Tales of the Shopaholic

I am busy playing Tales of Symphonia on the Cube.  MAN, it's great.  The graphics are gorgeous.  Of course, I'm partial to cel-shading so unlike the people who run screaming at the mere mention of anything not dripping blood, I actually enjoy the look of the game. 
 
The voice acting is actually pretty decent.  It's not going to win awards, but so far every voice has fit the character.  It's pretty funny too.  If you look at the list of voice actors, you've got Liquid Snake himself playing one of the main characters, plus Jennifer Hale, who has been in about every great game with voice acting since the mid-90's. 
 
The hoops I had to jump through to get it though are worthy of an adventure game themselves...
 
I had originally ordered it on Amazon.ca.. then I figured that since I had some time before work, I'd just go to EB and pick up a copy and not have to wait for the usual glacial speed that Amazon ships games at.  So I go to EB, and they tell me that they only had enough to fill their pre-orders.
 
I go to another EB across town and they say that they have a copy, but when they check, it turns out it got sold the night before.  I did get a promo art book though, and for free at that, so I was happy.  I checked ANOTHER EB and they thought they had an extra one, and yet again my hopes were dashed.
 
It turns out that for some reason or another the original shipment to all the stores in Canada were very small and pretty much every EB got enough for their pre-orders.  Amazon had it slated to ship in 3-5 weeks and Future Shop didn't have it in stock anywhere.
 
So I gave up... Later on I went to Wal Mart and I figure I'll just take a peek in their electronics section.  Lo and behold, there is not one, not two, but 5 copies of Tales of Symphonia there for the taking!  So I almost physically haul the dim-witted shop boy over by the scruff of his hoodie and get him to open the cabinet. 
 
WAL MART!!
 
I'm glad though.  It's just the RPG goodness I've been looking for, and thankfully Garrett has been ultra sleepy today and Julie just napped so I played Tales all day :)