2 - Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
24 - Final Fantasy Tactics
283 - Everquest

Looks like your list is broken?

When you say on-rails my first thought is of Virtua Cop style shooters, but I know what you mean about linearity.

I prefer a solid story so I tend to go for jrpgs more than open-world stuff. Probably the only thing I really hated about Oblivion (and most other open world games) was being able to go to Kvatch, tell the commander of the comically small barricade I'll come back later, and come back months later to find the city is still burning and they're still waiting for you. I played Final Fantasy (1) on PSP last year and spent nearly 10 hours in the middle of the game wandering about trying to find where the story had gone, before finally giving in and checking a walkthough. The world should have been thoroughly conquered by the forces of Chaos, but no - he waited for the four heroes of light (no relation) to turn up instead.

The fact that the storyline has a deadline in Atelier Rorona made it a day-one purchase for me. If the world (or a small shop) needs to be saved it should need to be saved - waiting until you've had enough of fighting giant rodents should not be an option.

I don't think the 1000 has the TV out. Only the 2000/3000.

Woops! Didn't check the date. Saw it was near the top and assumed. 'pologies.

Not risky at all as long as you don't force anything and make sure you don't take any heat sinks off.

For what it's worth I use a balloon pump to blow the dust off the fans in my PC. If you've got one (or maybe a bicycle tyre pump) it might be worth taking a shot at blowing it through from the air intake vent. See what (if anything) comes out.
edit: Switch it off first of course.

This might help? You don't want to do all of it, figure out which steps apply.

ZX Spectrum 48k. The menu music to my all time favourite game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rR_qSHMh8

That's fairly good advice, especially if you're new to rpgs.
I haven't played any DQ so I don't know if there's a rock-paper-scissors mechanic in there, but watch the numbers when you're fighting and pay attention to what kind of attack or magic does the most damage. Fight smarter, not harder. You can save a lot of grinding.

Will you? Have they not heard of Dungeon Master then? I'm fairly sure he doesn't understand what roguelike means.

• Brainy Gamer casts Pretentious Crap.
• It has no effect.

I understand the sentiment completely. I am, however, exceptionally patient.

I think I'm up to about ten games now that I play on a regular basis (regular enough to not trade in anyway). I haven't finished anything since April (White Knight Chronicles), and while I could probably finish one before the end of the year if I played just one, I have a terrible habit of sitting down each night and spending ten minutes deciding what to play.

So as long as I don't add anything new to the pile I'm putting in a 2 hour session on each game per fortnight. I'd estimate an average of 60 hours left per game (I just restarted most of them), so that's 60 weeks just to finish my current collection, which will probably grow by around one title every two months (Trinity Universe, Recettear and Atelier Rorona are on my list).

I'm happy to play shorter RPGs, but then I might end up in the horrible situation of having nothing to play while waiting for new releases. I'm not sure I could be patient about that.

I like Joystiq for the same reason. I'll give Siliconera a look. I don't generally bother looking at the score on a review because it doesn't tell you anything about the game, but apparently I'm in the minority here.


Not liking the fact that a teenage girl is the main character doesn't say much about the game. If it is a bad game can you please tell me why? Leaving the fairly obvious flame-baiting aside, have you played it yet? Has anyone here? Apart from Patrick obviously.

Incidentally, I'd love to play Lost Odyssey but it'll have to wait till I can afford a 360.

I haven't made a map of anything since the 8bit days (I bought Etrian Odyssey for map-making nostalgia), and only Myst's puzzles were complicated enough to make me write notes. Mostly I'm just too damned lazy.

Still a couple of weeks till this is released in Europe. I'd like to hear what more people think of it.
It's a definite buy for me, just a question of full price or wait.

I never really gave the matter any thought before, but now that you bring it up and I think back I realise that I've never played an RPG as a female character, and my first RPG was Bard's Tale, so that's quite a few RPGs I've played.

I do have a tendency to play a dwarf. I don't know if that says anything about me. I'm 5'10".