Now that I got my first PS3 game and am going to get a PS3, I'm looking into games to get. Unfortunately, I've played most of these games before on the PS3. 

 
amazon: $16.75
gamestop: $28 used

I played Eternal Sonata on the 360 and, despite the horrible story and funky character models, I really enjoyed the game. The battle system is really fun and the characters are really cute. Plus, it's also a tri-crescendo game, and I love tri-crescendo.
 

amazon: $30
gamestop: $20
gamestop: $18 USED

Played this game to its completion with a friend. I didn't like the story all too much, but the battle system is really fun. And I LOVE fighting as Faize. And the game has Japanese audio, which makes it worth that much more than the Xbox 360 version.

I have this game on the 360, but I might actually get this on the PS3 if I can find it for a cheap enough price. I don't like the Japanese dub as much as the English one (Troy Barker FTW), but I really like Flynn and don't trust my 360 version enough to pass up the PS3 version if I can find it cheap enough.


This game is not released yet and I'm not 100% sure I want it yet, but it's something I'm keeping my eye on.


This is The Last Guardian. I don't know much about this game, other than the fact that the griffin creature is awesome. It's made by Team ICO, so it should be awesome.

Are there any other games I should put on my "games to watch" list for the PS3? I'm mostly looking for action-RPGs, but nothing too hardcore like Demon's Souls. And no Strategy RPGs, please.

Other games on my to get list:

Wii

• Kirby's Epic Yarn
• Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
• The Last Story
• Monado/Xenoblade
• Rune Factory Oceans (might get the Wii or PS3, depending on cost and controls)

DS

• Pokemon White
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

3DS

• Tales of the Abyss
• Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

I don't know if you heard this, but North Korea attacked a small island in South Korea yesterday. Apparently, South Korea was practicing gun shots and North Korea didn't like it and attacked them. South Korea retaliated. Two South Koreans were killed and sixteen injured, while North Korea lost four men. My kids were really freaking out about it, but they're a lot better now that it's all over with. I'm not really worried about it at this point, though I'm definitely keeping my ears open for any new news.

So bad news and good news concerning my DS Lite. Remember before when I complained that my R-button no longer works? I was on the forums a few days ago and read that sometimes the buttons no longer work because dirt gets trapped in them. They recommended blowing air through the cracks. I tried it and it worked! I can't do anything about my DS's hinge crack, of course, but at least my R-button is ok now. It means I have no more excuses to not play Tales of Innocence or FFIV though. X_X

Bad news: My micro SD card converter has not been working these past few weeks, which means that I couldn't switch out games on my R4 card. This annoyed me a lot since I use my R4 for reading books and for Korean studies. So today I went to Hi-Mart and bought a new converter. The one I got reads MS Duo, SD cards, CF, Micro SD and also comes with three extra USB ports, meaning I now have four ports instead of two. I went home and tried out the micro SD converter one last time for kicks (even though I'd tried it many times) and it actually popped up. Unfortunately, I'd already opened the other one, so I can't return it. But on the flip side, I now have extra USB ports and an extra SD and micro SD card device in case the ones I have decide to no longer work. But it's still a little frustrating. Why do electronics hate me so much?

This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the USA, so Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in America! We're having a get together on Saturday to celebrate the event. There will be food and fun times and hopefully no talk about work. I'm not really looking forward to going, to be honest, but I should at least make a guest appearance. Probably. But I'd rather stay home and play videogames.

A list of games I'm now currently excited about. I've done this many a time, but I've added a few more thanks to E3. Also, I've added a list of some of the interesting sounding 3DS games slated for release on the system.

( My List of Anticipated GamesCollapse )

Nintendo is going to steal all my money. Darn it.

So I've decided to stick with my two games of choice, Muramasa and Arc Rise Fantasia. I've seen some more videos of Arc Rise, and while the voices are...bad...I think I can handle it as long as I have fun with it rather than treat as a serious game. And anyway, Omi told me she'd play it with me, so yeah.

The problem is I still have $30 dollars left over. I'm thinking of buying a PS2 game, or maybe even DS/PSP game, but I'm not entirely sure. I was thinking Persona 3, since Toys-R-Us so conveniently has it for $30, but then I know that the PSP version is coming out. Granted, I will not be buying the PSP version for $40. It would be one thing if it were a new game altogether, but $40 for a port? I don't think so.

I tried asking MAL on it, and all I got were people suggesting I hack my PSP. I was like, "no, I don't think so". They can't seem to get it through their heads that I don't WANT to hack my PSP. It's not just that I'm scared of bricking my PSP, I just don't see the need. I don't need it to play PSX games since I have a perfectly functioning PSX (albeit it's not in Korea, but that's besides the point). The only games I'd want to play on the PSP are FFIX and Threads of Fate, both of which I own. Although I'd like to play them, I don't want to play the, so much that I'd risk tampering with my system to do it. Not only that, the PSP is so game starved and suffers from hackers. Because of that not that many people are willing to make PSP games since gamers won't support the system. Do I really want to join in that number? And I'd have to buy a bigger memory card, which isn't going to happen. Yes, I have an R4, but in general I like to support my game makers by actually buying their games instead of just playing everything hacked. The R4 is nice, but for me it's only really good for testing games. I really can't get into ROMs.

So if anyone has any suggestions for games in the 30 dollar range, I'd be more than happy to hear them!

Speaking of R4, I played "My Chinese Coach". My Chinese Coach is super hard for me because I cannot distinguish Chinese tones. Every Coach game you get starts with a test to determine your level. The Japanese test was far too easy and put me on lesson 19, though lesson 19 was definitely not at my level as it was still teaching me hiragana... Chinese put me at lesson 8, confident that I knew 85 words in Chinese. That is a lie. I know, like, 10.

I gave Charles the game as well, and he's super addicted to it. We were about to watch FMA:B, but he spent the entire time playing My Chinese Coach instead. To be honest, I'm a little miffed that he seems to be interested in every Asian language except for Japanese, even Vietnamese. I wonder if that's my fault for being such a language freak when it comes to Japanese. But it can't be helped, and he does the same thing to me with Korean. So it's only fair, right?

I found out that for the past three weeks I've been washing my hair with conditioner. I noticed today when after I washed my hair it still felt gross. I looked at the bottle and read (in Korean)
린스 (rinse, aka conditioner) instead of shampoo. I bought the stuff long before I could read Korean and I had thought that it was a condition/shampoo formula. I'm gonna have to be more careful when I buy shampoo... Oh, the things that will happen to you in a foreign country, especially when you don't know the language.In that regard, I am jealous of Charles for knowing so much Korean, though I can't say I'm disappointed that I'm not as interested in Korean as he is. To each his own, after all.

Two more days of work and then I'm on vacation! I can't wait! But now off to bed.

This weekend does not deserve to be called a weekend. Saturday was spent teaching small children who really didn't want to be there and hoping six hours would pass quickly. Afterwards I cooked, yes cooked, spaghetti. Korean sauce tastes funny, but it was nice to have something different to eat for a change.

Today was church day. Yuri came with me and met a few of my church "friends". The pastor asked me to be the "presider" next Sunday. Basically, he wants me to do an opening prayer. For what? The opening? Before offering? I'm not sure. The church I go to is a bit frustrating because I don't really feel like I know it very well, like its beliefs or whatnot. It's not my denomination, so I can't know just at a glance its beliefs and thoughts on certain things. But at the same time, I really need to figure out my own thoughts and feelings on certain topics. I never really think about that until I talk to other Christians who have differing beliefs than me. I feel like most of the time I go on Christian autopilot.
Anyway, after that Charles came over and we watched FullMetal Alchemist. FMA is one of those anime you gain a deeper appreciation for when watching it with someone who's never aseen it before, or at least that's how I feel. Watching it with him makes me think more bout the show critically and see what themes they push at us. So instead of just watching it as entertainment I'm watching it critically and trying to understand and decipher the themes the show pushes onto the viewer. It's quite interesting.

Afterwards we had a Christian talk, where we looked at random Bible verses and talked about them. According to him, I'm very strict to my beliefs, but open to different ones, though I can't say I agree. I've always thought of myself as a bad Christian because I'm so critical of others and if they don't follow every rule by the book, but sometimes I feel like I'm kind of missing the overall point. I think the overall problem is that people of different denominations are so obsessed with their church's spiritual gifts that they forget that other churches have different spiritual gifts, and because of that look down upon them for not having the same gifts. Things like that have always turned me away from other Christian practices that I am not comfortable with. For instance, the church I grew up is really big on scriptural doctrine and studying it, but other churches are really big into spiritual healing. Does that make one of those churches "right" and the other "wrong"? Not at all! Those are different spiritual gifts, and both are to be honored and respected. But I feel like a lot of people don't seem to realize that. A lot of Christians feel that how THEIR church does it is right, and everyone else is just misinformed. So it was good to study the Bible and see that that's not the case. We are all one body, and the body has different parts, but they function together. I just wish more Christians, including myself, could realize that and apply it to their everyday lives.

Speaking of Christianity, I read the whole book of Revelation last night. We studied it in church a few years back, but I hadn't really looked at it since then. It made me think a lot about how different Christians interpret the book and I understand a bit more why the Jehovah's Witnesses thing only a few people will go to Heaven. Do I agree? No, not really. I was always raised to take the book metaphorically, so it's hard for me to take it literally, and the content in the book doesn't make it any easier. I see a lot of it present in our world today, though not in the forms described by the book. So I guess I find a it a mix. The events happen, but the way they happen are written metaphorically, as are the beasts.

But whatever. I guess I get my main fix from thinking about things like that, and seeing how they apply to everyday life. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I started playing World Destruction in Japanese the other day. Dang, that game is hard! It's not so much that the battle system is hard or whatever, but the monsters are really odd. I can kill them in 1 or 2 hits, but sometimes they have super powerful attacks that knock ME out in one or two hits, and other times they do 1 or 2 damage. The power is not consistent, which is kind of irritating. But I like the characters too much to give up on this game, and the whole premise sounds interesting. I am currently playing as Kyrie, who's about to invade the beast-men's mansion. Apparently it's a trap, and when Kyrie tries to run away he gets in a fight with some of the beast men. And that's where I am stuck. I really need to level up, I suppose.
One thing I do really like about the game is the ability to save anywhere. That's really nice. The voice acting is really nice too, though it's hard to hear because the BGM is a bit louder. You can turn that down later on in the game, but it made the intro very difficult to understand since my kanji reading skills are...inadequate. Games don't always make the best practice for that, but so far I'm plowing along despite my lack of understanding everything that's going on. Kyrie and Naja, at the very least, make the effort worthwhile.
But more on that game when I get past where I'm stuck. I have the feeling that it's not going to be simple, or spoon feed you. You'll have to actually work to get further in the game. But we'll see.

Well, time for work. Sorry for the novel.

So today I only had a half day. My second class got canceled, so I got to go home early. Believe it or not, I was not happy about this. I don't like not working because it means a cut in my paycheck, and really, what do I have to do at home? Do nothing but play videogames. I'd rather be at work earning money. But whatever. It can't be helped, I guess. I'm not short on money, but I'll have to be more careful with my spending in the future because my paycheck will be smaller this month thanks to students taking off because of school exams. I pretty much have everything I want here that I can get, at least for now, so I'm pretty happy. So I'll play with what I have now instead of pining over things I can't get anyway.

I made a bit of a boo-boo at work today. I got distracted during break and totally forgot to finish the reading, so when we went over the reading questions the kids didn't know the last two. Oops. No one caught it at least. I'm going to make them read the page we skipped next class to make up for it. Lucky my boss wasn't there in the office today, so he couldn't see my little slip up. Bah. I've got to get it together! XD

I've been in the mood for Harvest Moon lately, and Harvest Moon DS came on my R4, so I picked it up and started playing. Annnnnnnnd got totally confused. Where do I buy things? Why won't anyone tell me? Bah. It irritated me so much that I stopped playing and instead downloaded Rune Factory 2. I actually wanted to get this game before I left for Korea, but I couldn't find it at my local Gamestop, and I didn't have the time to go hunting for it. So I got Princess Debut instead. Anyway, so I started playing it. It's pretty similar to the previous game, but it's got a few improvements. One of the new additions is the mini quest board, where you can take quests. Taking quests helps you earn some cash and helps you get certain farming tools. At least, I got an axe out of doing one for the blacksmith.
The battle system is still a little sloppy though. Natsume is really going to have to improve on that if they want to keep going with Rune Factory. I've heard that the Wii version isn't much better in that aspect, unfortunately. Other than that, though, I really like the game. I'm not quite sure which girl I'll go after yet. I guess I'll look all the girls up and decide based on personality, looks, and how easy it is to win the girl over. I'm so shallow, I know.

Speaking of games, this year looks pretty good for me game-wise. Not only does Fragile come out, but also Endless Ocean 2 and World Destruction. What a bummer I won't be around to play either of them... I'll have to pick them up once I'm back in the States. I'm hoping I'll get to take a little vacation before job hunting, though I'm sure that I'll go crazy sitting in the house all day not working. I'm just a little worried that the job market will be bad when I go home as well. And a lot of people I know are staying on, or thinking about staying on, for another year. I am thinking about it myself, but all my friends here are leaving, including the guy I always hang out with, so I'm not sure. I think that without him and the others I'd be much more miserable here and more homesick.

Anyway, I'm going to pray about it and see what God wants me to do. Speaking of prayer, I went to the Bible study after church. I didn't really want to go, but I didn't really get a choice. The pastor was like, "Got free time? You should come to the Bible study!" *shoves me toward the door*. Yaah. Anyway, it was all right. There were two other Americans there, plus the pastor, who's from Pakistan, and a Korean there. We discussed a Bible verse and what it meant and eventually talked about other things. I ended up learning a lot more about the Catholic church, which was nice. I learned a little bit about it in school, but our information was a bit outdated, and at the time I didn't know many Catholics, so I didn't really care. Ir also didn't help that I was in junior high and had other things on my mind at the time. But it made me understand a lot more about how Catholics think and their view on the church. It was a little surprising since my denomination doesn't pay as close of attention to the physical church. We are more interested in our spiritual church. Anyway, I'll probably end up going next week too. I've been there once, so it's impossible to not go again. That's how things are here in Korea. You go once, you're expected to keep up with it. Next week at church is actually the Christmas service and ハッピさん is harassing me to sing in church. They'll have open mic, so anyone who wants to sing a Christmas song can come to the front and sing. I've never been too confident of my singing voice, especially around those who can sing better than me (I have an ok singing voice, but it's very weak), but they're insisting. If I do, I might sing it in Japanese, just for fun. I'm thinking of doing God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman or Silent Night or something.

Work tomorrow. Will probably be another half day. *groans*

Busy, busy week. I'm a little irked because Chungdahm Learning, the company that hired me, seems to be behind on their paperwork, so I'm not sure if I'll even get to leave when I want to. To make matters worse, I found that my cat had chewed the corner on one of the manga I borrowed from the library, which means I'll have to pay for a repair fee. Great. Out of all the books to chew in my room, you chew up the one book I'd have to pay to fix up. Thanks a lot. If it were my book, I'd say C'es la vie, but I can't exactly do that with a library book...

Omi came over Sunday to Monday and we played a LOT of pokemon. I mean a lot. Omi decided to start over so we played trade 'em last night and some of today. I really want to start over in my game, but I couldn't bear to lose all my pokemanz. I keep wanting to buy the new Platinum so I can start over, but I'm telling myself to hold out for Gold. I might even try and see if I can get that in Japanese. We'll see. I'm hoping to trade some of my pokemon over to Gold so I can start out with some decent ones and raise my favorites instead of the blah ones they give you at the beginning.

I'm also hoping to bring back my gold team. I was so devastated when I lost my dream team thanks to Gold's battery dying. And here I thought I messed up the game by cloning pokemon so much. But I was a kid and didn't realize it was as problem with the battery. Oh well.

I am officially addicted to Eternal Sonata. The characters are such love.

My digial camera is on the fritz. Even though it was perfectly fine when I took a picture of that cat and I haven't used it since, it's telling me that there's a lens error. When I investigated by trying to take a picture, the pic turned out all fuzzy. When it would let me take a picture. I am pretty sure the thing's still under warranty, so I guess we'll have to go to Best Buy and sort this out.

I finally played more of Rebirth and got through where I was stuck. I now completely understand what I did wrong. I misinterpreted the directions and tried to move the orbs according to the directions instead of positioning them in that color. (this probably makes no sense to most of you). At any rate, we escaped prison and circled around BACK to the castle to try to free Veigue's sistergirlfriend childhood friend. Overall, I am enjoying the game a lot. Veigue is the hugest dork ever and I love him for it. Eugene is way too serious, but Mao more than makes up for it. They are good for each other. ^^ I think that they're my favorite pair in the group, though definitely not as a couple. It's just cute how Eugene takes a sort of fatherly role toward Mao, but Mao managed to stop Eugene from becoming way too serious with his upbeat personality. But when the going gets tough Mao knows how to get serious and get results. Yay for Mao and his awesome-ness.

I'm stll not sure how I feel about Hilda, but I'm glad that Annie's cooled off a bit when it comes to Eugene. Of course, him saving her definitely helped a lot. And Tytree? He's fun, though sometimes he's hard to understand. I find his apparel atrocious though. Just because you have green hair that doesn't mean you have to dress in green. What are you, a Kokiri boy? XD Regardless, Tytree really livens up the party, along with Mao. And he's fun to tease too. Mao's song about him was right on the mark and incredibly hilarious.

I wish the PSP were more portable and I weren't afraid of getting any more scratches on it. If that were the case, I'd bring it to school. But for now, I'm stuck with Innocence...which despite being awesome is a game I'm also stuck in. I cannot figure out how to get through the cave dungeon. Pathetic, right? But I LOVE the battle system in that game. I'm half tempted to switch to fighting with Spada because I like his combat style more. But I always have this thing where I feel like I have to play as the main character. Not entirely sure why.

Unfortunately for Innocence, it's going to take a little longer for the cast to grow on me. But considering I have 15 hours on Rebirth and only about 4 on Innocence (most of which is my leveling up), it makes sense that the cast wouldn't have grown on me as much.

This weekend's gonna be filled with more Star Ocean, probably. When I get more time and play the game for myself, I'll write up a proper report on the game.

And now it's off to school.

Here are five of my most anticipated games:

( Fragile WiiCollapse )

( World Destruction DSCollapse )

( Arc Rise Fantasia WiiCollapse )

( Rune Factory Frontier WiiCollapse )

( Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope 360Collapse )