Jrpg Jungle

January was a very good month for JRPGs and also a month where I had to quickly accept that it would be impossible to play everything. After all, I started the month on the tail end of December’s Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and while I had a solid game plan in the form of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory for January, various experiences from betas to demos to indies kept popping up and all I could do was try stick to my plan while playing what I could in between. I did manage to try a lot of the experiences I wanted to try in January for varying lengths of times and feel positively about most of them, so here are all the JRPGs I Played in January. JRPG of the Month:  Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker’s Memory has been the JRPG I wanted to start 2018 with ever since it got given a release date thanks to the first one making me fall in love with my PS4 . Armed with my PS4 again, I entered Hacker’s Memory with not much knowle...

I think in 2017 I played more new releases in one year than I have any other year. I made a conscious decision to try play more of the many new releases I get hyped for and it was a decision I don’t regret as I found some really great games to add to my personal favourites. The year started out with a bang with strong titles like NieR Automata and Persona 5 and the JRPGs kept coming. While some were hit or miss, there was something for every kind of JRPG fan this year. But there were five great JRPGs that particularly stood out to me thanks to their quality stories and endless amounts of things to do that have made me really glad I played them. These are the five JRPGs I loved the most in 2017 and the five I will look back on fondly and remember as my favourite JRPGs of this year. 5. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 After putting Final Fantasy XV high up on my list last year, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 may just be the kind of open-world game I’ve been missing a little this year. I’m 45 hours in an...

This post is apart of a potential series I'm doing called the Spoiler Awards. As the title implies, there will be full spoilers for Persona 5 in this, so continue at your own risk! I thought Persona 5 was brilliant and outside of what I said in my review , there were many special moments that elevated the experience for me. From great dungeons to relatable characters, there are a lot of reasons to love Persona 5. Aside from Best Boy and Best Girl, there were a few things in Persona 5 that didn’t warrant a full post about them, but I wanted to talk about them in some kind of way. So, in what I hope will be a continuing series, here are some things in Persona 5 that I wanted to talk about that are full of spoilers and just for fun, I gave random awards to them. Enjoy! (Spoilers start now, you've been warned! <3) Feel free to watch the video version here! Best Dungeon - Shido’s Palace Making Persona 5’s last true dungeon go out with a bang, Shido’s Palace was the most maze-lik...

Booting up most games these days, I’m met with a decision. A decision that affects important parts of my game experience, such as challenge or the time it takes to play, which has a large effect on my overall game enjoyment. This decision is choosing a difficulty mode. I find changing difficulty modes along the way distracting, so I want to get it right the first time and there’s a very easy way to tackle this decision - choosing Easy mode. There may be a slight stigma towards playing games on Easy. I imagine some people have thoughts such as "It takes the skill or challenge out of playing", "It’s not really playing the game", "It’s for weaklings" etc etc, or at least that’s the internal dialogue I had with myself the first time I made the switch into easy town. But playing on easy mode has allowed me the opportunity to try more games by giving myself a little speed boost and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting a relaxing experience in one’...

When I was nearing the end of Persona 5, apart from leaving characters that had stolen my heart, I felt sad that I’d never experience its dungeons for the first time again. With treasure, platforming, puzzles and stealth, Persona 5’s dungeons amplify the story unfolding while mixing in the exploration experience from past Persona games in an interesting way and left me more often than not in a mild state of awe at the end of each one. Persona 5’s dungeons are a great example of how impactful story dungeons can be and this is a list of the things I missed experiencing for the first time after finishing my Persona 5 journey. Feel free to watch the video version here! The Platforming Platforming in JRPGs is something I generally didn't get too excited for until recently. Jump mechanics are fun and all, but sometimes they’re just there and don’t really add much more than making a world feel more three dimensional. Before playing Persona 5, I wasn’t excited for the platforming, as cool ...

With Persona 4 being so important to me, it’s no exaggeration when I say I had sky high hopes for Persona 5. Persona 5’s long and rewarding journey definitely managed to pass and even exceed my expectations, with a deep JRPG story that stole my heart thanks to a masterful balance between deep gameplay mechanics and the rich narrative being the best the Persona series has seen yet. If you’re like me and missed balancing school life, rich dungeon crawling, a great JRPG story and fulfilling relationships on an in-game day-to-day basis, Persona 5 has all of this in a stylish 100+ hour experience that is a standout entry in the series and in the JRPG genre. Persona 5 begins in typical Persona fashion. Between strange dreams about Velvet Rooms and being granted special powers, you’re a transfer student entering a new town ready to start your new life and not get in too much trouble, especially since you're on probation. This is until it comes to light that a bunch of important individual...

A long time ago, I wrote about how much Persona 4 Golden changed my life. Even now, it's still one of the most significant JRPGs I've ever played and I can safely say if I hadn't played it when I did, I don't know if I'd be making JRPG content at all. But before Persona 4 Golden, there was another JRPG that struck a chord in me that made me realise video games were much more than just finding gems and beating up bad guys. That game was Final Fantasy X. I've probably mentioned on here before many reasons why Final Fantasy X is so important to me, but I don't think I've dedicated an entire post to it. My journey with Final Fantasy X is significant enough to get its own post, as my first story-driven JRPG, my first video game addiction and the first one that moved me. I discovered Final Fantasy X when I was around my early teens at a friend’s house. A slightly older friend was playing it and it was one of the prettiest games I'd ever seen. As someone wh...