Jrpg Jungle

When I was a kid, before there were JRPGs in my life, there was anime. And while JRPGs eventually became the thing I loved more, I loved anime for similar reasons when I was most into it. Its inspirational characters, gorgeous animation and stories I couldn’t find anywhere else kept me coming back to it at different times in my life, whether it be for the childhood inspiration magical girl anime provided or the darker side of the genre I found as an adult. As much as my relationship with anime has changed, I’m sure it led me on the path to JRPGs in different ways, from making me drawn to its visual style in games or introducing me to story styles that are some of my favourites regardless of the medium. Anime might be a smaller part of my life now, but these are five of the anime series I enjoyed watching that I can link a few of my JRPG choices to at different points in time. Sailor Moon, Magical Girls and Blue Reflection Sailor Moon had a profound impact on my life in my childhood, pr...

For a big video game franchise, Persona has had barely any presence in mobile gaming world in terms of official apps or smartphone games. Because of this, I was surprised to hear that Persona was getting its own smartphone app and mini-game called Persona O.A. featuring new dialogue with everyone’s favourite Persona 5 characters and gameplay elements from Persona 5. Persona O.A. is out now in Japan in an initial form but it’s supposed to get updated with the gameplay features sometime in the future, so I thought I’d talk about what Persona O.A. is now and what it’s supposed to be in its Japanese version with the hope that one day it will be released in the West as well. What It Will Be Persona O.A. is described as a “ Persona support app” and in its eventual form is supposed to be part news app with it giving updates on the Persona series and also part smartphone game, with it being possible to get Personas using Persona Points and to take part in dungeons with Persona 5 ’s main cast...

I’d always been interested in the Atelier series for its pretty art style, but there seems to be more to Atelier Lydie and Suelle than its pretty paintings. Atelier Lydie and Suelle’s delightful looking world contains plenty to collect and find to synthesise and make items with, with the charming and well-designed characters backed by interesting alchemy systems. While the Japanese PS4 demo was a mostly visual experience for me, the world and alchemy systems of Lydie and Suelle have kept me curious about this new addition to the Atelier series. Atelier Lydie and Suelle is based around two young twin alchemists called Lydie and Suelle who work at their father’s small Atelier. The two girls, the fun tomboy Suelle and the quiet and kind Lydie, share a common goal: they want to turn their Atelier into the best one in the country. This goal is set in motion when one day they somehow end up inside one of their father’s paintings with many rare and wonderful ingredients for alchemy at their d...

It’s not every day you find a JRPG heavily rooted in anime and third-person shooting with a clear Freedom Wars influence, but Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet delivers this in its own way in this gameplay heavy experience. Taking third-person shooting mechanics and adding in JRPG ones with leveling and stat-boosting, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet’s challenging hunts and quests tell the story of this gun-filled MMORPG from Sword Art Online’s second series, but with interesting new characters that make its own story accessible to both newcomers and fans of the show. It might not be the biggest world to explore, but with endless customisation in both appearance and gameplay style, and an interesting story that ended a little too soon, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet’s shooting filled world managed to both be pretty fun to play and make me care about Sword Art Online’s world more. Fatal Bullet is based in the story’s online world of Gun Gale Online, an online shooting game known for its popu...

February was an interesting month in terms of the way my gaming time went. With Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory all finished, I was left with time to come back to my long term JRPG quest Persona 2 and time to catch up on Japanese demos like Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time and Atelier Lydie and Suelle that had been sitting on my hard drive for a while. There were also a few random delays, with Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s New Game+ mode that I’ve been looking forward to ever since I finished it getting a delay and the full version of Little Witch Academia not coming out in English when most people (myself included) expected it to. Luckily, the main JRPG I was looking forward to did come out towards the end of the month in the form of Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet and I can look back on the last month and say I had a lot of fun with what I played, so here are all the JRPGs I Played in February. JRPG of the Month: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 While I intended last month to go de...