ENKER'S PROFILE

I find that more often than not, when looking through the options a character has to attack (spells, abilities, physical, etc) most people will try out a status effect once and then not use it again. Some of the positives get a lot of attention, especially in boss battles where their duration lasts longer and benefits are more obvious, but casting mini, berserk, etc tends to be a turn wasted for many regular encounters and a draw on mp that could be used for vital healing later.

The Final Fantasy series has made good productive use of their effects for the most part. In particular the FF6 trick of casting a high level spell on your party when shielded by reflect and seeing multiple spells hitting a boss or enemy for lots of damage. Sleep was also a particularly powerful move in FF8 where it allowed you to draw indeffinatly and not wake up the monster in question.

However in games where characters have their powers pre-assigned then it is normally the status mage that looses out. Healers normally recieve the regen and barrier casting skills and sometimes hastening and attack charging as well, meaning that some poor sod gets lumbered with all of the others. A good example of this would be FF4's Edward (the spoony bard), who few players would relish having in their party despite the likability of his character in-game. Status inducing characters are a tough thing to balance.

Odd but true fact - I was the first person in the UK to own a copy of Yellow - a full year before the official release, by pure fluke. I am however going to go with Blue as my fave (till Crystal came along!) it had a nice balance of in-game pokemon.

Have you noticed how the balance for pokemon in the later games seems to have gone a tad wrong? Look at Pearl for example, only two fire pokemon to choose from till after the elite four, and one of those is a starter.

I am indeed - I'm just having to take it slow between bouts of nausia (nasty) I've almost completed the home base area and the main character creation system is in place. NPC interaction within the base has also been modified to take into account your sex, and dark/light allignment, meaning that there are up to four possible variations on how each character will react to you. Currently the base has large residential and commercial areas as well as links to unfinished Command and Barracks areas for mission launching and party choosing. 150+ moves also completed and the vocabulary, etc is all in place.

*goes to lie down*

Curse sickness!

One of the best games I've played in years!

Phantasy Star III delt with pregnancy multiple times, as the game took place over multiple generations choices as to which character your avatar ended up with romantically led to their child becoming the next avatar. This happened 3-4 times over the course of the game and made for lots of potential characters along the way. Whilst the actual nitty-gritty of birth was never really gone into too much, it did show consistancy.

On that note, there is a mini-quest in Shadow's Reach that starts at the very beginning of the game and impacts the rest of play. Right in the first town you can choose to help get two NPCs together romantically. After which you re-encounter them later in the game and are guests at their wedding, and again at a later town where they have brought their first house. Later on they announce the females pregnany and you even get to help in the birth (by running around in an attempt to 'help' in a generally male panicked way). All optional assuming that you have gone through the other steps of course.