Jrpg Jungle

February was an interesting month in terms of the way my gaming time went. With Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory all finished, I was left with time to come back to my long term JRPG quest Persona 2 and time to catch up on Japanese demos like Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time and Atelier Lydie and Suelle that had been sitting on my hard drive for a while. There were also a few random delays, with Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s New Game+ mode that I’ve been looking forward to ever since I finished it getting a delay and the full version of Little Witch Academia not coming out in English when most people (myself included) expected it to. Luckily, the main JRPG I was looking forward to did come out towards the end of the month in the form of Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet and I can look back on the last month and say I had a lot of fun with what I played, so here are all the JRPGs I Played in February. JRPG of the Month: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 While I intended last month to go de...

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....

I remember getting my PS4 at launch in late 2013, ready to play games like Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3, thinking I would need a PS4 ASAP for their eventual but surely not far off releases. My PS4 was in my home all 2014, but other than the new toy hype and one week playing Child of Light, it was barely used and I found some concern creeping in, as my PS Vita and even my PS3 at the time were getting much more use. The PS4 begun with a lack of JRPG support, with big JRPGs like the Final Fantasy X HD Remaster originally coming to PS3 and not PS4 initially (thankfully, it’s on all current gen PS4 consoles now). Fast forward to now and I’ve only played one of the two games that were my system sellers for the PS4, but I’ve found myself able to keep my PS4 plugged in much more consistently since last year and it has finally become my preferred home console. Here’s a look back at the PS4's journey into not only being a console for the players, but for the JRPG players too. Fee...

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...

My favourite games this year were surprisingly easy to choose. While there were a lot of good games I played in 2016, after many months have passed there are five games that stand out as truly great JRPGs to me. There are games I would've loved to include on this list that were supposed to come out  in 2016 (Hi Persona 5!), but there were some major delays in 2016 that mean certain games will hopefully make the list next year. Regardless, I had a lot of fun gaming experiences in 2016 and this list represents the best parts of my JRPG year. In order to keep things fair and to show why I included certain games, here are some rules I gave myself when making this list: The game must be a full game or at least a full experience (no demos or DLC, but finished mobile games that get updated are okay) Since this list is based on what I've played, JRPGs from any year can be included as long as I played it in 2016 Games from previous year's lists cannot be included unless they were re...

Spring was a season full of more games than I expected. Much like in Winter, I had planned to crank out Persona 3 after being distracted by games like Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. But playing the same game for two seasons left me pretty prone to being distracted, so distracted I was by smaller experiences like Platinum Demo: Final Fantasy XV and X-Tactics. In hindsight, I'm pretty glad I tried other experiences in between, because even without these it still would've taken me a few months to finish Persona 3, so the variety broke up the experience well and some of these smaller experiences were my favourite games from Spring. So, here's my mix of tactical, quirky and fantasy JRPGs I played during Spring. Let me know what you played in the comments! Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS) Status: Now playing and enjoying! I only started playing Fire Emblem Awakening this week, but I'm already excited to keep playing. Playing Tactic JRPGs is a very recent thing for me, but it's c...

If you had a half cyber body, would you dedicate your life to being a digital detective? This unique premise is explored in Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, but it's not your average story about hackers and detectives because it's a Digimon game. While other Digimon games keep collecting Digimon as the core gameplay mechanic, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth focuses on the story of the half digital protagonist and the many adventures had uncovering the truth about the Digital World. But don't fret, as this turn-based JRPG boasts killer gameplay, a decent story and it's the most fun I've had evolving creatures in a game in years. Cyber Sleuth's story is set in a world where it's commonplace for everyone to have a Digivice. Digivices allow people to log onto the Digital World of EDEN where they can interact with friends as if they're face to face. It's in the world of EDEN the protagonist and friends become hackers by chance when their Digivices are hacked and ...