He's saying that Nintendo is a known quantity: you will receive 2-4 first-party titles a year that are at the peak of gaming quality. He knows that his investment in the system won't be a waste, because even if every single other developer on the planet abandons it, he will have great games to play. Since he doesn't…

Who's to say your friend is wrong? You and he simply value different aspects of the consoles.

Words cannot describe how much I love this game. Its bosses were fantastic, its dungeons were interesting and varied, its puzzles were clever and challenging and it had a ton of great "aha!" moments, both in the plot and the gameplay. One thing it did exceptionally well was add in little moments that worked as part of…

Waiting for the "MOAR LIGHTNING" DLC.

Everyone got a second promotion in Radiant Dawn. I'm mostly referring to Path of Radiance, because she's not actually overlevelled compared to the rest of the Greil Mercenaries in the sequel.

Titania turned out all right, but yes, sound advice.

Many people liked Dragon Age II. It was, however, disappointing, because for every neat thing it did, it also did something boneheaded, likely due to the ridiculously constrained development cycle.

Skyrim is like going to a nice restaurant and being promised a great feast, but instead being given a small mountain of candy bars. Sure, the candy bars taste great, and when you're eating them you THINK life is grand. But then you leave the restaurant and realize that your hunger actually hasn't been sated, and now…

No, it's exactly the same thing that you have with buttons. How many times have you hit the wrong button and gone "stupid game! I hit jump!" or let go of run a bit too quickly in Mario and started swearing at the game when your jump came up short? Everyone has.

'First, filtering the Zelda series through the Wii's unique mechanical perspective has had a polarizing effect'

The whip is extremely useful for yanking items/materials off useful enemies.

I played both XII and XIII. I liked XII, loved XIII. I had an atypical experience with XII in that I didn't set up any AI aside from "All -> attack" and a few heal gambits, so I basically controlled the entire party. I enjoyed combat with that setup, but not to the point where I'd say it was the game's main strength.

You can reduce any story, no matter how well-crafted, to a quick, dismissive sound byte if you try hard enough. It's fine that you dislike the story, but you finding it uninteresting doesn't mean that it isn't well-crafted, just that it didn't resonate with you.

I should also note that the game is by far the most flexible as far as party roles while still maintaining distinct character flavor. Depending on how you equip your party (which from about halfway on really means what gems you're using), you can have either one tank (Reyn's configurations are basically single-target…

The story really isn't standard JRPG at all.

Unless it was already in development, they won't have time to cut an American English track. They probably should, because, even as a yank with a pretty good grasp of Briticisms, there were a few spots where a turn of phrase screwed me up. Nothing that would overall harm the game, though.

I'm getting really sick of the obsession with producers in gaming, particularly among gamers. It seems like every time Kojima or Suda or Notch takes a dump there is immediate coverage of it. Worse, every game gets boiled down to the sole achievement of one person, belittling the work that hundreds of talented people…

Play Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

I also adored Twilight Princess. There are two scenes in particular (SPOILERS the legion of shadow creatures falling to Hyrule from the sky, and carrying injured Midna through a thunderstorm to get her to safety) that are firmly ensconced in the part of my brain where Zelda resides. It wasn't the most mechanically…

'I imagine defeating the same end boss over and over again for the past 25 years grows stale at some point.'