Jrpg Jungle

Somehow, I’ve been writing and talking about JRPGs on the internet for a few years and I’ve still never played a Dragon Quest game. This might be because one of the first JRPGs I fell in love with in high school was Final Fantasy X since Final Fantasy is much more popular in Australia and since Final Fantasy X is a more of a modern-looking RPG, it definitely influenced the kind of aesthetics I like in JRPGs. Despite being a big fan of what some consider to be its rival series, Dragon Quest seemed interesting the first time I heard of it. Akira Toriyama’s art looks great in it which makes its aesthetic more appealing, it's got a cute slime mascot, turn-based battles and I’ve always wondered how its fantasy stories and worlds compare to others in the genre. With the English release of Dragon Quest XI coming up soon, I’m strongly reminded again that I still haven’t touched this series, so here’s a list of games in the series I want to try to help me get into this classic JRPG series. ...

If you’re coming to Japan, forget maid cafes. Seriously. They’re overpriced and you can just look at the maids on the streets like everyone else does for free. You can also do this with a Tapioca drink in hand that you damn well know Ifrit spit a fireball into for about 600 yen if you take a detour and go to the Square Enix Cafe first. Regardless of whether or not fireballs are actually in your drink*, if you’re a fan of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, NieR or other big Square Enix titles, the Square Enix Cafe in Akihabara is worth a visit if you’re looking for exclusive merch that you won’t always find in other stores. It even is a restaurant with regularly changing themes and corresponding foods based on their games, such as Ignis’ recipes from Final Fantasy XV or the fish caught in NieR Automata. But these are more expensive and require a booking and well, do you really want to spend your money on a delectable dish that's price is the same cost as a Moogle plushie? Of course not! T...

Let’s be real for a minute here - my PC setup for gaming (and other tasks) is not ideal. I’ve been using the same laptop for almost five years and while it gets the job done for some games, blog writing and video editing, it’s generally my last choice when it comes to playing games, especially long ones like JRPGs. I would, however, like to upgrade my PC one day to experience more high quality JRPGs on PC and improve my PC experience in general. I may not be rushing out to get a new one soon, but here are 5 things I’ll be considering when it’s time as a long-time console player looking deeper into buying a PC. 1) Laptop or Desktop The decision of laptop or desktop is probably the hardest one for me. Deep down, I’d love to have a really nice and high-powered desktop computer with a big HD monitor and the best specs, but I have to be realistic. Since I’m currently living overseas for at least another year, when it comes to visiting home, I would want to bring my laptop for gaming and jus...

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’...

There was once a time when video games didn’t support screenshots, a dark time indeed. But enter the social media age and it’s an assumption most games will support them in some way. It’s a feature that has had its effect challenged recently, with some developers implying that a screenshot has the potential to ruin a story heavy experience. At the other end of this is Final Fantasy XV , which embraces screenshots to their fullest potential and helped make a JRPG with a lot of customisation features such as costumes and mostly a non-linear exploration feel even more personal. Feel free to watch the video version here! Since every current gen console supports taking and sharing screenshots in some way, Final Fantasy XV took this idea and ran with it, making one of the core characters, the cheerful Prompto, a photography lover and photography AI. They developed a unique AI system that takes photos in real time and at the end of the day, Prompto (like any good photographer), shows you the ...

When playing Persona 2 and Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD recently, I noticed I felt a little lost. Not in a deep, emotional way or anything, but much more literally, at least in my gaming life. Both Kingdom Hearts and Persona 2 are over 15 years old (let that sink in) and in these 15 years, there are certain things I've apparently come to expect need in what I play. Aside from the beautiful graphics and smarter UIs found in modern video games, there's a little tiny thing I'm lost without - map markers and map points. It's exactly what it sounds like: I am saying that among the many fantastic JRPGs I was catching up on that I missed or hadn't played for a long time, before noticing how wonderful the story is or how good or bad some of the pixel art is, my biggest problem becomes how lost I find myself navigating these old worlds. It's important to mention that I don't usually blame the older games I'm playing for this. While yes, the older games could have put in...

One of the first things that stood out to me about Persona 5 when I tried to play it in Japanese last year was the way that gameplay mechanics kept unlocking, even 40 hours in. Playing the English version now, I'm still having the same experience five dungeons in, thanks to the Confidant system in Persona 5. This constant unlocking of new mechanics keeps gameplay varied and gives more benefits than just interesting conversations and Persona EXP for spending time with NPCs, and it manages Persona 5’s depth well. It's one of the many things that keeps Persona 5 deep in its JRPG roots, with the polished gameplay Persona fans know and love. Spoiler note: No story spoilers will be spoiled here, but there may be some mild gameplay spoilers. Proceed at your own risk! Feel free to watch the video version here! Confidants take the familiar social link mechanic for those who played Persona 3 or 4 and puts a spin on it that makes it suit Persona 5 much more. Persona 5’s themes of justic...

In the last few JRPGs I’ve played, I noticed something interesting: my general feelings during JRPGs remain almost the same throughout my hour count. If a game is good, I’ll usually know around the same hour count I realised other games were good. If a game isn't great and I decide to keep going with it, I can also see similar thought patterns based on how long I've been playing. I'm genuinely curious if other people have these, so here are mine and feel free to leave yours in the comments! The first 10 hours: Learning the game No matter whether a game is good or bad, I feel I never truly understand what the story or mechanics are until I'm coming up to the 10 hour mark. Personally, I'm not someone to get good at mechanics straight away, especially with JRPGs having different systems to learn among other things. While I can of course play the game before this, it takes me around 10 hours to feel like I’ve truly got the hang of the system (unless it’s really simple)....

Note: This post was meant to go up ages ago and for some reason I never edited it until now, hence a lot of what I discuss in this post happened many months ago in 2016. However, I decided to put the post up very close to its initial form as I wanted to show what fueled me writing this and since I still feel the same way about previews and spoilers. Enjoy! Here's something I never thought I'd say: I've seen enough Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5 footage. The release of Persona 5 in Japan put a spanner in the work in the everyday social media lurker in the form of potential spoilers. In the people I follow on Twitter, I saw multiple of them declaring that they will unfollow anyone who posts spoilers of the highly-anticipated JRPG. With plans to post a Persona 5 First Impressions , these points seemed extremely important to pay attention to and also as a fellow Persona 5 fan it made me think about how mad I would be if someone threw an extremely blatant spoiler in my face rig...

Once upon a time when I was getting back into video games (thanks to Persona 4 Golden ), I was a big fan of Skyrim. I’m pretty sure it was my first open world game, so being able to travel across such a large map and find new quests, towns and things to do outside the main story was freeing compared to the linear worlds I was used to. This isn’t to say I dislike linear worlds; I actually like having a clear goal and a way to get to it. But playing Final Fantasy XV has reminded me that open world games can combine the main story linearity that I’m used to with a giant open world sprinkled with quests, monsters and dungeons to discover to. The world of Eos in Final Fantasy XV is a great example of this and an open new backdrop to a great new story. Usually Final Fantasy has a very direct path to a goal, with a world that aims to take you from A to B in a fairly direct fashion. Yes there are side quests, but in recent Final Fantasy games they generally don’t stray far from pushing you tow...