Jrpg Jungle

While stories about war aren’t typically something I enjoy, Valkyria Chronicles 4’s complex tactical battles and characters may have found a way to make this one interesting for me. As someone new to the Valkyria Chronicles series, I was pleased to see its tactical battle system that combines turn-based and action gameplay well felt as smooth to play as it looked in trailers and combined the two styles well, along with its artstyle and many deep mechanics making the experience stand out from other tactical experiences. Topped off with a narrative that keeps things feeling light-hearted enough in a story with a serious premise, Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a great tactical experience so far and left me much more keen to try its full game next month as a new player of the series. Valkyria Chronicles 4 is set in what it calls the Second Europan War where the Imperial and Federal Armies are at war due to the scarcity of a rare material called Ragnite that both sides of its continent of Europa ...

A few months ago , I played a Japanese smartphone game called To Whom The Alchemist Exists and was pleasantly surprised by its quality. I had to play its opening chapter to get into the Final Fantasy XV collaboration I’d downloaded it for and found myself absorbed by its voice-acted story, music and combat that seemed too good for a smartphone game. Because I liked it so much, you can imagine my delight when it was announced last week that a localised version called the Alchemist Code will be coming to smartphones in English sometime soon. With this in mind, these are some things I'm looking forward to playing with in the Alchemist Code and why I think it's a mobile experience worth looking out for. Feel free to watch the video version here! Combat If you like tactical smartphone JRPGs, The Alchemist Code’s tactical gameplay doesn't cut any corners just because it's a smartphone game and is probably the deepest tactical smartphone JRPG I’ve played. The Alchemist Code fe...

JRPG fans have been pretty lucky over the last few years to be getting great smartphone games. There was Final Fantasy Record Keeper in 2015, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ in 2016. With great tactical gameplay reminiscent of the 3DS Fire Emblem games and a wealth of characters and things to keep players busy, Fire Emblem Heroes may be 2017’s killer RPG app. Fire Emblem Heroes begins with the light premise that you have been summoned to help the Order of Heroes restore other hero worlds that are regularly being invaded by dark forces. You can do this thanks to your ability to summon powerful heroes to fight by your side, with these heroes being familiar characters from the Fire Emblem series. As I’ve only played Fire Emblem Awakening outside of Heroes, it wasn’t until the Awakening chapter that I realised each chapter was based around the world and characters of a Fire Emblem game. Particularly in the Awakening chapters, it was cool to be versing teams o...

If you've ever had a completely overpowered party member in a JRPG, you'll probably know what it's like to wait each turn for your strongest character’s turn in order to cause some havoc on the battlefield. This is also evident when an enemy has a weakness and only one character has the right attack - suddenly the only character that matters is the one with that attack and the other party members become unimportant compared to the one related to my actual strategy. Lost Dimension’s Defer mechanic plays with this idea, essentially allowing party members to give each other their turns if they don't need them. This considerably changed how I thought about my battle strategies in Lost Dimension and gave me a new perspective on turns in tactical battles and how having access to the right skills at the right time can truly be the ultimate battle tactic. The Defer system in Lost Dimension pretty simple in practice, but makes a pretty significant difference to strategising in b...

When I began my tactical JRPG kick , Fire Emblem was one of the first series I wanted to try. As a fan of the Persona series and after enjoying the fun tactical smartphone JRPG  X-Tactics , Fire Emblem’s combination relationship and tactical mechanics sounded right up my alley. Fire Emblem Awakening may not be the most recent Fire Emblem game, but it doesn't take away from being a tactical JRPG triumph. With a well thought out and unique tactical battle system and twist-filled plot full of interesting characters, I was captivated with Fire Emblem Awakening from start to finish. Fire Emblem Awakening’s story begins in the midst of a war between nations as the amnesiac Avatar (the customisable playable character) awakens in a field and is found by the royal family of the Ylisse nation, consisting of the strong-willed prince Chrom, his loyal knight Frederick and the light-hearted princess Lissa. The tactically-skilled Avatar quickly joins the nation's army and becomes a key member...

After finishing Persona 3 , I decided to play something different because I was experiencing my first ever case of what I call ‘dungeon fatigue’. Since I’d recently had fun with the tactical iOS game X-Tactics and really wanted to finally play some 3DS games, Fire Emblem Awakening seemed like a logical choice for my next JRPG journey. Playing Fire Emblem is an incredibly rewarding experience that is the perfect continuation to my journey into tactical RPGs and definitely making me even more excited about them. I’m really enjoying strategising battles in a new way and it’s easy to pick up the systems because they mostly use mechanics such as status effects and elemental damage that are already familiar to the turn-based JRPG player as well. I once ignorantly shrugged off a bunch of interesting looking tactical RPGs as being too difficult or too different to what I was used to, but now I think they a good challenge and change of pace for someone like me who plays mostly turn-based JRPGs...

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...