Below I have written what I think of some of the best PS2 games that I've ever played. No Spoilers!

Title: Final Fantasy X
Publisher: Squaresoft (Now Square Enix)
Genre: RPG
Max Players: One

What I think: (note: these reveiws are a lot more elaborate than the book ones)

Main Characters

Tidus- Tidus is the main character in the game. He is the guy you walk around with. He is from Zanarkand, a city destroyed 1,000 years ago by Sin. He is the star player for the Zanarkand Abes (a blitzball team). In the begining of the game Tidus' city is attacked by Sin and Tidus is transported 1,000 years into the future. in battle Tidus is a very fast character and learns abilities such as cheer, haste, and slow. Bring him in when there are fast enemies.

Yuna- Yuna is a summoner. in fact she is the daughter of high Summoner Braska who defeated Sin 10 years before the game takes place. Braska never came home from his pilgrimage and I don't know what happened to Yuna's mom so yuna is kind of an orphan. Now Yuna is going on her own pilgrimage to destroy Sin and bring the Calm, a time without Sin ( 10 year period). The characters in your party are all of Yuna's gaurdians and are mentioned below. Yuna is useful in battle when your characters are low in health and/or you are low on potions or if you need the extra strength of the aeons that Yuna can summon.

Wakka- This guy is pretty kool. Wakka is like Yuna's big brother she never had. he looks out for her and grew up with her on Besaid. he talks with a kind of Carribean accent saying "man" or "ya" at the end of most sentences. Wakka is the captain of the Besaid Aurochs, a blitzball team. in battle if you are fighting flying enemies bring Wakka in so he can hit them with his blitzball.

Lulu- Lulu is kind of a Goth. She wears all black, which kind of suits her role as black mage. Lulu grew up on Besaid as well. She acted as Yuna's big sister. Lulu is mysterious and is a veteran gaurdian. She a serious person and sometimes seems cold and unemotional. In battle Lulu is good against elemental enemies such as flans.

Auron- First off Auron is a magor bad ass. He is the kool of kool. Auron was one of braska's gaurdians on his pilgimage and he holds a lot of secrets. When Tidus' father left to gaurd Braska on his pilgrimage with Auron, Auron watched over Tidus when Jecht Tidus's father) didn't return. Auron is a real bruiser. use him to take out the tough enemies and the armored ones since his weapons have piercing.

Kimahri- Kimahri is a ronso. He is small for his race and his horn is broken (a kind of disgrace amongst the ronso). he took Yuna under his wing after braska brought the Calm. Kimahri is one of those silent types that says little, but when he does talk he shows great wisdom. He is very protective of Yuna and would willingly give his life to save her. Kimahri knows the unique ability called "Lancet". It allows him to take some of the fiends abilities and use them for his overdrives. So bring Kimahri into battles when it looks like he can learn a new ability. He is also quite strong.

Rikku- The hyper and bouncy one. Her personality shares some traits with Yuffi from FF7. Rikku is a very cheerful person. The youngest of the bunch and the one with the most energy. Rikku is an Al Bhed and she is adeot at using machina. She is a theif and can steal things in battle. Also, in battle, she can dismantle machina by just using the steal ability. She is very fast like Tidus but lacking in the strength department. I should also mention that she is Yuna's cousin and calls Yuna "Yunie".

Plot Summary (breif more like a plot background). No Spoilers!

Gameplay

Title: Champions of Norrath
Publisher: SOE (Sony Online Entertainment)
Genre: Action RPG
Max Players: Four (online or Offline)

What I think:

Races and Classes

Dark Elf Shadowknight: This is my favorite character. This guy (or girl) is the dark necromancer character. All of the characters sometimes say things when you enter another area but the shadownight, in my opinion, has the best speech. "I hear things rot quicker in the tropics" was just one of the many things he might say. The shadowknight's abilities focus around death and disease. Some of his abilities are disease bolt, harm touch, and summon skeleton.

Wood Elf Ranger: This is the woddsman character, which you can kinda tell from its name. The homeland of the ranger is the starting area, Faydark. Don't expect any special treatment. The ranger's abilities are focused around bow. For this reason you start out with a short sword and a bow (I can't remember what kind of bow). Some ranger abilities are, fire arrow, ice arrow, and multi arrow.

High Elf Cleric: Hmmmmm. There seems to be a lot of elves in this game. The "cleric" part of this character name suggests that this is a healer character. this is indeed true. I have not played as this character (nor do I plan to. I don't really like clerics) but from what my friends say I can safely conclude that this character is especialy good with bludgeoning weapons such as maces and hammers. I could also asume that some of the cleric's abilities would be healing, and turn undead.

Barbarian Warrior: This cgaracter is pretty straight foward. the barbarian is a flat out brawler. The tough guy. I think now would be a good time to mention a good combo of characters for a two-player game. I would use the barbarian and the Erudite wizard ( mentioned below). Spellcasting to the mas with the wizard and fighting at its best with the barbarian. Abilities of the barbarian include dual wield (use 2 weapons), shield bash, dodge, and ground pound (a shockwave that causes area damage).

Erudite Wizard: Bald people anyone? No fantasy game would be complete without a chief spellcaster. And the developers did a good job on theirs. Despite the fact that the female wizard is bald this character is pretty kool. As a wizard this character sacraficed melee combat for spellcasting. Some of the kool wizard spells are bolt of shock, frost storm (aka blizzard), wizard beam, and cone of frost (although I have not seen this spell performed I think that it is similar to the spell "burning hands found in Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance).

Plot Background

This game takes place in the fantasy world of Norrath. It begins where this elf in Faydark makes this big speech about how orcs, goblins, and other evil creatures are taking over the land. After he gives you the background on what's happening to the world he asks if any heros can step foward and asve Norrath. The ammount of heros can range from 1-4 depending on how many people are playing. After this you get to choose your character and customize him or her. Then you have to find the shopkeeper in the starting village. he then tells you to kill all these goblins. After this beging mission things start to pick up. There is a total of 5 acts. Act 3 probably being the longest. The main big bad guy is Innoruk God of Hate (I won't tell you when you fight him hahahahahaa). You will find yourself traveling from a village in Faydark to Blackdelve Reach to a bunch of islands to a mysterious town and finaly to the Plane of Hate. The plot is compelling. So compelling that I had to ignore the calls of my other games and play this one. I couldn't bring myself to even open any other game case until I beat this game. Definitely a good buy.

Gameplay

Customization: Customization is definitely not the main focus of the game but it still ads a little spice to it. You can give your characetr different hair styles, facial hair, different color hair, body paint, and maybe a little more. The kool thing is that the customization style varies between characters. My own shadownight has long red hair a red beard and body paint. You can't really see the characters hair if you have a helmet and the same goes for the body paint if you are wearing a breastplate. Still, I really enjoyed customizing my character. And you can always walk around in your undies to show off that body paint!

Overall: Since this game was deleloped by the same company that did Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance one can expect that the overall gameplay would be similar. And similar it is. One noteable feature is that you can freely change the camera angle in most places ( a golden feature in my eyes). Another wicked kool camera feature is that you can zoom in for a closer look at the action or zoom out to survey the area. I enjoyed zooming in to stare at the spikes on my charaters armor. Also some of the enemies are pretty smart. They will surround you, gaurd against your attacks, and some enemie magic users will resurect their fallen comrades. The gameplay overall is very good. Although a kool feature they could have included would be that you could press certain buttons to trigger different combos. It would be kool if you could do up, up+attack to trigger a certain combo. Also I would have enjoyed a live inventory. A live inventory (or what I call a live inventory) is when you go into your inventory the game doesn't pause. But these are just small complaints and only my personal opinion and the game is really good. Sadly I couldn't try out the online play because I don't have a network adapter.... poor me. I would also like to mention a very kool area in the game. That area is the Plane of Air. The Plane of Air is the rest spot in Act 5. The only difference is that there are no enemies in the Plane of Air. Butterflies maybe but not enemies. You can still find and buy items but you don't get to fight. So on a final note this is a great game and is definitely worth the money.

Title: Final Fantasy X-2
Publisher: Square Enix
Genre: RPG
Max Players: one

What I think

Main Characters

Yuna: Yuna has changed a lot since the first game. For one she has lost some of her clothing and she has developed a new attitude. She is the star of the game and is the person you walk around with. During the game she does a couple of concerts which suggests that she is an aspiring singer. Yuna's starting dressphere is gunner.

Rikku: Rikku has lost a lot of clothes as well. She is still her usual hyper self and her starting dessphere is the thief. Although you are not told this directly (I think) Rikku is kind of in Yuna's shadow. She is a strong supporting character and a strong fighter.

Paine: Paine is new to the series. She looks and acts as though she is related to Lulu. Her clothes are like all black (mostly) and she has a bad attitude. She could have inherited Lulu's Gothicness. Paine might seem like she has a bad attitude but it is probably because she is hiding a lot of secrets. From her starting dessphere warrior I can infer that she is the main strength in the party.

These are only the characters that you control. Other important characters are: Brother (leader of the Gullwings), Buddy, Shinra, Barkeep, Nooj, Baralai, and Gippal.

Plot background

This game takes place two years afetr the first game (FFX). Yuna runs away from besaid and becomes a sphere hunter for the Gullwings. Yuna meets up with some old friends and makes some new ones. As well as sphere hunting and saving the world Yuna also appears to be an established singer. She was supposed to be doing a concert in Luca at the begining of the game but an imposter did the concert instead. What drove Yuna to becoming a sphere hunter was a sphere showiing someone who looks like Tidus and may very well be Tidus (hehehhehe you have to find out for yourself). Kilika has been rebuilt and is back to normal... almost. The Youth League and New Yevon are always fighting and some of the fighting and arguing is taking place in Kilika. Poor barthello is sepparated from Dona since Dona is with the Youth League and Barthello is with New Yevon. Poor poor Barthello. Yuna as usual feels the urge to play hero and takes on the huge roll of cleaning up Spira, but by doing this she discovers a lot of stuff she didn't know. Although this game may not completely measure up to FFX it is a solid sequel to a great game.

Gameplay

The gameplay in FFx-2 resembles that of FFx with some adjustments. For one thing there are only 3 characters that you fight with. This is a major loss in my opinion. However, there is a new feature that makes up for the lower number of characters to fight with. This feature is dresspheres. There are quite a few dresspheress (17 if you count the special dresspheres). More detail on the starting desspheres in the next section. The way desspheres work is that you equip them to a garment grid, something that holds dresspheres and may have an effect on the character(s) that it is equipped to, and you can switch to any dressphere on the garment grid anytime in a battle unless you are infected with curse (makes it so you can't switch dresspheres, also known as sphere change). An example of the use of dresspheres: If a fire flan appears and you want to kill it with magic and it is Rikku's turn here is what you can do. You press L1 to bring up your garment grid. You can only switch to a dressphere right next to the one you are currently using. So, right now Rikku is a thief and she is next to a black mage dressphere. So you switch to blackmage (here a little movie thingy will occur which is similar to a summoning movie scene thingy) and it is Rikku's turn. You cast blizzard on the fire flan and it dies. You can also switch dresspheres outside of battle. Moving on... no summons, sorry. Got that out of the way. Hey everyone! The ATB gauge is back. Personally I think that the ATB gauge makes battles more exciting. The ATB gauge works the same way as it did in previous FF games. When the gauge is full the character with the fuoll gauge performs an action. When two or three of the characters ATB gauges are full at the same time you can perform chain attacks for added damage. Still no world map (Yes!). Battles proceed very similar to battles in other games that used the ATB gauge (well... in terms of turn taking). I like how throughout the game you get "missions". When you do a mission start screen comes up and explains the objectives. At the end of a mission, a mission complete screen comes up and then you get awards and prizes and stuff like that. Prizes can range from gil to dresspheres. Missions are vital to getting 100% complete so be sure not to miss any. on the subject of completion percentage, this game is very nonlinear. After a short kind of intro mission and then another (on Mt. Gagazet) you can fly the Celcius (airship) anywhere on the destination list. Most of the time you can fly anywhere on the destination list. I think the nonlinear gameplay gives this game a more relaxed feel. Although the gameplay is great there is one thing that bothered me. I am on my 2nd time through the game going for 100% and I found a ton of things that I missed the first time (about 15% of the game). One example of something I missed was a ton of these commsphere scenes that I didn't watch or didn't finish. Waiting for some scenes to start is very boring. i also found that I was checking the strategy guide a lot to see if I missed anything. Sigh... I don't know any of that technical stuff and this is the only minor annoyance. Getting 100% is hard (damn advertising campaign)! I have 97% right now and I think that through hard work anyone can get 10% and unlock a secret ending movie. A feature I forgot to mention is new game plus. if you beat the game and wait for the credits to finish (I know. Boring, deal with it) then you get a chance to save your game as a new game plus. new game plus is like a normal new game except that you start with all dresspheres, garment grids, accessories, and items that you collected in your previous game. The only catch is that you start back at lvl. 1. you can even get duplicates of your dresspheres. This game has very solid gameplay, and is a great buy. Oh, before I forget, be sure to rest at least once in all of the chapters so you can see a secret scene involving Brother and Barkeep the Hypello.

Dresspheres
Gunner: The character shoots things with guns (obviously). The person with the gunner dressphere is good at hitting aerial targets. The good thing about gunner is that the abilities require no wait time. One ability is trigger happy which has you hitting R1 as fast as you can. Another ability, cheap shot, deals damage to an enemy no matter how much defense the enemy has. I found this helpful when fighting enemies with high defense such as iron giants. Yuna's starting dressphere.

Thief: I think the thief is protrayed as a speedy dressphere. This is partly because the thief attacks twice for every attack command. A very useful thief ability is flee. This ability causes the entire party to flee at the same time instead of having to use three separate actions. A good way to make some gil is by using the pilfer gil ability. Rikku's starting dressphere.

Warrior: The character(s) with the warrior dressphere has to do a lot of attacking. The warrior can also lower an enemy's attributes with abilities like power break, armor break, mental break, and magic break. Sound familiar? Yes, these were some of Auron's abilities. The warrior can also deal elemental damage with various abilities. Paine's starting dressphere.

Other dresspheres are: Beast trainer, berserker, dark knight, alchemist, lady luck, mascot, samurai, black mage, white mage, full throttle-Paine, machina Maw-Rikku, floral fallal- Yuna.

Preview!

Title: Star Wars Battlefront
Publisher: I forget.
Genre: 3rd person army style shooter (best I could do)
Max players: 4 offline (I think) and a whole lot online

What I know so far

I think Star Wars Battlefront will be a phenoninal game. I played the demo at my friend Andrew's house and I was blown away. I susually don't like this kind of game (shooter style game) and I've never played a Star Wars game that was very good but I was still very impressed with this game. The mission in the demo was an Endor (forrst world) mission. It was fun you could be the Rebel Aliiance or the Empire. I liked the Empire the best because they have storm troopers and what not. My favorite unit was the storm trooper. They have a blaster rifle and a blaster pistol. I also liked the guys with the shot guns and jet packs called drak troopers. In the mission you were able to pilot speeder bikes and and giant mech things (can't remember what they're called). Anyway in order to win you had to either kill all of the enemies or capture all of the command poinits. To capture a command point all you need to do is have your guy stand at the command point (light thing) and wait until it turns white then to green. The more units standing near a command point the faster you will take it over. Also I found it extremely satisfying to kill the ewoks especially with the rocket launcher. One thing I would have included is hand to hand combat and the ability to disarm someone at close range. I wonder if the final game will have it.

Any questions or comments, you can e-mail me at benplummer@earthlink.net


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