Jrpg Jungle

Fall marked the release of three long-awaited games: Persona 5 released in Japan and is now my main Japanese study tool, the delightful World of Final Fantasy and the very recently released Final Fantasy XV. Other than having some of my most anticipated games come out, I'm also really pleased with the amount of new JRPG worlds I explored in Fall. I had a silly curry adventure with Sorcery Saga, deferred moves and made relationships in Lost Dimension and tried multiple Indie JRPGs that all were very different. All these games left me with a really optimistic feeling coming into Winter, particularly with the release of Final Fantasy XV. Here's my list of what I played in Fall, feel free to let me know what you played too! Final Fantasy XV (PS4) Status: Only a couple of hours in as of writing this. Hoping to sink A LOT of hours into it! I've barely scratched the stunning surface of Final Fantasy XV, but what I've played was certainly satisfying. I'm amazed by its gian...

Ever since I started playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper last year, I’ve noticed mobile games becoming more and more a standard part of my gaming life. This is somewhat surprising to me, since when I used to bring up the topic of mobile games to my friends, they were regularly talked about as lesser experiences when compared to console games. Despite this, when the port of the original Final Fantasy became my first venture into the world of mobile games, my expectations of them became very high very quickly. I was completely addicted to the old school JRPG and the best part was that it lived in my pocket. As much as I love my portable consoles, there's a lot to be said about having everything on one device, so this Final Fantasy experience carved out the beginning of my enjoyment of smartphone games. I had paid money to play the original Final Fantasy game on iOS, so when I saw Final Fantasy Record Keeper was free, I was ecstatic. With a majority of my Final Fantasy experiences on...

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...

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...