This is an '04 game, so I only had the vaguest of notions about it. I remember it being sort of a big deal as a GameCube exclusive, and I remember it being another one of those RPGs with weird Germanic names. I also recall helping some confused mom find it on the shelf at Target back when it came out.

I was never much of an RPG gamer back in the day, because - and I say this in the fondest way possible - RPGs were what the poor kids played. When your budget is limited, you gravitate towards the titles that purport to offer the most gameplay. I tended to send dollar after dollar after new stuff, because I wanted to experience lots of different types of games rather than play Final Fantasy for months. Nowadays, every game wants to tout 30 to 60 hours of gameplay, so that distinction of the early days is gone. Today I get the best of both worlds.

So what I'm saying is that I have nothing to compare it to, except for Kingdom Hearts and Pokemon. Do the various core Legend of Zelda and Resident Evil games count? My opinion on this is unvalidated, if not unexpressed.

In one weekend, I'm about seven hours in. According to the promises on the back of the box, this puts me at around 12% done. Although I'm enjoying it so far, I can tell you that the outrageous time claim is almost completely due to everything is the game happpppeeennniinnnggg soooooo slooooooowlllllllyyy. You have watch every single dialogue box draw onto the screen, and the conversations are packed with useless filler like "I see" and "...". Luckily you can click through it, so a fast reader (such as myself) can make some inroads towards speeding things up without losing the thread of the story. Not that it's a great story, it's the usual Ancient Evil Threatens World and only a small band of adventures brought together with all the dramatic import of the first Muppet Movie can save the day.

One weird thing is that the game has this metatextual bit where the main character (appropriately named Kalas) talks to you. You, the fourth wall gamer you. You punch in your name and then Kalas regularly asks you for guidance, which usually means you ordering him to go do something that the whiny brat doesn't want to do. You're the big picture guy. Entering in your name means that you show up in the conversations and the characters all make fun of how your name is strange.

What I really like about it is that the battles are card-based, which is a metaphor I can totally get behind. I find this much more interesting than choosing skills off a tree and pumping up stats with point bonuses. Throughout the game, you're constantly finding new cards to add to your deck(s), then tweaking them for each character as needed. I know this wasn't the first game to do this, but I'm hoping it's one of the best. What other games (aside from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and the obvious Magic: the Gathering video games) did card-based gameplay like this?

I'm figuring I'll get far more than $5.50 out of this one. It may take me all the way to Super Paper Mario and Pokemon Pearl, but if it doesn't, I have Okami waiting in the queue. This weekend I also did a ton of Guitar Hero, at Clark's continual request. While I played, he used one of his toy guitars to mimic the onstage histrionics of the GH band. Like, holding it over his head and everything.