http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nstevens/lyrics/cc.html <------Radical Dreamers, The unstealable Jewel Lyrics.

http://www.dream.atfreeweb.com/yasunori.html <--------- Linear note translations.

I will throw in that the linear notes are really something to read. Also, they have a translation for The unstealable jewel at the end, but the other lyric's I provided are different from them. Oh well, I'm just a completist.

Ok, now will someone answer my question about Vagrant Story's ending peice? PLEASE?

-XZellDx

Sub, Licensed Professional

I never fully understood why some people imported text heavy RPG's from Japan when they know this much Japanese |--|. Recently, my mother went to Japan and managed to pick me up a copy of FF9 that turn out to be well... a copy. I played it anyway, struggling with the Japanese text, happy just to be playing FF9 before most.

In comparision to the other PSX FF's, FF9 is a kind and forgiving game to play in Japanese. I shudder just thinking of trying to sort out my materia and junctions. All the abilities and magics--battles and menus-- in FF9 are in a set order so a translated list is all that you need. The only problem is the items but each item has an icon like FFT, making the whole thing easier.

Being unable to understand the story helped focus my attention to the way it played. Every character has unique abilities, that I think a lot of fans were asking for. Having 4 people in battle seems so natural now, when I saw FF8 it just looked strange. "Only 3!!????!!! Ha Har Harr!" The music seems to fit the game better than 7 or 8 and of a better standard overall too, although some tunes sound suspiciously familiar.

But even though I think FF9 is a wonderful playable game, I can see many people complain about the games shortness. I'm 1/4 the way through disk 3, played 152 QuadMist games, yet I've only been playing for just over 24 hours. FF9 is definitely a case of quality over quantity.

I'm gonna buy the game in English --glorious English!-- as I need to know what they are saying and how close I was with my guesses. Playing FF9 has been strangely educational (I can recognise all the main characters names!), the most educational game since Parasite Eve.

To sum it up: Now that I know FF9 is a great game all that I have to worry about is the translation.

Oh yeah-- It's great knowing that I don't have to face Beatrix again!

Meia.
PS. I realise that you can rename all your characters in English letters but it's kinda pointless really. Really.

From Nov 1st - Dec 1st I am buying SIX games. That is more than I bought LAST YEAR. There are just too many RPGs . And the bad thing about it is...they are all good. Because of this, "the current big thing"'s topical lifespan has been shortened significantly. Final Fantasy VII. Not too many huge titles between then and VIII. People talked about it until VIII which was, what, a year later? Vagrant Story. There have been atleast 5 big releases since then. Talk of what was called "the greatest game ever" all but a few months ago has almost completely stopped. Talk of Shen Mue seems to have died down even before its US release.

I am not complaining about the availability of RPGs as much as it seems. But it is a little sad to see games "die" within a matter of months.

-onionkid
Slap Happy Rhythm Busters owns me.

How DO you pronounce Chocobo? I've always said "ChO-cO-bO" But others say it different ways.

I've also been known to pronounce "Magus" much like "magic". But I've been corrected otherwise there.

Eh.

EdgarFigaro

While the PS2 was launching I made the good decision to buy a N64 instead. As I marveled at the stunningly crafted Mario 64 and Zelda, I came to a drastic decision: If Final Fantasy doesn't make any major progress my last FF will be FFXI. FFIX, is a given with it's nostalgic feel, and any good square fan owes it to themselves to see what Square can do with FFX on the PS2. I'll even try FFXI, but only out of morbid curiosity. After that I'll hang up my Final Fantasy gloves until I see some real changes in the game.

I tire of videogame makers using the crutch of "tradition" (yes, I'm looking at you DW7)to excuse their obvious and crippling lack of innovation. Enix, Eidos, and to a slightly lesser extent Square are all guilty of what I call "The Vivaldi Syndrome". Vivaldi was an Italian composer who bragged that he had written over 500 concertos. However, all his concertos were so similar that many classical musicians, myself included, state that "Vivaldi did not write 500 concertos, he wrote 1 concerto 500 times." Sure Vivaldi is good to listen to, but why listen to his stuff when Bach, Piazolla, Mahler, and Shostakovich offer deeper, better written, and more innovative music? Eventually you grow out of Vivaldi.

I probably won't play DW7, why should I? I've already played it 4 times on the NES. New paint on a broken down old car doesn't make it run any better, why should it be different for games? Thankfully, Final Fantasy and their emphasis on story instead of gameplay, and the switch from 2D to cinematic RPGs, have kept things fresh enough to last this many iterations, but I'll still be hard pressed to try FFXI. Menu based combat is simply a dated remnant of an archaic console that could handle number-crunching but not much more. I find menu based combat's repeated use (except for in games like FFT and OB64) more of a detriment and a cop-out than a viable vehicle for gameplay. If Mario, Zelda, and MGS have shown us anything, is the great and immersive experience that can happen when games are "made as they should be"(to put it in Miyamoto's and Kojima's words), and truly they exemplify what the future of games should be.

I'm not saying that the future FFs and DWs and others wont be great. I'm sure they will be. But I'd rather let go, move on to other games, and have good memories of the heights of the series, than to stubbornly hang on to watch them eventually die in stagnation.

Mr. Cruz - who is sorry about the length of this

PS: Isn't it funny how Yamauchi rails on Square and Enix are making too many sequels? But how many Pokemon, Mario and Zelda sequels are out there? Hmmm...can you say hypocrite? I knew you could.

You don't need to post this or anything, just sending this as kind of an FYI . . .

About your vision. 20/20 vision means you have "normal vision acuity" at 20 feet. If you have 15/20 vision, it means what you see clearly at 15' a person with "normal vision" can see clearly at 20'. So 15/20 vision is actually not as good as normal 20/20 vision, which leads me to believe that you actually meant to say you had 20/15 vision.

Also, just as reference (nothing to do with what you said), 20/20 does not necessarily mean you have 100/100 vision (i.e. some people can simply see things better at a distance than others), nor does 30/20 necessarily mean you have 60/40 or 50/40 vision. The 20 foot mark is simply a standard that optometrists use for consistency.

A quick and easy page about it: http://www.visioncare.org/vision/problems/2020vision.htm

whistler-z

When a being is maturing in its mother's womb (or father's, in the case of the seahorse), it's genetically programmed, to an extent. Babies prefer certain foods, yet hate others, broccoli almost invariably being one of them. The reason for this is the neural pathway between it and the brain. For instance, whenever I hear a tune or two from Lunar SSSC, I get this image of home and when I was a little kid, which pleases me. Now, with the instance of the baby, they get this message of sorts from the tongue which goes "Ack! Get rid of it!" The same could go for Andy Kaufmann's reasons for liking FF VI music. Put simply, his brain is different from mine. Then there's the concept of "You'll learn to like it," etc., but that's dealing more with human adaptation than neural programming. This leads to trends among common minds, fads, and there you have it!

Realizing he still hasn't practiced his trombone audition piece enough,
Aleksandrs Bomis