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It's deceptively sophisticated --- put more simply, I suck. Each creature you summon has an associated element, and there's a strict order of precedence between the elements. Choosing your creatures to counter your opponent's is the key to the game. It's definitely made for wargame fans.

Despite being quite dated, it's still a lot of fun. The graphics are old but well done and perfectly adequate; it's full of well-presented little animations whenever anything happens. It's got a lot of nice touches like the fact that when you create a character, it runs you through a short personality test to find the right one for you... and there's something going on with Tarot cards I haven't figured out yet.

One of the attractions is the really, really bad translation from the Japanese. There's enough information there to actually play the game, but there's a weird air of surreality about the whole experience; particularly the cut scenes describing the ongoing plot. I've no idea what they're about --- my character seems to spend a lot of time talking to some woman with a dog, uttering the kind of cryptic runes you get when you try and speak Japanese without the right font installed!

Oh, yeah, and the fact that the title theme song is a direct ripoff of Limahl's Neverending Story has to be a point in its favour.

Alas, it's Windows only and doesn't run properly under Wine (it runs, but there's no sound and it's far too slow).

I've actually posted about a game in this series, VM Japan, before on /. When I was trying to find information on VM Japan I stumbled across the free version of VMO and downloaded it. Though the English translation is pretty bad (and the cutscenes aren't even trasnlated), it's a fun game. It's a tactical RPG (along the lines of Final Fantasy Tatics, Tatics Ogre, and it seems to share a lot with the upcoming Phantom Brave). However, you control it with the mouse and it runs as a miniziable windows app (more on that in a sec).

The graphics are dated but its a lot of fun. The system is simple; you control (via mouse, which is a new experience for me, but works real well) a main character who can summon magical familars. The nautiauls have various elemental attributes and one is weak against one other and strong against one other. Your objective is to kill off the enemy boss (by getting through his nautiauls). On the board there are power stones that you can claim for yourself (or your enemy can too) by standing on them. Stones add to your magical power, a big help. Every time you win a battle you win a new summon.

Simple yet fun. And since it runs as without going full screen as a normal Win32 app, you can run Winamp and AOL IM while playing, in and of itself a GREAT feature.

It even has network/internet play, which I haven't fooled around with much yet.

It's a great good will gesture for Falcom to put this out. It's a great download and if you enjoyed games like FFTA or Disgaea, it's defintely worth a download. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

I've actually posted about a game in this series, VM Japan, before on /. When I was trying to find information on VM Japan I stumbled across the free version of VMO and downloaded it. Though the English translation is pretty bad (and the cutscenes aren't even trasnlated), it's a fun game. It's a tactical RPG (along the lines of Final Fantasy Tatics, Tatics Ogre, and it seems to share a lot with the upcoming Phantom Brave). However, you control it with the mouse and it runs as a miniziable windows app (more on that in a sec).

The graphics are dated but its a lot of fun. The system is simple; you control (via mouse, which is a new experience for me, but works real well) a main character who can summon magical familars. The nautiauls have various elemental attributes and one is weak against one other and strong against one other. Your objective is to kill off the enemy boss (by getting through his nautiauls). On the board there are power stones that you can claim for yourself (or your enemy can too) by standing on them. Stones add to your magical power, a big help. Every time you win a battle you win a new summon.

Simple yet fun. And since it runs as without going full screen as a normal Win32 app, you can run Winamp and AOL IM while playing, in and of itself a GREAT feature.

It even has network/internet play, which I haven't fooled around with much yet.

It's a great good will gesture for Falcom to put this out. It's a great download and if you enjoyed games like FFTA or Disgaea, it's defintely worth a download. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

PC gaming is doing well enough in Japan. Try this for exmaple or the very popular Ys series. Why do you expect the Japanese to suck down crappy American games when they can make their own? The Koreans are nuts about American RTSes, but the Japanese have their own industry and titles.

American PC games don't do well in Japan. My girlfriend (as a side job) translated Northland and Deus Ex 2 for Japanese release. They didn't do well nor were the games really that good.

I'm no huge fan of the series but it seems like Ultima is trying to capitalize on how cool Japanese stuff is in America these days. I'm sure it will be a shallow attempt to cash in.

For a real fun Japanese experience, VM Japan, from Falcom is a cool Japanese mythology based tactical RPG for the PC. I still enjoy a game of PC RTS Shogun Total War (the developers aren't Japanese but they put a LOT of research into the history), which was the first Total War game.