Video Game Tirade
Video Game Tirade
Ep 9 (T) - JRPGs: Anime, Swords, and Commentary About Society
Warning: Foul language. Listeners 18+ recommended.
In this episode, I go crazy for JRPGs, since so many have been coming out lately that I just gotta get my hands on! This episode is quite topical, as I discuss all of the franchises that I really like from this genre and why I like them. I also list out what are the 7 qualities I think a game needs to even be considered a JRPG, so if you're curious what those are, go ahead and give this episode a listen!
Beginning and Ending Links:
Beg: https://youtu.be/__CRWE-L45k - Symbolism - Electro-Light
End: https://youtu.be/V42iRj0Toq0 - Running - Sekai
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Hello, y'all, and welcome to Video Game Tirade, the show where I talk about the video games I've been playing and whatever they remind me of for roughly an hour. My name is AJ, and let's get this ball rolling!
So, new Pokémon games have come out since my last episode, in fact the day after I posted my last one. Also, Shin Megami Tensei 5, hereafter referred to as SMT5 for convenience, was shadow-dropped on Nov 12th and I did not find out about this until the next day when I saw someone in my YouTube subs post a video about how to beat one of the late-game superbosses. I am actually, as I write this script, waiting on my copies of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, so I have NOT been playing those, and I HAVE been playing SMT5, as well as more Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I actually recently booted up Pokémon Sword to do a Nuzlocke run while I wait for my BDSP copies to come back from the war. Suffice to say, now that I'm in the absolute last stages of Yakuza Kiwami 1 - curse you, Climax Battles!!! - I am going a little JRPG crazy! And I haven't finished SMT5 yet, I don't have BDSP, and it's hard for me to get into exactly why I like any specific Pokémon game, or dislike them, without going off on a LOT of tangents. And since this is intended to be a podcast about games I have excessive knowledge about from playing all the way through but ALSO a podcast about games I just like or really dislike, I figured why not just make this whole specific episode about various JRPG series and games that I have really enjoyed?
A small warning before I get into things, don't worry, there won't be any spoilers, eh, kind of sort of, uh, but there will be cursing because there are just some emotions I can't express without throwing an F-bomb in there. So, if you are under 18 years of age, I would recommend you not listen to this episode. Thank you.
To start into the discussion of JRPGs, I want to address specifically what I qualify as a JRPG. The term, for those unfamiliar, stands for "Japanese Role Playing Game," and the most common examples people can think of are Final Fantasy and Pokémon, which both definitely count. In my history of playing JRPGs and the research I did for this episode, I have come up with around 7 qualifiers, of which I think at least 5, mm, maybe 3 need to be met to qualify as a JRPG, in my opinion. None of these qualifiers are that the game is Japanese, as in it is made in Japan, as a couple of the titles that I consider JRPGs are from studios that aren't and have never been located in Japan. So what makes a JRPG, if not the location the game was made? The 7 qualifiers are as follows:
#1 - a long convoluted story. This is practically the only HARD requirement, in that you must have a long and/or convoluted story to be considered a JRPG. Some famous examples are, of course, the Xenoblade series and anything from Final Fantasy - try explaining any of those to some rando and they will look at you like you're a freak after only a few minutes.
#2 - commentary on religion or society or both. This one almost always is a by-product of the long convoluted story but not necessarily. Some Pokémon games, as an example, DO have commentary on society that's not hard to see, you barely have to squint - Gen 5 and Gen 6 have some great commentary in this department - whereas others the commentary is virtually non-existent.
#3 - power of FRIENDSHIP. Pokémon is the ultimate example of this, as it is commonly viewed in-universe that only people who truly appreciate their Pokémon, regardless of positives or negatives, can become stronger together. Plus of all the various challenges out there to make the game harder, the famously popular type, the Nuzlocke, has one of its core rules to be name your Pokémon, so you can develop a bond with them and mourn them when they die according the other rules of the challenge. What does that say about this game series that one of the major rules for the most popular gameplay type other than base game is to Make Friends With Your Characters so you'll feel it when they die??? Power of friendship!
#4 - Really Goddamn Cool Visuals with usually an anime-almost style. Final Fantasy and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are culprits of this, for sure. I don't consider Kingdom Hearts a JRPG even though it meets all of these requirements including the next 3, purely because it's Disney-focused and fuck Disney, but the almost-anime style definitely fits in there - just look at Sora's hair and his pants. What is going on with his pants… This is another one of the 7 requirements that I consider basically a hard requirement, although less so than the story and #7. Xenoblade Chronicles 1, for example, is more realistic of a style but I still consider it a JRPG.
#5 - big-ass sword. 'nough said.
#6 - deus ex machina, almost literally since mechas are a huge genre in Japanese media. Without spoiling anything, all of the Final Fantasy titles I've completed as well as all 3 of the main Xenoblade Chronicles titles are culprits of this one. Same with Pokémon, since the protagonist being the savior of the day despite being a minor in all of the games is… definitely overpowered and broken and not - not realistic!
#7 - the pathological NEED for GRINDING. Oooh, if you've played ANY good JRPG, you know the sting of the grind. Grinding refers to how most JRPGs have a leveling system, and certain major story fights are often extremely difficult with the normal progression of the game unless you go out of your way to fight basic-ass enemies for a while just to get that extra level or two or specific gear - in essence, "grinding" the weapons you are or you use to use in the next fight to make them sharper and better at fighting. This is so common, it's also basically a hard a requirement.
With the 7 qualifiers listed and explained, I now want to go into the various major JRPG series that I consider as such and really enjoy playing, and cover a few of the stand-out titles from each. But first, our financial team would like to share a few words about this project! Hey guys, this moment is to remind y'all that I have a Patreon where I post my transcripts for free and to the public, if you need that accessibility option and-or feel like supporting me. I also have a Twitter and business email for hitting me up - today's hashtag on Twitter will be #VGTJRPG, all caps. Let me know in those spots what you think of SMT5 or BDSP, or anything else y'all are playing or want me to play, and so on! Update installed, let's unpause and get back into it!
The very first series I'm going to briefly touch on - hopefully very briefly - is Pokémon! This is absolutely the most famous series of the list I have prepared for this episode, I think that anyone who has played a video game is at least vaguely aware that Pokémon exists, if not exactly what it is. Pikachu is probably the most recognizable mascot in the world, honestly. Again, I don't want to get into specifics because I love Pokémon and I can talk AD NAUSEUM about specific generations and all of their pros and cons, but. Pokémon is the one on this list that has been with me the longest. The first Pokémon game I played was Gen 3's in-gen remake, Emerald, followed immediately by XD: Gale of Darkness on GameCube (which is good, watch a let's play of it or play it yourself, it's great! Don’t deprive yourself of a great game just because it looks bad, it's fine.). I have very fond memories of Emerald, and I was EXTREMELY excited for the ORAS remakes a few years ago, and of the modern games post-Gen-5, I think DexNav-ing is the most sophisticated way of Shiny hunting out there, as well as the best addition to a game to encourage completion of a Pokédex, ever. (See what I mean about tangents and feelings?)
The game I remember the most about my first playthrough, though, is Gen 4's Pearl - I remember when I got it, about a month after it first came out in a Toys-R-Us - RIP Toys-R-Us - how our car broke down on the way home and I got all the way to Eterna City and Gardenia before Triple-A came to help us fix our flat tire. I picked Piplup because it was the cutest and it did not disappoint, utterly blasting apart practically all of the major fights up until that second gym. Getting into catching all the Pokémon and seeing them evolve, knowing they were all completely new to Emerald's collection of mons, it was brand-new. I loved the Pokétch, I loved the Underground obsessively, I loved all the new Pokémon and the new towns and the new music. That young, I even enjoyed how slow the game was, although now it's a major complaint about that engine, because it let me sit back and take in all the details and just simmer in this new experience. I was already an active gamer by that point but this experience with Pearl firmly cemented the Pokémon franchise as one of my favorites. Funnily enough, after that I focused on the Gen 2 remake that I got my hands on, HeartGold, and the Gen 1, FireRed, but completely skipped Gen 5 because I thought it looked really bad and boring. (I have since been proven wrong - I will cover that in another episode, because I have MANY FEELINGS about Gen 5. I have so many feelings about Gen 5, oh my god.) I just really, really love this series, and I really love everything I'm seeing about the BDSP remakes already, I am SO HAPPY the Underground is back, I am so happy about the meh - berry mechanic returning properly, I'm so happy about the way it looks, the Pokétch, everything, UGH! I could go on and on, but Pokémon is probably my favorite video game series of all time at this point, at least in the JRPG category, and I have yet to experience a game from the series that disappointed me.
Except Pokémon Unite. I hate TenCent and everything they do, and I am sorely disappointed in Nintendo for ever working with them. It's not even a fun game, like, ugh. Fuck MOBAs.
Speaking of favorite games, that brings me to the next series - Final Fantasy. This is the next oldest - you may be noticing a theme for how I arranged this list - and there are actually some entries that I DO want to talk about here, because I can actually summarize my feelings instead of waxing poetic, like with Pokémon. I've played 4 of the various titles but beaten 3. 12 is the one I have the most nostalgia for. It's unusual compared to a lot of other JRPGs because its gameplay style is commonly referred to as "single player MMORPG" - whenever you walk into an area that could have enemies, you can be attacked by those enemies, if they are aggressive, at any time, if you are too close, just like an MMORPG, like Final Fantasy 14 or WoW. There's no transition to a fight and no strict turn-based combat like Pokémon, it's more of a rudimentary ATB like what happens in later games, and I am a slut for it. I LOVE the gameplay in this game, it is SO fun, and it complements the world and the design of the world SO FUCKING WELL. I could actually wax poetic about Final Fantasy 12 for long time, like with Pokémon, actually! For the longest time, this was my favorite game OF ALL TIME… before I actually finished the game. During the era where it was my favorite game ever, I had only played up to about 2/3 of the way through. For people familiar with the game, I was in Archades and actually IN the lab there. I played through the game during 2020's lockdown and finally finished it, and my very good opinion of it immediately started tanking as soon as I got to level 3 of around 12 of the Pharos. The same-y labyrinth full of hard enemies made me very angry, and then the way the game finishes, with VAYNE as the final boss? Granted, the way it mechanically works, with no health bar contrary to literally every other fight in the game, is really cool, but VAYNE SOLIDOR? Where's the emotional connection? The main characters interact with him, like, once, and he doesn't really have any outright evil intentions up until literally the last few cutscenes, up until he becomes a weird grotesque angel beast. Also, this is weird compared to the other 3 games I've played as this is just a dude as the final boss. Granted, he becomes weird and fucking grotesque and angel-y beasty, whatever - but he's still just a dude! Instead of, like, you know, a force of nature or a GOD. It's - mm!
13 has taken the place of 12 as my favorite Final Fantasy game, although none of the Final Fantasies are my favorite game of all time anymore. (That might be a Halo game, I'm not sure. I have to think about that.) And yes, you heard me right, 13 is my favorite Final Fantasy game. Ignore the existence of the cash grabs that are 13-2 and 13-3, and 13, by itself, is a game that is at worst fine and at best a masterpiece. I love the music so much and I love the story, which has this really poignant discussion of determinism versus free will all throughout that simultaneously is crushingly es- existential and freeingly hopeful. My god, I love 13. Don't get me wrong, the complaints made about it are FULLY earned; it is frustratingly linear compared to 12, up until chapter 10, and then after a certain point in chapter 10 it remains super linear until the end of the game. The movement is weirdly sensitive and also not at the same time, as well, and the characters are kind of flat, in the thematic sense, but also how can you hate Vanille or Fang or Snow or Hope? Or even Sazh or Lightning? Like, any of the main 6 are super good characters! They're all just trying their best to do what they think is right despite the hands they've been dealt and how everyone on their home world thinks they're all evil aliens out to destroy their way of life, when the majority of them were the exact same way just a day ago. There's a sense of grandeur to this game, and honestly this entire series, that few other games can really touch, and that's half the convoluted plot lines endemic to Final Fantasy, usually ending up with the main characters saving the world from some extreme threat - or, in 13's case, saving the world by destroying the world. And the other half is just how cool and awesome the characters are doing all their things. Snow ends up driving an ice motorcycle made out of two twin goddesses who contort their body to become motorcycles, and he drives it into enemies all the time in this game once he unlocks that ability - that is both super Japanese and also very freaking cool, literally and figuratively! I really like this game just for how fun and stupid it is, honestly, combined with the really well-done story, my god! Chef's kiss.
15 has a special place in my heart as the Final Fantasy game I currently hate the most and also love the most, simultaneously. Why is that? Well, the characters are fucking awesome, and that's the highest praise this game will get from me. Take all the good parts of 13's characters, modernize them and make them relatable to current audiences, and make all the playable characters handsome guys who don't really have a love interest between the 4 of them, and voila, you have magic in a bottle. The most shippable characters of the entire fucking series so far, and they're all dudes. Lunafreya is also not just a love interest for Noctis, (although not really) she actually does Really Important Shit to the plot without you as the player manually controlling her actions - that doesn't happen often, especially not in Final Fantasy games. Prompto being what we find out he is in Chapter 13 is a REALLY COOL twist to this really sweet relatable character we've been with this whole damn game. The gameplay is also beautiful, both in terms of the actual visuals and in the combination of fantastic and realistic elements, and also the actual, like, going through battles and the gameplay itself. Plus, I love the fishing! Fishing in a game is always a plus for me, and the fact that you can also use the fish to make food to help you fight? Ugh, perfect, just poetry.
That's all the praise that I can offer to this game. I fucking hate the story of Final Fantasy 15. Now before anyone gets on my case, saying the DLC makes the story better and make sense, my counterargument is I shouldn't need the DLC to have a complete story in the base game. DLC should be additional content, like easter eggs that add DEPTH to the story, rather than completing the story! From what I've researched of the DLC, they add depth to the characters and also important information that should have been included in the actual game's story, making it a requirement to buy those DLC and play them for the full story of the game, which by itself I find bullshit. I'm of the opinion that if you do not ship an entire complete story with a game, and you need to produce DLCs or further patches to complete the actual story, you have failed as a game creator in that particular instance. Games should be complete when they launch, at least in terms of the story and the playable gameplay.
As for the actual base game, I love everything about it up until Chapter 7, and I distinctly remember it being Chapter 7 because that's when the Leviathan fight happens, and spoilers, that's when Lunafreya gets fridged. Fridging, for those unaware, is when a female character, usually the main love interest, gets killed to further the plot of the male main character. I fucking HATE that this happens to 1 of 2 main female characters we get, the other being Gladio's little sister who's, like, 12. She didn't deserve it, she's fucking the greatest character in the game other than Prompto, and in my opinion it didn't add anything to Noctis' motivations, it was just furthering how spiteful and dickish - ooh, god, what's his name. The bad guy. The guy who is so poorly explained in the base game that I completely forgot his name. Ardyn? …I looked it up, I looked it up while I'm actually doing the recording, it is indeed Ardyn, with a "y." Uh. Anyways, Lunafreya dying, which is NOT a spoiler since it was in one of the trailers I saw before the game was released - forgot about that and reminded myself while doing the research - just reinforces this Ardyn guy as an asshole. Like, Noctis was already going on all of this adventure and stuff to, like, both get revenge for his dad and to honor his own legacy of, like, being the prince and doing all of this stuff that he needs to, to inherit his full responsibilities. Like, he already is doing that. And now you're adding more revenge on top of it? By killing his lover in front of him? When she's already dying? …Okay, I guess???
We still don't know who this guy actually is at this point, Ardyn, or his stake in anything is, just that he's dangerous, which we already knew from his apparent alignment with Niflheim. And, like, Niflheim, we already know at this point is super fucking dangerous because, again, they killed Noctis' dad and took over his fucking kingdom, like! It's unnecessary, it's not even an emotional hook because - there's so many other things that are emotional about this game, like, just the Leviathan fight by itself is super badass!
Urgh! I'm so angry!
His killing of Lunafreya right when Noctis was going to reunite with her was pointless, is my point with all this rambling. It's pointless, and it's stupid, and I fucking hate it, and she was fridged for no reason! He was already building up - Noctis was already building up to his locking- unlocking his powers already and them reuniting was the hope he needed to actually keep going and, like, the rest of the game he's just a whiny pissbaby, and like. URGH I hate it!
Plus there's also the fact that after this point, the game gets SUPER railroaded, because again Noctis is a fucking whiny pissbaby. It becomes less of an open-world game and more of a "alright, now we have a story to tell you, and you are going to play that story whether you like it or not" kind of game. Everyone has the complaints about the Niflheim chapters, Chapter 12 and 13, with the - how they are super tight and all same-y with those dungeons full of just hallways and hallways and more hallways and then some hiding and then more hallways. I agree with this complaint, this is the worst part of the game right after the absolute last parts of the game. There's a time skip at the very end that makes fuck-all sense, is poorly explained, and results in a world that makes no sense, too, and gets immediately fixed because the monsters infesting the land are too hard to fight, which forces you to follow the story instead of taking advantage of the access to the open world again. And the next story beat, once you get back into this world after the time-skip, is going to the final boss fight and undoing the shithole the world has become, which apparently was Noctis' whole purpose and the whole reason for the time skip, SO WHY EVEN HAVE THE TIME SKIP??? Like, it doesn't make any fucking sense! Urgh!!!
This was a great damn game until Chapter 7 and it slid rapidly into "bad" and then launched itself off that cliff straight into the ocean of shitty games. The entire rest of the game after Chapter 7 on the official Final Fantasy 15 wiki takes up the span of 3 and a half paragraphs and a total of 19 sentences. The entire second half of the game, actually longer 'cause this is a 15-chapter game, and those remaining 8 chapters are condensed to just 19 sentences. That's just a smidge over 2 sentences per chapter. Nothing happens in the second half of this game! Most of those sentences are "Noctis does this thing" or "this thing happens to Noctis." There's no, like, interesting elements, it's just Noctis is going somewhere and doing things, or he's being told things straight to his face in a very boring-ass way. There's so very little game-changing information that happens in those 19 sentences, and when those 2 or 3 things DO happen, it's an afterthought. This part of the game is so railroaded, and it's so - bad! Like. It doesn't feel like it was rushed during development but it DOES feel rushed in terms of the gameplay.
It almost feels like the developers - they had this idea for a game, and also had this idea for a story, and didn't know how to combine the two once the story actually started going. Like, the exploration elements are really only in the beginning of the game, there's not really much you can do once you get to Niflheim, and, like, exploring Niflheim?!? And the entire second half of the world, pretty much? Would've been so fucking cool!!! But no! Because Noctis has to be a goddamn pissbaby!
In the beginning of the game, I was most concerned with hanging around with my friends and everything, and at the end of the game, I was more concerned about what happened to my friends than who these NPCs who were telling me all this shit actually are. And that was a lot of the second half of the game, is NPCs revealing themselves to be way more important than you thought or cared about.
Anyways, I hate it. Final Fantasy 15 has the best characters of the franchise so far (that I've played) but by far the absolute trashiest of story lines. And another controversial take about the Final Fantasy game I haven't finished, 10, even though I've got a copy for PS4? The game is entirely about water, the main character's name is "Tide-us," NOT "Tee-dus." "TIDE-us." And to summarize why I haven't finished playing THAT game, I don't like any of the playable characters except for Yuna and even that is tenuous at best, 'cause she's - she's kind of like a school marm, of like "You shouldn't do that, it's against the rules" stick in the mud. Tidus is an asshole and, from the wiki summary of the story, none of the other major 4 playable characters particularly offer anything other than maybe Wakka, and Wakka is an obnoxious jock who is also kind of an asshole. I still want to play this game, because I have it and I like Final Fantasy and it seems terribly romantic other than fucking all the asshole characters, but it will not be for a while yet before I play it, no sir!
The next series I want to touch on is the Xenoblade series, and oh boy, this one is a whooper. Xenoblade so far is quite limited as a series, with 3 games and an impending 4th according to rumor, but it stands out among very similar JRPGs for a variety of reasons. 1) The battle style is like a combo between Final Fantasy 13 or 15 with the live-battle ATB stuff and Pokémon where you have specific moves and people who SPECIALIZE in certain gameplay types. Dunban from Xenoblade Chronicles 1, for example, is a tank, a standard RPG role, but plays VERY differently than the other 2 tanks, Reyn and Riki, due to his gimmick being evasion, and theirs being defense and HP, respectively. That's a Pokémon-style thing, but the combat isn't turn-based like Pokémon is but DOES rely on character-specific moves and strategizing with those moves and a limited party size, like Pokémon! It's a really interesting thing that I haven't seen in JRPGs very much. 2) The Story. To some extent, these games tie in to older series with similar names - Xenosaga and Xenogears - but the stories are separate from those series and don't require playing them to enjoy, more that you get bonus enjoyment from easter eggs if you have played them. But the stories in all 3 games so far are definitely JRPG-confirmative in terms of scale and length - the events are world-shaking for all 3 game worlds and the story lines themselves are, at minimum, 40 hours of gameplay if you're not goofing off and doing the bare amount of grinding required. Very long games! And each story has something to SAY. I have already done Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as an episode so to briefly touch on that one, one of the major themes is how people's relationships with each other and the memories of people can help regulate evil in the world, how admiring someone or wanting to protect people is how people get inspired to do heroic activities, from making a dinner all the way up to saving and recreating the world for the better. It's a pretty generic theme but the way the game handles it is so AHH. It's not just the story, why I like this series, it's also the characters and how universally enjoyable they are, or at the very least 3D instead of flat. In the thematic sense, like Riki from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 being a lovable goofball who doesn't appear to take anything seriously, who is a father and is being away from his family and is doing the things he does, risking his life and everything, in order to provide for and protect his family. He's not just comedic relief, and ALL the major playable characters are like that, with some additional background or side interests that make them more than just "tsundere princess" or "pretty woman #1" or "a robot"! It's very impressive - Monolith Soft have very good writers. I cannot recommend these games enough - and I can recommend, if you want to watch full playthroughs of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2, then Chuggaaconroy's YouTube channel is where you want to go. #NotSponsored.
The next 2 series I want to mention are Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, which allegedly according to various wikis are part of the same core Megami Tensei series. I -I disagree, sort of. Persona and SMT are sister series, in my opinion, and go hand-in-hand. Not in that their stories are connected, just that they're - hmm. How to explain this. These 2 are the most recent "mainstream" RPGs I've added to my collection, and the way I understand them is like how GTA and Saint's Row are related. One came out as a sort of spoof/improvement on the other and now is just its own barely-related thing, more of a stand-alone series rather than something directly based on the other. If I recall correctly, it's the reverse with Persona and SMT of GTA and Saint's Row, where SMT came out first but Persona, the spin off, is the more serious one. I'm most familiar of these 2 with Persona - SMT5 is actually the first one of SMT that I've seen any gameplay of or played for myself! So we will see how that goes. By comparison, I've watches gameplay of Persona 3, 4, and 4: Golden before I got Persona 5 myself and played it all the way through twice. I also have Persona 5: Royals but I had just finished my second playthrough of base Persona 5 when the game came out so I haven't actually played it yet. Let me know if y'all are interested in a breakdown episode of Persona 5! It would also cover the differences between base game and Royals, so it would be another long - super long episode, like probably Xenoblade Chronicles 2 length episode, if that sways opinion.
Anyways, why am I into these 2 games? So, for me, the main draw is the very anime-like everything about these games, from style to content. Anime is very well known for being stylized and occasionally super out-there - anyone remember the way Darling in the Franxx ended? And just existed? That was a weird anime. Persona usually has a bunch of typical Japanese high school kids being asked to go to a netherworld where they unlock a version of themselves that's super powerful in this netherworld - a titular Persona - and through these 2 things - the netherworld and powerful Persona - they end up changing the real world for the better somehow. I've seen previous Persona games described as "video game anime series" and, as a massive nerd, that very much appeals to me. Persona 5, as well, I feel had some very tacit and relevant theming to it in light of our modern Internet Age and specifically our relationships with authority in this age that I really enjoyed. Persona is definitely a series I will continue to look forward to, as all the games I've experienced have had this extra level of polish that makes them exceptionally stand-out.
I don't know how SMTs past have differed from the base I'm familiar with or if this new one is legitimately different compared to older SMTs or even Persona games - uh, for SMT5, I'm still in the 1st area fighting demons, and I don't know if I'll go back to being a high school kid afterward, although the game synopsis leads me to think, no, this game no longer has a real world, unlike Persona, as the two worlds merged. Which is interesting all by itself! I decided to pick up SMT5 purely because of Atlus' renown and my personal experience with SMT's sister series, not knowing anything else about it because - what was there to know? I remember the announcement trailer showing a Captain-Falcon-like character in a run-down school, and that's it, and then after that I don't remember seeing any other trailers before it shadow-dropped on Nov 12th. I didn't see any announcements of when it was going to release, at all, until suddenly I saw that Youtube video, the day after it dropped! Where was the hype for this, this is, like, one of Atlus' biggest games, and no one said anything about it Okay… I just might be in the wrong circles.
So I literally only bought this game only knowing it's made by Atlus and connected in the loosest of ways to Persona. We'll s- we'll see if I enjoy it the same! So far, I have, it's pretty interesting. The grinding at least is very fun so far, so it's got that going for it and is a definitive plus over Persona. We'll see. I'll - I'll - I'll do an update video once I actually finish the game in, like, eight weeks.
I want to make a small mention to the Ni No Kuni series, a Bandai game series who worked in conjunction with Ghibli studios on the first game, arguably the better one. The gameplay is really good, kind of a mix of Monster Hunter and Persona and Pokémon, but in a lot more of a kid-friendly package than Monster Hunter and Persona. And the story is majestically tragic in a Ghibli way, and I cannot get into it without covering any kind of spoilers! So just - other than the fact that it’s a very isekai kind of thing, before isekai was even an anime genre. It just - it I love this game and I need people to play it more. The first game, I believe, is on the Switch and the second game, I believe, is on PS4, but I might have that reversed. Either way, please play them. The JRPG game style really fits portable consoles super well - developers out there, please bring more JRPGs to the Switch. The pick-up-and-play aspect really, REALLY lends itself REALLY well to the grinding that's required in practically all JRPGS.
Please play Ni No Kuni, please. I need more people to talk about this game series with, it's so good. It's SO Good!
So, this last section is for random JRPGs that I've played that I don't see discussed ever anywhere. Which, again, may just be me being in the wrong circles, but like, I don't see it ANYWHERE. As an example, the Disgaea franchise. "Dis guy?" "Dis guy-a"? It's spelled "gaea" like the earth goddess, so "Dis guy-a." I would consider that not mainstream, as the first time I ever heard of the series was when I was randomly searching the Switch store early in 2018 trying to find something to play that wasn't Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It's a - the game series is a really good terrain-traversing turn-based level-based RPG - and level-based meaning the gameplay takes place in levels, rather than in an open world. Like XCOM but with anime characters and without super detailed environments. I like it a lot but the grinding gets a little distracting very early in the game, at least in Disgaea 5. Another point, separate from my script, to this game being super under the radar: I was in Target the other day, and I saw Disgaea 6 on the shelf, and I had heard Absolutely NOTHING from Nintendo Directs, from anything on Twitter, NOTHING about that game's development, and there it was! This game is super underground, and yet somehow they're super popular at the same time, despite no one talking about it? What's going on? It's a - it's a really good game, though, and I cannot recommend it enough. Uh, the visuals are really good, they remind me a little bit of the Shantae: Half-Genie Hero series, of that, like, exaggerated anime style, and the music is so good, as well. God, it's really good. And the humor is spot-on for at least my brand of ridiculous millennial dadaism. So, like, go forth with this recommendation and enjoy!
Another example, a stand-alone game called I Am Setsuna, was for me a Switch game but is on multiple platforms and is a port to Switch from PS4. It's a short game but very emotional - the story follows a young girl, titular Setsuna, who is journeying to a distant land to fulfill their world's requirement that every so often a young maiden must be sacrificed in order to prevent the demons plaguing humanity from taking over the world. You know - typical anime shit. The story gets a lot more complicated than that - you know, typical anime shit - but it is a story about sadness, loss, and grief, and it's quite well-written despite the RPG "uh what just happened and why" wrenches that get thrown in, deus ex machina-style, at the end. Those kind of make everything kind of fall apart - into more sense, if that makes sense? I can’t discuss it more without getting into spoilers, but it's - it is very well-written, the emotional impacts are all there, it's such a good game. I also randomly found it, the same way as Disgaea, because, like, again, people don't talk about these games! I'm talking about them because they're good! Play them! They're not expensive! Plus, on I Am Setsuna, unlike Disgaea 5, the combat isn't very hard. I think this is the first RPG - JRPG, even, I've ever seen or heard of that actually wants you take care more about the story than anything else! This is another one where I need more people to play it so I can talk about it with more people!
And on that note, Bravely Default is another pretty good JRPG series with a unique battle system. This one I see talked about a lot because it's great and it's a spin-off of Final Fantasy, and, like, it's really good? I can't put my finger on why 'cause the story's kind of bleh, the combat system is interesting, and the music is kinda bleh, but, like, it's so much better than the sum of all those parts? Anyways, unique battle system!
It is turn-based, yes, but each character can "brave" and get more than 1 action per turn at the cost of future actions, gaining "negative" actions that recoup after each turn of inaction, or "default" and store "positive" actions to take more actions in later turns without the "brave" penalty. It's hard to describe and that's the basic - the barest way I could do it, but, like, that's such a cool concept??? Ugh, it's so cool! And the story - again, it's kind of basic, especially for a Final Fantasy spin-off, but, like, at the same time it's engrossing? The story takes place in a world that is actually upheld by the classic 4 elements - water, earth, wind, and fire, typical Final Fantasy thing - and each element gets its power from a major crystal somewhere in the world - again, Final Fantasy - that in turn gets ITS power from the prayers of specific sects of women, and specifically one Vestal from each sect who becomes the crystal's bride for her life once her magic develops enough and spends the rest of her life dedicating all of her power to her bonded crystal. That sounds fucked up, and I think it is, but like… It's an interesting world-building concept, at least. Then, one day, the main character's crystal, the wind crystal, gets consumed by darkness and suddenly all wind in the world disappears. Similar attacks occur to the other 3 crystals simultaneously, rotting the oceans, dimming the sun, and causing MASSIVE sinkholes to appear all over the world, just the earth in those areas just disappearing. Agnes, the wind Vestal, whose name, by the way, is dumb because it's spelled "Agnes" and it should be pronounced that way but it's not for whatever reason - she must work together with a farm boy who is the only survivor of a town who got eaten by one such sinkhole, the daughter of the most powerful sky samurai in the world who turns traitor against her family when she finds out they are probably helping the perpetrators of the crystal darkness grossness, and a mysterious traveling bard/rogue who doesn't remember his real name but has a journal predicting all the events that then follow the group, who flirts with anything that moves, including the underage samurai daughter, we don't like him. This is all, like, the buildup of the first hour, maybe hour and a half, of this game, and this is the first and technically there are 2 more - End Layer, which is a direct sequel to Bravely Default 1, and Bravely Default 2, for the Switch, which is entirely new. It's kind of another shortish game, at least the 2 for DS, Bravely Default and End Layer, and it's very cutesy, it's chibi-fied Final Fantasy.
It's definitely a relic from the 3DS days, and it kind of was earlier in the 3DS cycle so it - the visuals are a little dated, but it still holds up to this day as a good game, and because it's on 3DS it's cheap. It's definitely no less enjoyable than anything else in this list if you can get past how the visuals are a LITTLE bit dated by modern standards.
And finally, to wrap up my discussion of JRPGS, I would like to shout out the Tales series even though I've never played one because, goddamn, do I WANT to. They all have absolutely convoluted plots that are VERY anime, what looks like fantastic visuals and gameplay, and there's a thousand of them, like Final Fantasy. I ALMOST bought Tales of Arise earlier this year since it's the first Tales game to come out where I had the money and wherewithal to be able to buy it at launch... But I watched gameplay of the first chapter, and my main gripe and why I'm not going to play that one is how fast the first chapter progressed. JRPGs are supposed to be slow! It should not feel like I just went through a month and an entire political revolution, start to finish, in 3 hours of gameplay! That really turned me off entirely, like I get you have to explain all the stuff and, like, progress the story to the point that characters will get invested and want to keep going and see how easy it is to keep going, but…
The first chapter needed a lot more - expansion, for me at least, for it to not feel like it was rushed. And not rushed as in, like, crunch, but rushed in the same way of Final Fantasy 15's second half, where like, so many things happen but it doesn't FEEL like very many things happen, you know what I mean?
This opinion, by the way, for anyone who's listening and is a fan of Tales of Arise, is just based on chapter 1, until they beat the first lord, the fire guy, and Mask Face figures out what his real name is. If I should continue watching/play after that point, please let me know, I'm happy to change my opinion, but right now, based on JUST that collection of information, I don't really wanna play this game because it doesn't - it has problems with pacing. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, I'm probably wrong.
I WILL eventually be playing older Tales games because I have XBox GamePass and there's at least one Tales title in that library, and because they're old they're probably cheap! Eventually I'll get around to playing those and do an episode of them. Probably sooner rather than later 'cause they're super popular - maybe once I finish up my playthroughs of the Yakuza games. For anybody whose general fans of the Tales series, please give me recommendations on which ones I should ignore and which one I should REALLY put my attention into.
This episode being - ended up being a lot longer than I was anticipating, so thank y'all for coming along on this dissertation of some of my favorite games, ever, and a lot more that I really enjoyed or found notable from this popular genre of gaming. If you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and like the episode wherever you're getting your podcast content, it lets both me and the system know when I'm doing something right! Today's hashtag for Twitter is once again #VGTJRPG, all capital letters, and the links to all of my socials will be in the description, as well as links to today's opening and ending themes. Those songs are, respectively, Symbolism by Electro-Light, the NCS release, and Running by Sekai, also an NCS release. Thanks for taming the tirade today, and I hope you have a great weekend! Bye!