I've gotten hooked on BOTH Phantom Brave and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time this week.  That's not a typo on Star Ocean by the way... presumably one becomes an intergalactic farmer using a Trans-Temporal Space Plow to properly till your property at the End of Time.

My grammar-fascist tendencies aside, both are great games.  Between those two and Front Mission 4 I'm in RPG overload -- and I know the holiday season is far from done serving up RPG goodness.  Fortunately Xavier likes watching me play Front Mission (or "robot game"), and all three games are quite different, at least as far as RPGs go.

I have to admit Front Mission is probably the weakest of the three.  It's certainly the slowest paced.  Phantom Brave is a little too much on the goofy side for my tastes, but it is without a doubt the ultimate stat-building leveling up game -- if you like that sort of game (such as Nippon Ichi's Disgaea or La Pucelle) you definitely should check out Phantom Brave.

Star Ocean is the most "classical" RPG of the set.  While it does have a more reflex-based combat system (like Star Ocean 2, or the Tales series) it has a big epic story, lots of angsty dialogue, etc.  I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.  So far it feels a lot like a more polished and slightly less wordy (but only slightly) Xenosaga.

Modern console RPGs really are the digital equivalent of novels.  Just like I have a hard time reading multiple novels at the same time, I'm not quite sure I'll be able to keep all the plot threads of the three games in my head at one time.  We'll see, but I can't quite bring myself to stop playing any of them...

The next few weeks are all ridiculous for good new releases too.  Next week is World at War and Kohan II, two of my top picks for strategy games this holiday (though by no means the last).  It's a good time to be a gamer.