Jrpg Jungle

Currently my Persona 5 hype is very, very high, probably due to the fact that it's almost April (or because I changed my PS4 theme to the Persona 5 one). Thankfully, there were a lot of JRPGs in March to keep JRPG fans busy, in fact more than I could keep up with. What I did play, I really enjoyed. There was the breath of fresh air that was NieR Automata and its amazing story, my addition to Final Fantasy XV continued thanks to Episode Gladiolus and I got a little further into my own personal side quest of catching up on the Kingdom Hearts series by playing more 1.5 HD on PS3. I might not have played all the new JRPG releases this month, but these very different JRPGs I played in March I am overall quite happy with. Here are all the JRPGs I played a little and a lot of in March, before Persona 5 takes over my entire life. Feel free to watch the video version here! My Favourite JRPG of March: NieR Automata (PS4) It's always nice when positive expectations pan out. I had the high...

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...

I've been feeling really positively about most smartphone games I've been playing recently. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has become a new staple in my smartphone game roster and I'm also having fun playing Kingdom Hearts Unchained X and X-Tactics at my own pace. I was so ready to add Mobius Final Fantasy to my smartphone game roster and love it like I had all other Final Fantasy mobile games I've played so far. I had all my pre-registration rewards ready, I tweeted about it and I was genuinely keen. Unfortunately, being keen for something leaves you open to being let down. After downloading Mobius, I played it for one night, tried to jump back in the next day and found I didn't have the immediate hook I’d gotten from my other recent smartphone JRPG discoveries. This was (and is still) strange to me, since I thought Mobius had some very cool ideas in its trailers and I liked the idea of having a version of Final Fantasy similar to the modern ones on consoles on my sm...

X-Tactics is a unique game from the moment you read it's description. By a Japanese indie studio founded by veterans from Square Enix, Sega and Capcom, GAMKIN, Inc 's X-Tactics combines fighting game and tactical RPG mechanics in an location-based world full of government spies and secret agents. As someone who plays a lot of JRPGs but hasn't quite ventured much into the tactical side of the genre, I was worried this kind of gameplay initially may be too complicated for my turn-based RPG mind at first, but X-Tactics' use of original and innovative game mechanics made the gameplay intuitive and most importantly, fun. Using a variety of gameplay mechanics, everything blends together into a seamless experience full of challenging levels and humourous characters in X-Tactics' entertaining tactical experience for players on the go. When I first booted up X-Tactics, seeing the somewhat intricate mechanics in X-Tactics initially had me worried this game was quite complicat...