I like the game mainly for the story, exploration, and customization.  IMO the writing is really good and the characters have good depth to them, especially the main character since he changes a lot throughout the game.  Even conversations with random people in the bars are usually interesting and make the "world" of the game seem more real.  I also like that the game frequently allows you to make choices that change the way the story unfolds, though the game only has one ending.  What battles you fight, what characters join you, what characters you kill, what ships and modules you get, all these things can be affected by your choices throughout the game.  

The ship customization is a lot of fun thanks to the tetris like modules you use to modify the ship and the fact that there are a lot of different modules with different effects.  Certainly more fun than the actual combat IMO.  I'll agree with you the combat is pretty boring, but usually it is a quick affair if you keep stabbing that touch screen to skip the animations (everyone does this most of the time, anyone who says otherwise is lying lol).  Of course, I will sometimes watch the animations just to feel cool when I see a whole ton of projectiles from my ships wreck everything.  I'd say Knights in the Nightmare has much more complicated gameplay, as the only thing especially  complicated about Infinite Space is the ship customization.  The game does do a pretty bad job of explaining how to tell what enemy ship is "in front" though so I had a lot of trouble against the first boss because of that.  Basically though, I'm saying the meat of the game is not the combat so I don't think it is all that terrible that the battle system is unexceptional.  So that is why I like it but I can tell it's not for everyone.

I played the game about 9 hours and gave up.  In all that time I completed only one dungeon which took maybe half an hour.  There were some other little "dungeons" with enemy encounters but you could run through those in like 3 mins so they didn't really count imo.  My brother beat it and he still said there still weren't much dungeons so I found it easy to believe.  Game rather have you run around and watch boring cutscenes repeatedly.

Apparently it disappointed you but I think it is the best game on the DS.  Just sayin'

I'd say to avoid Golden Sun Dark Dawn unless you like

1) being treated like a 5 year old constantly
2) horribly written dialogue
3) not having any significant innovations/changes to the original golden sun battle system
4) awkward item menus and a useless world map
5) general lack of dungeons

being able to re-set a team and their assists sounds really handy

you can find videos of hsien-ko and sentinel on youtube now. 

I'm just waiting on the Hsien-ko reveal.  My team probably gonna be her, Morrigan, and Zero. 

You might want to check out Gundam X and Gundam 00 if you haven't yet.  They are pretty similar to Gundam Wing. 

Pretty cool awards.  Glad the Ys games got some (personally I like Seven better).  I'm just sad that none of the lists had Infinite Space on them.  I am pretty baffled at Golden Sun DD getting the runner up award for DS as well.  The game treats the player like a stupid child.

also kudos to Dennis's "Best 2009 RPG I've played in 2010" for Half Minute Hero.  would win in that category for me as well

My brother watched the first episode and told me it's bad.  I saw a trailer and it looked like someone tried to mash code geass and gurren lagann together and gave the main character a really gay dance. 

Yeah I would be avoiding this topic like the plague if I actually cared about the plot in Golden Sun DD.  It's so freaking bad that I don't care though.  

I've never played an RPG that that held my hand this much.  I feel like I've got an annoying babysitter that won't leave me alone.  I've only played the game a few hours so I hope this stops, but I'm not optimistic.  Also the encyclopedia thing (or whatever it's called) is the most obnoxious feature in the world.  Why do I have to click the name of the king's advisor to read that he is the king's advisor?  I can tell that by context.  It also seems silly that you click a name and all the sudden you know all this frivilous information the characters can't possibly know.  For example if a character named "jake" appears I can click his name and find out his favorite color is yellow.  It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't make the game more enjoyable in any way.  

I'd really like another Grandia game but only if it is good XD

My first one was 2 on dreamcast and that one is still my favorite.  IMO it had the best characters in the series.  1 is good but I didn't like any of the characters except Sue, and she's not with you all the time   :(  Didn't play Xtreme.  3 has horrible characters and I liked none of them.  main character was a fruitcake.  if the battle system wasn't so great I wouldn't have been able to finish it

all the games have great battle system and a generally bad plot that's why my preference is determined by the characters lol

graphics



also Kirby's Epic Yarn is cool. 

I like the character art (just sayin).  I actually just got the game about a week and a half ago for DS.  This remake looks extremely lackluster though.  Sounds like you'd have to get to the 8th day for much of a difference to occur.  Those screen comparisons basically tell me "the character portraits are higher res now" and nothing else.  It looks the same, though I suppose it will look "3D" when you play it in person.  Don't really care about characters being voiced now either, most of my favorite rpgs have barely any voice acting if any.  Doesn't seem like this would be worth it unless you haven't played the DS one yet.  


well the DS one doesn't use the stylus at all to my knowledge...so unless stylus functions are new for overclock...

Sometimes during the localization process it is possible to add glitches and things accidentally even if all they are doing is modifying text files or whatever most of the time.

hmm I guess it is either because I have a psp 3000, or I just got lucky.  sucks for the ppl that happened to though

what part of the game was this?  I got the creation ending with both characters and never had it crash