Jrpg Jungle

With a brand new Switch in hand, I entered October with pure excitement after an August and September fairly quiet on new JRPG releases. My main goals for October were to finish Blue Reflection and play my new Nintendo Switch, so I made sure to play any new Switch demo on the go that caught my eye and at home give my time to my new favourite JRPG magical girls in Blue Reflection. As usual, I also attempted to finish what I was playing before I dedicated myself to newer releases, but I let lots of little things use my time in between too meaning I didn’t get to focus on them much. I don’t regret a bit of it though as I wasn’t ever bored last month, so here are all the JRPGs I played in October. JRPG of the Month: Blue Reflection While it’s not perfect by any means, I was won over by Hinako and her magical girl friends in Blue Reflection. The emotional story was filled with great characters that I enjoyed getting to know and I was genuinely moved multiple times while playing thanks to it...

A long time ago, I wrote about how much Persona 4 Golden changed my life. Even now, it's still one of the most significant JRPGs I've ever played and I can safely say if I hadn't played it when I did, I don't know if I'd be making JRPG content at all. But before Persona 4 Golden, there was another JRPG that struck a chord in me that made me realise video games were much more than just finding gems and beating up bad guys. That game was Final Fantasy X. I've probably mentioned on here before many reasons why Final Fantasy X is so important to me, but I don't think I've dedicated an entire post to it. My journey with Final Fantasy X is significant enough to get its own post, as my first story-driven JRPG, my first video game addiction and the first one that moved me. I discovered Final Fantasy X when I was around my early teens at a friend’s house. A slightly older friend was playing it and it was one of the prettiest games I'd ever seen. As someone wh...

When it was announced a few weeks ago that Ariana Grande was to be a character in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius , I was a little confused. Since when was Ariana Grande a Final Fantasy fan? Is this a marketing move? Why can I put Ariana Grande in my party and not the pop star version of Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2? My confusion was as a Final Fantasy fan, despite the fact I'm actually a fan of Ariana Grande’s music and think she has an incredible voice. Considering she’s not a story character and I think her character design is undeniably adorable, I'll live with the choice, but I definitely think it's a bizarre choice. Ariana Grande aside, this collaboration made me remember something about Final Fantasy and pop music - they've played together a few times. From theme songs to revamped characters, recent Final Fantasy games have seen pop music mixed in both in subtle and obvious ways. Whether you like the incorporation of pop or not, the Ariana Grande collaboration isn’t th...

A majority of the cast of Persona 3 and 4 (and some other characters too) together in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax When I finished Persona 4 Golden, I was sure there was no other game in the world that was as deep, as engaging and as involved as it was. Little did I know, Persona had plenty more to offer and the series was already highly successful after Persona 3. Persona 4 Arena had introduced me to the characters of Persona 3 and since I wanted more Persona in my life, after starting the game, getting distracted by other games and then starting again, I decided to finally commit to Persona 3 to learn more about the series and honestly, in the hopes finding another game that would become high in my favourites list. The mechanics of Persona 3 were easy enough to pick up, but I quickly noticed a different feeling in Persona 3. I definitely think both games I good, but I found I definitely had a favourite out of the two games. For anyone interested, but specifically for those who were like m...

Music takes an interesting, more dominant role in Final Fantasy X-2. With Yuna now somewhat famous after the events of Final Fantasy X, she seems to be a pop star figure in of sorts, especially if we're judging from the game's opening cutscene where she's singing and dancing to a pop song. Much like the different tones in their opening movies, Final Fantasy X's more sentimental feeling is replaced in X-2 with a mix of mostly fun upbeat funk, rock and pop pieces, but also a wider exploration of genres when needed for more humourous and dark scenes that are quite different to what was heard in X. The composer for X-2 isn't the same composer as Final Fantasy X and doesn't feature any compositions from Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy's regular composer, which could have a lot to do with the different feeling of the music in X-2. While I'm a big fan of music from other Final Fantasy games and Uematsu's music, when X-2's is placed aside other Final Fanta...