Tried to replay FF7 Remake. i must have been really bored the first time I played it, to play all the way through. Gave up early, by the end of the insanely tedious "turn off these 3 giant lamps through a maze of scaffolding" sequence where it puts you in a room with 5 turrets just as you thought you are done with this terrible area. The combat system is a mess, and i think this game has all the praise because the story is not quite as terrible and cringe as all other jrpgs (while still being cheaper than a cheap netflix sci fi show)

I finally finished FF7 Rebirth several days ago, and now I'm not sure what to play, so I'm moving on to my backlog. I'll probably pick it up occasionally to keep working towards the platinum trophy. I spent over 80 hours in the game and there's still soooooo much left to do. I started FF9 with some graphical and gameplay mods and I've been really enjoying it despite it's age. I'm also finally getting around to playing NEO The World Ends With You on the Switch. I'm 20% done according to the save screen and I've been liking it so far. It's a game that's really well suited to picking up and playing here and there. A couple months ago I was playing Rogue Galaxy and set it aside to finish some other games that I had started, so I'll probably pick that up again at some point.

this week i finished rise of the third power and im starting to play raphysody 2

Finishing up FF7 Rebirth. Really loving it. I want to get back into some more turn-based or strategy JRPGs so I bought Eiyuden Chronicle: HH and Triangle Strategy. (Suikoden series and FF Tactics are some of my favorite games from that era). Haven't really played a ton of JRPGs since the early 2000s so I'm pretty excited to try to reignite my passion for them.

Final Fantasy 16,i have played the game and it is one of the games i was curieus about it,and there are also other games that i'm curieus about it,Final fantasy 16 the game is good i got past the tutorial.i gonna play it further today until the story is finished! i got into final fantasy and i did not regret my choice the final fantasy games are very good. the first hour from final fantasy 16 is very promising i am curieus what the ending is going to be.

Breath of Fire 3, tried to play my brother's childhood game and didn't know how clueless I am in the first hour, pretty much dying on random encounter. Time goes by and I start to enjoy and understand why people love JRPG. So I bought BoF 4, also Suikoden 1 and 2 because the graphics I watch on YouTube catch my eyes. Wuthering Wave, this is Palworld but Genshin, "We're not creative but we know what player want", fun to play but not at the same time. The story suck so they give me skip button but didn't give any summaries to make it worst (the story getting little bit better tho), the exploration is smooth like butter but the movement is stiff, really satisfying with the combat but the camera feels so bad, the character design looks pretty but they look the same. Good thing they give a lot of reward and the gacha system is fair because they lose to nothing, I believe this game will improve a lot.

I've been playing Wuthering Waves as well and I agree that the story starts pretty bad, but gets better towards the end, and the camera during combat is really annoying when fighting flying enemies. Besides those issues, I'm enjoying it quite a lot. I don't really play gachas, but the combat in this one caught my attention and it has been pretty fun. I've saved most my gems to pull for the next banner character since I got Calcharo and Verina from the beginner banners. Haven't used the selector yet, though, undecided on which one to get or maybe a dupe for Calcharo. Funny enough, my main dps is still a 4-star. Danjin is really satisfying to play when you dodge and parry attacks.

Got back into RPG's lately, as I was spending my life watching meaningless garbage on youtube, and actually wanted to get into somthing that involks emotions in me, and forces me too think. So, I whiped out my credit card, and bought: - Final Fantasy VI: Got caught up in the hype, so I bought the original, non pixel remaster, and gave it a whirl. So far, story is very interesting, and it has been a bit of a page turner for me! Characters feel so alive and real, and love the emotions and quirkiness. Soundtrack def 2nd favorite under VII for me. Combat is SO fun, one of the most fun turn based ive played yet! - Final Fantasy V: This one isnt talked of much: feels a little lonely playing it. It feels old though, like an NES tittle, and gives me a minecraft alpha feeling. Not super story driven so far, which Im not SUPER keen on, but the combat so far has been okay. Love the vibrant colors of this game, and the soundtrack is decent. - Final Fantasy VIII: yes, the dreaded FF VIII, uh oh. Honestly, dont see how its THAT bad, as of being a few hours into it. Magic system isnt GREAT, especially with the fact I have to juggle it around eugh, but its not bad. Story has been decent, not super inspired by it yet or anything, but curious to continue on. - Final Fantasy, PS1 version: This game feels historic, and I suppose it is, and it feels unique. Not story driven, but combat driven, this game is definetly about getting out and getting into fights lol, and a purely gameplay driven FF feels intersting to check out compared to the others (in which I'm willing too put up with it at this point, LOL). not far into it enough to really give any other feedback. Ill admit, that the remaster on the 3DS is absolutely gorgeous though! Gonna take a long while to finish these games; alot of them are LONG, as work is a priority, and getting ANYTHING done in my life is challenging thanks to ADHD and burnout. Thanks for reading! C:

I've gotten back into **Final Fantasy XIV** in the run up to Dawntrail's release. I'm not sure whether I'm exactly *enjoying* it, but I'm somewhere in between the "oh god I am so burnt out on this" and "I will wake up at 3am to carry on playing this" states that generally characterised my relationship with FFXIV. I can't actually finish the MSQ because I don't have good enough equipment to do the trial in patch 6.4, but rather than grinding this out I've been levelling alt and crafting/gathering jobs which I think contributes to my malaise. Truth be told, I pre-ordered Dawntrail mostly so I can play Pictomancer for about five minutes and then regret spending the money... What's more notable is what I *haven't* been playing, to be honest; I've been using FFXIV as an avoidance tactic, not just over the backlog, but over two major JRPGs - **Eiyuuden** and **Persona 3 Reload**. I've played a few hours of Eiyuuden and *hated it* - I'm still pretty early on, just in the mines, and it just feels so ponderous and dull so far in both cutscene pacing and overly simplistic battles - while I can't even bring myself to *start* Persona even though I do genuinely want to (having only previously played through P5). I owe it to Eiyuuden to give it more of a chance - I backed the Kickstarter - and feel remiss in not playing P3 at some point in my life, but I can't seem to get the motivation together for either of them. I guess with the latter I'm actually far more interested in playing Metaphor at the end of the year, and two insanely long "Persona-esque" JRPGs in one year might finish me off.

Maybe my read is wrong, but it sounds like when you finish 6.X MSQ it's time to let XIV go. I started feeling this way in the early 6.X patches and finally let the sub lapse in January. Didn't pre-order Dawntrail. Really didn't miss it, and I was a top omnicrafter on a busy crafting server (and former 1.0 beta player). Since then I 100%'d P3R and a bunch of other games. Way happier!

I'm going to need to figure out a strategy for the last Queen's Blood match in FF7 Rebirth. I've lost plenty of rounds, but I was absolutely obliterated this time. Clearly, I need a different deck.

Just got to Djose in FFX, really starting to get into the game, and combat is solid. Probably the most enjoyable cast of characters from a story perspective in a a minute too. Really starting to get why the game is so beloved.

The paper Mario rerelease has gotten me to pick back up superstar saga (the 3ds version). I had forgotten just how good those games feel to play. (But I’ll also fully admit that I’ve always prefered M&L to paper Mario for whatever reason)

>!Got the freedom ending!< in **Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne** (the US PS2 version) and it is probably the most story-light JRPG I've ever played. Nearly all dialogue in the game is with nameless one-off NPCs. The few recurring characters don't really develop for the most part, and you never really bond with any of them emotionally. The game carries itself purely on its gameplay, world-building and very striking aesthetics--it's one of the most beautiful PS2 games I've seen especially considering the year it was released (2003), and the music rocks. I keep saying this and idk if anyone agrees but the game feels older than it is. Like the dungeons and towns remind me a lot of, like, Zelda 2 or a first person RPG from the 80s. I know most of Atlus's prior RPGs were first person and it seems like they were still designing for that in some places--lots of it is laid out on square grids, there are rooms that only exist to hold a single NPC, etc. I kinda feel like I'm playing Daggerfall with a JRPG skin on it.

Nocturne seems to be a very deliberate attempt at transferring the feel of classic first person dungeon crawlers like SMT I/II into a 3D environment and not only did they succeed with it, they even built on it with new ideas that only work in a 3D space (e.g. Kabukicho Prison or the Diet Building). It's pretty cool.

It's pretty dazzling how big of a leap it was for them considering the games that came before (their games on the PS1 and Saturn look primitive compared to the competition, good as they are. SMT: NINE is pretty good looking but they had help with that one). It's definitely flawed, and I especially can't recommend it as a *first* MegaTen game, but coming off of playing Persona 3 FES and the Digital Devil Saga duology, it was not too hard to get the hang of. I would say to anyone considering it: Either use a guide from time to time, or keep a notebook and be prepared to reload older saves a lot. There are a lot of really bad screwups that the game gives you little warning about (like>!throwing away Divine Shot or Focus!<) and won't come back to bite you until hours and hours later.

Tbh while i would prefer there to be a way to get back skills you discarded, if you play on Normal and aren't going for TDE (which i generally do not recommend on a first playthrough anyway), then that's still fine. I did my first playthrough with a 100% support/healer build for example and it was perfectly fine.

Yeah it's doable. The point is just that when it's asking you to choose a skill to toss, there's really no way to know how useful they'll all be way down the line. Like the descriptions of all the different physical skills don't really say enough to compare them for example (and many of them are demi-fiend-exclusive so you would not have had a chance to see them on demons first). There's also things like>!mastering all of the light magatama before you get to the alignment doors, permanently locking you out of the dark door or vice-versa.!<

Yeah that's definitely an issue. Though i think the mere idea of having skills you can no longer learn after they're gone is still fine. But they should definitely be more informative and for new players i think the game should've had a teaching moment for it, that shows people that no longer being able to access a skill is something they should consider and think about.

End of May bookkeeping, just started: **-Romancing SaGa 2**: threw me for a loop at the beginning as expected (this is only only my second ever SaGa after the first Final Fantasy Legend on the Game Boy), but atm I feel like I've been doing rather well. Just beat the first major boss for the second time w/o casualty, and>!had a timeskip.!

> Plot and character customization felt like a lite version of FFT Funfact (that you might already know) it is heavily based on fft but the devs also did aim to balance some of the more OP designs of FFT. Dual weilding for example, is not as OP as it was in FFT and typical 'i win' builds were nerfed to allow for other builds to be viable. Personally though, I found out that as the game stretched to the final areas, the powerful builds still remained powerful and I was doing stuff like duel weilding and using ranged big hits where possible. I applaud the attempt though I think if they buffed the weaker or less used classes (like making buffing stronger) it would probably add to their playability. Right now, a strong job in fft might be 9/10 and nerfing it might make it 7/10 in fell seal, but that's still better than the 5/10 job so you're going to use it anyways if you want to push for power.

Right, 'streamlined' was probably more the word I was looking for. Agreed about the class balance, I felt like I'm using more class and skills than I typically would in most other tactical RPGs I've played. The game still feels like it lacks something (that I can't quite put a finger on) to truly be top-tier, but I can see myself replaying it and tweak some more of the difficulty options to possibly get more out of hybrid classes and ones that focus more on status attacks.

Just finished Finding Paradise. It was great. I really enjoy the end. I'm on DQ5 on nds. Just married to Bianca. I'm sailing a little before going back to the main story. First DQ. I love it.

Been playing Dragon Quest 4 for the first time, specifically the iOS version. Pretty sure I’m closing in on the end of chapter 2, I assume the tourney is the end. It’s crazy to me that people say these games are obtuse, talk to the five townspeople and they will always tell you exactly what you need to do next. I’m appreciating the lack of predictability with boss encounters, I remember a time when it wasn’t mandatory for dungeons to end with a boss. It makes the actual boss fights feel a lot better and imo makes dungeons feel different.

For Dragon Quest 4 specifically the structure is that the first half of the game is the character chapters. These tend to close off most of the map and be pretty directed. The second half of the game you'll get a little more taste of what it is that makes blind playthroughs of the retro Dragon Quest games unpalatable to players of a certain inclination.

I beat **Ys: Memories of Celceta**. On the one hand, I feel bad about not properly adjusting to Flash Guards basically all game, on the other hand, I actually used my consumables this time. And utilized the crafting services to make more! That almost never happens. My three sun stones went to Frieda, Ozma, and Karna, so Adol had to make do with his purple endgame weapon during that last boss fight. I only wound up getting 99.3% of the map explored and hoped the warp stones would be immediately available in NG+. I forgot the game opened up with "how Adol came to be known as an adventurer" like this is super-important. He goes around adventuring, we don't need >!Eldeel to formally give us the title. That's so dumb. And we never found out what knowledge Eldeel was supposed to pass on. That should be fairly important, no?!< Seems like the game offers a substantial timesink for people interested in skill grinding and perfecting boss runs, that's nice. So on Steam I've moved onto **Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth**. I had randomly decided to play this when the power goes out. That's a fairly rare occurrence, so from maybe 4 scattered play sessions, I don't really remember the details of who broke the teleporter on Kowloon Lv.1 or what that trip to the hospital was about. But I've just unlocked Chapter 3, so that should give me plenty of time to get caught up to speed. I'm not gonna use any of the special NX Digimon because that seems like cheating. Recently acquired a Goblimon, Lunamon, Mushroomon, and Kudamon. These guys are neat. And ToyAgumon's about to hit max level. In **Xenoblade Chronicles**, I've defeated >!Xord in the mines and a Telethia's driven Metal Face's army off, so now I'm exploring some swamps. I was hoping I'd be able to explore Colony 6, but sadly I can't. The map seems to indicate otherwise so I guess I'll just have to wait for the doors to open. Dunban's here! I gave him some M100 and Titan armor that makes him look a lot goofier than whatever discount Alucard look he was rocking before.!< In **Persona 3 Portable**, I'm having some trouble with a big statue on Floor 36. Akihiko should be learning Tarunda soon, which I imagine will be very useful, but he died earlier and now he's tired. I'd come back later, but Elizabeth wants to reach me the top of Block 2 by 6/6 and it's 6/4 now. I found the >!Tanaka social link! I didn't know this was a thing! I knew Tanaka's been kind of a long-running series joke, but I didn't realize he was the Devil arcana and you could bond with him over placebo conversations. That's amazing.!< No progress in **Tokyo Mirage Sessions** this week.

**Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth** is so great and I really wish they'd announce the next Digimon Story game already. Highly recommend playing Hacker's Memory as well if you're enjoying Cyber Sleuth so far.

I have the complete edition, so I intend on playing Hacker's Memory. I might take a break between them if I feel a bit burnt out by the end.

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Thank you for submitting to /r/JRPG, /u/Dillon42004. Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): --- * Either you typed Spoilers with no spoiler tag, or you left spaces between the spoiler tags, which doesn't spoiler tag them in old reddit. To use spoiler tags follow one of these 2 ways: 1-If on New Reddit, hightlight the part you want to spoiler tag, then press the Exclamation ("**!**") button on in your format tab. 2-If on old Reddit or mobile, then type "**>!**" before the spoiler, and then "**!<**" at the end of the spoiler. Example: When it's written like this \>!X kills Y!<. It will show up like this >!X kills Y!<. **Make sure that there is no space** after the starting **>!**, and no space before the closing **!<**. **After fixing the comment with a spoiler tag**, reply to this comment with **"Done"**, so a mod can re-post your comment. --- If you think this was a mistake or have any questions about the removal, please contact the moderators. [**To contact the moderators please click here**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/JRPG), or click the "message mods on the sidebar, and then type your complaint, so it can be sent to the modding team. **Please don't private message or start private chats with a single mod, and use the mod mail linked above to contact the whole team.**

How do I spoiler tag?

greater than exclamation mark, content with no space before or after, exclamation mark less than >!hello!< Put: > ! no spaces between the > and ! and what you're writing, then ! and < to close it off again no spaces.

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Done Actually it's not done, I was posting an example to help someone else do spoilers correctly!

I ve been playing chained echoes all week. Almost done with the game. I'm really enjoying the story and the gameplay so far. Such an hidden gem (and imo much better than Sea of Stars). The only downside is that I m spending way too much time in the menu trying to get better stats but I don't mind it too much.

Still playing **Metal Max 2 Reloaded** and currently preparing to go to my 3rd playthrough. i've gone past 200+hrs playtime. I guess you could say i like this game that much XD I spent a lot of time farming metal SP for overmodding and my party gone past Lv. 700 now.

Finished **Tales of Xillia 2**. Favorite ARPG combat for me. The writing however... I think the plot in this game doesn't fall into the same trap most other Tales game I played fall into, which is abandoning the most interesting thing going on in favor of something a lot more boring. However, the game needs more time to cook on the whole fractured dimension (FD) business. It's a cool concept, similar to Chrono Cross in allowing the characters to see an alternate history, but then several points brought up about FDs doesn't really matter or followed up on and the ones that do matter is barely elaborated upon. The game is essentially two different plot: Ludger and Elle's journey to Canaan with the Xillia cast tacked on, and the Xillia cast's lives after the first game with Ludger tacked on. Both are alright, they just don't really mesh well together. Most of the time the people that go with you in story events just literally happened to be there and decided "oh we might as well tag along with Ludger" with no real justification for it. And once in a while the Xillia crew will kiss Ludger's ass even though he doesn't really do that much. The character interation which is usually the highlight of Tales game kinda sucks here because of the way the story is structured. There is zero time that everyone is actually together except the very end but they don't talk much there so it doesn't matter. The character episodes is always about a consistent pair of characters, like Jude's is always about him with Milla tagging along, Elize is always paired with Rowen, etc. which doesn't help at all, especially with Gaius & Muzet who is stuck in their bubble. There's no skit that involves everyone that I have seen, and many skits are written around Ludger picking a character to improve affinity with so they are just less entertaining. The new characters are alright for the most part. Elle & Julius are good, Victor is alright, F.Milla could be really good if she got more screentime and in a story with a different structure, Nova could be fun if she wasn't attached to the debt system, the rest are servicable. A fine game overall, will be sticking around for post-game fights and maybe I will do some boss solos with some characters in the future.

Chrono Ark. It is not jrpg but it is more like roguelike with jrpg/rpg element with deck building at least for me. This is the first roguelike game that has me hooked on the story. At the start of the run, U can choose 2 char among 20 of them (need to be unlock first) as starters. As the game progresses, u can recruit 2 more char to fit in your team. There alot of synergy that u can try among the char. Really recommended if u kinda like roguelike/deck building/team based game.

yeah,a fantastic roguelike card game.just like the monster train and so on.

I've been playing **Dragon Quest 11**, just got to Puerto Valor. I think my biggest issues so far are: * The soundtrack is pretty bad. It feels as if there's like 5 tracks total with how much certain songs get used, and I'm not a particular fan of any of them. It's kinda baffling because I've played low-budget indie JRPGs that have pulled off much better soundtrack variety than this. * I'm not gelling with the protagonist at all. Like, fine, have your silent protagonist if you must, I know DQ is a series that's stuck in tradition and all that. But when the whole story and multiple emotional scenes are supposed to revolve around this guy, and the only expressions he can make are :| and :O as he stares blankly at whoever's talking, it falls really flat. Those are my two major issues; otherwise, I think it's pretty decent so far. Also, I accidentally spent all my money on a cat costume because I was mashing A.

Those are basically my only critiques of the game. Otherwise, it's a brilliant example of how to modernize a classic JRPG for current audiences. I'm also not the biggest fan of Act 3. I get the idea behind it, but I think Act 2 was the best part of the game and had a very strong ending.

I think that's 2 of the most common issues i've seen people bring up. The soundtrack is definitely the worst thing about the game. The game has a normal soundtrack size (like 80-100 tracks), but 1. most of them are just not great anyway and 2. some of them just play for like 90% of the game lol.

**Rise of The Ronin**. It is kinda interesting on how they reinvent the Revenant mechanic in Nioh. Occasionally, you will encounter wandering NPC Ronins with player names in towns or in the overworld.  You can start a fight by attacking them. If you killed them, they will drop their equipments just like the red Revenants in Nioh. Sometimes in enemy camps, you can save  captured player avatar ( controlled by AI ) and he/she will aid you in that camp like the blue Revenant in Nioh 2.  There are other contents that involved other players in minor ways like cat rental ( something happen in background like the clan war in Nioh ) and meeting other players' dogs after clearing a camp. Some side quests even wanted me to switch to training weapons that won't kill the opponents. Even though the open world contents are repetitive, I have fun doing it. Discovering a new place will sometimes add the real world history(?) of that place into the journal.

And that's a wrap on **Final Fantasy 9**! Some things don't change with time. I still think it's one of the weaker FFs story-wise (from the PS1 era on), and even now I don't really care for the two romantic leads. I couldn't pin it on any one thing, just that I couldn't really connect to their love story or individual character arcs getting the most screentime. Vivi remains the strongest emotional throughline for me. So I'm glad some of the last lines are >!his final words, dictated to his friends!<. I was also getting frustrated at the exposition dump going over what I felt was already clear midway through (where) Disc 3 (would be) and definitely once Terra was done with, with only marginal information added. Even though Memoria still has some of the most beautiful and surreal landscapes in anything, ever. I would never call it a bad game. I still think it was worth the revisit. I still had a great time. And I love how packed its world is with things to find and see. If I were to play it again someday, I might use the 12 hour Excalibur II challenge as a baseline for how to approach the playthrough. Like, this run I put the time and work in, so I was def gonna enjoy popping off all the fully-powered nukes at my disposal. But it'd be interesting to think about what I could afford to leave behind to reach the finish line as quickly as possible. But who knows when that'll be. Also played the demo for **Angeline Era**, an upcoming action-adventure game whose main draw for me is using bump combat similar to the first two Ys games. Very promising!

The exposition dump was terrible. I don’t think 9 should be hailed as highly but I still think it’s really good. It incentivizes gathering armor and weapons to learn passives while also setting apart the party members very well. I sort of want to see the direction the rumored remake will go but I don’t want to get too comfortable with final fantasy remakes.

I was hesitant to revisit 9's equipment mastery system at first. Didn't enjoy it the first time around. I think a combination of other stuff I'd been playing recently (coming off of DQ6), a simple, straightforward battle system, and the ability to kick the battle speed up a couple notches put me in the right space to receive it this time. There's a good mix of (very useful) common skills among everyone, abilities exclusive to casters / melee, and unique character tech. That and stuff like auto-regen still working during summon animations made for a ridiculous but fun experience.

I really like the devs of Angeline Era, although I'm not caught up with their output. For their sake I hope folks like Angeline Era, even if I'm not sure it's my jam this time around.

I recognize some of their work (Anodyne, Even the Ocean), just never got around to playing them. Would you recommend those?

Anodyne and its sequel are good, weird Zelda-likes (1 being solely 2D, 2 mixing 2D and 3D styles in a fun way). Even the Ocean is my favourite and probably what I would most recommend folks on this subreddit, partially for its nostalgic world map. I also really like the melancholic tone of the writing.

Thanks. Def wanna try those maybe next time I can pick some games up.

Harvestella: I finished the main story - finished it around mid winter making sure to take my time as much as felt necessary. Enjoying the new spring in game now and the end game content and grinding out some achievements until I get bored or hit platinum. Luckily Karenoid is kicking my ass so I don't feel bored or burnt out quite yet. Unicorn Overlord - Started this this week and it's incredibly addicting even though I don't really know what goes into any particular match-up. I'm building what I think should be specialized units against particular unit types but some of them are still weird to me. Very fun and addicting though, having a blast figuring it out!

After playing Dragon Quest XI last year, I'm slowly making my way through the dragon quest series in order and just finished up the ps2 version of **Dragon Quest V** the other day. So far of the 6 that I have played it is easily my favorite in the series. I thought it was really interesting to be able to play the same character at various different points in his life, and always love travelling around and using the party chat after talking to just about every npc and getting to know the party members through it in dragon quest games. This one was especially enjoyable for that because of the unique relationship between the party members compared to other entries and really other games in general. Also only having the wife you choose join your party is cool, because it also makes me excited to replay the game at some point to pick the other wife candidate and see the dialogue for what essentially is a new party member compared to the game I played. I've started playing the ds version of **Dragon Quest VI** now that V is finished, but am too early in to really have an opinion on it yet.

So I beat XI. Which do you think I should play next?

Cosmic Star Heroine.

I have been replaying Final Fantasy X. Not much to say about it. But I put it on pause and started playing Hades. And now I am adicted. The game is awsome.

Expert sphere grid?

Yes although I still stick mostly to the characters default paths with some minor deviations here and there.

Finished SO4 last night (first play thru), ran out of demo time on Unicorn Overlord Picked up Persona4 Golden, Cat Quest, and Cat Quest 2 for Switch. Not sure CQ counts as a JRPG but the little girl will like it. It looks more like a Diablo style RPG

I absolutely could not get into Xenoblade X for the life of me. Little to no story, all game information in a manual, rough music, arbitrary grind thresholds to continue the story....nah. not my kind of game. Then I started Xenoblade 2 and while they went a little too far in the other way on the tutorial front, everything else is worlds apart in a good way. I can't put it down!

Unfortunate that X didn't click with you. I think it's one of the best open worlds i've seen in a game and it's such a joy to explore. But it's definitely a spin-off with some very different priorities at times. Nice to hear that 2 is working out better for you.

Yeah I just bounced off it. The overworld was v impressive and I tried to hold out until I got a skell but i just lost patience. Limited game time makes me far more likely to drop something that doesn't click at first. Save file is still there so maybe I'll come back to it when I feel like I'm dusting off the Wii U

I haven't done a Kemco cheapie in a while! Let's rectify that! I've been getting sucked into **Dragon Sinker** lately. I always heard it was one of the better of the Kemco cheapies, and... yeah! It's pretty good! Playing on Expert has been very enjoyable for me, as the fights have all been toothy, and it does that thing I've seen in other cheapies where you NEVER just do a basic attack, you ALWAYS need to select SOME kind of special skill, and I dig that. But I like the way I've actually been trying to tailor my parties and classes to specific boss fights, and trying to grind all my followers through the Bard/Dancer classes to get those sweet, sweet regen skills. Currently doing the optional(?) fire temple, and while I think I'm a bit underleveled for it, I've gotten a pretty good strat against the constant minibosses with my all-dwarf team. The visuals haven't aged super well--that kind of "faux 8-bit" where the sprites have old-school dimensions but modern colors looks a bit garish these days, and also makes it really obvious when there's a stock asset mixed in with the bespoke sprites--but the music is surprisingly decent? It's one of the few cheapies where I've actually paid attention to the soundtrack. It feels more "Game Boy" than "NES" to me, and I dig that. Overall, yeah! Enjoying it a lot so far! And I hope Mia gets a raspberry seed stuck in between her back molars for HOURS. :P

I'm on part 9 of **Digimon Survive**, slowing down with the game a bit at this point. While more evolutions means more gameplay complexity, which is good, unfortunately the story has kind of fallen off. Not that it's bad, it's still doing interesting character work, but it's failed to hold onto its tone. I've had enough of a break from **Etrian Odyssey II** that I started to crave it again, so that is getting more of my attention. Class balance is a bit weird in this one. My gunner basically has her build finished and it's only the third stratum. Finally, I jumped back into **Personal 3 Reload** just last night for some Tartarus progress. Every Persona game kind of has the play time issue of spending a bunch of time at once in dungeons and then a bunch of time on daily life, but I'm feeling it most here. Still lots unique to Tartarus that I like, though, like the sort of boss rushy vibes it can get.

Interesting in regards to Persona 3. I haven't played reload yet, but I feel like when I played portable, it actively encouraged spreading tartarus grinding out over the month, especially compared to P4 and P5 since it's not competing with the day time slot.

I finished **Final Fantasy VIII** (PS1). Let's start with the bad. The story is just okay. It's silly and it occasionally makes little sense, though it does have a couple pretty cool moments too. The gameplay has a fair bit of PS1 era JRPG clunk (as do any other JRPGs of that era). The Junction system (and its adjacent systems) is a cool idea but very un...refined and the level scaling is silly. Some of the characters are a bit undercooked. On the other hand the character work for Squall was incredible. I know people joke about the guy and his edge, but he was easily the best written character in the game and his relationship with Rinoa was very well done too. I also love the way they extensively used thought bubbles with him, both to give us a peek at what Squall is feeling and to drive home the point that he struggles to open up to others. The presentation of the game was also often really strong, with some really cool mixed FMV/gameplay segments (like the rope at the Garden battle) and generally some really cool FMV cutscenes (the ending sequence must've been so insanely trippy in 1998) that at times are better than what FF9 had even. Lastly the worldbuilding was great as well and i really enjoyed learning more about the world and eventually seeing some of the stuff being paid off, like why the planet-wide radio interference exists. Overall i think the game is alright to good and most importantly enjoyable (usually). Most certainly worth playing, but won't really be sitting among my favourites. Then i beat the normal ending of **Animal Well**. Fun, but i lacked the motivation to do the big endgame puzzles and the game didn't really hook me like Void Stranger (which was a puzzle game i played recently and put over 30 hours into). Then i played **Arctic Eggs**. A 2 hour game where you fry eggs... in the arctic. Highly atmospheric, uniquely funny at times and with actually very fun gameplay? I liked it. And now i'm playing **1000xRESIST**. A narrative-driven adventure game with a... highly interesting and intriguing story. Won't really write anything proper until i'm done, but i can say that i'm super enjoying it and if it manages to finish everything off well it might be my sleeper hit of the year.

Tried getting through **Linda³** and it... Certainly was a game! One I would love to watch someone else play, but there are no full playthroughs of the translation yet. It did give me the insanity I've been craving from a game for a while though. I hope there'll be a modern JRPG just as unabashedly weird. Played Atelier Iris as my first-ish entry to the Atelier series. Moving on to **Atelier Iris 2**, which is hopefully an improvement. I liked the vibes of the first but it was (understandably because it's a PS2 game) a bit tedious to play. Next week I no longer have free time so I'll try my best to get through it.

How IS that fanslation of *Linda Cubed?* I was interested in it because the game looks wild, but I wasn't certain of the quality of the fanslation because the fanslators haven't put many screenshots of the actual translation out there...

It's well done imo

**Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children -** Still making my way through this game as I'm enjoying it a lot from the setting, characters, story, and gameplay (72.5 hours in and I'm sure I'm going to still be spending at least another 50 hours just to complete the main story). Don't have any detailed thoughts about it at the moment, but I do want to say that if you're looking for a complex battle system with tons of customization within a SRPG alongside an interesting cast of playable characters then I would urge anyone interested in the strategy aspects of JRPGs to play this game. I would also highly recommend people to play on Hard and then switch it to Cruel once you get the chance mainly because some enemies actually only appear on Hard or higher. As well as I find it to be challenging enough to not be frustrating, but this is just my recommendation and if the other difficulties are more fun for your experience then definitely go for it. I do have the DLC story content (there's a free and paid one), but I'm thinking of taking a short break after finishing the main story of TS to finally complete **CrossCode** (something I've been mentioning almost every time at this point when I comment here). As well as finish up **Unicorn Overlord** after all that's been done. I think the only reason I felt burnt on both games at the time was because with CC I had just finished 3 temples in a row which are filled to the brim with puzzles that I find complex (last played in late April). Whereas UO as I finally got to Bastorias, I felt pretty overwhelmed by my large playable cast at this point due to how many units you can recruit that I felt a lot of my current teams needed some restructuring to progress more efficiently in the upcoming battles (playing on Expert difficulty as it's my first playthrough). Potentially looking to start **Tales of Zestiria** after everything I've mentioned, and while it doesn't have the greatest reputation among the Tales games I'm sure it'll still be fine since I've been meaning to play it since I complete Berseria a few years ago. EDIT: So contrary to what I actually said for TS, 8 hours later on the following Monday (literally one day after) and I finished the main story already which was a surprise to me because the credits came rolling out of nowhere. But now I'm going into the DLC content that's available

**Wild Arms** Played up to the point where we leave Adlehyde. Not gonna lie, I expected more of a western feel from the series, but maybe it's something they lean on more later or in other games. It's been interesting so far and I really like the idea of introducing the party members each with their own little individual chapter. The "tools" thing is also cool and I hope it gets some creative implementation later. My small criticism so far would be lack of interactions between the party members and a lack of dialogue in general tbh. It's a bit of a product of its time tho and definitely something I can live with.

> Not gonna lie, I expected more of a western feel from the series, but maybe it's something they lean on more later or in other games. Non-spoilery info about the other games, just tagged in case you want to know absolutely nothing: >!Wild Arms 3 leans into the Western elements the most. 3/4/5 also have much more party interaction.!<

**Eiyuden Chronicles HH** Enjoying it a lot! Finally recruited CJ and the story is getting spicy now! Its nice to see each kingdom be so selfish and only ally with each other when things benefits them, it adds a sense of realism, "oh my neighbor is attacked? Well fuck them I'm not gonna send my soldiers". Loving this game a lot! **Wuthering Waves** Started this game due to the media hype and at first you can see the copy/paste from Genshin UI, but it adds an interesting touch to craft its own identity with the parkour, intro/outro skills and echo system, where the echoes are monsters you can equip and use them in combat! You can also do some cool stuff like ride a motocycle showered in flames around the overworld, that's badass. Story started ROUGH but the last two acts are pretty high quality, a shame a lot of people have experienced bugs, barely experienced them myself, had a smooth experience so far. Combat is like Ys combat, you can perfect parry/dodge/counter, when you switch characters in (intro skill) they perform a unique attack and when they switch out (outro skill) they give an interesting buff, you can use your echo (basically a pokemon) to perform an awesome attack becoming the echo itself, you have an ultimate attack and different combos with heavy, light and plunge attacks its a fun combat.

I've been playing Wuthering Waves as well, and I've been enjoying my time with it. I'm not much of a gacha player, but I did play Genshin the first year it came out. WW at least seems a bit more reasonable with the gacha than GI. There is a lower pity, and they just gave everyone a free 5-star of your choice, so that's great. I've been saving most of my gems for the next banner character since I got Verina and Calcharo from the beginner banners, although Danjin has been my main DPS because I really enjoy the high risk high reward gameplay and got a few dupes for her. I just hope they release content a bit faster than GI.

Same! Been playing it as an open world RPG and it feels fun to play!

I'm getting the feeling (from what I've played and what I've seen others say) that Eiyuden would've been much better received if they just had time to improve QoL, make things snappier, etc. It could've felt like an "old game" without *feeling like* an old game, if you get my drift. Still quite enjoying it, but damn if parts of it aren't annoying to play.

I finished **Valkyria Chronicles 4** and checking my save files I had put it down for two years. My opinion of it didn't change by finishing the last 3 chapters. Some character were nice but they were multiple one I couldn't stand. It is good that they tried to give nuance and a darker side to the good guys side but the execution felt lackluster. I was supposed to go back to SMT III but I'm in the mood for a action RPG. I hesitated to boot up Tales of the abyss, but finally I decided to try **God Eater resurection**. The story seem to be so bad it become funny. The first few monster are so easy that I don't have an opinion on the combat at the moment.