Jrpg Jungle

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...

I played the Japanese version of Persona 4 Dancing All Night a few years ago out of impatience for a localised release announcement and found myself unintentionally raking in the trophies. At the start of this year, I made it my resolution to platinum at least one JRPG and as I was checking what seemed achievable, my over 90% completion of Dancing All Night made it feel silly not to get the platinum for, even if it’s more rhythm spinoff game than JRPG. As a fan of rhythm games outside of my JRPG life, I really enjoyed aiming for high scores and dance fever combined with one of my favourite JRPG series ever. As for the platinum trophy experience, aside from a couple of minor time-consuming trophies, compared to Persona 4 Golden’s platinum trophy’s multiple playthrough extravaganza, Persona 4 Dancing All Night’s trophy is a piece of cake that a majority of people can probably get easily with a little bit of time. Feel free to watch the video version here! Facts Persona 4 Dancing All Nigh...

On March 10th at 8pm, you can bet I was grinning pretty hard as my platinum trophy for Final Fantasy XV popped. Not only is it my little badge of honour for a game I've had over 100 hours of fun with, it's my first platinum trophy since 2015 and my second JRPG one since I platinumed Persona 4 Golden in 2014. Platinum trophies are my excuse to stay in worlds I don't want to leave yet, and this Final Fantasy XV trophy gave me another 60 hours of gameplay to satisfy my addiction to its open world . The extra time I spent in Final Fantasy XV going through the trophy list and finding out what I needed to do was actually pretty fun and it isn't that difficult of a platinum to get compared to my three (or more? I can't remember) playthroughs of Persona 4 Golden. Final Fantasy XV’s platinum was mostly pain free because it simply requires time and if you waited until the end game like myself to explore the open world, you'll probably find a lot of new things that you di...

Remember when people completed games without the motivation of a trophy or an achievement? When I was discovering video games through Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot, young little me really wanted to have every gem, every record and every level for some reason. I don't remember whether it was because my parents wouldn't buy me another game or if I just wanted to, but I have many fond memories of the joy I felt getting that final gem and the hours in between. I started thinking about this after looking at Final Fantasy XV ’s trophy list. It's my resolution to platinum at least one JRPG this year and I enjoyed the hell out of XV, so I thought it would be a good candidate considering I'm had around 70% of XV's trophies when I finished it (edit: and I finally got that platinum !). What struck me about XV’s trophies was how easy it looked compared to what could still be done in it. You can get a trophy for maxing out Ignis’ cooking skill, but you can't get one f...

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...