BeefWaterfall

Jeanne d'Arc not as good FFT? Hmmm.....that's sad to hear. Then again, I had so much fun playing FFT, I can't imagine that level of quality fun being able to be consistent across all rpgs on PSP.   
 
As far as "Crimson Gem Saga", I feel this review (linked below) is not bad. I think the guy over-exaggerates the grind a bit. Yes, there's times you gotta go grind for a while, but for some reason it never bothered me too much. Either that or...just when I was about to get fed up with the grinding, I didn't need to do it anymore and was powerful to proceed forward again.  I like the art design, the backgrounds in particular are gorgeous. The combat system is old school but in a good way. I was in the mood for simplicity at the time I played it so it appealed to me.  
 
Y'see....I play the PSP to take a break from work. I have a job that sometimes demands marathon hours at a desk. When then happens, by the time I get home, I don't have time to play my console games. I just sleep and go back to work. Simple PSP games are a great bite size chunks of fun during occasional breaks. I keep the PSP in a drawer, play a bit during dinner time...maybe again later around 11pm. So the simple combat mechanics were very cool for me. 
 
  

Hey, first off ... thanks so much for all the replies.  Giantbomb community is awesome. 
 
There seems to be a lot of praise for Jeanne D'arc. I'm starting to consider this one heavily. I think I'm only slightly hesitant because of the pseudo-European alternate reality setting. Maybe it won't bother me as I play it? 
 
Wild Arms XF....wow, I watched some videos of this on youtube and I like the look of it a lot. Never even considered it. I think this one is in the running too. 
 
For people who are into JRPGs, there seems to be a lot of good vibes for  Lunar and Grandia. I watched some videos but it might be "too old school" for me.  Or maybe its the art design that's too old school and I'm just not currently in the mood for. Although I did say earlier that I was okay with cute , but that's not the problem. FF Tactics was cute too, but I liked the art style a lot.  I'll have to do more research on Crisis Core. Can't tell yet....but just looking at the videos makes me confused. There's like a slot machine thing going on off to the side....what the? Anyways, thanks for the recommendations.  I think Jeanne D'arc is the front runner currently being considered.....  
 
Feel free to keep 'em coming. And thanks again for all the recommendations.

So hey, I'm totally in the mood to play an RPG game on the PSP. Thing is, I sort of have a few parameters as far as what I don't want to get into and because of that, I'm having trouble picking one off the shelves. 
 
Things I don't want (or things I'm not in the mood for): 
 
1.) Super complicated. I don't want something that I have to do a lot of research on the internet in order to optimize and get through tougher battles. Sure, I like to think about how my party or guy is built with his skills and stuff. But I don't want the path to good tactics/character builds to be so complicated that the only way I would've known to do that is if I did a lot of out of game research. 
 
2.Not too silly. I was thinking of picking up Disgaea 2, but I played a bit of Disgaea on the Playstion 2 and, while cool looking .... it may have been too silly for me. Final Fantasy Tactics (which I've already played) was the right amount of cute stuff, story stuff, humor, and serious stuff. It can look anime cute, but just not too overboard. 
 
Anyways, just those two things are my restrictions. Can you guys recommend me anything?  Games I already played or have on PSP: Crimson Gem Saga, Final Fantasy Tactics, God of War: Chains of Olympus, Monster Hunter 2 Freedom Unite.  
 
Thanks for any suggestions you can make. :)

" what is it with some defenders i was medicing it up, reviving some dudes when i happened to run past the helipad there were like 5 people waiting for the apache the apache was in the air and killing odds on theyd all be shit and crash it too "

I agree with the single player Marine campaign. Sweet jeebus the dialogue is horrible. I always roll my eyes when writers make this fanboy like homages to the original movie dialogue that feels so ....corny.  Oh, and really....in the future only Latinas join the Colonial Marines? Also, in the future, the SureFire Flashlight company must be out of business. Marine flashlights have the illumination power of a sleepy firefly. 
 
I checked out the first 20 minutes or so of the Predator and Alien campaign and felt much more entertaining. Hopefully that'll be the case as I attempt to play through them. Don't think I'll ever go back to the Marine one. 
 
As far as Multiplayer - - There are things that work fairly reliably in single player that I can't seem to execute in Multi-player. The Grab move for instance leaves me baffled. I'll sometimes work hard to sneak up behind a guy (as an Alien or Predator) and.....his back is to me....and I won't get the prompt to hit "X" and grab. On other occasions, I'm like....20 feet away from the guy, and I get the prompt to Grab. Yeah, my Alien jumps and closes the distance. I"m not debating the realism of doing the move from that distance. I just don't get why sometimes I can't do it when I'm like a foot away from the guy. 
 
I assume I have to be undetected or I won't get the prompt. But there are times when I swear the opponent I'm stalking doesn't see me (his back is to me and everything) and I still dont' get the prompt. Manual, of course, doesn't elaborate on what conditions need to be met in order to pull of the grab. Guess I'll wait for some fan game tip tutorial on the internet.  Multi-player would seem to be a lot more fun if I just knew what I could or couldn't do and when. 

Thanks Darniaq!  I'm a bit disappointed that this game still has some of the same old things I dislike in MMO games.  
 
First Disappointment: a level based system where your character hits harder with bigger numbers with each level and then allowing these guys to have free access to lower level characters. I don't like what my friends and I call sheep/wolf gameplay. Basically, you play as sheep until you reach max. level. Then you finally get to play as a wolf and the next generation of leveling characters is the sheep for you. 
 
Second Disappointment: Also, no mentor/side kick equalizer for friends with big level gaps? Hmmm....another big minus.   
 
Third possible Disappointment: lack of dungeons in each leveling bracket?
  
This is all unfortunate. The game has some cool animations, some fantastic music, and beautiful landscapes to explore.  I was very close to impulse buying. However, I wanted to do research first. 

Did a skim of the main website and the top newbie guides but didn't see the answers to some of these other questions I had.  If anyone can help answer them, that would be great. 
 
Question #1: The PvP: Is it like World of Warcraft where, if you're in a level 20-30 zone, a player of the opposite faction can come in with a bunch of friends and have a gank fest? Warhammer had a mechanic where higher brackets can't pvp in lower tier zones. Level 40's couldn't go to the level 20 RvR zone and gank away. Does Aion have something similar? 
 
Question #2: Does the holy trinity still exist? (Holy Trinity= Tank, DPS, Healer) From what I've seen on videos, it seems you don't need the holy trinity to do every day regular quests. However, what about dungeons and bigger encounters? Am I gonna have to stand around for a half hour trying to get someone of a specific class to join my group so we can start playing the content? 
 
Question #3: Is there a mentor (like EQ2) or side kick system (like City of Heroes)? Something to help friends with different play times. Y'know, one guy is level 34, the other guy is level 21.  One guy can lower himself to 21 or bump his friend to 34. With most MMOs, buddies with different life schedules can't play together until you're both max level. This for me happens with every MMO. Like 5-6 friends of mine all get the game at the same time, then we can't play together until like 10 months later when we're all max level. Usually along the way, 4 friends stop playing entirely. 
 
Question #4: If I do join Aion and play, is their an over-powered class.? Every MMO has one. I used to not care. Y'know, the old mantra "play whatever you feel is fun". Yeah well, I always ended up with the gimp class. Murphy's Law laughing at me. If I play this game, I'm thinking about selling out and joining the masses and rolling a class that everyone thinks is the most powerful. That sounds horrible doesn't it?  I know, I know... but I'm just tired of the playing the one class that's gimpy.
 
Question #5: Are there no dungeons to go to in each level bracket?  I've heard of the dungeons in the Abyss area for the higher levels, but none in the lower areas? That would be disappointing. 

Thanks for the responses so far. Every bit helps.  The "Build" window doesn't exactly have user-friendly labels. Which is odd because mousing over everything else on your character sheet gives you great info on what does what. But the Build window just has a pull down selector but no label on it that says "Roles". Thankyou DOUBLESHOCK for the tip. 
 
As with Question 5, I also posted the same questions on the actual Champions Online forums. Interesting tid bit, you guys responded before the community over there did. :)  
Anyways, I've told over there that you mash on it "Track & Field" style. Perhaps, the stat that is tied to the roots influence how much of the timer bar you reduce when you're mashing on the button. But that's just a guess.

 Hey guys, sorry if these have come up before. I am truly a newbie at this game and I am having some problems with a few things still. Any help will be much appreciated.

Question 1: Roles? Is this the term? Some NPC I clicked on talked about roles or something. My guess is this is some system for characters to switch their Presence from trying to aggro as much as he can or aggro the least amount he can. So better defensive group mates can sort of MMO 'tank" while frail shooter types hang back? I'm not sure. Uhm...so the NPC talked about it, but I can't find the button on the UI that makes me control this feature. At first I thought it was the two build buttons above my hot bar, but that's...uhm...builds? Like for if you want to have a PvE and a PvP build? I don't know what's going on. Need this better explained to me. The NPC did not provide sufficient instruction.

Question 2: Not that I plan to PvP much in cage matches, because man ... the balance is all over the place. Ice seems to dominate. Anyways, I'll be concentrating on burning down the health of one guy and ....out of no where, I no longer have him targeted? Why is this happening? Are there powers that detaunt you and make you un-target them? Not sure what's going on. As if it wasn't already challenging enough to break out of ice and get on someone already. No I gotta rapid fire tab through enemies everytime I lose my target, which seems to be very often.

Question 3: Can you set up customized hotkeys? Not all of my friends I play have Ventrilo (I won't get into why this is), but sometimes, I wanna just have basic "Wait stop!" and "Need help" hot keys made. Considering how quick a fight can accidently spiral out of control from fighting 5 henchmen to 20, I could use every short cut I can to communicate with my non-Ventrilo friends.

Question 4: Speaking of Ventrilo, is there something better and easier to use than Vent? Half my friends have it working fine, the other half spend an hour tweaking settings and we still can't hear them. Is there another service that's not as fickle with drivers and codecs. Something a little more plug and play friendly?

Thanks for the help with any of these questions.

p.s.

Question 5: When trying to break out of a hold, the game says, "Press Z!" Okay, press Z and keep tapping it until you break? Or just press Z once and your character will auto go into "I need to break out" mode? So far, I have just been spamming Z "Track and Field" style. 

Thanks guys. I totally missed the Cold Drink on the merchants. I think at the time I just didn't see it. I figured the hot drinks were for cold, there had to be a desert equivalent. Guess I need to slow it down a bit and look for things more carefully. 
 
But wow, the drinks are expensive! Like 300z each. Or there abouts.  I guess that's the game's way of keeping you from getting too rich. Also, an incentive to make desert armor. Now I just gotta figure out how to fight those Cephalos things. Looks like range weaponry would be good for that fight. 
 
Anyways, back to it. I gotta lot of learning still to do. Thanks again. Feel free to offer or post other weather condition or environmental condition tips.