Granado Espada (Sword of the New World), out of all the MMOs I've played over the years for some reason it's the only one that's held my attention for longer than a month (I've been playing for probably like half a year).

Ok it finally came... at like 10pm last night (I didn't even know UPS ran that late although maybe it's because of where I am). Anyway since then I've done nothing but play this game so I figure I should probably write a review since no one has done it here yet. Now bare with me here I didn't go to sleep last night and on top of that my english sucks anyway, it's not my native language but I've been speaking/writing it since like 2001-2002 and I grew up hearing it/reading it so I should be better than I am with it by now to tell you the truth. Well anyway on with my crappy review...

Gameplay
At its core it's alot like Guilty Gear, most of the mechanics work the same so yeah calling this a spiritual successor to GG wouldn't be wrong at all. One of the things that is different in Blazblue is how special attacks work. Basically most special attacks are done with one button (X on the PS3) and everyone's special attacks are done and act completely different than everyone else's. For example Ragna is pretty much your standard quarter circle + X = more damaging flashy technique type guy (except they absorb life force or something) but pressing X + a direction with Rachel Alucard makes her control a gust of wind that can be used to blow her (she has an umbrella like thing) and projectiles around the stage or with Carl Clover it lets you control a marionette who's always in the battle with him.

Story mode is pretty good too, although not as good as what I expected from other people's comments (I thought it would be way longer) it still gets the job done. Its basically what you'd expect from a fighting game's story mode (you know read some text while looking at some still frame images then fight and repeat) but the characters are all interesting enough to make it worthwhile. You also very occasionally choose what your character says, I'm not really sure how much barring this has on the flow of the story though.

My only real gripe with this game is the lack of modes such as survival and tournament (the game modes are Aracde, Verses, Story, Score Attack, Training and Network) and when compared to GG the character roster is pretty small (although this IS a new series, not to mention everyone plays differently so I'm not so sure how valid a complaint this is).  Overall though this game is awesome especially if you like doujinshi-style fighters, in fact I'd say without a doubt that hands down it's the best fighter I've played in a while.

Graphics
Beautiful, I started out playing this game on a SD TV and it already looked good but on a HD TV it simply looks like a work of art. To be fair some of the backgrounds (the 3D stuff pretty much) could use some more work and if you hate anime style stuff (I love anime, I think I'm a minority nowadays...) it might turn you off but this has to be the best looking fighter around right now (atleast until maybe when King of Fighters XIII comes out).

Sound
Pretty much the same music style as GG, although there seems to be more vocal and choral tracks and overall the music seems to be of a higher quality than GG's. That's probably just because it's been like a million years since GG has had all new music instead of just remixes and that probably just makes the music sound fresh. SFXs get the job done and the voices are better than I expected. I mean yeah there's a well supply of engrish but nobody's really that annoying which is rare in this genre. I also find it pretty cool that the characters say completely different things depending on who they're fighting (I'm not just talking about intros and stuff here they even say different things when they do their attacks). Bang *insert long Japanese name which I can't spell* is awesome too btw.

Network
I couldn't tell ya since I'm currently smack dab in the middle of the podunkyist hickville you could ever find. I did ask a guy outside the city hall here this morning about any wifi areas in town so I could atleast use my PSP, DS or my labtop online and it went something like this...

ME: Excuse me sir is there a place in town where I can use wireless internet?
HIM: Wha?
ME: I asked if-
HIM: Are you black or a mexican?
ME: Umm... nevermind.

So yeah I can't really review the online features yet. I'll probably update this review with what I think of it after I'm in an area where I can use high-speed internet (I leave here next Wednesday for Memphis, TN so...).

Well I can't really think of anything else to say so yeah that's my review and all that.

Bubsy the Bobcat - you had Mario I had Bubsy

Whoa I can't believe someone else liked this game besides me...
I use to rent this all the time when I was a kid... although I wonder how much I'd like it now?

Anyway right now I'm playing Persona 3:FES, this is my first time playing Persona 3 and so far I'm enjoying it alot. To tell you the truth I thought I would hate this game because of the dating sim-ish aspects but that's not the case at all.

Also since alot of people recommended it I've been playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. So far it's great, probably the best Star Wars game I've ever played (not to mention the Jeremy Soule mixed with standard Star Wars music soundtrack is awesome). I generally don't play western RPGs, mainly because I hate anything with a typically high fantasy style (Well besides Berserk, but that's like dark fantasy or something right?) but ever since I played through Oblivion (yeah it's high fantasy-ish but for some reason I still liked it) I've aquired a taste for western RPGs especially the ones outside of the high fantasy realm.

I dunno I'm starting to think the only reason I never liked western RPGs was mainly because I haven't played that many. I mean the only ones I've played are Secret of Evermore (does this even count?), Deus EX, Septerra Core, Fallout 1/2/3, Oblivion and KOTOR and all these were in like the last 5 years (well besides Evermore, I grew up with that one). With such a short list how the hell can I say I don't like them!? (especially when I've liked everything actually ON the list)

Where do you live? The game seems difficult to get everywhere except in the US. I'm a little disappointed that only a few hundred copies shipped to Canada. Still waiting for this game to arrive from Hong Kong, which will hopefully be in a few days since it shipped out yesterday.

So, does anyone here have this game for any console yet? I'd love to hear what a GW member thinks of it.

Yeah I'm in the US I think it's taking so long (yeah I still haven't gotten it) because I ordered it kinda late.
The sucky thing is I actually had it shipped to my mother's house because that's where I was last week for vacation (plus I wanted to play it with my 2D fighter obsessed cousin) so now I have to wait till after it arrives there (because they say it's already in transit) and then after she sends it to me.

Actually I pre-ordered this (the limited edition version) but because of alot of stupidly annoying reasons it hasn't arrived yet.

Hmm... when I think about it this is like the only game I'm looking forward to this year (hopefully something else will impress me at E3 but I'm not getting my hopes up). I don't really know WHY I'm anticipating this game so much but to be honest it's probably just because of this game's relation to Hulk: Ultimate Destruction a game which I've beaten literally hundreds of times and haven't grown the slightest bit tired of yet.

Bruce Willis did star in a video game already, two really and one of them was actually good. So with that in mind, I might play this. Jack Black has a taste of humor I don't really like.

Sorry it was Vin Diesel I was thinking of, yeah he starred in two games one of them was good.

Ragnar whats with all the editing?

Actually Bruce Willis did star in a game that had no connection to a movie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_(video_game)
I actually remember this game because I had one of those old PS1 demo discs with it on it.

no one has even pulled off a good mmorpg on the pc yet, wtf. this smells mediocre

You know I was going to disagree with you but then I realised that I've never played one single MMO for longer than a month before I move on to another one so yeah...

i know that nobuo uematsu used to make music for some pornos before square hired him.

*Pictures Nobuo Uematsu music in a porno* ok... whoa that's a freakin' epic porno. It's time for the money shot *cue dramatic choir*

You know regardless of how bad this seems based on the demo I'm not so sure if that means the final product will be bad at all. I mean does anyone remember how much the FFXII demo that came with DQVIII sucked? Yet the final game is one of my most favorite FF games (well gameplay-wise). Not to mention there really hasn't been IMO a bad main series FF (I enjoyed the hell out of FFX at its time but not so much now and I'm not counting the sequels) so I have faith in this game so far. Come to think about it the FFVIII demo that came with Brave Fencer Musashi was pretty bad too (mainly because FFVIII has alot of "unique" features and the only explaination the demo had were static text screens which I doubt anybody read) so I s'pose you could say Square Enix just isn't that good with demos (although the Einhander demo was awesome as hell and if it wasn't for it I probably would have never even considered getting it).

Anyway this demo is coming to the US via the blue-ray version of Advent Children right? Is there any other way to get it cause I really want to play this myself but I have no desire to buy AC.

It's all licensed oldies tracks but the occasional (as steel puts it) postrock with violins inon zur composed track.  I do like the radio stations, though, and no one can say that they hate Butcher Pete.

HE'S HACKIN' AND WHACKIN' AND SMACKIN'

Oh yeah the radio stations are cool (everything I said previously about music was about the in-game music not the radio stations).

sh'was s'pose t'be a crazy w'man

lol I really do talk like that my english sucks, but I'm working on it.
So "s'pose" is bad? Ok "suppose" it is from now on the​

but yeah if this is anything like oblivion, all the characters (or almost) feel really bland and boring, just because their dialogue is so bad
(i guess it is, listening to you guys)

Well to tell you the truth the dialogue and characters are overall alot better than Oblivion's. I've experienced alot more memorable characters already than I did in Oblivion (mostly all the characters in Oblivion were forgettable). This is mainly because each character for the most part has there own unique dialogue and you can't really talk to unimportant people (they just make a response like "how are you today" or something like that).

there is one character in arefu named braillie euwen or something, i can't remember what exactly it was, but she is the worst character in a game. she is horrible. aaaaaaa she is bad.

You talking about Brailee Evers? I don't really think she was a bad character at all, she was s'pose to be a crazy woman who talks like a mom from the 50's. Sure considering half of the stuff she talks about hasn't existed in 200 years (Mrs. West is probably whipping up a batch of her famous cookies and all the kids are playing in the yard... uh yeah what world are you in lady?) she really doesn't make sense (well I guess she could have watched old TV or Radio shows or something if that still exists) but still she was funny as hell to me.

EDIT:

how is the music. i heard one song and it sounded basically like the battlestar galactica soundtrack, which is not a terrible thing but makes sad/intense middle eastern-esque music into a cliche if it is all like that. i mean it sounded good, but how is the music overall?

Mostly forgettable for me. I mean yeah it definately gets the job done but there's nothing that has stuck in my head so far. Still I gotta say it's better than Oblivion's crappy music though (that's really just a preferance though. Oblivion's music wasn't bad it just wasn't my style).

Man this game is wowing the hell outta me.
Alright I found this town named Big Town right that had been attacked by Super Mutants multiple times and they had dragged off (and I s'pose eaten) most of the people in town. So I agreed to go save these 2 people that had recently been dragged off named Red and Shorty. Ok so I go to the place where they were taken to (Germantown Police Department) and shoot my way through it, nothing special yet. Sooner or later I find Red who tells me they took Shorty downstairs to the kitchen (and no one returns from the kitchen she sez). This sets off the first choice I can go down stairs and save Shorty or we can just get outta there. I choose to go save Shorty (because I heard some Super Mutants talking about him I figured he was still alive) and I take her along with me (she's useless I gave her a gun but she didn't use it) and after wacking a few more Super Mutants we find Shorty still alive. So we all make our way back to BigTown right and I'm thinking "ok so the quest is over"... WRONG!!! Now the people of Big Town are talking about how the Super Mutants are gonna come back and attack again and I'm given the choice to either Fight off the Super Mutants so they'll leave them alone / Just let fate take care of'em and hope for the best / Teach them how to shoot (because my small firearms stat is high). I choose to teach them how to shoot. So they go over to the Junkyard as they call it and I shoot a can and then they pop off a couple of rounds. Now again I'm thinking ok now this is the end of the mission so I make my way to the exit of the town and suddenly I see a bunch of Super Mutants rushing the way in so I start V.A.T.S.ing them when I realise that the townspeople are fight them too. After we take out all the Super Mutants (actually I just Fat Man'em all to hell since by this time I'm low on ammo with everything else) the mission is finally over. I then go to Red's place since she's a doctor and I need some healing. When I get there I find yet another set of choices in the form of a wounded guy named Timebomb. The game gives me the choices of Performing surgury on him (I have a high-ish medical stat too) / Killing him and making it look like he died from his wounds / Just leaving him be. I choose to fix him up and he thanked me by giving me something that ups my Luck S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat +1.

What's my point? Well basically that this game gives you a helluva lot of choices! What if I hadn't saved Shorty? He'd never make it back to Big Town. What if I had just left without teaching them how to shoot or fighting for them? Would all the people in Big Town become Super Mutant food? Heck what if I had higher other stats? Would I be given different choices? AWESOMENESS!!!!!

I know yeah the old Fallouts did stuff like this too but that was ten years ago and I can't really name a recent game that gave you that much freedom.
Non-spoiler / Short Version: This game gives you alot of choices, way more than I expected from a Bethesda game and I'm totally blown away by that simply because the last time I experienced something like this was probably the old Fallouts.

EDIT: Still haven't seen any Deathclaws though.

is there an deathclaws?

There better fucking be Deathclaws.

Well I haven't personally seen any yet, but I've heard other people talking about them so I'm pretty sure they're there.

You guys with the game should offer a bit more insight into the game so far, I think, rather than just "seems cool" or "oblivion with guns." Anyway, I'll probably pick this up for the PS3 after work.

Um, I don't really know what else to say besides what I already have so I dunno... just tell me what you wanna know and I'll be glad to tell you.

Fuck sakes. I still have to wait two days before I even get to play it.

Leric, you must update your post with more thoughts on the game when you are less tipsy/tired.

Basically this game is freak'n awesome and unless something else sneaks up and wows me this is definately my GOTY choice this year. Yeah it's ALOT like Oblivion but there are some things that make it better. For one thing this game probably has the best dialog Bethesda has ever written and there's way more choices during conversations than you probably would have expected from them. V.A.T.S. is way more useful than I would have originally expected it to be (I find myself using it whenever I can) although I have to wonder if it won't get kinda annoying having to watch the slow-mo scenes over again and over after I hit like the 30 hour mark. So far they're quite entertaining though. In some ways it does feel like a Fallout game (maybe it would feel even more like one if you haven't played Oblivion before eh?) but just don't go into this game expecting it to be like a Fallout 2 Washington D.C. expansion pack and you'll enjoy it alot more.

I'm curious, since this is coming from Bethesda.. What is the character creation like?

Long story short it sucks. There's basically no choices and if you want to make an original character prepare for atleast an hour of manual face shaping. I swear Bethy should really realise by now that in these games they keep making that last for hundreds of hours the way your character looks is gonna be important to people. The hair choices suck too btw.

I wonder how tedious it'll become if you replay the game too much though.

It's pretty annoyingly long the 2nd or 3rd time around to have to go through it all again, atleast until I took Marcus' advice and made a save right before you leave the vault that is.

Hahaha.....

I read that on GameFAQs. Is it for real!?

I'm not sure, I don't think so. Well it would give the different races more purpose I s'pose but yeah that's kinda... yeah I hope not.

Ironically enough I AM black and latino in real life and I usually do use alot of heavier combat skills while sneaking and stealing shit in these kinds of games, heck that's how I played pretty much all of Oblivion.

EDIT: Also I just wanna add that the 3rd-person camera actually would have worked (atleast it would have been playable from that mode I mean) if they had just fixed one small problem, the target reticle in 3rd person is off a little to the right from where you're aiming so this makes you crazy inaccurate in combat or when just picking up stuff. I hope they release a patch to fix this sooner or later since it doesn't seem like to me it would be that hard to fit.

Got this a couple of hours ago (GameStop midnight release thingy).
So far I've just been dicking around, pretty fun it does remind me alot of Oblivion but there's definately some Fallout there as well. Haven't played enough to say if it really deserves a 10 or not but so far I'd say maybe an 8 oor something.

I would run on with a million pointless sentences like I usually do say more but I'm tired as hell (and alittle tipsy).

This is probably my most anticipated game this year (now that Prototype is coming out next year). I've pretty much already paid for it I just gotta pick it up at a midnight launch the Gamestop near here is having (well I don't "have to" per se but the wait is freak'n killing me and I want to). Although surprisingly I didn't get one of those more expensive special additions (I just want the game, now!)

I'm one of those people who walk the line between the old Fallout games and Oblivion since they're both some of my most favorite games of all time (I also like FPSs too so...). Basically if this game is atleast half of what I expect it to be (Oblivion with guns works for me, give me more and you've got gold) then I'll definately love it.

still, i'm not expecting fallout to have especially good writing.  but the parts of fallout 1 and 2 i played weren't amazingly written, either.  maybe the good writing came later on, but yeah, i wasn't blown away by what i saw of either of the first two.  maybe i'm missing something!

Well to tell you the truth the writing wasn't actually that good in Fallout 1 and 2. What made it seem like such good writing was the amount of choices you had in dialogue and the game's ability to continue to make sense no matter what you chose to say. I wouldn't call it good writing, it's more like I dunno... natural writing perhaps? Like it felt like you were really talking to people living in a post-apocalyptic future.

So far from what I've seen of Fallout 3's writing and dialogue choices it seems to be better than Oblivion's and I've heard that most quests are longer and more meaningful than Oblivion's and give you multiple ways in how you can approach them.

I absolutely hated Fable 1. Like, I found nothing enjoyable about it. I seem to be the only person who seems to think this, though.

I won't be picking this up!

No you're not the only one, I hated it too.
The gameplay tended to be more frustrating than fun and the story was horrible.
I don't like too many western style RPGs (well I use to say that but lately I've been getting into and enjoying Oblivion, Fallout 1 and 2, Planescape and some other older ones) & I have even more dislike for high-fantasy RPGs so this might explain my dislike for Fable but I dunno, just seemed like a bad game really.
I'll be picking up Fallout 3 next week and there are some other western RPGs I wanna try as well (like Mass Effect and y'know I've never played KOTOR, Jade Empire or any of Bioware's games for that matter) so I really have no reason to get this.

EDIT: About the world, I've heard them say that this game doesn't restrict you to just a couple of paths like the first game, that you can go off the path and explore where you want but is this really true? Going by every video I've seen it seems to be just as path based as the first game.

also, some buddies told me that major grinding is required to beat the game.  some villagers or something ask for RARE drops (and those of you castlevania fanboys knows how long it can take even with MAX LUCK to get a rare drop) and this is necessary just to finish the stupid game.  also there's supposed to be something called a GLYPH system that limits how many times you can attack with your MAIN weapon??

god dammit i'm not buying this piece of shit.

Well from my experience so far the villager missions are side-quests (pretty much like the missions from that ghost guy in PoR) so you don't have to do them.

And as for limiting your attacks it actually works alot better than you might think. See in this game you don't just equip new weapons but use glyphs on both your arms and back as weapons. These glyphs can be anything from a sword to the ability to shoot lightning bolts. Since you can pretty much dual-wield any glyph (or even 2 different glyphs), which allows you use them at a much faster rate than in previous CV games by alternating your attacks (not only that some of these regular attacks are equavilant to the special attacks in previous games) MP is used when you use your regular attack because if it didn't well you'd be to damn powerful.
Heh I know, this still sounds stupid doesn't it? Well what makes it not stupid is the fact that if you stop attacking MP automatically refills, very quickly. This makes it feel more like a limiter (kinda like Secret of Mana's % system but... not) instead of a crutch. Tell you the truth they probably should have called it stamina or something instead of MP considering how it works.

But yeah this game is alot more linear than the other Metrovanias (or however the hell you spell that) and I take back what I said about it being atleast as non-linear as PoR cause it's not. Really I'm not sure if I'd call it a Metrovania since because of the world map there's usually like just 1 or 2 exits from an area and there's hardly any backtracking at all. It actually reminds me more of Demon's Crest... damn that game was awesome, Capcom needs to make a new Demon's Crest for the DS!!!