I don't remember that rock-paper-scissors Xenogears minigame, though I've certainly played that or something similar in other games.

I teach ESL. English *is* a hard language to learn. The pronunciation is a big part of it, but so is the grammar. How hard it is and precisely what students will have trouble with will depend on their first language (or any other languages they might already know). Some languages, such as Japanese, do not use…

Not going to happen. Pretty sure they already confirmed that it's English audio only.

Er, Totori has already been released in the U.S. twice.

No, playing Rorona really isn't necessary. There are a few returning characters, but not knowing them won't be an issue. The story (which is fairly minimal) is completely separate.

I forgot about that. But when I see "JRPG" (especially by someone who's just writing something off" with no "action" qualifier, action RPGs is not what I think of and is not what a person is referring to 99% of the time.

It's a 3rd Person Shooter or action game, not an RPG.

I agree that RPGs are better than other genres in that regard. If nothing else, generally about half your party consists of female characters.

Fair enough. They've been using the same two character designers for over 15 years now, it certainly wouldn't hurt to get someone else in there or otherwise try to do something to give them a more unique visual flair. Though they have done the latter to some degree. Xillia looks very different than Vesperia, for…

"rarity" =/= "non-existent", this is not a difficult concept.

Create your own character games don't count.

Please, do list all of these female protagonists that apparently permeate the genre. Outside of Atelier, its very rare, and its usually the Xillia thing where its a choice between a male and female protagonist.

They're the same game in the sense that every modern warfare shooter is the same game. Players/fans of the game can tell the difference, but FPS games all blur together to me while each Tales game is significantly different.

Not legal at all, same as anything else.

"though it does make me wonder what the point of permanent death is if even the developers go out of their way to not experience it!"

We spend so much time on these issues because people are starting to take them seriously and recognize that the issues are much, much worse in video games than they are in other mediums.

He didn't say he wasn't aware the game existed in Japan, he said he was not aware *of the English release*. Nobody was until yesterday. Including you. This was released out of nowhere.

Totori has a few returning characters from Rorona but the lead character is new and the story is completely unrelated so being unfamiliar with the characters that were in the first game won't be an issue.

Thanks, glad to hear it was helpful. I'm something of an Atelier evangelist and I really enjoy writing about it and helping explain it to people so they can figure out if they want to get into it and where to start.

That's fine, just don't let Rorona turn you away from the others. Just realize that its by far the most restrictive with its time limits and what you can do. It has set tasks to accomplish every 3 months, and even if you accomplish them early, you won't be able to travel to new areas until they're unlocked after the…