HARMONIC'S PROFILE

There aren't a great amount of archetypes in terms of RPG battle systems, but there are a lot of RPGs. So, list the games whose battle systems you enjoyed the most! ...Or hated!

10. Final Fantasy 7/8/9/10
I can't say I enjoyed these battle systems. Super long, elaborate spells, rapidly panning camera, sub-par high-res 3D graphics. It's all flash, no substance imho.

9. Dragon Warrior 1-4
I like to be able see my battler. Although DW4's party switcher really kicked ass.

8. Ogre Battle
The tactical system was very cool, but the battles were not controllable directly. You could set their behavior and use tarot cards, but sometimes your guys would do retarded things.

7. Final Fantasy 4/5/6
The baseline battle system. Really can't go wrong with these. Nothing too special though.

6. Chrono Trigger
Like FF4/5/6 but much more stylish. What can I say... double and triple techs are a great idea, and they were implemented masterfully.

5. Secret of Mana
Action RPGs are really cool. SoM suffers from lack of character customization, and the weapon techniques were obselete considering how long they took to power up. But the system was still a blast.

4. Final Fantasy Tactics
Who doesn't love FFT? This revolutionary battle system could never bore me. It was the perfect balance of tactical without being overly tactical and cluttered.

3. Seiken Densetsu 3
Just like SoM, but with REALLY customizable characters, and the weapon techs were applied much better... depended on buildup over time of normal attacks. Not to mention, 6 characters to choose from for a 3 person party. Awesome!

2. Tales of Phantasia
The king of SNES battle systems in my opinion. Even though you didn't have extreme control over the non-Cless characters, controlling Cless himself was pretty fun, and you could have the others cast spells and behave the way you want.

1. Fire Emblem Games
This just can't be beat. I will buy every Fire Emblem game ever made until I die or go broke. I wish I could script a battle system like Fire Emblem's, but unfortunately it's way beyond me. This system allows for a huge amount of characters, highly varied, using a huge amount of weapons or spells. In the later games, you can assign or unassign neat passive and command skills based on capacity. Class changes. Low stat paradigm so every point counts. Perma-death of characters. Fire Emblem forever!



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At the height of the United States' prosperity (1998-1999) Oil almost got as low as 10 dollars a barrel. Now it's above 139 dollars a barrel. Oil got 14 times more expensive.

Yeah be lucky our gas only got 4 times more expensive so far. And guess what, if you make good steady money like most of us old farts at RMN, you probably don't worry too much about spending 50-60 bucks per fill up at the pump. But not only will that get worse as time goes on, EVERYTHING gets more expensive, since everything is so closely tied to oil prices.

-I plan on buying a motorcycle or an extremely gas efficient vehicle when my current vehicle finally craps out. (150k miles and still cherry, I love you Nissan)

-I also plan to try my damnedest to have a short commute to work.

Discuss.

This is my new favorite video game ever.

Is the latest refinement of the tried-and-true Fire Emblem TRPG engine.

Graphics: Adequate Although graphics aren't nearly what the Wii is capable of, artwork is very good, in-battle animations are neat to watch, especially as characters start developing god-like abilities.

Sound: Phenomenal The soundtrack makes me cry. Cry because it's so beautiful, and because I only hope to become as good as this composer someday. The sound effects are excellent. You can really feel the clanging of swords and axes, as well as the slashing of talons and claws. Of course, you can literally feel them because of the controller's rumble feature... so yeah.

Story: Good The storyline is way underrated. There are SO many side stories and characters. Ike's relationship to the Black Knight, as well as Micaiah's true nature, etc, etc... this game wraps up a lot of loose ends. The overall premise... war is bad, save the world... isn't anything groundbreaking, but I still wanted so badly to know what happens next. It's hard not to fall in love with the characters, even a lot of the villains, who are multi-dimensional for the most part.

Challenge: Very High This game is NOT for fire emblem beginners. The challenge level is really high. It gets easy at a few points, but you quickly learn a lesson in humility when you make one tiny tactical error and your healer gets slaughtered in one round. Very unforgiving challenge level. That said, I love challenge, and as a die hard fan of the franchise, I enjoyed this level of it. I would recommend fire emblem newcomers play FE9: Path of Radiance first, simply because it's easier, plus it's a prequel to this game story-wise.

Replay value: Huge It is ...........EPIC. I have logged 50+ hours on my first run through and I still haven't even beaten the game. The first playthrough rewards you with unlockable features, so the game gives you at least 2 full playthroughs of quality play. Since there are a million characters, you can always try to build different teams.

Overall: Awesome Like I said, my new favorite video game of all time, even more than Final Fantasy 6. Easy to fall in love with the latest 2 Fire Emblem games.

Rent or Buy? You cannot possibly beat this game in one rental period unless you have no life. Buy since it's a staple of the Wii game selection at the moment.

There are spell elements (fire, water, lightning, etc) other stuff (holy/dark) and physical elements, etc.

I was thinking about the various ways to use elements for RPG skills. Some people seem to use a generic "physical skill" element that applies to a huge amount of skills, others tend to stick to the tried-and-true FIRE LIT ICE.

I've seen: FIRE ICE LIT EARTH

Fire vs Ice
Lit vs Earth

I've seen: FIRE WATER WIND WATER ICE EARTH With a wheel in various configurations.

There's also HOLY and DARK which I've seen a million ways used.

also... physical elements like SLASHING PIERCING BLUNT (used widely in my 2 games)

How do YOU organize your elements?