Jrpg Jungle

Spring was a season full of more games than I expected. Much like in Winter, I had planned to crank out Persona 3 after being distracted by games like Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. But playing the same game for two seasons left me pretty prone to being distracted, so distracted I was by smaller experiences like Platinum Demo: Final Fantasy XV and X-Tactics. In hindsight, I'm pretty glad I tried other experiences in between, because even without these it still would've taken me a few months to finish Persona 3, so the variety broke up the experience well and some of these smaller experiences were my favourite games from Spring. So, here's my mix of tactical, quirky and fantasy JRPGs I played during Spring. Let me know what you played in the comments! Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS) Status: Now playing and enjoying! I only started playing Fire Emblem Awakening this week, but I'm already excited to keep playing. Playing Tactic JRPGs is a very recent thing for me, but it's c...

Before the hugely popular PS Vita game Persona 4 Golden stole my heart and my gameplay time, there was it’s predecessor, the standout PS2 JRPG Persona 3. Persona 4 set the tone to my journey into the world of Persona games with it’s glaring yellows and talking bears, but this impression of the series shifted when I began Persona 3. Persona 3 may be another high school dungeon crawler, but the glaring yellows are replaced by dark blues hues alongside a darker story when compared to it’s successor, giving it a unique feel of it's own. The two games share a similar structure, but Persona 3 being the older game has a few drawbacks, such as an inconsistent AI which makes the experience feel a little less refined than Persona 4. However with it's complex battle system and an interesting story premise, Persona 3 highlights the Persona series strength of interesting stories and fun dungeon crawling it's own darker way. The dark tone is set for Persona 3 is set pretty quickly in it...

X-Tactics is a unique game from the moment you read it's description. By a Japanese indie studio founded by veterans from Square Enix, Sega and Capcom, GAMKIN, Inc 's X-Tactics combines fighting game and tactical RPG mechanics in an location-based world full of government spies and secret agents. As someone who plays a lot of JRPGs but hasn't quite ventured much into the tactical side of the genre, I was worried this kind of gameplay initially may be too complicated for my turn-based RPG mind at first, but X-Tactics' use of original and innovative game mechanics made the gameplay intuitive and most importantly, fun. Using a variety of gameplay mechanics, everything blends together into a seamless experience full of challenging levels and humourous characters in X-Tactics' entertaining tactical experience for players on the go. When I first booted up X-Tactics, seeing the somewhat intricate mechanics in X-Tactics initially had me worried this game was quite complicat...

Games give us almost free reign over a fictional world, yet my brain seems to use this as a strange excuse to make weird and wonderful in-game habits. Whether it's leveling up my characters or being a crazy item hoarder, I often find these time-consuming habits creeping into my play time. Some work as good strategies, others are purely habits I should consider changing. I don't know if this is standard for other JRPG gamers or not, but I thought I'd share some of the weird and wonderful things I do while playing JRPGs and other video games. Training Equally Training equally is probably my most consistent gaming habit for almost every game I play. If there's a team or party travelling with me in a game, I must train each character at an equal pace. If there's one character that's a higher or lower level than the rest, it's unacceptable and they'll be the first in line for training. I'm honestly probably my happiest in a game when I see a full party of...