While the veto-rule made for a fun game, I was kind of curious to know the top 5 listener voted games in each category to get a sense of what people think different genres are. I wonder if you would consider making the poll results public?
For example for strategy games I was very surprised that final fantasy tactics advance and Valkyria Chronicles were the top 2 as I don’t even consider them strategy games, but rather tactical RPGS. With strategy games I usually think of either RTS games like Command and Conquer, Starcraft etc. or turn-based strategy games in the vein of Heroes of Might and Magic (admittedly I see how this straddles the line with respect to tactics RPGs), Civilization etc.
On the question of Chrono Trigger vs DQV I played both of those games for the first time within the last 2 years and I have to say I enjoyed Chrono Trigger more. I think I have a major preference for shorter games though, so that might be part of the reason, but with Chrono Trigger I felt like it was paced well and ended before I started to get bored of it. With DQV on the other hand, I got bored off the random battles towards the end, even though I liked the overall story and themes. As someone who does not have any nostalgia for Chrono Trigger it’s a real good game, even if it’s the stereotypical answer to the “best rpg” question. Mind you it is also not my personal favorite RPG, but definitely up there.
Also, I did vote for Crusader Kings II for the simulation category, so I was happy to hear Tim suggesting that game. This is despite me claiming in another thread that I don’t really think Paradox games are worth their complexity, but it was still the game that came to mind when I saw that category.
As it keeps coming up in the podcast I also decided to start playing that zettai setsumei toshi 2 (I will still try to finish Suikoden!) and man, I’ve never really cared much about frame-rates and such, but the dips are really noticeable in this game. Still it seems fun so far, I like the setup a lot. Hearing Frank talk about the English version and looking it up, that’s a pretty wild localization though. They even changed the hair and skin color of the characters in addition to the names and transplanting the plot to America. I wonder who made that decision? It seems like a strange thing to do for a game that is so decidedly Japanese.