Jumping in Headfirst

Talk to any fan of J-RPGs, and they'll tell you they have a favorite series of games. Most of the n00bs will tell you Final Fantasy. The "hardcore" ones might tell you Fire Emblem. Others still might tell you the Tales series. (Particularly if they like anime.) Me? My favorite series has always been Suikoden. Y'know, I love Japanese RPGs. I really do. But one thing that's always gotten to me is that they seem to have something against continuity. I don't get it, really, but they do. For all the morons that whine about Final Fantasy ("How can it be "Final" when you're up to like, fifteen?"), each one of those games is a completely different world in a completely different universe. Its a bit disheartening. As I mentioned in my Lunar post , no good RPG ever relies solely on its story, seeing as how the story is probably going to have a few cliches in it. The key to a good RPG is in world building. You create a world in which...

Another new series of columns. JiH is really booming, huh? Voice in the background: But you haven't updated in weeks! ...Gotta do something about the more noisy people in my room. Maybe rope and a ball gag.... Anyway! This is the start of yet another new series on JiH. Depending on when you actually ask me, I'm a pretty hardcore gamer, and my favorite genre has always been RPGs--particularly of the Japanese variety. This is fairly logical, since: A.) Before I discovered RPGs (my first being Super Mario RPG, but we'll get into that a little later), I was at best a casual gamer, much preferring comics instead, and B.) Western RPGs tend to be a little too PWP (that's, Plot? What Plot?, for you people who've never read a fanfic, particularly of the pr0n variety) on consoles, and considering I'm primarily a console gamer, well... So this new series will be devoted to my favorite RPGs, and split into two versions: Favorite RPG Universes, and Favorite RPGs I wi...