Jrpg Jungle

When Persona O.A. was initially released as a part news and game app, its news features were all in tact and its gameplay ones were mostly missing. Fast forward to now and its gameplay features are all in, with dungeons to crawl, its first dungeon event and Persona 5’s wonderful characters available to spend time with in brand new story events. As a game, Persona O.A. condenses the Persona 5 experience into one that is very quick and easy to open up if you have a spare minute on the go, albeit sacrificing some of its console game immersion in the process. But if you prefer to have smartphone games that are easy to manage like I do, Persona O.A.’s condensed version of Persona 5’s relationship building and monster collecting may be worth your time if you can get past the language barrier. The main gameplay features in Persona O.A. do their best to recreate the general feel of Persona 5 but with less immersive features like the ones that are usually in console games. The focal point in ...

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...

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...

If you’re anything like me, anything described as a magical girl JRPG mixed with Persona is almost guaranteed to be something I’ll be interested in. This was how I heard people describing Blue Reflection before I bought it and pretty much sealed the deal for me getting it, but I didn’t realise just how many similarities there would be. When I began to really see these similarities in Blue Reflection, I became a little skeptic at first. While the idea of magical girl Persona was why I bought it, I’m usually not interested in something that blatantly rips off story ideas. Luckily Blue Reflection for the most part makes the ideas it seems to have borrowed original, but I found the similarities interesting nonetheless, so I wanted to talk about the parallels between Blue Reflection and Persona 5 and how the two good games are similar, yet different. Dungeon Premise Blue Reflection and Persona 5 both share the concept of big dungeons created from people’s joint hearts and shared state of ...

With a brand new Switch in hand, I entered October with pure excitement after an August and September fairly quiet on new JRPG releases. My main goals for October were to finish Blue Reflection and play my new Nintendo Switch, so I made sure to play any new Switch demo on the go that caught my eye and at home give my time to my new favourite JRPG magical girls in Blue Reflection. As usual, I also attempted to finish what I was playing before I dedicated myself to newer releases, but I let lots of little things use my time in between too meaning I didn’t get to focus on them much. I don’t regret a bit of it though as I wasn’t ever bored last month, so here are all the JRPGs I played in October. JRPG of the Month: Blue Reflection While it’s not perfect by any means, I was won over by Hinako and her magical girl friends in Blue Reflection. The emotional story was filled with great characters that I enjoyed getting to know and I was genuinely moved multiple times while playing thanks to it...

During September, apart from playing some of the usual suspects and small bits of other games, I felt like I was playing the waiting game. The first new release I was picking up since God Wars: Future Past was coming out at the end of September and since I missed playing new stuff, I was really excited and spent most of the month anticipating that fateful day. But I couldn’t just play nothing until then, so I did my best to get into the games I’ve been trying to complete throughout the year, along with some DLC and demos to satisfy the need to play something new. With a mix of various series I love and new ones I hope will keep me interested, here are the JRPGs I played in September. Feel free to watch the video version here! JRPG of the month: Persona 2 I’ve been waiting for a while, but I’m please to say Persona 2’s story has finally hooked me. After a tension-filled timed dungeon and another that revealed a big secret about what was going on in the story, I find myself ready to pla...