yeah, looking back, it's like the entire journey up the bionis is the 20-40 hour intro...

Unfortunately some of the great character moments were the entirely optional relationship moments scattered around the map that you had to unlock and activate, or some of the character quests that add 4th and 5th skill trees. That and since Xenoblade was underwhelming for Jason (which really disappointed me since…

Yeah playing Last Story right after Xenoblade really hit home how a fantastic story and combat can be packaged much more efficiently. I think a 60 hour game is my sweet spot for RPGs... Last Story was <30 where Xenoblade was easily 100+ hours. Yeah there were tons of fetch quests, but I'd argue that even without them…

I was so blown away by the sheer quantity of breath taking moments like that... just make you want to explore it... And then you can!

Yeah, while xenoblade on the wii had lots of really interesting locations, they didn't often influence the combat all that much since most fighting was done in close quarters. There is a stealth aspect where terrain possibly affects how easy it is to get around a monster undetected. Also some areas are easy to fall…

I was truly shocked at the draw distances in Xenoblade on the wii - like an order of magnitude more than any other wii game I can think of. It looks like they want to continue bringing on the amazing environments, which will be even better in HD.

Is everyone convinced enough that we all want JRPGs to stir the pot with another round of "JRPGs are dead" articles? Gotta love how the market oscillates wildly while human nature and what we find fun mostly doesn't change - it just expresses itself in fads in response to our changing culture. Anyone think folks will…

That'd definitely be awesome ... given the final cutscene spoilers it at least seems possible ... of course anything is possible with magic, gods, sci fi, portals, inception, etc...

How far did you make it? There's sooo much epic stuff the deeper you get... definitely worth restarting, unless you have a great memory, since your current progress is probably only like 30%... so much epic...

I can't see a new console before Nov 2017 ... they need at least 2 E3 shows to tease and then show off the new hardware... and its fairly certain there won't be any new consoles teased this year ... have to wait until at least the Zelda comes out for Christmas followed by a DLC dungeon in the Spring or something. The…

Me too! It'd be awesome to see a mix of different accents for different races or something...

I really want to believe that Zelda and other Nintendo games could survive the leap into voice acting... so far Wii fit and Metroid are the only core Nintendo games I can think of with voiced dialog. People can criticize Metroid Other M's story and writing all day, but I'm glad it had voices to move the story along. …

yeah the one I missed was collecting the 4 pieces of tech from that place for the people (avoiding spoilers is hard). I was glad I was still able to get my affinity high enough with each area to do almost everything else. Had to use the internet to help find a couple items to finish the colony ... that was the last…

i guess if you knew you were around 40% then you know how much of the game you missed... I was blown away at the size of everything - spent most of the game after maybe 20% thinking I was 80% through...

Thanks for the clarification - I should've just done the research, but I figured opening the discussion to a fuller comparison of the platforms was worth asking the question.

doesn't PlayStation require a subscription for access to the digital library? Or is that just for online multiplayer or special deals and whatnot? I'm at least glad that Nintendo hasn't pushed a subscription on everyone. I don't do gaming subscriptions, period.

Does she have any moderately expensive hobbies? Have any friends with even more expensive hobbies to compare yourself to? A co-worker of mine just got a several thousand dollar piano and I joked that I'm definitely bringing that up with my wife next time I want something that's merely a few hundred dollars... aaand…

So the camera controls on Wind Waker for the Wii U were an improvement over the camera controls on Wind Waker for GameCube? Is it just that the analog stick works better on the Wii U than the C-stick did on GameCube?

yeah I try to remind myself that the point of my gaming hobby is to have fun, not to own and experience every new thing that comes out. Its easy to be influenced by all the blogs and media and think that I'm missing out on things, when really I have more backlogged fun that I'll ever have time to experience. First…

Man your entire situation and attitude sounds so familiar! My wife knows she married a gamer and supports it to an extent and plays some games with me, however she also manages our finances and is very frugal and doesn't understand the impulse to acquire more stuff when I have plenty of backlogged games. Part of me…