At the moment I am playing two games(the others are kinda partially on hold)
The main two games I'm talking about are Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII(PSP) and Luminous Arc(DS)
Crisis Core is really impressive, its so well presented, voice acted, scripted(for the most part) and the graphics look really nice. They've also put a lot of thought into the main story, with minigames and different mission styles keeping it nice and fresh throughout. Its taking me a long time to complete the game however, as I am trying to complete all of the subquests or missions as they are referred to in the game. Apparantely there is a good reward for doing so but...they are very monotonous, as they are all basically the same A-B layout-kill the miniboss(es) to complete them. I am currently on a play time of 30:10:20, sitting on Lv44 at the start of Chapter 7 and 39% through the Missions. I am guessing I will 100% the missions around the 60 hr mark, but thats just an early estimate, I might get bored of them and not bother.
Luminous Arc is quite cool, I really like the character design and character building. Each of the characters actually have quite well developed personalities and you get to know each during the intermission bits between missions. The game is a tactical RPG a la Final Fantasy Tactics(I'm only comparing it to that because that was the first Tactical RPG I played. The battles arent exactly revolutionary, but they arent too bad either. One thing I noticed that I dont really like about the gameplay are the amount of near enough useless skills the characters will learn. I guess that happens in most RPGs, but it kinda annoys me sometimes. Its also quite easy to grind the challenge out of the game, especially with support or healing characters. Every time they use a skill or spell that aids another friendly character they get 30 XP, and in this game, similar to many other Tactical RPGs, the characters always require 100 Experience Points to level up, regardless of level. So currently, my healing characters and support characters are about 9 or 10 levels higher than my combat characters. Theres quite a lot to do in this game, but I'm still pretty sure its not a very long game(excluding the sidequests, of which I've only found 1 so far.)
I was at Auchinawa 08 the other weekend, an anime convention in Glasgow, running for the 2nd year now. I was at the first, which I think although it was in a better location(Central Station in Glasgow City Centre) this year it was better. This year it was at the Holiday Inn at Glasgow Airport, slightly harder to get to for us lot, but still pretty good. Me and some others from GUMAF-the Anime & Manga Society at Glasgow Uni stayed at the hotel for 2 nights. The Con ran Friday, Saturday and Sunday and was really fun but exhausting. I did my first cosplay for the event as well, I was L from Death Note. Kinda known as the lazy man's cosplay, but one of my favourite anime characters, so I dont care lol. There were at least 2 other Ls at Auchinawa, one of which had socks! L doesnt wear socks or shoes, so he automatically failed lol. Anyway...I am getting sidetracked...
Other awesome things that happened at Auchi 08 were some karaoke to anime openings, endings and other stuff. Pokemon opening=AMAZING! Disco, Yugioh tournament (which I won!) Cosplay Masquerade, Games Room and the dealers room(which had awesome stuff, but I had to resist the temptation to buy stuff due to my lack of income...
GUMAF - Pokemon!
Some stuff I've been listening to recently; Killswitch Engage, The Black Mages, Disharmonia Mundi, Castlevania soundtracks
Killswitch Engage - The Arms of Sorrow
And finally, one of the most amazing cutscenes I've ever seen in a video game.
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core cutscene
