. Aya was, for all intents an purposes, a "mature" character I could take seriously an empathize with in the story. The setting was dark, the main character was believable, and over all the story took itself seriously.

Now The 3rd Birthday goes along and some idiot decides to let Bevis and Butthead program it.

"Heh heh...hey Bevis...look...her butt's hanging out, heh heh. That'll totally make the game sell...heh heh."

This level immaturity doesn't belong in the PE universe, especially applied to Aya. It's the kind of crap I would expect from a Compile Heart game or NISA's more immature translation moments (Record of Agarest War and Ar Tonelico 2 comes to mind); not from something out of the PE series.

If this game had anyone else as the main character and wasn't bearing the Parasite Eve name I wouldn't care. I'd roll my eyes and let it join the other hoards of fanservicy games that come from Japan on a weekly basis. But the fact that they're, almost literally, raping Aya as a character outright without all the subtly of a 12 year old hyped up on sugar who just hit puberty and discovered the internet...that irritates me to no end.

Wow...that screenshot just about killed even the original Parasite Eve for me. It's a dark day when one of video gaming's few competent, likable, strong, and sensible female protagonists is lowered to this level of debauchery. I'm not even sure I'd want to pay for the original should it come out on PSN because the money will most likely go to supporting these pigs. *shakes head* Not even X-Blades (from the few videos I've seen) was this racy; and that's saying something.

The reason I make the comparison is because they both use the "socialize with fellow high schoolers for more power" mechanic.

VCII: You get 4 small cutscenes with each character including a slightly more difficult than average battle. These cutscenes are rather short and only do little besides generate a tiny story arc that's very predictable. The only payout is a new randomly triggered special ability.

Persona: You get 10 cutscenes (not counting the character introduction) with each social link that lasts a good 2-4 minutes with emotionally involved story lines as well as the ability to chose your own response. Payouts include new powers, new skills for party members, and your choice of main character x person for a relationship.

While I wouldn't want VCII to be a Persona clone I do think they could've taken a few lessons from them. Also the character count is pretty similar actually. You have 19 members in your squad selection (thus the ones most people will want to interact with) to have interaction with in VC II. In Persona 3 Portable you have 23 different social link opportunities, not counting the Elizabeth/Theodore escapades. I know I'm going into deep opinion territory here but there is something very wrong with a game's writing and/or design when a freaking dog (Koro-chan, P3P) has more backstory, screen time,  and reason to care about it than a person you're supposed to go to war and possible die with (Lotte and Rene so far have some of the worst offenses in "didn't really evolve" story arcs I've gotten through so far; Vicki is coming dangerously close to competing with them and the idol-wannabe Stormtrooper is a good runner up).

Also I'm not sure I would say you don't "have" to talk to character in VCII considering that if you don't their "negative powers" can be pretty crippling. Especially the ones that suddenly drain all of your AP without warning.

Maybe it's just the way I'm playing or gear I have equipped then. I tend to close range for the easy headshot kills regardless of weather. And my tank pretty much never misses unless someone ducks. XP Although speaking of which...did the April storyline battle pull a cheapshot for anyone else?

It says in Turn 1 "Capture the Bases but avoid Baldren". I think okay, so it's like Dirk's battle and fiddle with my character's on the alternate starting point. Enemy's turn 1 rolls around and Baldren barks some order, then teleports onto the starting map and proceeds to charge right towards the starting point (where only the tank has moved that turn) and slaughters a character; then proceeds to run away but then does this again with his next CP!

The only way I kept from having my team constantly killed was to waste all of Turn 2 and part of Turn 3 (probably could've killed him Turn 2 if he hadn't ducked about 2-3 times) pumping CP into my tank to blow him away with multiple shots. Avoid Baldren my exhaust port. How do you avoid someone that can cross an entire map and pretty much heat seeks/teleports after you like Jason from Friday the 13th? ~.~; *sigh* At least the map was fairly easy after I killed him.

Did they forget to program weather effects or are the changes it causes just that minimal? Every time there's supposed to be something crippling to my accuracy, like snow or fog or night time, I find everyone still shoots just fine...maybe I over leveled for those maps. >.<;

Heh, in all honestly calling it a "story" is generous I think. At this point I'm just playing it for the battles. Getting a bit of cliche steeped/predictable story every 6-10 maps isn't cutting it for me (I'm a completionist so I have to do all the free/paid/classmate missions as they come up, so months drag on longer for me).

And let's be blunt about it...the characterization in this game sucks. Period. As sick as some people are of hearing this game's name come up but Persona 3 PSP does High School interaction stories with PCs and NPCs on such a far better level while still managing to have just as fun gameplay as VC II...they really had no excuse for getting this lazy with the writing and the presentation.

Edit: While I'm thinking about it. I disagree that the smaller maps are an issue. They feel just right for this game IMO. The problem I have comes from how many times they recycle the same freaking map. XP I swear it feels like there's 6-8 maps they just reuse with a unique one popping up rarely for story sequences. Granted those might not even be unique and they'll just recycle them again later in the game.

Lol, I need to retract the above statement. Now that Birth by Sleep is out and getting decent reviews the PSP hate is out in full bloom.

So what's everyone's squad name so far? I'm currently: Hel "Lyria" Destroyer Kings. (Lol, I just realized how much like .hack area words the squad names sound like.)

Agreed. Despite certain irritations about the gameplay it's quite enjoyable. Heck I might even replay it later this year once I beat it for no other reason than to do it all again. Certain parts of the battle system seem wonky to  me though. Shield Classes are absolutely godly. I can pretty much clear half a map of infantry units with one Shield user alone. But fighting against them...dear lord. X-x;

The Draken Shield Class girl's (forget her name) character map I fought (with a party of level 3's and 4's...probably a mistake) and beat after 16 turns...what took so long? 2-4 (depending on the turn)  constantly respawning Fencers. It's insane how many Command Tokens you have to spend to kill these guys. @_@; They take at least 2 CT for one (one to make them turn and another for someone to rear head shot them). Finally I just decided to spam Lancer classes so I could make progress instead of hit and running and about 15+ rockets later I broke through. ~.~;

WoW was my first. Got talked into playing it by my  college roommate my first year there. Was alright but took a while for me to get used to it. I think what I would consider my "first" MMO though by attachment standards is Mabinogi. About a year after I stopped playing WoW I stumbled across the Closed Beta application and got in. Totally threw myself into the game just to enjoy it for all it was worth. I actually was one of the top Bug Busters for Closed and got a nice chunk of Amazon credit for my trouble. Stuck with the game for about 6-8 months enjoying the heck out of the community until it just all kinda fell apart. :-/

Elitist as it sounds I sometimes wish certain games would never let the mass public in just so all the good people aren't driven off. XP *sigh* Ah well, that's the way of online communities.

Am I the only one really irritated by the manner in which they handle non-video cutscenes? For a current gen handheld the production value is really low. Either they ran out of disk space or got incredibly lazy. :-/ The characters all look like cardboard cut-outs and bounce around the edges of the screen in the exact same manners hand puppets do at a children's puppet theater production...well...almost exact. The puppets are actually better because they at least have limited arm movement to express body language.

I know it's kinda similar to the "Tales" series in how the interactions/story is told but at least in the Tales games the character's faces were animated while they were talking to express emotion properly. Unlike here where it seems every character only has about 3-4 emotional stills while typically only cycling between 2 of them. (Speaking of which what's up with the main character's "tough guy" pose? XD He looks like he's filming for a Captain Morgan commercial...)

I dunno, maybe I'm just nitpicking but seeing these cutouts wave and twitch around on screen as if they were on a Cloverfield set every time they need to indicate more than basic motion kinda gives me a headache and causes irritation. ~.~;

Just started it this afternoon and have pretty much played non-stop for about 8 hours. Pretty good game, won't have any problems seeing this one through to the end. It's a fairly flawed title though. I swear over half the playable cast so far is pretty much dumb as rock with the cliche factor cranked up so high I can't even take the story slightly seriously. Which is a shame because it has potential to be so. Not to metion the very first 10 minutes of the story made me miss the days of the silent protagonist. Not so much for the VA work as his thought process is comepletely insane and nonsensical in a bad way.

Although speaking of "dumb as rock" the AI in this game ranges from decent to outright pitiful. I just got done beating a map where one Shocktrooper ran forward, fired, ended his turn; then Shocktrooper #2 came up directly behind him, fired at me, and completely wasted all his ammo critically hitting his friend...

I haven't seen such a bad case of AI friendly fire since FFT's black mages. With decent AI programming this could've been a nicely challenging SRPG right up there with Wild Arms XF. As is though...not so much.

I rather enjoyed Valkyrie Profile and regret selling my PSP copy when I had to dump the system a few years back. It's one of those odd games where if you want to get technical about it you're simply grinding and dungeon crawling non-stop but it does this in a way that keeps it fresh and entertaining. The overall story is pretty fantastic too and with the constantly changing selection of characters you're bound to form a party you can get rather attached to.

But play it with a walkthrough for the A ending. I've only played through it once and got Ending B. "Blows" is an understatement. That ending was so unrewarded for the effort I put into the game that I never played it again (original PSOne version) til I found it years after it's PSP release.

I'm a caveman. Online shopping's never been a big things for me unless I absolutely cannot find something anywhere else (and even then I'm limited to places that take E-checks only). For such a good game from what I've heard I find it kinda odd I've never seen a copy of VC in stores for the past 2-3 years. :-/ This counting both a major college town and a major city.