Oh how I love these threads~.
Persona 3 FES - A seriously fun RPG for the PS2, and an updated, more balanced version of the original Persona 3. It's a spin-off series to Megami Tensei ("MegaTen"). It involves controlling your character (a silent protagonist whom you name) through his double life, making friends and trying to do well in school by day, and entering a sprawling tower and fighting freakish occult monsters by night. The titular 'Personas' are embodiments of the person's soul, which are based on gods, demons, and monsters from mythology and such, and Personas are summoned in battle to cast spells and assist your characters. The battle system's turn-based and involves a fun bit of strategy; the main character is the only controllable party member, and you direct the others with orders or allow them to act as the CPU sees fit. Depending on how you order your party members you can make things easier for yourself if you scan the enemy - the other members will then target the enemy's weakness, which knocks the enemy down, causing every party member to simultaneously attack and cause huge damage. The summoning method is... controversial to some, considering the summoner points a gun to their head and fires to call upon a Persona. Although the gun is a custom-made one specially for summoning... Anyway, the fun in the game lies in its massive depth (there is a hell of a lot to do) and balancing your 'double life', making sure to keep your social links high so that corresponding Persona types will get level up bonuses and such. It's a huge, fun RPG that's incredibly enjoyable.
Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon - I'm not too far into this, only 5 or 6 chapters. Still, it's great fun. Remake of the first Fire Emblem, what do I say? It's strategy with rock paper scissors combat and the ability to geniunely upset you should one of your units die (they permanently die), and it doesn't help that you're forced to sacrifice one early on... Anyway, it's a really great game.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy - Fanservice at its justifiable best. Eleven FF heroes and eleven FF villains fighting it out across a storyline picking on each hero's vulnerabilities and their reasons for battle makes one hell of a game. The actual fighting is a bit difficult to get the hang of at first... You have to build up 'Brave Points' by attacking your opponent with circle button attacks (which steals their BP and adds it to your own), and then you can hit them with HP attacks (the square button), which damages the foe for the amount of BP you have. Also, reducing their BP below 0 puts them into 'Break' status, where you gain BP from the little storage 'pool' in the middle of the health display. The story for each character explores their weaknesses and interactions with other FF heroes; it's both hilarious and heartwarming to see such team-ups, like Tidus and Squall with the former convincing the latter to show some trust, and Frioniel passing on some determination to Cloud. Only thing it lacks that would've made my year is playable Gilgamesh, but at least he's a summon. So is Ultros, for fans of the quirky mini-boss villains (and he causes BP to be unreadable by spraying ink! Brilliant!). Dissidia's great fun if not a little hard to pick up and play without a little while exploring how the system works. I'm working through the stories at the moment, finished Frioniel, Cecil, Cloud, Zidane, and Tidus's so far... I'm going by the difficulty rating given in-game for the order I'm doing these. Next will be Squall's story, I think. Tina/Terra and Warrior of Light have the hardest stories, a full 5 stars.
Final Fantasy IV DS - The lovely 3D remake of FFIV which pushes the difficulty even further (some bosses even have new attack methods which make them near-impossible without a serious amount of level grinding). I've just finished the Sealed Cave and about to get the Lunar Whale... Edge keeps dying and I need to train him a bit. Nothing else really notable, 'cept I went through hell trying to kill the Demon Wall. Oh yeah, and the Augment system is fucking annoying.
