Resonance of Fate

I'm playing a new JRPG named "Resonance of Fate". It's weird. In many ways. And I love that!

I found out about it by listening to a podcast about RPGs called "Active Time Babble" ( http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3176689 ). In the recent one (#12), Bob Mackey called in to the show, and detailed how his Mind Was Blown, Man! That was good enough for me; I stopped on the way home and bought it.

I'm really...

enjoying it, because it's teaching me and making me think (both make me happy). In fact, it's doing so much teaching and thought-provoking, I'll have to cover it all in several blog posts.

Right now, I want to talk about some of the side-issues with the game. First, people are openly wondering if SEGA has severe money troubles. There's much talk of them being bought by Microsoft or Sony, and everyone wonders why they pushed out Resonance of Fate and several other games around the same time FF13 came out. So far I haven't seen any obvious problems with ResFate that could be caused by rushing it out, but it's a big, long game.

Second, the NPCs in ResFate are functionally identical to NPCs in some games made 25 years ago. At first, I thought it was LAME, but now I'm interested in exploring how to make better NPCs myself.

Third, save us from "fan service"! There are so many crude double entendres, bouncing boobies and panty flashes! This game goes from bleak and serious steampunk to highschool farce in 0.2 seconds! Seriously, was Tri-Ace trying to service a particular player demographic, or is this kind of humor just standard fare for the Japanese? Either way, it breaks the game immersion for me; I don't like it!