I have officially given up on Suikoden III, it's really not a bad game, but I just don't like it's pacing. You go from some fun challanging battles to the game dropping you into a lv 10 area with a lv 1 character and having a fluffy bunny one shot your whole party... sure I could spend some time leveling up, but I shouldn't have to. The game should be designed in a way where it paces and flows smoothly.

I put in Sly 3 Honor Among Theives and just like the previous games before it I love the presentation, quirky characters and comic stealth elements. The first game is still my favorite and while this one is really good I don't think it will change my mind on that decision. The whole Sly Cooper series is an excellent example of what "charm" is in a video game.

I've been working on Suikoden III, it took me a few hours of playing to get over the fact it has no voice acting and no flashy cinematics but I'm really enjoying the old JRPG genre once again now that I've fallen back into the groove. How quickly you become jaded to the old way of playing.

I'm inspired to put some other old JRPGs I've never finished back into my Now Playing list. Starting with the Lufia games on the SNES and Lunar Eternal Blue on the PSX. I played through Silver Star Story on the SegaCD and the PSX remake but for some reason I've never made it through Eternal Blue. Perhaps I was just all Lunar-ed out when I first got it having just finished the remake.

On with collecting the 108 stars of destiny.

I finished up Twilight Princess last night. It was most excellent, but in the end I felt like I had played it before. It was a big homage to the older Zelda games, feeling most like a melding of Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time to me. I really enjoyed it but in the end it just made me feel like playing the Gamecube Zelda because that one actually tried to do something different. I only had to go to an online guide twice throughout the whole game, once in the sky palace and once again in Hyrule Castle. For the spoiler free version in Hyrule Castle, shoot the rope holding the suspicious looking picture with your bow and arrow, you don't do anything to the picture itself of the nail it is hanging from.

I'm going to go back in time and have the next game on my hit list be Suikoden III, I think I'll follow a spoiler free guide for this one because I have a lot of games I'd like to finish and the last thing I need to do is waste an evening of gaming running around lost.