Okay, so, Sony stereotypes aside, September was likely a good month if you’re both a PSP owner and RPG lover such as myself. For four weeks straight, a new PSP RPG released that was able to catch my attention for each of those weeks. (Though one came after a second opinion.) This, to me, is a rare occurence, and really had me stretching my wallet for all of them.

So… what were the games that had me investing so much in the PSP recently?

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep
For some, this would probably be “how typical.” For me, “how surprising.” I can humbly say that this is in fact the first time I had ever picked up a Kingdom Hearts game ever. (Except when I demoed Kingdom Hearts 2 very briefly at Disneyworld some four years ago now.) For a second, I have to forget about all of the rabid fanboys that this series produces and actually play a game. Since Birth By Sleep is a prequel to the entire series, I thought that it would be a good time to get into it. The game was already coming off of high player and editor reviews alike, and within an hour or so I could see why. The game, although not exactly like the other games in the series as I’ve been told, plays very well, has an interesting story, and looks pretty good for a PSP game. BBS has succeeded in making me want to try other games in the series… well… after hearing that 358/2 days was subpar, I will probably wait for the next Kingdom Hearts to hit on the 3DS

Phantasy Star Portable 2
Sharing the same abbreviation as the system is on, PSP2 could be overlooked if not just by the other games released before it, then also by the fact that Sega announced Phantasy Star Online 2 at TGS this year. That obviously didn’t stop me from picking it up. My friend had gotten me into the Phantasy Star series, starting with Online. Since then I had gone back and played the original turn-based games on the Master System and Genesis, but the Phantasy Star Universe games caught my eye, although it didn’t with some. Portable 2 expanded on a lot of the things that came out of Portable 1, all for the better. The game features online play, which seems like a rarity for PSP games nowadays, as well as bringing in some Universe traits as having a room you can customise and decorate. Also to the positive is the ability to block (if you have a shield) and having a single PP meter that regenerates, instead of having to manage PP for every weapon you’re using. It’s just fun all around.

Cladun: This is an RPG
What is Nippon Ichi without niche titles? Cladun is a 16-bit dungeon crawler-like game… with a twist. Aside from having your story character, you have the ability to create your own characters, right down to the pixel. Yes, you can create any character you like and even define the end boss. The game also features an very interesting powerup system, using the other characters you make to act as “shields” and power the main character up. This game can tend to be difficult at times, and can time some time getting used to, but all in all this game becomes an effective time waster.

Valkyria Chronicles II
How does the earliest game end up as my last game? I tried this out when the demo was first put up on PSN, hastily played it and couldn’t make any sense of anything. However, after reading about it quite a bit I decided to try it again, play it properly, and I ended up liking enough to buy it. Ever since then, I haven’t been able to put it down. Thing is, I’m not even that much into SRPGs, but Valkyria II just has so much going for it. It’s got warfare strategy. It’s got quirky characters that you’ll all get to know over time. It’s got… guns. (Okay, so guns doesn’t really mean much.) But really. It’s hard not to fall in love with the students that make up class G, and never have I played a game in where “grinding” (by repeating old missions) actually felt like I was doing something. You find ways to refine strategies, try different classes, see if you can try to beat each mission faster… It’s a rush. Although the story goes by month to month, you aren’t pressed for time, so it gives me all the reason to level up a bit, dive into each character’s story, and just keep me hooked. I think I might need help.

Probably the hardest thing out of all of these is balancing each of these titles. I don’t really put much time into my PSP at all, although Valkyria Chronicles II has changed that over the last couple of days, but a lot of the time I find myself wanting to play Birth By Sleep yet I know I’ve been neglecting Phantasy Star Portable 2. Always a problem when you’re a backlogger, I guess.

But who knows? Maybe I’ll end up getting through them all… some day.

E3 has come and gone, EVO 2009 and well underway, and people have gone away for the summer. However, I’m still here for the most part, wasting away in front of the computer…

…Speaking of which, let’s talk about my computer.

My Dell Inspiron 2200

Yes, this is what my computer looked like before it started to fall apart; While I still played mediocre free Korean MMOs (see the screenshot again.) despite still being involved in the community today, before I had to buy a USB headset because my audio jacks fried, and before I had to borrow my friend’s monitor because my knuckles met with the screen and cracked it.

Yep, that was my faithful, beat-up laptop… until about four days ago.  Now it’s time to introduce you to my new baby:

My new laptop, The Toshiba L300

I can tell you this much: It’s nice to have all this desk space again. Even if the laptop was crap I’d be happy, but this one’s pretty damn good, and it wasn’t all that pricey either. Here’s just a quick overview of what this has. Of course it’s not gaming quality, but for now it gets the job done:

CPU: AMD Athlon Dual Core 2.0GHz
RAM: A whopping 4 gigabytes worth! (It`s so nice not to have to page stuff back and forth)
HDD: 250GB (AFAIK the brand doesn’t really matter. Laptop HDs aren’t that great to begin with.)
Video: ATI Radeon 3100, 256MB shared, Pixel shader 3.0, Vertex shader 3.0. Can actually play good games.
Optical: CD-RW/DVD-RW
OS: Vista Home Premium SP2
Other stuff no one cares about: WiFi b/g/draft-N compatible, 100mbit Ethernet, 56k modem, (They STILL make these things?!) Built-in webcam, built-in SD/MS card reader (SDHC supported)

I wasn’t initially going to get the Toshiba. There was an Acer laptop that I wanted that was about 30 bucks less but it was gone before I could get the chance to buy it. I ended up on the Toshiba because I overheard one of the sales reps saying that it was one of his preferred brands; That, and for an extra 30 bucks I got Home Premium instead of Home Basic, which also means I might be able to get a free upgrade to Windows 7, and an extra gigabyte of RAM. It was worth it.

Of course, this means one thing: I CAN ACTUALLY PLAY GAMES THAT OTHER PEOPLE PLAY. Of course, most of the games I’ve been wanting to play are by Valve, so here’s what I’ve been playing:

Portal: I actually bought Portal a while ago because I found out that I might be able to get it to run, albeit very slowly, on my old computer; It didn’t work, and so it sat there on my Steam account unplayed, undownloaded, unloved. After getting all of my stuff transferred from the old computer, the first thing I did was download this and start playing it; And I’ve had fun with it so far.  However, I haven’t been playing this as much as…

Team Fortress 2: Oh yes. I loved playing Team Fortress Classic. I knew my computer couldn’t run TF2 and was sad that I couldn’t play this. I ended up buying this after acquiring this computer and have gotten immersed in it… although for the most part I suck. I’m not all that bad, though. Earlier today I joined a fellow member from Maple Towers and started kicking some serious ass; I went in as a Heavy while he stayed back as a Medic and kept me healed. Needless to say I was bowling over people quite well; It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve finished anything with a positive KD; Although back in TFC my K:D would be absolutely unbelievable with the Heavy.

There’s not much else I want to talk about tonight; My mind is a bit fatigued. If I’m going to say something however, I’m once again going to point to OCRemix. If you remember I gave props to the guys who did the remix album for Tales of Phantasia and Symphonia: Summoning of Spirits.  Just today a remix album was released for another game I can relate to; Final Fantasy 4, titled “Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption.”  I haven’t been able to listen to it yet since I just downloaded it, but if SoS was anything, I would really suggest checking this one out, too.

Anyway, that’s all for now. To close this post out, here’s a video of crash compilations… with some very good dubbing utilizing TF2 voices: