To think that 70% of this game, so familiar to so many players, occupies exactly 0 bytes of data. The glimpses I see of Real Zebes break a spell indeed... It is one thing to understand how a game works, but it is another entirely to see how it work.

After a short hour into a playthrough, the player may feel as though they've accomplished nothing---this is likely true. Do not mistake: there is strategy in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is simply difficult to extrapolate when you are falling asleep in your chair.

RPGs have always been about trying to combine disparate genres into a seemingly endless cycle of nerdier and nerdier products. It started when a bunch of guys sat down, threw some board games and copies of Tolkien on a table, and ended up with Dungeons & Dragons, which resulted in some other guys sitting down, throwing D&D rules in with computer programming manuals and creating Wizardry. RPGs have been combined with every conceivable genre, from first-person shooters (The Elder Scrol...

Despite my prudish nature and enrolment in something called “Library and Information Studies,” there is a part of me that wants to get piss ass drunk, rip off my clothes, and throw myself onto a pile of naked women. I'd never admit to it in my every day life, and you could never tell from looking at me, but there is a deeply disturbed creature in the back of my head that wants to be called a “bad boy,” to feel finger nails and teeth digging into the skin on my back, to have intimate contact wit...

The RPG genre has generally been understood to be exclusive to games that are, in some form, driven up front by visible statistics. If there is a screen that displays HP, STR, MAG, or any other common abbreviations, the game in question is likely an RPG in the sense in which the term is most commonly applied. Half-life is obviously not an RPG in the numerical sense. It is instead, a great example (perhaps the best example) of the original sense of an RPG, a game in which narrative is v...

After finally obtaining a “next generation” gaming system media center (?), it seemed prudent that I should make an effort to experience the best that my new PS3's cell processor could muster. I wanted to make a point to experience a game that was technically beautiful and fresh from all the genre-centric titles that had dominated the previous generation. In that spirit, I purchased Valkyria Chronicles.

Pool of Radiance is an unusual game in that it has entirely fallen from the perspective of the average gamer, but still enjoys an almost legendary status with those familiar with the name. Among the right audience, it will still be brought up with the same type of reverence that NES owners talk about Super Mario Bros 3 or Zelda acolytes discuss Ocarina of Time. It wasn't just another RPG or a good RPG, it was the RPG that defined the late 80s and the first successfu...

I must confess that I listen almost exclusively to classical music. At work, I frequently infuriate my co-workers by turning off their intolerable rap music and switching to NPR. The thing with classical music is that it requires a great deal of concentration to get the most out of it. The pieces that I enjoy hearing the most are the ones that I have heard repeatedly, ones that I perhaps have some familiarity with the score itself, and ones that I'm able to pick up on the subtle nuances.

Despite the popular notion that the Mega Man series never evolved (or became more “intelligently designed”) as it progressed, the series actually underwent many fundamental changes in its early NES installments. While the differences between the first Mega Man and Mega Man 6 are pretty blatant, even the refinement that took place between MM1 and MM2 or MM3 and MM4 cannot be overstated. Anyone that has played these games over and over (and over)...

Like the average fan of RPGs, I typically do not look back on my years in high school with fondness. So when Atlus began showing trailers of Persona 3, the most recent spin-off in the ever edgy Shin Megami Tensei series, I was obviously skeptical of the unusual format in which the player equally divides his or her time between school work and dungeon-crawling. I mean, this is the same series that had tried to revive Hitler; how did we go from that to sleeping through Engli...