The waiting is the hardest part...

So, I finally beat Shadow Hearts: Covenant last night. The last boss wasn't much of a challenge (what is it with games and final bosses either being a sinch or nearly impossible?) and the ending was very weird (something like the heroine travels back in time and actually is the hero's mother and the hero travels back in time to meet his lost love again for the first time so they can start anew). I still highly reccomend it as a good under the radar purchase (although buying the original first will help clear up much of the plot, hell I beat the first one but it was awhile ago and my memory is pretty fuzzy about it, so I was still lost at some points). But what this mainly creates is a problem. I'm an rpg nut and I pretty much always need to have one I haven't beaten handy. I have money down on Knights of the Old Republic II, but that isn't out for a few more weeks, leaving me with a pretty big void and several interesting options. There's Baten Kaitos, which looks sort of interesting but has a card based battle system and I loathe those.
Then there's Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. This is one of those very weird titles from Japan that somehow makes it's way to our shores, but it's got a fairly interesting hook: You can't save the world, it ends ten minutes into the game apparently. You are instead integral in the rebuilding and you recruit demons to help you in your cause by negotiating with them in battle. It's sort of like Pokemon with an extremely twisted dark side. But it also has that hint of being way too Japanese for any but the truly hardcore to get into.
Then there's also Growlanser Generations. This is the LONG time coming latest release from Working Designs (note that their last rpg port was for the PS one) this is two games in one and looks to have some strong battle roots, but the last WD releases haven't exactly been quality (namely the horrific Arc The Lad Collection), although since all they really do is translate and publish, I shouldn't hang it on them, just question their judgement in brigning it over here.

Of course, I still haven't beaten Halo 2 or Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal yet, I may decide to do the reasonable thing and beat at least one of those before getting anything else (note that if I concentrate on one in particular, I'll probably have it beat by this weekend, so that may not matter much).

And on another note, the Nintendo DS finally relases next week. I'm not buying it, and I don't really plan to. Same goes for Sony's upcoming PSP portable system. Has anybody seriously looked at the release list for either of these systems? It's either kiddy crap or downgraded versions of stuff we can already buy on consoles (and don't even get me started on what a horrible idea a card-based Metal Gear game is) And while the DS' dual-screen setup is an interesting idea, I haven't seen any real inventive uses for it, even from Nintendo. Of course, I also said that I wasn't planning on getting the game boy, the super nes (diehard genesis fan at the time), the ps, the xbox, the ps2..........