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Picked up a few rpg titles just recently off of amazon.

Grandia (ps1)
Bof 4
Wild Arms
Tales of Phantasia (GBA)

Any recommendations on which one of these bad boys I should play first. I will state that I have not played any of the grandia or wild arms series.

I am currently playing and about to finish Tales of Symphonia (GC). I am on the final boss (well about to be). I thoroughly enjoyed this game and it was actually my first time playing the tales series. I do feel that the game was not that difficult though. This is honestly the only negative comment I have to say about the game overall. Granted I do always spend a few extra hours of leveling up when I start out any new rpg and when I acquire new characters.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:I fired up Final Fantasy II (GBA) last night. It is part of my "summer challenge" and it is the only one of the first ten Final Fantasy games that I have yet to complete. It is quite simple, and I am enjoying it so far. (I particularly enjoy the fact that I can save anywhere...which is such a key feature for a portable RPG.)

Uh...oh. I can't figure out where to go, and I have resorted to fighting my own characters to build up their HP. I am less than an hour into the game...this is not a good sign.

Doesn't attacking your own characters decrease their ability to evade, thus actually making the game more difficult, or at least not any easier?

Zing wrote:Doesn't attacking your own characters decrease their ability to evade, thus actually making the game more difficult, or at least not any easier?

From what I have read, aiming physical attacks at your characters also increases their evasion. I have been aiming magic attacks at my characters so that I can spread out the damage, build magic levels, and build magic defense. May be it will work. Their HP have been increasing at least...

I'm playing Wasteland with a friend, I haven't done much so far, other than the dog quest and the one with the crazy rabits in a nearby spot, which seem a pretty weak part of the game but it's still fun.

Even though getting there is painful, it seems the game gets more focused there and you start knowing how everything works. Sure, now it pains me I wasted some points in silly abilities and I should go back to kill some NPCs to get experience but so far I'm doing great. I'm checking out some guides for the basic stuff, crossing the map and getting killed because you didn't know there was radioactive ground there is not very fun.

I'm playing FFIV Advance, and I'm being reminded of lots of things I didn't like about the game when I played before. This is my 3rd attempt at playing through the game. I find it really annoying how you spend much of the early game with a basically useless party. There's nothing wrong with mages and the like, but when they make up the majority of your party, you just end up spending ages waiting for Cecil's turn in order to actually be able to kill common enemies - in the early game mages don't have enough MP to cast often, and when they do the results are less than impressive anyway. It's not a problem that resolves itself for ages either, what with the twins and Tellah later on. At least Yang helps out for a while.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:

Zing wrote:Doesn't attacking your own characters decrease their ability to evade, thus actually making the game more difficult, or at least not any easier?

From what I have read, aiming physical attacks at your characters also increases their evasion. I have been aiming magic attacks at my characters so that I can spread out the damage, build magic levels, and build magic defense. May be it will work. Their HP have been increasing at least...

Yeah you're doing fine, attacking yourself is the best strategy, as least early in the game.

You know the "cancel trick" right? If you select an action (like casting a spell) and then cancel it, it still "counts" as being cast. You can spam this multiple times during a battle and level up spells easily. Works for physical attacks too. There's a couple downsides though: you can't do this with your fourth character (you can't cancel their actions) and I believe that while you can level up the strength of your spells you never actually gain an increase in MP by performing this trick (you actually have to cast the spells fully to gain an increase in max MP). So basically, make sure you don't gain spells that are so powerful you don't have the MP to cast them!

Once you get the Swap spell you can "cheat" hardcore and gain ridiculous stat increases. I don't think you can gain this spell until over halfway through the game however.

(I've only played the PS1 version so what I said may not apply exactly to whatever version you're playing)

Interesting. The cancel trick sounds a bit too much like "cheating" for me, but if I get into a tight spot - or if i want to maximize some spell levels quickly at the end of the game - I might try it out.

I am making some progress, and my party is getting stronger. The problem that I have right now are the enemies. All of the enemies that I am encountering are either too weak to damage my characters or so powerful that they kill all of them in a single round...

That said, I am still enjoying the game. I think that it has strong atmosphere, especially for an 8-bit RPG. Moreover, it just feels "epic". It is like your characters are involved in something larger than themselves. Also, the soldiers in the occupied city and the random airships flying overhead do a good job of giving the impression of a world at war.

Kahokian wrote:Picked up a few rpg titles just recently off of amazon.

Grandia (ps1)
Bof 4
Wild Arms
Tales of Phantasia (GBA)

Any recommendations on which one of these bad boys I should play first. I will state that I have not played any of the grandia or wild arms series.

Grandia or Wild Arms would be a good one to start with. Wild Arms is an early PS1 RPG so some of the graphics are downright ugly, but it has a really unique setting and a great cast. Grandia is just really good all-around but I don't think I like it as much as Wild Arms.

The Witcher 2. I'm pretty happy with it so far, but the small text and lack of any background for those without the first game is killing me.