Jrpg Jungle

I didn’t know I wanted to see all of my favourite childhood characters turned sinister until the announcement of NieR Automata director Yoko Taro’s smartphone game SINoALICE. Partnering with successful developers of smartphone games Square Enix and PokeLabo games, SINoALICE has a lot of potential as a quick and fun RPG experience, with bite-sized pieces of dark story that are quick and easy to cycle through, along with weapon-based combat that combines familiar elemental JRPG mechanics with interesting new ones. Although it has a few technical bumps in its current form, what I’ve played so far has given me confidence that with enough support technically and events to keep it fresh, in good time SINoALICE could be the dark and unique smartphone JRPG that the smartphone world was missing. Feel free to watch the video version here! SINoALICE’s characters are all based off fairy tale characters that will be easily recognisable to most players. There’s Alice, Snow White, Cinderella and oth...

I knew nothing about the God Wars series when I jumped into the Japanese demo of God Wars: Future Past. Other than vaguely hearing that it was a JRPG, I was mostly drawn to it from its gorgeous animation style and its old Japan aesthetic. As usual, my limited Japanese kept me from getting any major context from the story, but it seems to be based around Japanese folklore, with a beautiful princess and a journey that had me visiting multiple places in the demo alone. Mixed with a tactical battle system with its own unique twist and pretty visuals, my look at God Wars: Future Past has at the very least made me curious about it. Feel free to watch the video version here! After comparing what I thought the story was to the press release, turns out I wasn't that far off. Future Past’s demo opens with the Queen of the story’s land of Mizuho sacrificing one of her daughters to calm the spirits that the people of Mizuho had been neglecting. Neglecting the spirits had seen them begin to giv...

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...

Let’s start the New Year with some honesty - my last two gaming resolution plans haven’t been the most successful. I made resolutions then ended up becoming overwhelmed between achieving them, fulfilling my regular JRPG desires and living my everyday life, and eventually abandoned all except one or two of them . This bums me out, because I get very excited to achieve all of my goals and I set them because they’re something I actually think I should do. Not being able to do them makes me feel like something I want is missing from my JRPG life and I’d like to make my JRPG life as great as possible. To make my gaming resolutions more achievable, I’m doing three instead of five this year. It’s a simple solution that I think will make things a lot more doable and I’m already excited about the goals I’ve chosen as they’re three things that I really wanted to do last year but I didn’t have (or give myself) the time to do. Here are my three gaming resolutions, posted with high hopes that I wi...

It's not an easy time to be a spoiler-sensitive Persona fan. If you're wanting to go into Persona 5 in February with a clear head, there are hashtags, wikis and preview videos to actively avoid (seriously, avoid the wikis!). My initial plan was to be part of the spoiler-free crowd, but when Final Fantasy XV was delayed I decided to give into my Persona 5 impatience and bear the spoilers in order to fill my September gaming void and play a great game. But as someone only studying Japanese rather than fluent in the language, I was quickly reminded that Persona isn't a light JRPG. I found Persona 5’s story getting hazier as I spent my time focusing on merely getting through Persona 5 rather than fully and easily experiencing it like I normally would in English. At its core, buying Persona 5 before release may seem like a good idea, but if you’re like me and love Persona’s story, getting it in Japanese when you’re not fluent won’t give you the same experience the English releas...

After a long wait for Persona 5, I can barely believe that it’s out and inside my PS3. While plenty of people are still waiting for the English localisation, other people like myself have bought the Japanese version to get a peek before the slow-approaching February localised release and/or to play it out of sheer impatience (I’m in both parties). Persona 5 has plenty of high expectations to live up to thanks to the generally high quality of Persona games and after playing Persona 5 for over 26 hours (at the time of writing), I think most Persona fans will be pleased with Persona 5 for many different reasons. The gameplay, story, music, artwork and UIs shine in true Persona style and with every character design, transition screen and new game mechanic, it seems like a lot of love was put into crafting the incredibly fun JRPG that is Persona 5. If you're a Persona fan that’s missed changing Personas on the fly, Social Links or deciding what to do with your after school time, you’ll...

If you've read my blog for awhile, you probably know I'm a big fan of the Final Fantasy and Persona series. I've bought, pre-ordered, played old and new games from both series, and most importantly I’ve put hundreds of hours of play time into them. So of course, I'm definitely excited about Persona 5 and Final Fantasy XV. Since I can safely say they’re two of my all time favourite JRPG series, I was quite concerned about September being the time where both Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5 were to be released. But with the recent pre-E3 announcement of Persona 5’s English release being in 2017, I can safely say that Final Fantasy XV will be getting the bulk of my gaming time in September this year. But this leaves me with a new JRPG dilemma. As an overly keen Persona fan that wanted to play Persona 5 as soon as possible, I'd already placed a pre-order on the Japanese version in case something like this happened and to make sure I got the cool, special edition (that you...

Final Fantasy XV has got a lot of expectations to live up to. It's been floating around for almost 10 years, beginning as Final Fantasy Versus XIII and resurfacing at E3 a few years ago as Final Fantasy XV. For almost 10 years, myself and others have been waiting to find out when it'll be out, what it'll be and will it be better than more recent Final Fantasy games that a lot of fans didn't enjoy so much. Despite this, I walked into Platinum Demo: Final Fantasy XV with leftover hype and positive expectations for the game following the Final Fantasy XV Uncovered event. The demo is only 20-30 minutes long, but it's a good teaser for the full game, showcasing some of what's to be expected from the game's combat, boss battles and interactive worlds. Platinum Demo is a standalone story that won't be featured in Final Fantasy XV. It looks into a  dream from Noctis' childhood where small Noctis is led through the game by Carbuncle, an adorable rabbit like c...

I usually have mixed feelings about Persona 4 the Animation. On one hand, it's entertaining and a fast way to relive the original story of Persona 4, which is pretty convenient considering the length of the game. On the other hand, I'm a total sucker for small details in fiction and Persona games in general are full of details. Anime and TV by nature are shorter mediums, meaning some of these details are forced to be omitted just because of time. But there's one great thing about the Persona anime series and it's that it uses filler episodes really well to give extra insight into characters, even expanding on the game's detail. Persona 4's shining glory are it's characters, so building upon the complex universe made in Persona 4 is the best way to use this  I've been recently collecting the Japanese Persona 4 the Animation Blu-Rays from my local electronics store because the first few were quite cheap. I'm always on the hunt for ways to incorporate m...