Jrpg Jungle

As much as I love video games, I don’t claim to be the best at gaming. While I can pick up most mechanics, my varying degree of skill with some games has made me no stranger to the Game Over screen and I've had to hit the Retry button in some of my most played games (such as my complete inability to complete the Omega Ruins in Final Fantasy X). Recently I’ve been playing the Roguelike JRPG Sorcery Saga: The Curse of the Great Curry God, a fun but tough dungeon crawler that has found me sent back to its town without my items on multiple occasions with a small bit of my dungeon confidence eaten away. This made me think back to some of the many fails I’ve had while playing JRPGs and while these are only a small selection, these are some of the biggest fails I’ve had while playing or more accurately, times I’ve had my ass kicked while playing JRPGs. Note: I’ve kept spoilers to a minimum by mostly not mentioning boss names and story circumstances, but there are some minor spoilers about...

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...

Before the hugely popular PS Vita game Persona 4 Golden stole my heart and my gameplay time, there was it’s predecessor, the standout PS2 JRPG Persona 3. Persona 4 set the tone to my journey into the world of Persona games with it’s glaring yellows and talking bears, but this impression of the series shifted when I began Persona 3. Persona 3 may be another high school dungeon crawler, but the glaring yellows are replaced by dark blues hues alongside a darker story when compared to it’s successor, giving it a unique feel of it's own. The two games share a similar structure, but Persona 3 being the older game has a few drawbacks, such as an inconsistent AI which makes the experience feel a little less refined than Persona 4. However with it's complex battle system and an interesting story premise, Persona 3 highlights the Persona series strength of interesting stories and fun dungeon crawling it's own darker way. The dark tone is set for Persona 3 is set pretty quickly in it...