Jrpg Jungle

As DLC tied to my favourite character of Final Fantasy XV and two satisfying previous DLC episodes, I had high expectations for Episode Ignis’ story. As expected based on the last two Episodes, Episode Ignis gives unique fighting mechanics to Ignis to suit his fighting style and reveals what happened in a part of the game he was absent. Unique to Episode Ignis however is a special Extra Verse portion that puts a new twist on big moments of Ignis’s story that had a fan of Ignis and XV’s core story like myself captivated in all the right ways. Delivering the kind of quality expected from the last few DLC chapters coming to XV, Episode Ignis mostly delivers and is a story chapter that fans of Ignis and Final Fantasy XV won’t want to miss. Spoiler note:  Due to the nature of when Episode Ignis is set in Final Fantasy XV's story, mild spoilers may follow. Episode Ignis starts off strong in the epic Leviathan portion of Final Fantasy XV’s story and details what happened before Noctis wa...

When Lost Sphear’s English demo appeared on PSN, I initially made the assumption that this was just the English translation of the Japanese one I’d already played, so I put off playing it for a little while. When I finally got to it, I realised I was very wrong and that this demo not only showed a new area in Lost Sphear, but also expanded upon a few things I liked about it in the Japanese one. Most importantly, the new Lost Sphear demo did its job of getting me even more curious about it, so here are some things it expanded upon in the demo that makes its world and gameplay seem even more interesting. You Can Unlock More Than Just Areas With Memories In the Japanese demo I played, Kanata receives his powers to use memories and unlocks a part of the first town, which made me think this kind of ability will be only used to unlock new areas. The new English demo proved me wrong, with Kanata able to unlock a bunch of things with his power, including treasure chests and breakable boulders...

When playing a big open world JRPG both at home and out of the house, it’s hard to imagine playing much else during the month. My December JRPG time was full of the two releases I intended to fill it with and not much else on the side, apart from finishing my November JRPG .hack//G.U. Last Recode and the very occasional stray into other games I’ve put to the side during my open world journey with Xenoblade Chronicles 2. With it being the holiday season in December though, it felt good to sink my teeth into a big open world and get immersed in mostly one game before a year full of new ones, so here are all the JRPGs I Played in December to round off 2017. JRPG of the Month: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 It’s interesting to me that I found myself immersed in another open world JRPG again during December this year. This time last year I was playing Final Fantasy XV and quickly realising the time sink it would be and I’m currently feeling that with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but in a different way....

Since 2015, it’s been my own tradition to make a few JRPG resolutions to improve my gaming life for the year ahead. I do this to encourage myself to play the experiences I think I don’t have time for and to finally catch up with any JRPG urges I had throughout the previous year that I didn’t take the time to cater to. These resolutions always come with mixed levels of success , but they always help me improve my gaming time and are a fun way to start planning what I want to play each year. While keeping up with new releases is a challenge in itself, there are a few things in my JRPG life I’ve been wanting to do since I found some new things I liked last year and also things I’ve been wanting do for a while and never got around to. With those things in mind, these are my three JRPG resolutions for 2018. 1) Play an Atelier game In 2014, I saw the trailer for Ar nosurge and was flawed by it . First from its music, then from its stunning visuals and all together with its interesting premis...

Last year, I tried to make my JRPG Resolutions more realistic . I was over ending the year with a bunch of Resolutions I didn’t end up having time for, so I tried to be a little smarter and just do three. In hindsight, I ended up doing an unofficial resolution that I wanted to try keep up with new JRPG releases as much as possible in 2017 and I did that very well. However it also took a bunch of time away from my intended resolutions and while I think I had more success overall than failure for my 2017 JRPG Resolutions, I didn’t end up with the 100% completion I hoped for. In any case, I’m thankful for these resolutions that encouraged me to go deeper into at least one of my favourite JRPG franchises and fully completed or not, I’m happy to take what they taught me about my gaming time into 2018. 1) Play an old game from a JRPG series I would call my goal of playing an old game from a JRPG series fairly successful, even if I didn’t completely finish the game I was playing for this goal...