About that expensive FFXII demo...

One of the good things about this week is that I've just started playing Dragon Quest VIII (aka Dragon Warrior 8) and it is phenomenal. It's a gorgeous game but it really pays homage to its 8-bit roots. The menus and other sundry sound effects are all taken from the old-school Dragon Warrior games, which is great for someone like me who remembers sitting in our TV room playing the original Dragon Warrior at the house on Vidal, waaaay back in Grade 8. Man...

It's also nice to play a console RPG that actually feels like a normal console RPG. Too many of the RPG's I've been playing lately have been trying various fancy new tricks and such that just haven't panned out (I'm looking at you, Radiata Stories). DQ8 had lots of new tweaks but, like a new Final Fantasy, just feels right when you play it.

Speaking of Final Fantasy, DQ8 has the demo of FFXII included with it. I think I might have been one of the few people picking up Dragon Quest who wasn't thinking of it as the game that happened to be packaged with the Final Fantasy demo. Sigh. It is too bad that FFXII is pushed back to, oh, I don't know, March 2008 (at the rate they're going). Actually, it IS supposed to be out around my birthday next year, so that's cool. Of course, it was also supposed to be out around now, and my birthday last year, and Christmas of the year before that... It had better be awesome, I tell ya. We don't need a Final Fantasy equivalent of Daikatana.

Anyway, I'm off to play some DQ8 before bed. After today, I need to squish some slimes!

Oh, and if anyone is looking for something for me for Christmas, I would not be averse to one of these: