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Today on Gaming with Killatia we take a look at the latest Tales game to hit the US market, Tales of Graces F. Is it the best game in the franchise, or is it another blow to the Japanese style Role Playing Games? Watch to find out!

Click here for my Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City review! 

Today on Gaming with Killatia we take a look at hit rpg for the Gamecube Tales of Symphonia. Now Granted its not often that we talk about role playing games on this review show but I enjoyed Symphonia so much that I wanted to play it once to see if I still enjoy it. The answer? Watch to find out

Catch my Tales of Vesperia Review on gotgame.com right now!

Oh the pain we went through to get this episode. 3 Recordings, a full night of editing and multiple renderings to get it right! But we are back! And are we back! Even after 3 separate recording we still had a great conversation full of new things to say! How do we do it?!

But on the table for this episode are Aliens, celebrities, Role Playing games, Judges Shows, pony underwear, The Golden Critic Awards! And So much more!

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I know not many folks will care about this, but I need to express my feelings just a bit on this particular subject and my blog seemed the best place to do it (plus I'm on a caffeine buzz and just watched 'Frasier' so I'm feeling empowered). I will start off by saying that I am a roleplay enthusiast--and no, I don't mean the kinky type either. I'm talking about roleplay in the sense of either games like Dungeons and Dragons or text-based like in forums. I'm not ashamed to admit this, however embarrassing some may think this particular hobby may or may not be. As a writer, roleplay helps me to think fast and work my creative muscles. But here is something that has caught my attention recently after a discussion with another roleplayer in a chat we had today.

He explained that what he did was different from being a 'writer'. "Writers get writer's block but people like me just flow with everything. We never get stuck or have to think. That's the difference between you and me." Of course, my first reaction was to call him a stooge and point out that his demon-vampire-prince (according to his character sheet, mind you) was laughable since it wielded a sword exactly 8,000 lbs heavier than the character itself. I decided to not do that and instead give it some thought. I've spent enough time doing text-based roleplay to know the basic rules about characters and actions and for those of you less versed, I won't get too deep into a description since it's really boring. Having experienced many different styles of roleplay over my ten years in the hobby, I've seen a lot of good and a lot of bad and I can tell you one thing--roleplay of the kind he was talking about squelches creativity.

This free-flow style is called 'T1'. It's part of a series of styles ranging from 'T1' to 'T5'. T1 roleplay is incredibly detailed writing for mostly fight scenes. There's lots of details to make sure that no one involved misunderstands any action the character has made and usually is no less than five full sentences. My friend said that since he was capable of putting out '3,000 to 5,000' words per post, he was superior to writers who can't write as fast or describe as much as he could. And he's right--no good writer would ever dream of writing out descriptions of a single person's actions with that many words unless they were being paid by the word for something--or unless they were Stephen King or Tolkien.

So then, what makes a writer different? What makes me feel indignant about my friend's statement that he was superior in the written word to me because he could write so much 'quality' work in such a short amount of time without stopping? The answer is very simple--he is selfish, and I'm not saying that to be petulant. Every word of his several thousand words is about one thing; his character. It's not about advancing the plot for all the characters involved in the story or even growing and developing his character so those reading can enjoy it. It's about making sure his character is superior to another person's by means of writing something closer to a legal document rather than a narrative.

A writer may suffer from writer's block, it's true, but that's because, in a sense, a writer is a god--a flawed one, but a god none the less. They must oversee every single detail for every character. They can't focus on just one character and everything the character does and everything about the single character's story or else they would be Stephanie Meyer. No, a writer must watch over all of his characters, whether they have an active role or not. They must take into account everything in their world and embrace the beauty and horrors therein. To focus on one would be like taking a litter of puppies and then only taking care of one of them while you left the others to fend for themselves. That is the difference between a writer and a roleplayer. That is the thing that sets us apart; we care for all of our proverbial puppies.

I'm a big fan of games of all kinds, and one of my favourite styles is the good ol' table-top role-playing game. I do so like throwing dice across a table, describing and imagining scenes of glorious, wondrous fantasy. It's a form of beautiful escapism that I don't think any other kind of entertainment quite captures, where you can immerse yourself in the imaginary world of the game at exactly the level you want, so no-one is ever "doing it wrong" and everybody round the table is comfortable and having fun.

However, like many 'cult' hobbies, role-playing has something of a divide in it in terms of style. While everyone is in agreement that there is no wrong way to play these games, you can bet your bottom dollar that everyone has a right way.

The divide, curiously, can be drawn through the name of the genre: Role-Playing Game. Specifically, the line separates the last word from the rest of it - creating the "Role-Players" and the "Gamers". You can see this in practice when people talk about themselves in the hobby; many will tell you that they are a role-player, while just as many will brand themselves a gamer. This is really just harmless, but it speaks of the range of subjective methods to something that they are all doing.

I'll note here that while I speak of two groups of people, they are by no means extremes to which everyone in this hobby subscribes. The issue is of course much greyer than that, so see them as the two parts of a player's perception of the hobby, with one having maybe a bit more precedence than the other in individuals.

First, I shall speak of the gamers. I identify more as a gamer, so this is where my train of thought starts. RPGs started as a bizarre twist on wargames (something which is unquestionably a gamer thing), so were more about the rules with the concept of deeper personal narrative being this whole new unexplored thing. Everything that happened was based on equations of numbers and dice, with the referee having the final say. The rules dictated what went on, so it was very much a game like its boardgame and wargame cousins. Other than a bigger and more complex manual (and of course a totally different premise), there was little to differentiate D&D from Monopoly in terms of what market they occupied.

Merry Christmas, everybody!  This year we start seeing many more console titles.  They're not always that great, but they're there all the same!  Actually, this year was tied up for a while, but it eventually became clear who the true winner was.

Still not feeling too hot, so here's another supplement.  On a very cautious basis, I'm going to start heading INTO THE FUTURE!  There are 37 games this year.  This was one of the toughest years I've encountered so far...possibly the toughest.  In advance, I'd like to say that making the top 5 list this time around was NOT easy and as a result, a lot of great games totally tied for multiple places.  This was a year of many highly successful RPGs.

I apologize, guys. I'm feeling deathly ill, so this will have to do for an update today.  This time around I'm only going to highlight one game per year.  While that may not seem very inclusive the fact is there are some years where there aren't any officially licensed brawlers at all.  Furthermore, the definition of a brawler has become somewhat vague, so as it stands, here's my running definition, subject to change at any time...

There are 21 games.  This is a huge year for adventure games and if you already know about most of these, you'll see why this was a ridiculous hard choice to make for top 3.

There were 17 games this year.  While certain titles were obvious runner ups for me, it took some time to decide #3.  Sure, I already pretty much had in mind what I wanted for the top 2, but the 3rd was especially elusive for a time.  This was an...interesting...year for adventure games.  You'll start to see more and more "pervert" titles on this list.  I mean, sure, I liked games like Leisure Suit Larry, but some of these are just ridiculous.

This time around I will changing things up a bit.  I will only be doing a top 3 for each year and I'm hoping that will suffice as some years have barely any adventure titles released.  I'm also trying to be as accurate as possible, which is proving to be difficult considering most of these are labeled either incorrectly or in poor chronological order on Wiki.  In fact, let me know if something's out of place or missing on these as I've been updating their "official" list with THEIR OWN INFORMATION...so yeah.

Yet another gigantic year for RPGs.  There are 29 games!  This will probably be the last year I do, at least for a while, so let's not wait any longer and just hop right into it.

This was a HUGE year for RPGs, at least if you go off the numbers.  There are 30 games!  This was not an easy pick, so don't think I just randomly selected these.  I almost wish I'd done a top 10 list for this year because a lot of the RPGs are just plain incredible.

There are only 13 games, but I assure you, these are some BIG games.  The other titles are massively overshadowed by the top 5 since the rest range from okay to completely fucking sucks.  I would honestly call this the most bipolar year, because you either played a game that was totally awesome or you didn't and there was very little middle ground.

1996 was an interesting year given the PS1 started cranking out RPGs.  Not all of them were good, but dammit they tried!  As a result, this is when the SNES really kicked it into full gear to try to compete.  Overall, it was a very good year for console RPGs, but that's not to say there weren't any good PC RPGs.  There were only 15 games, so this should be quick.

This was another easy year.  And yes, I'll likely be annoying PC gamers, but before I do, consider this:  all 5 of the titles selected were either PHENOMENAL or the best of their respective series.  There is literally no reason they should be on the top 5 list and the only one I really feel bad about not including is Breath of Fire 2.  There are 20 games in total, so let's get started!

This is another year where I'm sure PC gamers are going to be pissed with me.  To be honest, I was about ready to call it when I saw the list, but there were certain PC titles I wasn't sure about.  This was a good year for console RPGs and it really shows.  There were 19 games in total and keep in mind that perhaps I can't see some of these titles' charm because I didn't have a PC that could play them and I did have various consoles that could.

This year will be easy.  Why?  Because the only tough part about it is not highlighting certain games I know are great, but not the best.  I went into this one expecting it to be as tricky as the last two years, then realized I knew exactly which 5 should be at the top within 30 seconds.  There are 25 games, but you only need to remember these...

This time around I noticed there are more console titles and the SNES especially is getting a good start.  Unfortunately, most of those titles don't belong on a top 5 list.  Sure, games like Mystic Quest and Soul Blazer are fun, but out of all the rest?  Ha, no.  Not too surprisingly, there are a lot of great PC RPGs this time around, making it pretty hard to call it in some cases.  There are 22 titles this time, so let's hop into it!

This was actually a tough year for me to choose through games.  There were a lot of PC RPGs, naturally, but the problem is a lot of them, yet again, are not very easy to simply pick up and play.  Most of them require thorough understanding of the manual or perhaps prior knowledge of the series in general to truly appreciate the experience.