Jrpg Jungle

If you’re like me and enjoyed the outrageous combat, outlandish villains and wide-range of mini games available in Yakuza games like the recent Yakuza 6, Yakuza Kiwami 2’s version of these things in its demo makes it look like an intriguing experience. With a new city to explore, Kiwami 2 features a lot of what’s made more recent games in the series feel good mechanically, along with a stylish visual flare that make it easy to forget that Yakuza 2 was originally a PS2 game. With a few new mechanics that save it from feeling too similar to the last Yakuza game and a wealth of new activities in this demo alone that keep the charm of the Yakuza series while adding plenty of new things to play with, Yakuza Kiwami 2 seems to be a satisfying new take on an older game in its series that is easy to pick up for those who’ve played the newer games in the series. Yakuza Kiwami 2’s demo begins in the second chapter of its story, scratching the surface of what will no doubt be a bigger narrative. T...

There’s a certain nostalgia to old school JRPGs, but Lost Sphear is thoughtful enough to remember to make it special. With its emotive premise of watching all that you hold dear disappear, this literal take on loss somehow manages to keep things from getting too heavy, with the introduction to the cast being fairly light-hearted most of the time in this demo. This first look at Lost Sphear showed me a peek at the main objective of recovering the lost parts of the world and a new take on the active time battle system, and both seem interesting enough to make me think Lost Sphear is more than just its emotional premise. If you’ve seen any of the English Lost Sphear trailers, you’ll know it’s a story of loss and a world slowly disappearing. The main objective of Lost Sphear seems to be recovering memories that unlock the areas covered in fog and this is done during the character’s journey into the many places in Lost Sphear’s world. From the first trailer, it seemed like Lost Sphear could...