In all the ways that really matter, Persona 3 Reload on the Nintendo Switch 2 is exactly the same as Persona 3 Reload on other platforms. By that I mean it offers the same narrative (with Reload itself not really touching the narrative of the original game). Ultimately, if you’re…
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I’ll admit that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of mecha games. I appreciate their appeal, but spending hours tinkering around with mech builds simply isn’t something I’m overly fond of – I’ve never been a min-max statistician when it comes to my beloved JRPGs either. So I missed the…
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Let’s get this out of the way up front: Varlet very badly wants to be Persona. It’s a game about dungeons that form out of people’s wayward “desires”, and those desires just happen to offer an opportunity for personal reflection while casting a broader analysis on society. It’s not a…
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Mado Monogatari is the JPRG property that gave the world the Puyos – the cute little blobs that form the basis of the Puyo Puyo series. We don’t get many of the Mado Monogatari titles out west, though (as far as I know the only one is actually Sorcery Saga…
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Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army was originally released before Persona 3. That was a very different time for Atlus as a company and this entire property. Before Persona 4 and, particularly Persona 5, took the broader Shin Megami Tensei name to the mainstream, SMT were these dark…
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It’s incredible to think that Bravely Default: Flying Fairy is 13 years old at this point. It feels like it was just yesterday that it was turning heads as a new spin on the JRPG genre and a brilliant homage to Final Fantasy in particular (Flying Fairy as the subtitle…
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It’s been a difficult few years for Level-5, from the highs of the likes of Professor Layton, Ni No Kuni and Yo-Kai Watch a decade ago to the lows of… well, everything that it’s done with those properties in recent years. Level-5 just hasn’t been the same company since the…
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Once upon a time, Rune Factory was a simple matter of asking “What if Harvest Moon had some combat bits?” That was perfectly adequate in its own right, because it did add a fun way to take a break from farming and small-town socialising and to flex some muscle, but…
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Like its predecessors, Death end re;Quest: Code Z looks like it should be a pretty standard Idea Factory JRPG. You’ve got cute anime girls, most of them with very large assets, and magical girl-style transformation screens that make full use of those assets for maximum impact. Then you have long…
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One of my first observations about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, was that it was very, very French. Having no idea about the developer prior to playing it, I immediately said to myself, “This is a French game.” Then I saw all the jokes about it being a “J’RPG” and realised…
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