@mjk45

You're right about latter FF's, they are focusing more on the global story and forgetting the core characters that composed the game, making them a little generic, kinda like it was on FF1 and FF2.
Well one of the things that made me love FF's and JRPG's in general is a turn based system, even though battle systems like Kingdom Hearts or the Tales Series, mainly focused on real time action, are great and make for a fluent gaming experience, i found that giving you time to plan out your strategy works out great for you. Right now im playing Lost Odissey, and the turn system that it has is really good, and it's a must for the game, because, so far, most of the time you are overwhelmed by strong enemies, i haven't played a hard RPG like this for a long time.
Well Tetsuya Nomura worked and inspired himself by the work on early FF of Hinoboru Sakaguchi, so that's one of the reasons that the art style and characterisation seems almost similar.
About the FF8 system, i thought that the junction system was a neat addition, having you make your very own custom characters, and giving abilites for your GF was great too, although taking out the MP system and replacing it for a Draw and magic quantity, wasn't that nice, since made magic gathering an extremely long and boring process.

@lestatdark ,i will have to get back into lost odyssey i was up to the point where you met the kids took on the arrogant soldiers that pestered them and thinking i'm going really good up to this point proceeded to get my ass smacked and since then i have been to busy to play it i ,have been playing other games in that time but when i play rpg's i like to put aside at least 3hours at a time, PS i wish with the time it takes now for a rpg to hit market that Sony would start up one if not two or more studios just for rpg,s ,there track record with legend of dragoon means a sony produced rpg can sell ,but I'm sure there arrangement with square about exclusives and there consequential bailout and subsequent shareholdings precluded this ,but now the climate is right and i know there is a large following to this day for a follow up to LOD especially in the united states

could any one give me a quick synopsis of fragile please as i am some what behind on new rpg's , being a fan of most game genres when the rpg side seemed to slow down i stopped looking for new stuff as most seemed to far away from publication to warrent investigation ps what console is it going to be on,

@lestatdark yes i remember the draw system well and using it on invisible monsters on an island after i got the space ship, if i remember they had the best magic

@mjk45 u mean the island's cloest to heaven and hell. i loved the draw system from ff8, cause it gave u more too think about , then your normal hit button and move on. also i think a sequel to "legend of dragoon" would and could sell a good amount. but 1st they would need to release it on psn at least 6 months before the sequel and also would have to promote the hell out of it, something sony doesnt do very well with most of their titles, like m$ and nintendo does.

has anyone played the online area of phantasy star universe?

when do u think elder scrolls 5 will be released? i think august 2010.

@ robotecheaven yes they where the islands and if my memory serves me the hardest enemy in the game was optional way down in the south west corner of the map below ground and it took your hp down to one putting you on the backfoot having to to defend all the time and just as you got the partys hp up it would do the attack again until suddenly it let up giving you the opportunity to go on the attack PS are you intersted in the psp phantasy star coming out and as your name implies what did you think of the ps2 robotech game

 the junction system was really amazing, but thats problem with it, it makes the game the easiest FF, you can easily pull off a 9999 damage with squall in disc 1 and couple that with renzokuken and you can take down every boss in 1 turn(omega weapon in 3).

@emilie autumn

Yeah you're right, it really made for the easiest FF, coupled with the card system, even before i got to Dollet i already had Lionheart, with all the pieces gotten through the cards and Quezacotl's abilities.

@mjk45

That enemy you're naming is Ultima Weapon, where from you draw the GF eden. It had an attack that dealt 9999 damage to your characters and was really fast, but even so it was really easy beating him, the hardest part was getting to him, because you didn't have a save point for a long time.

@ROBOTECHHEAVEN, 2010 may be a little early for a new elder scrolls to be released, 2011 or 2012 may be a more realistical release date