Jrpg Jungle

E3 2016 was full of a lot of great surprises, conferences and games and a nice, big handful of them were JRPGs! As I mentioned last year , Tokyo Game Show is usually a better show for JRPG fans, but nonetheless E3 usually has a few major JRPGs mixed in, this year being games such as Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5. It took me about a week to catch up with all the news and announcements and that's because there's a lot to be excited about being released, which you can read about in this article. Akiba’s Beat The next game in the Akiba's Trip series Akiba's Beat was announced for PS4 and PS Vita and is set to come out later this year in Japan and North America. Set in Japan's Akihabara, Akiba's Beat is a new story about the town being stuck as a Sunday and uncovering the delusions and mysterious surrounding this phenomenon around town. Replacing the 'Strip' mechanic in Akiba's Trip is a music based mechanic, which allows the music used in battle to effe...

If you've read my blog for awhile, you probably know I'm a big fan of the Final Fantasy and Persona series. I've bought, pre-ordered, played old and new games from both series, and most importantly I’ve put hundreds of hours of play time into them. So of course, I'm definitely excited about Persona 5 and Final Fantasy XV. Since I can safely say they’re two of my all time favourite JRPG series, I was quite concerned about September being the time where both Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5 were to be released. But with the recent pre-E3 announcement of Persona 5’s English release being in 2017, I can safely say that Final Fantasy XV will be getting the bulk of my gaming time in September this year. But this leaves me with a new JRPG dilemma. As an overly keen Persona fan that wanted to play Persona 5 as soon as possible, I'd already placed a pre-order on the Japanese version in case something like this happened and to make sure I got the cool, special edition (that you...

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...

After spending most of the year so far playing console games on home consoles like PS3 and PS4, I was pretty surprised how much it felt like home when I started playing handheld consoles again. The simple convenience of playing through the deep, wide JRPG worlds I love while being able to lock the console and continue exactly where I left off later felt much more right to me than relying on save points, and having extra mechanics like touch screens and second screens was something I really appreciated after being without it for so long. In the spirit of rekindling my love of handheld consoles again, here a few of the reasons I think they're great, along with some of my favourite handheld JRPGs showing why. Unique Experiences Thanks To Hardware Features and Portability Modern handheld consoles like the PS Vita and 3DS boast extra features such as touchscreens and motion control, giving the consoles fun extra gameplay mechanics in certain games. It’s thanks to the PS Vita’s touchscre...

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...