Jrpg Jungle

Final Fantasy XV is a gift that keeps on giving and is really doing its best to keep everyone playing, whether it's those who purchased it or those who bought the Season Pass holders like myself. This is a smart move considering the time between each of the upcoming character Episode DLCs and is a good way to stop the open world becoming stale and keep those still totally addicted like myself from becoming less addicted or worse, not playing at all. Normally I wouldn't write anything about an update to a game, but the 1.05 update added some really significant updates, such as timed quests and a higher level cap. On top of that, Season Pass holders also got the Booster Pack+ a day after the update so as a happy Final Fantasy XV fan, I wanted to give my thoughts on each new feature added to the game because some of them are pretty cool. (Feel free to watch the video version!) Update 1.05 The new update to Final Fantasy XV adds some significant features and is available freely to ...

For those who don't know, I'm currently living in Japan and I'm from Australia. Australia is generally warmer than Japan and allow me to let my Australian out when I say this: Japanese Winters are freezing!  On the plus side, cold winters mean wanting to stay inside and play JRPGs, which means I was able to play quite a bit this season. I mostly mean hours-wise, because I may have gotten a very big Final Fantasy XV addiction, which meant I only tried so many new games while continuing to run around in Recipeh Final Fantasy XV . Looking back on my JRPG time in Winter, outside of my Final Fantasy XV time I'm really happy with the variety of JRPGs I played. I fell in love two Final Fantasy games, added a fun new mobile game to my regular rotation, played some really great Indie JRPGs from outside of Japan and got started on my JRPG New Year Resolutions. It was a fulfilling Winter of JRPGs, so I hope you enjoy reading about the JRPGs I played. My Favourite Game of Winter 2...

In the last few JRPGs I’ve played, I noticed something interesting: my general feelings during JRPGs remain almost the same throughout my hour count. If a game is good, I’ll usually know around the same hour count I realised other games were good. If a game isn't great and I decide to keep going with it, I can also see similar thought patterns based on how long I've been playing. I'm genuinely curious if other people have these, so here are mine and feel free to leave yours in the comments! The first 10 hours: Learning the game No matter whether a game is good or bad, I feel I never truly understand what the story or mechanics are until I'm coming up to the 10 hour mark. Personally, I'm not someone to get good at mechanics straight away, especially with JRPGs having different systems to learn among other things. While I can of course play the game before this, it takes me around 10 hours to feel like I’ve truly got the hang of the system (unless it’s really simple)....

Note: This post was meant to go up ages ago and for some reason I never edited it until now, hence a lot of what I discuss in this post happened many months ago in 2016. However, I decided to put the post up very close to its initial form as I wanted to show what fueled me writing this and since I still feel the same way about previews and spoilers. Enjoy! Here's something I never thought I'd say: I've seen enough Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5 footage. The release of Persona 5 in Japan put a spanner in the work in the everyday social media lurker in the form of potential spoilers. In the people I follow on Twitter, I saw multiple of them declaring that they will unfollow anyone who posts spoilers of the highly-anticipated JRPG. With plans to post a Persona 5 First Impressions , these points seemed extremely important to pay attention to and also as a fellow Persona 5 fan it made me think about how mad I would be if someone threw an extremely blatant spoiler in my face rig...

A short time ago, I could play JRPGs in subbed and dubbed forms no problem. JRPG voice actors are high quality in both Japanese and Western voice tracks nowadays, and I was lucky to be playing subbed JRPGs at all, right? There are certainly characters I have a voice preference for, such as Tharja from Fire Emblem Awakening's low creepy voice in the Japanese version and pretty much anything Erin Fitzgerald does a cartoon-style voice for in Western JRPGs including Chie Satonaka from Persona 4, but this usually never stopped me from enjoying the other version. My opinion on subbed or dubbed games changed after I played Final Fantasy X HD in Japanese for fun study. I chose Final Fantasy X to play because I knew the story so well and could already play the game well enough to focus on the language learning for my Japanese . I found it really interesting hearing the Japanese voice track and actually preferred quite a few of the Japanese voices, not because the English voice acting was ba...

JRPG fans have been pretty lucky over the last few years to be getting great smartphone games. There was Final Fantasy Record Keeper in 2015, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ in 2016. With great tactical gameplay reminiscent of the 3DS Fire Emblem games and a wealth of characters and things to keep players busy, Fire Emblem Heroes may be 2017’s killer RPG app. Fire Emblem Heroes begins with the light premise that you have been summoned to help the Order of Heroes restore other hero worlds that are regularly being invaded by dark forces. You can do this thanks to your ability to summon powerful heroes to fight by your side, with these heroes being familiar characters from the Fire Emblem series. As I’ve only played Fire Emblem Awakening outside of Heroes, it wasn’t until the Awakening chapter that I realised each chapter was based around the world and characters of a Fire Emblem game. Particularly in the Awakening chapters, it was cool to be versing teams o...

Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan is one of the most unique JRPGs I’ve ever played for a lot of reasons. It’s from Kiro’o Games, a game studio in Cameroon, Africa, and it’s based on African mythology, something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen explored in a JPRG world. Reasons like this are probably why it was successfully Kickstarted years ago and would make it a one of a kind experience for any JRPG player looking for something different. Aurion has many highs, such as a deep story that challenges its player to think profoundly throughout the King and Queen of Zama’s story, a fun active battle system and its own different kind of class system. A lack of polish stops Aurion from being a great game, but the variety of gameplay mechanics and philosophical story do make it pretty good. Aurion centres around King Enzo from the isolated city of Zama, whose world is turned upside thanks to his brother-in-law attacking Zama just after Enzo is wed with his childhood friend and new Queen Erin...

“A Final Fantasy for Fans and First-Timers”. This is what Final Fantasy XV opens with every time I boot it up and it truly echoes throughout the experience. The wide open world and the easy to learn battle system are much like a western RPG, while the story, character relationships and skill trees are closer to what Final Fantasy players would be used to. I wouldn't say it's a perfect balance of the two, with XV switching back and forth between the two from time to time, but in the end it doesn't need to be. Final Fantasy XV excels as an open world RPG and the dynamic friendship between the four men on their royal journey satisfied the Final Fantasy fan in me and created an addictive environment for me to run around and quest in with new characters I love. It’s not the Final Fantasy fans are used to, but with an open mind you may find yourself completely addicted to the open world, questing playground of Final Fantasy XV just like I am. Final Fantasy XV is set in the world...