I want to very much, but I can't afford it right now.

I want it in my mouth! Delicious RPG!

Really hoping it appears in the store today.

I'm really curious about this one too, I might try to pick it up today (trade-in time!), I haven't used my DS in a while. Has anyone played Professor Layton? Is it worth picking up too?

It looks pretty good. Can anyone who has it comment on the difficulty? Some of the reviews refer to it as "hard" or "for the hardcore". At my advanced age (32) those types of statements tend to steer me away from games.

Note: for lefties out there the game apparently includes a lefty switch to make the ABXY pad work instead of the directional pad. This would have been a game killer for me, had it not existed.

The bottom screen character is controlled via the stylus. The top screen character is controlled essentially by a DDR or patapon like control scheme on the top screen.

I just picked it up. Be warned, this looks like a very limited release. My Gamestop had 1 copy and I got it. They weren't scheduled to get any more. Impressions tomorrow.

Played for a few hours, to about day 3 -

Setting: The setting is a mix of superb and super emo. Now, I *hate* the whole emo culture thing, but in this game it works with the whole theme. Plus, I get the feeling that the main character is going to basically become un-emo by the end of the game, so that helps a lot.

Style: It's Jet Grind Radio! I love Jet Grind Radio!

Music: See, I lived in Japan for a year. I can assure you this is not normal Japanese stuff. But again, this falls right into the Jet Grind Radio classification of awesome, and I have no idea how it did that. Edit: I take that back, it's actually a mix between Jet Grind Radio, FLCL and 80's dance beats.

Combat: Holy sheeeeiiiiitttt. I gotta tell you, I went into this thinking, "Man, a bunch of pansy reviewers can't handle doing both the stylus and the button presses? Lame asses." Then, after about... oh... 4 seconds I was going, "AHHHHHHHH TURN ON ALLY FULL AUTO!!!!" Seriously, apparantly I'm getting old already, I simply cannot seem to handle both things at once. What's funny about this is that even without the second character control combat is completely, 100% awesome. Seriously, just by itself the stylus combat is probably one of the top 3 RPG combat systems I've ever played.

Other notes: One of the things I am quickly discovering is that the game is very, very customizable. In fact, I'm getting the feeling that this is the game that developers will hold up when they want to explain how to make a game accessible to a wide variety of skill levels. This customizability is basically all implimented with a very easy to understand risk/reward system. If you play the game with all of the easiest settings, you simply won't have cool attacks, but you'll still be just fine on power. If you play while intentionally handicapping yourself via the settings, it will reward you with cool attack spells and whatnot. Let me give an example, as this is seriously something that I haven't seen in games before.

So I'm running around town, and I have this whole bunch of spells in the form of badges (read: Materia). I want to level up my badges so they're more powerful. Now, I start a battle with a random enemy and defeat him. The game gives me 2 points for each of the badges I used. But I want to level up faster, so I go into the menu and turn on a handicap, say, gimping my own HP a lot. Then I do another battle, and this time the game gives me 6 points for all my badges. Or if I was having trouble I could go in the opposite direction and turn the difficulty to a lower level, and now I'm only earning 1 point. This is a brilliant move, allowing pretty much any level of gamer to be having fun on battles within an hour of starting. You'll never feel like things are too easy or too hard, as you are always making the challenges to your own level.

Wow, what an original opening to a JRPG! This still looks interesting though.

It's a bit overwhelming at first, but there's a couple things you can do to tune the difficulty. You can set the AI to give commands to the top screen character after 6 seconds of no input, 3 seconds, or instantly. A short ways into the game you unlock the easy difficulty, and even if you play on normal I'm pretty sure I saw a "retry on easy" option on the end game screen. Also, your pins (special move giving items) will gain experience and level up when your DS is powered down, for up to 7 days of bonus experience.

I think roaming mode works with ANY wifi signal the DS picks up... not just people with TWEWY.

I've also heard that the music was changed from the japanese original.

I think my favorite pin so far is the one that let's you hurl cars at the enemies! The best part is that it's in the group of pins you get right at the beginning of the game! I love games that let you hurl 2-ton vehicles right away.

A revelation has just occured.

I was sitting around, grinding battles to level up my pins.

Then I realized that simply by shutting off the system for the night, it would actually accomplish that very task for me.

My god, imagine if WoW actually gave you free levels for *not playing*. f*ck rested experience, this is the greatest thing I've ever experienced!

Yeah, but I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't like "gaming" the game. I think about the only time I ever did such a thing was just when I replayed Metal Gear Solid 3, I turned the game a year ahead during the fight with The End just to see for myself if he really died of old age.

I have not played it, but I love freedom and I love forces!