Might be time to buy a switch 2

us JRPG fans ate like crazy these past few weeks

All 3 Urban Legend JRPGs were shown or announced in the span of 2 weeks.

Dragon Quest 12
Persona 6
Kingdom Hearts IV

some unofficial fan art for 2nd anniv of SMT V. This game was so good man. I need a SMT VI

Scooped up the DQ3 HD2D remaster last night and it’s been pretty good. Only a few hours in but I am enjoying it. Game looks gorgeous too.

speaking of HD-2D, are you copping Adventures of Elliott? the demo really won me over and I might go digital for it since barely any physicals shipped out near me

I was, but didn't realize it's more of a Zelda game rather than a JRPG/action RPG (or whatever you want to call it). I'll have to download the demo (again lol) and actually give it a shot. Seems like it'll be a good game though. You planning on playing when it comes out?

I'd like to but I also have Saros (and FF7 Rebirth) in the backlog so idk if it'd be wise lol I dropped Mina the Hollower tho

I'm probably going to do the same. I know if I buy it alongside replaying Rebirth on PC and the DQ 1 & 2 HD2D remasters, I know I'm just not going to play it at all At least it'll give us time for an inevitable discount in the near future lol.

I still gotta finish the Raidou remaster that came out last year. Only got a few hours into that

Any reason why you dropped Mina the Hollower? It does look good and I've only heard good things, but I also kinda know I won't finish it if I were to play.

a few small things that together led to a less than fun experience: enemies having active hitboxes when they "jump" if you are behind/above them (limiting how you can evade outside of burrowing), diagonal/unrestrained movement & attack patterns from enemies when Mina is locked to cardinal actions, the wind up time (both animation and runway distance needed) for the burrow mechanic, and the difficulty of the platform segments revolving the burrowing mechanic even early game.

I might have just gone the wrong direction and entered a later area out the gate but that's the experience they designed to happen

Finished DQ3 and DQ1 HD2D games. Got through em pretty quick. Would prob give them both a 7/10. Enjoyed quite a bit of 3, but about halfway through, I lost a lot of interest due to the "difficulty" spikes, but the last 10% of the (very small amount) story tied it together nicely and ended on a high note. Kinda the same for 1; it even has a more barebones story, but found myself enjoying it more consistently throughout.

Honestly, just don't think I'm the biggest fan of the combat in general. The enemy "group" mechanic is pretty ass to me. I don't mind grinding in games (if anything, I kinda enjoy turning my brain off), but didn't find the combat fun enough to grind to even want to deal with the pretty large difficulty spikes.

I did start up 2, but not sure if I'm going to hop into it immediately. I have heard the updates to 2 in particular are VERY good, but we'll see how it goes whenever I get to it lol.

Still good games though. Happy I decided to play these just for the sake of actually playing them. Would not pay full price for them though.

Anybody messed with the Ivalice Chronicles new updates?

Smt2 might be the greatest mainline entry

copped Chained Echoes a couple days ago which finally dropped via a non scammy seller

superraregames.com/collections/chained-echoes

About to tap out on DQ2. Feel like I’ve played the same game three times in a row now

It’s the only numbered mainline I haven’t played. I really should get around to it

Picked up the Suikoden remaster last august and now finally getting around to making some progress on it. S***s getting good.

Normally wouldn't touch a game with pixel sprites but nostalgia from watching my older cousins play this as a kid and all the good things I hear made me wanna check it out. It's been pretty fun so far

If you liked smt1 youll love 2 bro like a lot more than 1 it clears it

I’m just about finished with the game and good lord man, I’m so ready to be done. Game is fine and all (if anything, it’s the best of the 3 games), but this s*** is not fun to me

Granblue Relink DLC out today

Fingers crossed for a new turbo banger from Stella Magna/Narita

gotta wrap up Adventures of Elliot before I cop

How're you liking it? One of my friends was not a huge fan but said the ending was nice. If I do play, just going to wait for a big sale.

Need that studio to make Octopath 0-2

If you like old school zeldas, you'll have fun with it. It's repetitive though with not a whole lot of variances in the landscape and enemies between the eras you travel to. Fae isnt as annoying once you dial her chattiness down so there's a positive. Also, you can customize your weapons a bit with the magicite system, which is nice lol I like it overall and would welcome a sequel

just wrapped up xenoblade chronicles definitive edition on switch 2 gonna copy and paste my review from backloggd

I really, really, enjoyed this, until the final chapter. The pacing falls off a cliff in its final moments and becomes a total slog to get through. Fake fight after fake fight into cutscene after cutscene. It's very unfortunate because everything in the story was finally coming together and it gets totally interrupted by all the stop and go sequences. I ended up switching to casual mode just to get through the fights because I had become invested enough in the story that the conclusion mattered to me more than trying to grind out a few more levels just to be the proper level for the final fights.

I finally decided to jump into this when the Switch 2 upgrades were announced and the story was surprisingly engaging. I knew nothing about it before starting, just had a vague interest and it surpassed all my expectations. Once the puzzle pieces start getting put together it's awesome moment after awesome moment. Learning about the history of the world becomes increasingly satisfying and despite the poor pacing at the end I think all in all it comes together extremely well.

I sorta ended up with a love/hate relationship with the characters. I loved their collective presence (except Riki) and their camaraderie, but I didn't enjoy the actual writing of the characters all that much. The writing always felt either way too stiff and robotic or overly cheesy and juvenile and because of that only a few of the emotional moments connected with me, the rest all fell flat.

The scale and visuals of the environments are incredibly impressive. I took so many screenshots overlooking unbelievable backgrounds and vistas. Unfortunately I found exploring the environments to be pretty boring a repetitive by the mid game. Side quest design is very poor, they're almost all some version of a fetch or delivery quest or kill x numbers of monsters. At least the music is phenomenal. There is always something either beautiful, exciting, hype, atmospheric or touching playing.

I don't play MMO's but I know everyone compares this series' combat to MMO's, so I was unsure how I was going to feel about it but I ended up falling in love with it. It basically ended up feeling like a strategy game where I was managing cooldowns, status effects and positioning. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up clearing out pretty much every dungeon because the combat felt so satisfying once I found my groove. I did find the party system to be a bit limiting though. I felt like I had to have a bruiser/tank and healer at all times or else the party would get demolished quick. That meant I ran with Shulk, Dunban and Sharla for the majority of the game. Maybe I was building the other characters wrong but whenever I tried to experiment and switch someone in, combat felt significantly more punishing and not very fun.

The other games are definitely on my list to play at some point but I think once I finish the dlc I'll just wait for Genesis next year.

4/5