I guess I don't see his speeches affecting my gaming experience too much because I don't think he was all that overly badass in this game, talking wise that is. He's got his moments, but there aren't so many of them that I have this overwhelming sense that he is a pompous asshole. A couple times his arrogance shines through beautifully, but only in a small fraction of the game.

I've gotten the idea that speed is a factor in the game, but there are defiintely some boards that it is quite necessary to just kill demons over and over and over again when they dish out a lot of Red Orbs. For example, when you warp into the mirror towards the end of the game, before entering the Underworld, that set of 3 Nobodies (I think that's their name) that you have to fight after getting the Philospher's Stone drop about 450 Red Orbs between the 3 of them. I literally fought them about 20 plus times just to upgrade a lot of my skills and load up on Devil Stars. If that isn't done, I don't see how it is possible to get all the Alacastor and Ifrit skills?

Also, being my first time through, I honestly had a HELL OF A TIME getting use to the controls. Especially after basically only playing HALO on XBox for months on end, the PS2 controller is 100% different for one thing, and the camera angles are a completely different story... I just can't wait for the harder levels, and DMD.