When I first started playing The Legend of Dragoon, I told myself, "OK, when I write up my review, I won't focus on its similarity to Final Fantasy VII (FF7) like everyone else has." Well, here I am writing my review, and all I can think about is its similarity to FF7, and how stale and unoriginal the whole experience is.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Animated Violence, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes

I never played any of the original Landers games, so I'll leave Ben to speak on the merits of this RPG as it pertains to its Landers lineage. What I can talk about is Time Stalkers as an RPG, and more specifically, a Dreamcast RPG. It's obvious that the Dreamcast needs RPGs, but it's really telling when even Sega can't get its hand on one that is really worthwhile.

Time Stalkers is a completely different game—a more traditional RPG rather than an Adventure/RPG. By using the word "traditional," I don't mean to imply that Time Stalkers doesn't try anything new. There are actually several interesting ideas and possibilities floating around in this game.

This is the game that managed to outsell all competing PlayStation 2 software for two straight months in Japan? I asked myself this question practically every second I played this game. I must confess that I am not at all a Kirby fan, but that isn't why I was so perplexed as to why this game was made. I do agree with Scott on all of his points, but I have to say something on two aspects to the game.

To resolve this, Nintendo and HAL, a second party of Nintendo, created a game featuring a slow-moving character that was little more than a circle with feet and put him in a sidescroller, similar to Super Mario Bros. The result was Kirby's Dream Land.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood & Gore, Animated Violence

Koudelka first gained media attention at the 1999 E3 show. Anyone who saw its looping demos admitted that the game showed promise. It sported impressive CG graphics, rich prerendered backgrounds and was made by a collection of developers who once worked at Squaresoft—all the things needed to garner some attention and positive early reviews.

What makes survival horror games so annoying is how exploring and finding items in the prerendered backgrounds almost always proves to be a rigid and awkward experience. Koudelka makes this quality about a thousand times worse by adding random attacks—more typically found in RPGs—to the mix.