[quote name='willardhaven']Star Ocean 3 is good, but it is not a popular game around here.[/QUOTE]
I'll never understand why people hated that game so much. Sure the huge twist at the end was kind of ridiculous, but overall, it was leaps and bounds better than 4... I dunno, I loved it anyway, one of my all time favorite PS2 games.
Does anybody play any Western RPGs? I enjoyed almost anything that used the infinity engine and/or the d20 system. I loved BG2, and was planning on an attempt at the first, but it's just toooooooooo hard, even on easy. It's impossible for me to progress without cheating, so I didn't see much point in continuing with it.
Not that I don't love JRPGs, but I find that as gaming tech advances, the Japanese ability to tell a coherent story is lessening greatly. The simple stories that they used to tell transcended culture because they were just that. The new, more complicated and esoteric stories are largely incomprehensible. I obviously can't say it's due to a difference in culture but I don't see any US-made games pumping out stories as convoluted and difficult to understand as, say FF XII. I loved XII but the story fell completely apart in the end. All of the sudden there are some weird aliens that need to be protected (or killed) for some reason. It was just weird, and I think the game would have been better served if that whole thing hadn't been included.
Just now, I'm getting ready to start up Arcanum. I played it for a bit a couple of years ago, and I'm really jonesing to start over and get into it again.