Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

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shivan128

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Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread!  Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here.  Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc.  Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.

I've wikified the thread to make it more friendly and open to others that can actively update with important information. You can find the wiki post directly below this one.

NOTE:  Please, leave the censorship discussion away from this thread.  It's common for japanese games to have questionable content outside of the country.  We want to keep discussions to the game itself and not about cultural/societal tolerance.

A message from Thorbahn:

Our CAG Japanese Niche Games Thread also has a community on PS4, where you can interact and game with other members of the thread.

Our moderators are: Draekon, Las_Hole, and Waffleswanton

You can basically friend any of our members, or any moderator, and you will be able to request to join the community under "Communities friends are in" tab, and a mod will approve your request.

You can also leave your PSN ID in the thread, saying you want to join, and we can invite you directly as well.

As always, have fun and enjoy your stay!

 
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shadowysea07 said:
I think it's the default hard drive but I'd have to check to be sure. I know I upgraded the phat to a large hard drive because the default was too small.
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Good note on the super slim, I have two of them (sliding access panel on top) that I bought on black friday back in the day. One for my kids and the other for myself. I did upgrade the harddrive in mine so at least it sounds like I'll be ok.

I played Atelier Marie & Elie (jp import) back in the day on the Dreamcast and didn't really feel like that series was for me, so I never bothered to continue checking out the series as it got localized. So either way at least that title won't be an issue.

 
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PS3 was ideal for my family.   One profile bought everything and had both systems registered for it... so no digital rights mess.  Kids had theirs ... I had mine... I got PS+ for the games and cloud saves and made all the purchases on Playstation Store.  The library when I bought into it was really cheap.  Lots of 4 for $10 or $20 deals on used games.  The library had a lot of really interesting stuff... and everything over HDMI.   The PS3 Super Slim also was really easy to upgrade the harddrive.  I went nuclear though with my upgrade as I felt like I had so much installed that it was impeeding my ability to decide what to play... so after the rebuild I just opted to download what I wanted to play first.   That worked out well until I discovered the PSTV and fell in love... and then later that year the Vita (right as the last systems were disappearing from brick and mortar stores).
 

 
nightc1 said:
PS3 was ideal for my family. One profile bought everything and had both systems registered for it... so no digital rights mess. Kids had theirs ... I had mine... I got PS+ for the games and cloud saves and made all the purchases on Playstation Store. The library when I bought into it was really cheap. Lots of 4 for $10 or $20 deals on used games. The library had a lot of really interesting stuff... and everything over HDMI. The PS3 Super Slim also was really easy to upgrade the harddrive. I went nuclear though with my upgrade as I felt like I had so much installed that it was impeeding my ability to decide what to play... so after the rebuild I just opted to download what I wanted to play first. That worked out well until I discovered the PSTV and fell in love... and then later that year the Vita (right as the last systems were disappearing from brick and mortar stores).
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You can game share with PS4 and PS5 as well. It just requires slightly more work.
 
Gotta say I am enjoying Tales of Arise a lot more than I thought I would based on the demo. I mean it was fine, just felt like another modern era Tales game but in retrospect the demo really sucked. They leave out some of the combat tutorials, ones I think are kind of important personally. And I don't think many (if any) of the skills from the skill tree are active so you didn't get access to really basic things like air dodges and the skills that let you actively recover your arte gauge (perfect dodging, landing crits, etc.)

 
Loop 4 ending in re zero was pretty disturbing. I feel like that was murder pron. It was also one of the few without art for it. Though I'll admit I'm somewhat thankful for that.

Anywho I pretty much already guessed the majority of the plot by this point. There's a couple of plot holes though regarding wolf.

Additionally the one antagonist reminds me of fate series. Particularly the
bug stuff from zero regarding the matou family
 
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Not sure if Play-Asia still sends out coupon, but does anyone have coupon codes for Play-Asia they are willing to give out so I can use? Thank you

 
Gamefly has Akiba'S trip (Switch) back at $34.99 again... and has Ace Attorney Chronicles (Switch) for $29.99.   Not big deals... but it's good to see they have enough to put them up for sale.   I don't plan on buying either... but if they drop further and I catch it, I'll post something.

...

I ended up not playing any games this weekend (I don't count a daily sudoku puzzle on my ipad)... so no progress on deciding what ps3 stuff to purge.   But that's life.  I'm not under the gun to do any of this... though I'm looking forward to the end result.

 
Zenax[zd] said:
Gotta say I am enjoying Tales of Arise a lot more than I thought I would based on the demo. I mean it was fine, just felt like another modern era Tales game but in retrospect the demo really sucked. They leave out some of the combat tutorials, ones I think are kind of important personally. And I don't think many (if any) of the skills from the skill tree are active so you didn't get access to really basic things like air dodges and the skills that let you actively recover your arte gauge (perfect dodging, landing crits, etc.)
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It's about the same as the demo for me. My main gripe (and most people's) is the lack of dodge cancel.

But I also feel like the xp gain is too low early on. Playing on hard, I hit the first boss at level 9 or so, and that's killing everything I passed. It got better when you reach the demo map.

And things don't respawn like on the demo, which I prefer, because I like to clear maps when I explore.

 
I should have figured that the spawn rate wouldn't be like the demo. I actually wouldn't mind it being the demos since that would be great for getting gels.
 
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elessar123 said:
It's about the same as the demo for me. My main gripe (and most people's) is the lack of dodge cancel.

But I also feel like the xp gain is too low early on. Playing on hard, I hit the first boss at level 9 or so, and that's killing everything I passed. It got better when you reach the demo map.

And things don't respawn like on the demo, which I prefer, because I like to clear maps when I explore.
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Ah yeah, lack of a dodge cancel doesn't bother me that much to be honest. It's just one of those things I can live without if the designers don't want you to have access to it.

My biggest problem with the demo was they didn't really make the flow of combos clear, leaving out that fact your penetration is nerfed for spamming the same move over and over cleared up a lot of my confusion just with how I should be playing. Also I can't remember if they tell you boost attacks restore AG in the demo but I did not realize that either which just helps with keeping the speed of combat up.

 
SInX4Lyfe said:
Just recently played and finished XC2 after sitting in my backlog since launch day… man I regret not playing this day 1!!! GOTY for me for sure I only played it casually but beat it within 55hrs. I def can see myself 100% and putting the necessary hrs to play thru all the blade story bits. I haven’t had this experience with an amazing game in forever. Just wanted to share that.
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The biggest issue I had with XC2 was the blade summoning system. The gatcha system was somewhat annoying for me, but apart from that it was very fun.

 
Mangydogg said:
The biggest issue I had with XC2 was the blade summoning system. The gatcha system was somewhat annoying for me, but apart from that it was very fun.
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It was a bit too harsh for being a single player game. You'd think when you're just missing 1 blade there'd be a built in system to guarantee you get it after a while

 
Gamefly's copies of Akiba'S trip for switch are gone again. I guess people are snapping them up at $35. So it's not likely they will go much below this anytime soon since they know if they want to dump some copies that people will scoop them up.

Mangydogg said:
The biggest issue I had with XC2 was the blade summoning system. The gatcha system was somewhat annoying for me, but apart from that it was very fun.
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Somewhat annoying, yes, but not too bad. The trick I figured out is once you knew what pattern was needed to up the chance for a specific blade, then clear out the generics except those that generate from that same pattern. Then start generating blades and as the pile of generics build the chances of getting something special climb. Referencing the net for some of this made it a lot easier. Also the more special blades you have, the smaller the pool is to pull from and the odds go up that the next special will be what you want (since they can't give you a duplicate of a special blade... just the generics).

....

Actually played some PS3 last night. I pulled about 10 or so games without playing them and moved them out of the collection. My play time was split between Batman Arkham Asylum, Duke Nukem Forever, and the first few minutes of The Saboteur . Arkham Asylum, while pretty amazing ... I had enough of as I kept finding spots to repeatedly die the deeper I went into the prison. Duke Nukem Forever was the highlight of the night, I had to force myself to stop playing to move on to get The Saboteur installed. Both DNF and The Saboteur... very M rated right out of the gate. Glad the family was mostly asleep or in other rooms. I didn't get deep into The Saboteur before calling it a night, I'll further evaluate it tonight if I game. DNF though... I paid a couple bucks for it just to see how bad it really was... it's surprising how not-bad it is. If you played DN 3D back in the day when it was new... this has the same humor... the situations are even more over the top... it looks pretty decent... and was fun. There was a bit of a learning curve as they don't hold your hand at every turn and the levels have some puzzle elements to them. I'm not sure I'll finish it... but I'm going to give it more time before making any decision.

 
DNF honestly was decent enough. I enjoyed my time with it getting it in that old arse deal on amazon where it came with the DLC. I think people just pooped on it because it wasn't amazing. It was still playable and pretty bug free when I played it. The two weapon limit sucks, but otherwise it's an action game shooter and it's playable with some antiquated humor. Nothing amazing and nothing terrible.

 
Akiba's Strip Hellbound seems to be $39.99 now on Amazon for Switch/PS4. Those Gameflyers bit too quickly. I want to get around $25, but I may bite if it goes about $30.

 
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nitrosmob said:
Akiba's Strip Hellbound seems to be $39.99 now on Amazon for Switch/PS4. Those Gameflyers bit too quickly. I want to get around $25, but I may bite if it goes about $30.
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That's still $5 more than gamefly. So they are still winning the cag race for now. I'm just kind of glad I took time to think about this one and realize it wasn't a good fit for what I enjoy. This whole collection slim down has really added a mountain of perspective of what I actually enjoy these days in gaming and keeping the scope of what I buy pretty exclusive.

Last night wasn't as productive on PS3 stuff... I pretty much just played the first Uncharted. It's by no means perfect, but it was a fun experience. I made it to the 8th chapter before going to bed. So basically 1/3 of the way done since google says 22 chapters and I'm at the start of 8. I might just finish this game before going back to testing, and will save the others to play once I'm done.

 
I'd pay $5 more for new but I've gotten some badly chipped disks disks from Gamefly. I also receieved a badly scratched Bluray as well from one of the Tomb Raider games on the PS4. I generally only get from them if they're really cheap. I bought 3DS games from them before though and they were fine, so I would assume the Switch games are fine as well.

 
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nitrosmob said:
I'd pay $5 more for new but I've gotten some badly chipped disks disks from Gamefly. I also receieved a badly scratched Bluray as well from one of the Tomb Raider games on the PS4. I generally only get from them if they're really cheap. I bought 3DS games from them before though and they were fine, so I would assume the Switch games are fine as well.
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I've bough a handful or so of switch games from them. All of the used switch games were perfect and even had the gold coins still available if the game was less than a year old. I haven't bought a disc from them in ages though... I think the last thing was Murdered Soul Suspect and it was fine. It's always a much bigger risk buying disc games used. I've only been burned once... that was my PS2 purchase of Burnout 3 as it's the only disc I've every had with disc rot (came that way, I've never had a disc actually rot).

 
My NIS Classics Volume 1 special edition finally shipped last night, for those of you still waiting for it. I'm kind of torn on getting Volume 2, since I haven't played either of the games in that package (as opposed to Phantom Brave in Volume 1, which was one of my favorite games growing up), but I've always been curious about Makai Kingdom. I actually already have the original ZHP on my Vita (got it on a sale a while ago and never got to it). So, I don't know how worth it the special edition of Volume 2 will be for me.

Finished my NG+ run of Persona 4 Golden last night, clocked in at over 100 hours. Maxed out all the social links and fused Izanagi-no-Okami, which I'm sad couldn't be registered. I also made Magatsu Izanagi for the hell of it and gave him Dark moves, because it just made sense. Totally forgot to create Kaguya Hime, though. She would have worked well with Magatsu Izanagi since she has Light moves. Oh well, there's always next time. Overall, P4 is still my favorite one, though P5 is absolutely better in terms of gameplay and QOL improvements. However, P4 easily has the best cast, and I really feel the tight bond of friendship between the characters. Plus, it's just laugh out loud funny in so many places. One of my favorite games ever.

"...You were truly a remarkable guest."

 
Makai Kingdom has buildings in it which give bonuses to units that come from them. This is similar to Phantom Brave's putting units in items for bonuses. Also you have usually a big battlefield and when you reach certain areas they open up. The movement is Phantom Brave's movement. I mainly didn't like it as much cause of the weak as heck story. It has entertaining characters though. Phantom Brave I haven't played fully (only a few missions) and most would say the story really hits hard. It's an OK game for sure, but I lost interest over time in it.

 
Kitaria Fables

I know, it's not Japanese, but I'm sure it fits this audience.

It's not great. It's like the people in charge played a couple games 20 years ago and decided to make a game now.

  • They say it was inspired by Rune Factory, but it reminds me much more of Ragnarok Online. From the porings to the random emotes to the art style to other things.
  • There's 2 weapon classes only -- sword and bow. Your magic power is also tied to your physical attack power for whatever reason.
  • There's bugs in multiplayer. Trophies are bugged in co-op because it randomly pops for one person or the other. I ended up missing a late game STORY trophy despite being my save.
  • They designed it to have multiplayer but thought through very little. You end up off the view really easily because of how zoomed in it is, relative to movement and attack ranges. You end up pulling each other because you can't be too far away. Yet you can't zone with one person afk.
  • Another multiplayer bug happened because the boss battles get gated inside invisible walls. One of us ended up outside it once.
  • You can hold 4 skills total. Say if you want to swap sword and bow depending on the situation. You now have to sacrifice another active slot if you want 1 sword and 1 bow skill. If you thought 6 artes in Arise was bad...
  • The farming is really only good for grinding money for gear. Which you will need to do, unless you want to grind hundreds of ambers.
  • So. Much. Grinding. Getting new spells require orbs, which require grinding for orbs or 10 souls. And higher spells need 10ish orbs. Each boss that drops the orb spawns once a day.
  • So. Much. Grinding. Pt. 2. So the reason it feels like a late 90s Korean MMO... for weapons, you need to get money (grind) + drops (grind 50x of this item + 20x of this rare spawn), etc.
  • There's like no scaling. Your final weapon needs 25,000 gold? The stuff you're killing end game drops items that still sell for only 25 gold. But it's not like there's XP or levels, so you have 0 benefit killing high level mobs. So you might as well run through and go back to early game where they drop a 1000 gold item 25% of the time. Until you need 50 of some random item.
  • Double the grind in co-op because now you need 100 drops.
  • The story just ends abruptly. Like they had a development time limit instead of a goal and just... stopped. It's not as bad as Rage, but it's like second to it. For an RPG, that's pretty bad.
  • Ultimately, there's very little content. If it wasn't for the grinding required, it'd probably take 3 hours. With grinding, it's like a 10 fold increase.
  • Stat system is odd as hell. Your armor mostly raises your health. If you don't grind and upgrade, you get one-shotted. So get grinding so you can have 480 hp instead of 120. But good luck healing on boss fights. But I guess you can... grind for food to heal, because your 10% damage leech is not going to do much on bosses even after you grinded for the best weapons.

Overall, it's like a... 6/10, if you can tolerate the grind.  If not, it's probably a 0/10.

 
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Sounds like a -10/10 for me. Grinding in RPGs and other things (one reason I don't play mobile gacha games often) bores me so quickly now. I can kind of stand it for like a Story of Seasons game, but even then over time I get tired of the grind. I especially hate games that make the game longer just because of a big grind. If there is fun with the grind I can forgive it, like I know Monster Hunter games are grindy, but some people love them to death. These games are just not for me. I know people love to turn their brain off and grind, but that's just not my thing anymore. Only time would likely be a Diablo style game, but those are action packed at least.

 
I don't mind a grind if it's fun and it's optional.   Like Dragon Quest or Xenoblade... that stuff is mostly optional these days.  Heck even Neo:TWEWY I could have easily beaten that game on Normal without doing much off the beaten path the story leads you down.

The deal breaker here is the grinding isn't optional and the story abruptly ending as if the game wasn't finished.   So, Kitaria Fables, is no where near worth my time.   Nice to read some feedback though... makes it easy to avoid some of these stinkers.

 
nightc1 said:
I've bough a handful or so of switch games from them. All of the used switch games were perfect and even had the gold coins still available if the game was less than a year old. I haven't bought a disc from them in ages though... I think the last thing was Murdered Soul Suspect and it was fine. It's always a much bigger risk buying disc games used. I've only been burned once... that was my PS2 purchase of Burnout 3 as it's the only disc I've every had with disc rot (came that way, I've never had a disc actually rot).
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3DS and switch carts are small enough that what you get may or may not have been in my 3 year-old’s mouth.
 
elessar123 said:
Kitaria Fables

I know, it's not Japanese, but I'm sure it fits this audience.

It's not great. It's like the people in charge played a couple games 20 years ago and decided to make a game now.

  • They say it was inspired by Rune Factory, but it reminds me much more of Ragnarok Online. From the porings to the random emotes to the art style to other things.
  • There's 2 weapon classes only -- sword and bow. Your magic power is also tied to your physical attack power for whatever reason.
  • There's bugs in multiplayer. Trophies are bugged in co-op because it randomly pops for one person or the other. I ended up missing a late game STORY trophy despite being my save.
  • They designed it to have multiplayer but thought through very little. You end up off the view really easily because of how zoomed in it is, relative to movement and attack ranges. You end up pulling each other because you can't be too far away. Yet you can't zone with one person afk.
  • Another multiplayer bug happened because the boss battles get gated inside invisible walls. One of us ended up outside it once.
  • You can hold 4 skills total. Say if you want to swap sword and bow depending on the situation. You now have to sacrifice another active slot if you want 1 sword and 1 bow skill. If you thought 6 artes in Arise was bad...
  • The farming is really only good for grinding money for gear. Which you will need to do, unless you want to grind hundreds of ambers.
  • So. Much. Grinding. Getting new spells require orbs, which require grinding for orbs or 10 souls. And higher spells need 10ish orbs. Each boss that drops the orb spawns once a day.
  • So. Much. Grinding. Pt. 2. So the reason it feels like a late 90s Korean MMO... for weapons, you need to get money (grind) + drops (grind 50x of this item + 20x of this rare spawn), etc.
  • There's like no scaling. Your final weapon needs 25,000 gold? The stuff you're killing end game drops items that still sell for only 25 gold. But it's not like there's XP or levels, so you have 0 benefit killing high level mobs. So you might as well run through and go back to early game where they drop a 1000 gold item 25% of the time. Until you need 50 of some random item.
  • Double the grind in co-op because now you need 100 drops.
  • The story just ends abruptly. Like they had a development time limit instead of a goal and just... stopped. It's not as bad as Rage, but it's like second to it. For an RPG, that's pretty bad.
  • Ultimately, there's very little content. If it wasn't for the grinding required, it'd probably take 3 hours. With grinding, it's like a 10 fold increase.
  • Stat system is odd as hell. Your armor mostly raises your health. If you don't grind and upgrade, you get one-shotted. So get grinding so you can have 480 hp instead of 120. But good luck healing on boss fights. But I guess you can... grind for food to heal, because your 10% damage leech is not going to do much on bosses even after you grinded for the best weapons.

Overall, it's like a... 6/10, if you can tolerate the grind. If not, it's probably a 0/10.
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Yikes. I had managed to pick it up with 30% off from Target, but this makes it seem like it’s not worth my time. Luckily I hadn’t opened it yet so it’ll be going back.
 
Oh, another funny thing I didn't experience. If you buy the deluxe, each map change takes 30-45 seconds to load... on PS5 / XSX. So people who bought the deluxe are being told to uninstall the extras if they want to cut it back down to like 5 seconds... which is actually still really long because the mobs don't spawn til after the map loads.

 
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Played some Yakuza 3 last night on PS3.  I love that they included video recaps of 1&2.  Definitely going to just hold on to the whole collection for now.   Also gave Way of the Samura 3 some time.  While cool, I'm good letting it go as I'll never have the time to fully appreciate the various paths you can take in that game.  Finished the night with Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena... though I played Raid on Butcher Bay (as it's remade and bundled in, even though it's not mentioned on the front cover).   Riddick was decent... I'm keeping it on the bubble for now and will decide later.

 
Got my NIS Classics Volume 1 SE in the mail already and they sent me a cute Prinny fabric patch as a freebie, I assume since the game was delayed. So cute, dood
 
TheKbob said:
When it comes out on a platform that can run it, many of us may! :D
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It has running issues? I haven't heard anything about it probably due to the busy release schedule from may to July. I got it in my backlog still.

I bought it from the buy 3 get 2 sale so I didn't pay much for it at least.
 
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shadowysea07 said:
It has running issues? I haven't heard anything about it probably due to the busy release schedule from may to July. I got it in my backlog still.

I bought it from the buy 3 get 2 sale so I didn't pay much for it at least.
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Unless it's been patched, pretty much every review and commentary I have seen on it says its probably the worst performing title in the series to date.

Here's one article on it from Kotaku.

There has been some patching, but I don't think they can fully fix what is fundamentally a design choice. Can't fix what isn't "broken."

I imagine they're not stupid in limiting a numbered Disgaea release to one platform, so I anticipate a PS4/PS5/PC release at some point and would choose to play it there, even though I would love to have the series entirely on one system. Maybe someday PC will be that system.

This is beyond the rather divisive issues around the design of D6 versus previous entries, but that is rather more a matter of opinion than strict performance metrics.

 
I assumed that Disgaea 6 had timed exclusivity. It came out on the PS4 in Japan, but Switch-only in the West. Part of me was wondering if they decided to hold off until the inevitable 6+ or 6 Complete edition and then throw it on the PS5.

I'll buy it if it does end up coming to the PS ecosystem, but I don't have reservations about skipping it if it does remain exclusive. Too many good games to play already, and the reviews certainly didn't paint Switch performance positively.

 
Am I weird that I barley care about anything Disgaea anymore? The stories are always OK (mainly played 1,2 and 5), but the repetitive grinding, somewhat same-ish feeling games (yes I know the gameplay evolves over the games) and just lots of systems leads to maybe an OK but not great game. I bought 5 mainly to see if I can find my magic for the game again, but just became bored and it felt similar again to the previous I played. I also did play 4 but dropped off quickly. Disgaea 6 lost me even before the technical problems surfaced. I am ok with tactical games too loving FF Tactics and the Advanced ones and some others liking enough like Stella Glow. Some reason I just can't get into Disgaea anymore after the 2nd.

 
Disgaea is a series that i buy when cheap. I have slight interest in it but have always figured they cater to a specific audience that doesn't really include me. The one i remember enjoying the most is Disgaea D2, where characters grated on me the least and i had fun pushing item world runs as far as possible.
 
I don't really like the modern aesthetics of the Disgaea games.  If I'm going to invest a ton of time into something I want it to be VERY fun and I want to like what I'm looking at.   I still have a lot of nostalgic love for the franchise, but I don't want to play it anymore.

...

Last night I played a few more PS3 games... but the big thing was cleaning out the cabinets next to my tv (2 small media cabinets) and moved every game I haven't decided on and those i plan to keep into them.  Added it up and I'm down to around 210 games total left.  I plan to get everything out I plan to part with this weekend and set it up on my dining room table so the kids can pick through it.  I'll add that up to see how many games that is.  I have no idea how many that is... but it's quite a lot.   I love stats though... so it'll be interesting to see where I started versus where I'm at.    I won't aim for under 100.  There's really not a lot of fat left in the 210.   Maybe I could knock it to around 180.  I have to get the og xbox out and put some time in with that.  It was fun to revist... but I could probably live without it.

 
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