One other interesting little note, now that I've played more. There's a pretty fun alchemy system in effect for the game that will create new potions and spells to use. If you plan to play the game, make sure you don't skip any tutorials!

I've had my eye on it for a while now. I've seen good scores all around so I'm definitely giving it a shot.

Goodjer seal of approval then? I'm glad because i'll be pretty happy to pick this up next week.

My order got backordered.

Hey Certis, do you have your PS3 hooked up to a HDTV and if so does it upscale the signal for you? For a game that's already gorgeous at standard defs I wonder if upscaling the signal, either in the TV or with the new PS3 update makes it even more gorgeous?

So it's locking it at 704 x 480? I wasn't aware that you could upscale the signal to HD and still keep the SD screen size. Besides, why would you want to stretch it wider? Won't the characters look like Jenny Craig rejects then?

It's locking at 4:3 yeah. Upscaling to HD doesn't magically make a non-widescreen game fit the format, it just sharpens the 4:3 image. Stric mentioned you could change it in the PS3 settings to fill the screen, but I suspect it would just full screen the game, which would make it look wide and a little off. What I did before the update was use "Theater Wide 1" on my TV, which zooms the screen in a little and stretches it. You lose a little at the top and bottom, but it fills most of the screen without stretching it out too bad.

I did the same thing. I wonder, though, what the difficulty level actually affects. What I'm afraid of is that it will be like Valkyrie Profile, where you can't get at parts of the story and can't get the best ending if you play on easy. I suppose that since you can change it on the fly, it probably only alters how much damage you deal and recieve. I'll probably stick with medium for a bit longer, but assuming the latter is the case rather than the former, I might dial it down if it continues to be as punishing as it was early on.

Another question, though. Do the English voices pick up a bit? I used them at the beginning, and while they weren't bad in any way they also didn't strike me as anything special either, so I switched to the Japanese voices. Should I give the English ones a second chance?

Darn it. I want to get this game, but I've got a stack a mile high. Curse you, WoW!

Yeah the fullscreen option in the scaler scales the image to fill the screen. As I stated though i've only tried FFXII which has a widescreen option so it's not so bad. But that said I know my tv has a wide mode option in the settings so you can mess with the stretch/zoom options even with hd content. I've got this shipping from gamefly should be here today or tomorrow, i'll mess with the scaler options then.

Oh also Certis I thought I would mention you can turn the scaler off in the game settings menu and it should go back to the way it was.

I just ordered from Amazon. It doesn't say "In Stock" but it says ships within 2-4 days, so I hope that means there are more on the way. I'm not in a rush because of my backlog, but I don't see much reason to wait on the purchase either given a few factors:

1) It's published by Atlus, which probably means a small initial run and maybe another run down the line, but quantities will be limited.
2) It's gorgeous and looks like a game I'd hold onto rather than resell, although given the likelyhood of its rarity it may actually increase in value.
3) It looks like a lot of fun as well - I like brawlers and I generally like RPG-lite games, and I trust Atlus to put out a good product.
4) Birthday gift certificates from Amazon, and this game may never go down in price + see above (may actually increase in value).

I'll let you all know more when it does arrive.

Sheep trees! I love them. Plant a sheep, wait, sheep sprout!

Chase said sheep down, voila: lamb chops.

If the PS3 were to do upscaling by tapping directly into the PS2 hardware and rendering onto a higher resolution, it would likely be very good. But that would almost certainly have needed to be a shipping feature. The fact that they added it afterward most likely means it won't improve the image much. It's highly likely that they're analyzing the output as a bitmap, frame by frame, without access to subpixel detail. That'll let them smooth out the jaggies a bit, but they can't REALLY improve the resolution. They just kind of blur it a little so it looks a little better. It's not upscaling in the sense of giving you more resolution. It's just, possibly, doing a better job of stretching X:Y resolution to 2X:2Y than the TV does.

It's sort of like taking hamburger and trying to reconstitute the cow. If they were earlier in the pipeline, the hamburger wouldn't be as finely ground, and the resultant cow-shaped paste would look more bovine... but even then it wouldn't moo.

So I finally finished the first character, and I must say I am quite impressed with the story so far. It's been quite a while since I really felt myself caring about what was going on in an RPG (FF12 and Rogue Galaxy, while excellent in terms of gameplay, both fell a bit flat in this regard), and it feels good. I must say, though, that the story is FAR more serious than I expected from the game's bright and cheerful visual style. Because of this, I'm glad that I decided to stick with the Japanese voices.

Seeing as there is not really any humor to be lost in the translation, listening in a language that I barely understand helps me to not notice the occasional awkwardly written line. More than that, though, despite the vaguely Norse/Gernanic/Norman-Anglo-Saxon setting, the attitudes and behaviors of the characters (at least so far) are VERY Japanese, and the way they way they speak, think, and act makes much more sense to me in the context of what I know about Japanese culture. This, and the fact that the game in many ways reminds me of old Kurosawa films (Rashomon, anyone?) has greatly contributed to my sense of connection to and enjoyment of the story.

One minor gripe, though: Man, is that slowdown ever annoying. If you haven't yet reached the first character's final level, let me warn you in advance that what you have experienced so far is nothing compared to the last level. Ugh! I really wish they could have found a way to make the game as pretty as it is without sacrificing so much of its playability.

1. I think they teach you about alchemy in chapter 2 or 3.
2. It's a difficulty rating.