My suggestion to u is "not to buy"............U say u are a fan of Turn based RPG's yet only played FF9!!! come on, u hardly know what a turn based RPG is judging from the games u've played thus far..... so do ur self a favor and leave this game alone. ppl like me who are RPG fans are more inclined to play and not need the advise of others to make a decision like this. Hopes this helps ease your confusion ;)

sugrim

What am I reading?

Most definitely. One of the most refreshing Final Fantasy's out there, and my personal favorite. Seeing as you can get it off Amazon for less than $10 as well there's absolutely no reason not to give IX your 40 hours of gameplay (my first playthrough time)

I played the game first time through the entire way on keyboard-only with no problems. You people are all lieing. The controls are fine.

Honestly if the keyboard layout is too difficult for you to figure out (WASD+IJKL) than you really don't stand a chance at this game anyway and it will only frustrate you. Don't buy it in that case, From does not care if you do not buy it.

The graphics are exactly the same by default due to the locked internal resolution. However by installing a resolution mod by a fan the game simply looks spectacular in true 1080p. All the details are way more crisp and defined. I never realized the game was capable of looking so good.

Forum for the patch:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=488240

You really have to see it in animation to realize what a huge difference it makes, although the pictures are fairly obvious too.

Probably the only character one would consider unbalanced is Mitsuru, but she's also rather difficult to play so it's not like anyone can just pick her and win. She is a bit too powerful though imo.

As far as "never-ending offense" the most obvious character for that is Akihiko, but that's entirely what he's designed around. His attacks come in two flavors: short range and very short range. He doesn't have any projectiles either so he has to zone very carefully in order to close distance (made more difficult by how everyone can use evasive moves)

I've always wondered if Japanese gamers think Japanese voice actors are terrible and English voice actors are good, just like the vice-versa situation with English gamers (in general).

I really hope they didn't get so carried away making it "accessible" that they just make it super dumbed down and easy so **** people can still feel great about themselves (see NG3 for a great example).

The fighting game genre by it's very nature is a highly competitive game. The day it gets blended down into a pureed smoothie that's palatable to the casual gamers will be a very sad day indeed.

As for P4A, the only thing I see that's very "accessible" about it is simplified input commands. Here's hoping there's still at least some measure of the depth and strategy of BlazBlue.

Catherine was a great game, with highly unique story/gameplay.

As for this fighting game, it looks great for people like me who love playing BlazBlue competitively. I played P3 and P4 both to death and loved them too but I really don't consider this a "betrayal" of the series. Is it so wrong for a franchise to bridge more than one genre?

Honestly, I hope they give P5 a bit more time while they hopefully perfect a new and improved battle system. It started feeling really old near the end of P4 and it just feels kind of cheap sometimes (mainly in favor of the player).

Hazama. Obviously.

I wrote the GameFAQs guide on him, I recorded a strategyand combo videos, and even thinking about making a general tutorial for him. All that, and yet I'm still learning new things to do with him. He has by far the most diverse, and most difficult, gameplay style I've ever seen in a fighter. Which, in turn, leads to the highest skill:reward ratio at the sacrifice of reliability in online play.

Beyond Hazama the only character's I've ever really liked have been from BlazBlue or Guilty Gear. The rare exceptions being Nightmare and Yoshimitsu in Soul Calibur IV. I detest practically the entire cast of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter and every other generic fighter that's tried to copy their success.

I really can't stand fighting games that have the entire cast fighting with bare hands/feet, it's just so boring and restricted feeling.

Street Fighter.

Mortal Kombat.

I'm not even kidding.