I lost the thread with earthbound at fourside because my laptop broke down and it was months before I could access that hard drive and by that time I guess I was playing a different game. I really enjoyed it though, I like the game's attitude.

hmm, for me way after fourside when you needed to start grinding. a big mistake on game developer's part...

Final Fantasy Tactics is the only FF game I've beaten, and I've played all the others (including Mystic Quest), except for X and X2.

I've watched Paolo beat 7 though, hooray!

Any Disgaea game - I also haven't beaten. I get to the hardcore grinding, then after a month wonder what I'm doing with my life.

Looking back, I don't think I've properly completed a game that wasn't A) a suikoden game, B) a tactical RPG, c) Warhammer game, since the days of SNES and the rule of 2D PLATFORMERS. EVen then I didn't complete most of them.

I am like a magpie; the second something shiny and new appears, I need to do that instead.

It's crazy how similar that sounds to what I was going to say. Now that I can put every final fantasy prior to X on my phone to emulate, what I'm doing right now is playing through the only Final Fantasy that I ever did already beat all the way through (but Final Fantasy Tactics on an entirely portable format is so bad-ass in principle and execution. FFTA2 can just suck it!)

My problem is that I always get my party into a state where they can go through to the final boss, but then I lose all interest in going up and actually beating the game itself. I think it's the blatant linearity and crazy endgame difficulty is what made FFT the exception for me, but does it count as a real win if you abuse the JP generation glitch all the way through? I never fail to use that cheat, since I personally view it as just a way to skip redundant grinding, which is pretty ironic given I use the exact same logic to loosely justify my consistently constant grinding in Disgaea.

Now that I think about it, I'm probably just going to look into some Tactics Ogre games I haven't played and beat those instead. I'm astonished at how effectively that entire series flew under my radar since I am the exact same way about Tactical RPGs as you are.

I'm surprised at how many people are saying they never beat Earthbound. I thought most of the people here were already used to playing RPGs. (Although tbh I am just as surprised that Earthbound was one of the few traditional RPGs I played all the way to beating. I beat the sequel, but I still gotta play through the prequel *or original, depending on your perspective*)

my two black sims had a white baby.  does this count as winning the sims?

actually on my earthbound cartridge there's still a saved game in the lost underworld, which is where I had to take a break. I got to magicant years before, but when we were 14ish my sister stomped near the SNES because of something her boyfriend did and the cartridge reset and I had to start over for the third time

The fuck, a cartridge can RESET? And it can reset due to STOMPING NEAR IT?

It could have knocked the battery lose or something.

yeah I dunno, but it happened twice.  this was while it was plugged into the SNES and I was playing it. the other time I think my sister accidentally kicked the console while it was on.

Earthbound Zero wasn't very fun. It basically could've been a hack of Dragon Warrior 2 or something and it is /too/ much like Peanuts that time around with the clinically depressive atmosphere Peanuts had

I like all the huge/empty/open spaces though (hyrule field/spacechat). Reminds me of Earthbound where between Threed and desert there is this grassy highway area but in Earthbound Zero you can actually explore those places. Also going through dark train tunnels and fighting overpowered enemies is pretty surreal and dreamlike. Wish Earthbound had more ridiculous wandering segments like this, it has lots of nature areas but it's always like one of the Your Sanctuary dungeons and it all seems to have a purpose/flow. Wish there was more segments where you're just hopelessly lost in mountains/presented more like EB Zero where it is like scattered towns + overwhelming nature/lack of civilization inbetween. Have to walk around the mountain 10000 times to reach the haunted house dungeon. Is actually in a secluded area rather than Earthbound videogame version of 'secluded'. But EB Zero just didn't convince me with the atmosphere that I was in suburbs/city/school/etc. interested in that EB Zero hack of Earthbound that starmen.net or some dudes were doing though

Dragon Quest VIII

it's like beautiful game and I do enjoy exploring the game and stuff but it kind of lost how ultra-streamlined the series had become. (not streamlined like pretty streamlined like fast/intuitive) Like I remember VII and the remake of III was so fast going through the battle menus even with enemy animations they made them so brief in such a way it actually made it funkier to watch. Also item management is weird now it's like Quest 64 gaudy icons for every item. It's easier to ascertain if a sword is better by names like SHORT SWORD vs. RAGNAROK ULTRA DEATH BRADE, or HALF MAIL FULL MAIL not so much a pictoral representation. Everything just feels like a pain in the ass to do. Also getting in extra battles because of fighting the camera or because you can no longer see through walls like in the 2D games. There are really so many problems because of the 3D like you can also no longer see a dungeon MILES ahead of you because of the shrunken perspective of the world map. I think they maybe should've had like a quick zoom-out feature where it appears like any other Dragon Quest game and you can see the landmarks up to a certain distance. Or maybe there is an overworld map? I dunno

Final Fantasy V and Deus Ex. Got near the end about 4-5 times each but I just can't seem to do it.

Nowadays most of the games I get seem to be short enough to blast through (although I still haven't got through Dead Space and I've had it for a few years, ugh. Great game but it's a slog at times).

I never finished System Shock 2, Condemned 2, Wild Arms 3, Shadow Hearts:From the New World, or Final Fantasy XII.

The incomplete ps2 games were due to my console dying on me. I've subsequently patched a functioning one together from two I had laying around the house, but I've been away from the games for so long I don't really feel like picking them back up. I watched an LP of Shadow Hearts From the New World, picking up about where I left off... then I lost interest in watching the lp. I don't know what that says about the game, but Shadow Hearts Covenant is still one of my favorite rpgs of all time. I tried FF12 again, but I was in that damn repetitive as hell tower/ziggurat/whatever and just said "hell with this."

Condemned 2 just fell apart for me the more I played it. It made less sense than the original, which is strange since it went about explaining everything that happened. The part I gave up on was the bowling alley. I had a good trip through, had found (I guess) all the hidden stuff up to the point where I was, but I had a power outage (or something, been a while). I went back and replayed the level later, and realized that I'd missed something, but when I went to go back, I had faceless mannequins blocking my way. I reloaded a save and did the level again up to that point, only this time I forgot to find some other thing, and had to stare at the damn mannequins again. I said "F-ck you too," and turned the console off, and never had a desire to play the game again.

System Shock 2 was one of the games I attacked after falling in love with Deus Ex. I wanted more games to be like Deus Ex, and I wanted to play them all. For me, System Shock 2 just wasn't as good. I had fun with it, but for some reason my interest just tapered off, big time.

Just remembered, I also haven't finished Vampire:The Masquerade: Redemption. The modern sections were kind of annoying with the horrible accuracy rate for firearms. I found myself cheating the game and carrying unlimited ammo and healing my characters all the time through console commands when things got out of hand. It just wasn't fun to play that way, let alone in its original broken state, anymore. It was a shame, because there was potential there.