Ron:
> Been re-reading my Maison Ikkoku tankobons (again). Like most of
> Takahashi-sensei's stories, they never seem to get stale, IMO.

    I don't know, I can't really go back to read Ranma 1/2 again except for
the stories I really liked (mind you, there are a lot of them).

    Then again, I've a hard time reading anything I've read already once.

> As for the games, I still putter around with them; I am satisfied with my
> DC as the most recent machine in my collection (Bought it launch),
> but will likely get a PS2 in the next few months. XBox looks nice,
> and DoA3 looks nice, but hardly what I would call innovative, at least
> compared to my DC DoA2. Thinking I will pop in my Christmas
> NiGHTS disc; should be near the Christmas decorations time in
> the game.

    DC is honestly a pretty good choice for its time, though it's basically
inferior to PS2 in every possible way consider all the good titles on DC are
getting ported to PS2 anyway.  Still, playing Grandia 2 or Skies of Arcadia
an year or so early is great.  I'd say Skies of Arcadia is probably the best
next-gen RPG to date, and that means better than FFX too.  The music was
just fanastic... too bad the OST isn't sold anywhere that I know of.
Grandia 2 might've been better if they actually have interesting main
characters.  It really sucks that Aira, the girl with the most developed, or
perhaps the only well developed personality behind the Valmar series of
bosses, happen to be the 2nd one, which leaves a huge gap of uninteresting
bosses at the end.  Aira is also the last boss that's challenging since you
definitely won't have everyone with instant cancels and instant heals at
this point, and even if you do she gets 7 attacks per round, and 75% of her
attacks breaks your active time bar.  It's a battle you can't expect to win
consistently unless you play ultra conservative because she's fast enough to
lock up your entire team with Delta Bursts, and she's got the whole gamut of
nasty status attacks, including the unresistable paralyze.

Don, still waiting for response from Richard Lawson, who's stuck in EQ land