I really don’t play a ton of JRPGs – not because I dislike the genre, but because they tend to be rather long affairs and I just don’t have the hours to devote to them like I did back when my “backlog” consisted of a shelf of about a dozen SNES and Genesis cartridges.  In the time it takes to grind through a single Epic Story Wherein An Amnesiac Youth Discovers A Massive Conspiracy And Saves The World, I can play five or six games In Which A Grizzled Combat Veteran Shoots A Lot Of People In The Head In The Name Of Peace.

That said, I got sold on Star Ocean: The Last Hope: International for two reasons:

First, the character designs are pretty cool.

Second, the main character’s name is EDGE MAVERICK.

You have to say it like that, by the way.  All capitals are very important when it comes to EDGE MAVERICK.

Anyway, I’ve put about eight hours in so far and I’m liking it a lot.  I did hit a bit of a roadblock in the form of the game’s second real boss fight, but looking around online suggests that I just came at it way under level and need to back off and do some old fashioned grinding before making a second attempt.

Before I got going on Star Ocean, though, I needed a game to run through to try out a new video card, and I decided that it was a good time to finally play Remember Me.  It’s very pretty, the Future Paris it’s set in is a place I’d like to see more of, and the main character is definitely someone who deserves a sequel, so I hope it gets one.  It’s also been given away to PS+ subscribers and regularly sees huge discounts on Steam, so I suspect that it did not meet sales goals and a sequel is a pipe dream.  So it goes.

I also finally GET that there is a standardish control layout for 3rd-person action games, much like the very standard control layout used by virtually every console FPS since Halo, and I feel a bit daft for not picking up on it previously.  Now, if only fighting games could settle on a standard…