Thursday 27 October 2016

What Draws Me To JRPGs

Whenever I approach the end of a game, even if it's an absolutely outstanding game, I start getting excited for something new. My backlog and my wishlist are both overflowing with so many JRPGs to play next and whether it’s Atelier, old Final Fantasy, Disgaea or Tales of, as vastly different as they are, they're all apart of this genre I love. I'm a fan of all genres of video games, but JRPGs are where I feel my happiest and most at home when gaming. Whether for the quirky characters, the long hour counts or the unique worlds to explore, these are some of the reasons I'm drawn to JRPGs.

Gameplay Systems and Mechanics
JRPGs feature a variety of gameplay systems and mechanics, with well-known ones including turn-based battle systems and skill trees. A lot JRPGs are for having unique stories, but gameplay is equally important and JRPG's focus on stat progression or skill acquisition is one of the most enjoyable parts of playing JRPGs for me. I find leveling and grinding really satisfying, even more so when paired with a good skill tree to pave through or skills to reach for as I level up.

Another big reason I love JRPG mechanics are the variety of them. I can go from playing an active battle system in Final Fantasy XII to a turn-based one in Final Fantasy X. I can play tactical battle systems like the one in Fire Emblem or an action ones like in Kingdom Hearts. There are a bunch of genres blended together in JRPGs and while there are definitely some common elements, the combination of these makes each game feel unique. Blending in different genres such as the visual novel aspect of Lost Dimension, the social sim part of Persona 4 Golden or the roguelike dungeon crawling in Sorcery Saga, it’s this kind of variety that makes playing JRPGs fresh and exciting to me.

Collectibles
Whether it's real life toys or in-game items, I love collecting things that interest me and JRPGs really cater to this. Most JRPGs feature plenty of items, weapons, monsters and even dialogues to collect and unlock through difficult but rewarding side and main quests. In my current platinum trophy playthrough of Final Fantasy X HD (that I'm really neglecting by the way), the hardest part so far has been trying to get the Ultimate Weapons, especially with tasks including dodging 100 lightning bolts and playing way too much Blitzball to wait for a rare item to pop. It might sound tedious, but knowing my characters will have the best weapons in the game and I will have gotten some extremely rare items through my own hard work and dedication is enough to keep me pushing forward in the hunt. This is what makes me what to replay so many JRPGs - I want to unlock all of the Dive scenes in Ar nosurge or try to get all the Digimon in Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth one day, along with all the other various JRPG challenges that stick in the back of my mind. Whether you're a collector or a completionist at heart, JRPGs are an incredibly fun way to indulge in these tendencies.

Game Length
While I assume most people reading this blog already love JRPGs, a point I usually raise to non-JRPG fans who wonder why I’m so into these seemingly strange Japanese games is that I enjoy the length and value of putting 100 hours into one experience rather than putting 20 hours into many smaller experiences. My reason for playing JRPGs isn’t solely because I feel like I’m getting better bang for my buck out of them than other games, but I like really throwing myself into activities and 50+ hour JRPGs are a great way to do this. Some of my absolute favourite JRPG experiences have been games I’ve spent hundreds of hours in, like Kingdom Hearts and Persona 4 Golden, and their long length only added to my investment in the story and my enjoyment of their systems. For some people the length of JRPGs is daunting, but for me it’s one of the most rewarding parts of playing JRPGs.

Story
When choosing a JRPG to play, I'm usually first attracted by the story premise more than gameplay. While gameplay is no doubt important in a video game, the stories of JRPGs are usually one-of-a-kind. I think there’s no other genre of games where I can say I’ve played stories about medieval fantasy, high school students fighting monsters inside someone's heart, a great curry God, being a CPU or making star children in order to stop the spread of monsters. I’ve also had plenty of emotional moments with JRPGs where I’ve laughed or cried, since many JRPGs aren’t afraid to explore really heavy subjects all while mixing in humourous quirks such as talking bears, sometimes crude humour or awkwardness. When a JRPG story gets it right, playing for hundreds of hours flies and I leave the experience feeling like I learned or experienced something new.

There are many reasons to love every game genre, but JRPG's great gameplay, stories and fun collectables are the reason I play them for longer than I probably should without any shame. I love feeling like I’m progressing through an interesting world with complex characters and while you can find that in many genres, paired with JRPG gameplay, story length and scavenging, it definitely feels like the right kind of game for me. Whether it be for fun, an escape or a good story, I'm sure that with these things that appeal to me, JRPGs will continue to be a prominent part in my gaming life for a long time.

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Why do you play JRPGs? What was the first game that made you love the genre?
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Thursday 20 October 2016

Review: Lost Dimension (Reviewed on PS Vita, also on PS3)

Lost Dimension combines a lot of things I love: JRPGs with tactical elements, visual novels and finding a suspect from a group of likable characters. In fact, on the surface it draws a large influence from a few of my favourite series, such as the Trials from Danganronpa or the Materia concept from Final Fantasy, which initially gave me some concerns about how original Lost Dimension would be. But after playing Lost Dimension, I found the combination of these elements plus its own mechanics and its story of traitors make Lost Dimension a unique tactical 30 hour experience that remained enjoyable throughout my time with it, even with some imperfections.
As someone who likes stories that make me feel like I need to constantly look over my shoulder, Lost Dimension is right up my alley. Lost Dimension mixes suspicion into the usual ‘save the world’ JRPG plot. The world is being targeted by a man called The End (no really, that’s his name), who gives the world an ultimatum: defeat him at the top of a giant pillar within a limited number of days or else he’ll destroy the world. Lost Dimension’s characters are all members of S.E.A.L.E.D., a secret government group formed to stop The End’s terrorist attacks that all boast special supernatural gifts, such as Teleportation or Superhuman strength, that give them an edge in battle. The group are briefly separated at the start of their mission with no memory of how, meaning they forget an important fact: there are a small group of traitors among them acting as friends to covertly affect their mission. To top things off, The End forces them to try find the traitors as they progress through the pillar’s floors and kill off a suspect on each floor if they want to complete through the tower Each of these story aspects may seem familiar to players of JRPGs or Japanese games, but I've never seen a combination of all of these story elements in one game like this, giving the story a unique feel.

Keeping traitors in your team can be damaging in the long run, so it’s important to try find the traitors as they cycle through each floor/chapter, despite how sad it is to kill your new comrades. After completing missions, the protagonist’s Premonition gift kicks in, letting you hear the other party members inner thoughts to pick out the traitor. It's not that difficult to find suspects, as multiple voices will be distorted and they are supposed to be that floor’s traitor but I like how it added other innocent character's distorted voices to try mislead me. Finding the traitor is all well and good, but Lost Dimension’s Camaraderie System adds emotions into the mix, allowing you to befriend your teammates as you progress through the story in a visual novel style. Since the main story cycles through vague and sometimes flat-sounding lines in order to tell the story no matter who the traitor is in the part, Lost Dimension’s character depth and best story moments lie hidden in this optional Camaraderie portion. The characters are all struggling with something, including loss, morals and even dreams of being an Idol, that all explore the negative sides of their supernatural gifts and with characters that don't follow the usual JRPG tropes, I was able to feel a connection to the characters easily.
Camaraderie was one of my favourite parts of Lost Dimension as it made me feel way more invested in the story than the vague main story did and the complexity of the characters really lifted the main story. This made it hard to weed out the traitor at times, as in my playthrough two of my favourite characters ended up being killed as suspects and it really added a harshness to the trial system. My only concern is that this part of Lost Dimension may get looked over or rushed by players because of its optional nature. Lost Dimension's strength lies in investing you in characters and then taking them away from you, but that may be lost on people who only briefly explore it in preference of battling and racing through the story.

To unlock new conversations with comrades and see Lost Dimension’s main story, it’s essential to complete Lost Dimension's tactical quests to progress through the tower. The tactical battle system in Lost Dimension is easily understandable to those who have played JRPGs or tactical games, but mixes in a few new mechanics of its own to keep things interesting. Character gifts act like classes and dictate the abilities and stats of a character, including their movement and physical strength. I found most characters could be divided into close range tanks, long ranged attackers, support or long distance movers, so as long as I brought a party with a combination of these I was ready to take on most quest's tactical challenge. Enemies are all quite similar and aren't very noteworthy as they all look similar, but with high stats they can overwhelm a party with sheer numbers, which is the real challenge in Lost Dimension's quests. Mixed in with the usual JRPG mechanics is Defer, a unique yet simple mechanic where a turn could be essentially transferred to another character, allowing them to attack again. It's a simple idea but ended up being one of my favourite mechanics of Lost Dimension because of the edge it gave in battle by giving more access to the skill I needed. With a party of six, Defer allowed me to do things such as only use characters with long-range abilities against crazy tank enemies or to teleport and fly long distances from enemies that kept spreading more enemies, and was an interesting new way to think in a tactical RPG.
While the battle system of Lost Dimension is pretty fun, I had a few awkward moments with it due to some camera issues while playing the Vita version. Between turns, the camera that was supposed to show me the enemy’s actions occasionally showed me walls while following out-of-sight enemies. I know it's not a huge problem, but it happened enough times for me to wonder how it still remained in the game and ruined the purpose of showing me the enemies actions at points, making it a small waste of time. Another thing that kept me from being totally immersed in Lost Dimension’s world was its story dialogue. While the story itself is interesting, it tends to be a little vague in order to keep the continuity. Since traitors are randomised every time you start a new game in Lost Dimension, the dialogue avoids a lot of direct communication with characters. It’s a sacrifice made to keep the replayability interesting in Lost Dimension and to keep its unique concept, but it’s a clear difference from similar games like Danganronpa where the intercharacter relationships are a huge part of the main story. Luckily, the Camaraderie portion of Lost Dimension makes up for this in many ways, but as someone who loves getting invested into a good plot, the main story wasn’t really skilled at doing that.
With the story-telling method supporting Lost Dimension’s replayability, there is appropriately a New Game Plus system in place so you can find a new traitor without losing your progress from your first playthrough. My playthrough of Lost Dimension lasted a decent 30 hours but I didn’t get the true ending, so I may revisit Lost Dimension in future. In the New Game Plus mode, your Ability points carry over, allowing you to essentially keep your abilities and focus on meeting the criteria for the True Ending. Since I enjoyed the Camaraderie part of Lost Dimension, I’d like to go through and max out my bonds with people who I wanted to get to know more before they sadly betrayed me.
Lost Dimension may use a few ideas from other games, but its traitor concept and battle system make it an original experience. I had multiple moments of sadness when my favourite characters betrayed me thanks to the engaging Camaraderie system, even if the actual main story didn’t give me the same emotional connection. As my first 3D tactical JRPG experience, I enjoyed Lost Dimension’s use of range attacks and the interesting Defer system that allowed me to take advantage of the character’s gifts. It’s not a perfect combination of randomised story aspects, traitors and JRPG elements, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable. Lost Dimension is a great idea and worth exploring if you're also a fan of these elements.

Score 7.6/10
A unique and fun game of traitors and tactics, albeit with imperfections. I’d love to see a sequel that improves on this idea, but for now, I have to consider replaying it to max out all my bonds!


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Have you tried Lost Dimension? What did you think of it?
Leave a comment below, send me a tweet at @JRPGJungle, hit me up Facebook or Instagram and let's talk!

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Thursday 13 October 2016

The Reality of Playing Persona 5 In Japanese When You're Not Fluent

It's not an easy time to be a spoiler-sensitive Persona fan. If you're wanting to go into Persona 5 in February with a clear head, there are hashtags, wikis and preview videos to actively avoid (seriously, avoid the wikis!). My initial plan was to be part of the spoiler-free crowd, but when Final Fantasy XV was delayed I decided to give into my Persona 5 impatience and bear the spoilers in order to fill my September gaming void and play a great game. But as someone only studying Japanese rather than fluent in the language, I was quickly reminded that Persona isn't a light JRPG. I found Persona 5’s story getting hazier as I spent my time focusing on merely getting through Persona 5 rather than fully and easily experiencing it like I normally would in English. At its core, buying Persona 5 before release may seem like a good idea, but if you’re like me and love Persona’s story, getting it in Japanese when you’re not fluent won’t give you the same experience the English release.

It's not a complete uphill battle to play Persona 5 in Japanese though. If you've played a Persona game or two, you can probably work how to play Persona 5 at the very least. Same as the other main series Persona games, gameplay is similar enough between each edition that it’s pretty easy to work out how to play one Persona game if you’ve played another. It’s the same with Persona 5, with the added bonus of it being polite enough to put some of the basic battle controls and main menu interface in English. For dialogue heavy moments, because Persona 5 is such a visual improvement on pre-current gen Persona games, it’s easier to get context from the visuals making Persona 5 a bit easier for international players. If missing plot intricacies doesn’t bother you, mechanical knowledge of Persona and some button mashing through new mechanics is most likely enough to at least get to the end of Persona 5. This is how I played through the first dungeon of Persona 5 and despite wanting to understand more of the story, I was able to have a lot of fun with the battle mechanics and understand just enough of the story for it to be interesting. Dungeons were probably the most stress free part of my dictionary-free run because of the battles and animated cutscenes, so if you’re importing this aspect won’t be too much of a problem and they're a good way to have fun with Persona 5.

My Japanese is....(see above)
If Persona 5 was all dungeon crawler and no dialogue, it wouldn't pose as much of a problem to the non-Japanese speaking player. However a lot of Persona’s core is narrative, with some of the series best and most unique mechanics including Social Links and the new Demon Negotiation using dialogue as an important game mechanic. A lot can be gathered from visual cues, however with Persona’s characters always having well-rounded personalities and long dialogue scenes, it’s easy to miss important plot intricacies with little or no Japanese knowledge. With my lower level Japanese, I could gather a few of these intricacies but I did find when speaking to my boyfriend (who is much better at Japanese), there were still a lot of things I missed. I didn’t fully understand just how evil the antagonists were because of what I missed in the dialogue and there were developments I really wish I had been able to understand for myself. It’s to be expected since I'm not fluent in Japanese, but Persona is so largely story-based that I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing really important things. Social links are another beast, as I found myself matching words or kanji I knew in dialogue choices when I don’t understand what’s going on, with mixed success. By the beginning of Persona 5’s second dungeon, I found myself pretty nervous as I always wondered if I was missing something important I'd been told to do that was vital to the next boss and if I’d be sent to game over town because I hadn't been able to understand what to do.


There is hope though. For the patient and for those with an interest in learning Japanese, my trusty picture translator and dictionary method requires me be much more patient, but works in Persona 5. In my new save file, I’ve been able to look things up to my heart’s content and actually understand what's going on, which makes me feel way happier when I play. It is, however, taking a lot longer; I’m not at the first save point yet and it’s probably been 4 hours in my new save file. But feeling like I know what’s going on is important to me, which is what drove me to write this article. Some people won’t mind getting a glimpse at Persona 5 without understanding everything, but if you love the details of Persona’s stories, actually waiting may not be a bad idea for a game like Persona. If you want to understand how truly evil some of the characters are, you may not get that from a bunch of words you can’t read and some maniac laughter as much as you think, which is what I found in my first save file. I completely understand the impatience of waiting for such an anticipated and consistently great series, but as I said in my previous article about playing Persona 5 before release, localisations exist because of how much dialogue there is to translate and Persona 5 probably has more than ever.


Playing Persona 5 pre-dictionary was like looking at it through a glass door: I could see the coolness of Persona 5 - the gorgeous visuals, the improved battle system - but I was missing a lot of details and those details are what makes a Persona narrative so hard-hitting. I'm going to keep playing Persona 5, but I may abandon my dictionary-free save and take my time learning new words and understanding the story. I can’t promise that playing Persona 5 will be cool for people who don’t speak Japanese and for those who speak it on a lower level like mine as there will be nuances missed out on unless you approach it with patience. But I also understand for a lot of people, merely playing Persona 5 is what they want and they can live without knowing every detail and I kind of envy that in some ways. No matter when or how you play Persona 5, I encourage everyone as its load screen regularly reminds me to ‘Take Your Time’ and enjoy the intricate world that is Persona 5 in the way you can have the most fun possible.

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Do you play games in Japanese before they're localised? What's your best/worst import game experience?
Leave a comment below, send me a tweet at @JRPGJungle, hit me up Facebook or Instagram and let's talk!

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Make sure to follow the blog here, follow @JRPGJungle on Twitter and Instagram and like JRPG Jungle on Facebook for updates on content and random musings on JRPG news and games. You're awesome! <3

Thursday 6 October 2016

JRPG Appreciation Post: Lost Dimension's Defer Mechanic

If you've ever had a completely overpowered party member in a JRPG, you'll probably know what it's like to wait each turn for your strongest character’s turn in order to cause some havoc on the battlefield. This is also evident when an enemy has a weakness and only one character has the right attack - suddenly the only character that matters is the one with that attack and the other party members become unimportant compared to the one related to my actual strategy. Lost Dimension’s Defer mechanic plays with this idea, essentially allowing party members to give each other their turns if they don't need them. This considerably changed how I thought about my battle strategies in Lost Dimension and gave me a new perspective on turns in tactical battles and how having access to the right skills at the right time can truly be the ultimate battle tactic.

The Defer system in Lost Dimension pretty simple in practice, but makes a pretty significant difference to strategising in battle. By giving up attacking that turn, the Defer option allows one party member that’s near another party member to attack again. It only works on party members who have previously attacked, but the character movement and skill change is more than enough to give an edge in battle. Defer can be useful when another character has a more suitable attack or ability, when a nearby character is closer to an enemy or when activating special abilities that require another character's Materia. For example, if there’s a nearby item or enemy that is only reachable by passing over a gap, deferring to Agito who can teleport or Nagisa who can fly would be a great move. If you're in a pinch, deferring multiple times to Sojiro who is essentially the healer could get your party back to full health as well, saving you from a retry. While using Defer ends the using character’s turn, it allows for a better quality turn if used correctly and even allows the character to move a little, making the next turn better.

Defer gave me some of my favourite gameplay moments in Lost Dimension because of all the options it gives. In most JRPGs, you're usually limited by each character's skill set but Defer allows you to break out of that by having near unlimited access to all skills. Being a tactical JRPG, this allows for more focus on character placement in the 3D field, which considering Lost Dimension's areas take advantage of platforms and gaps can be a challenge in itself. Although I'm still fairly new to the world of tactical JRPGs, but this mechanic alone made Lost Dimension a really unique experience and I enjoyed playing with this new mechanic quite a lot.

Defer added a really different line of thinking to the way I usually play JRPGs, especially tactical ones. It makes me wonder how it would fare in other tactical RPGs such as Fire Emblem where I had a few instances where I was just shy of defeating the boss with one character. I think the reason why Defer works so well in Lost Dimension is because the enemies either provide pressure in numbers or in crazy brute strength rather than weaknesses, so finding the correct skill to take them down is essential. It’s a tactic that makes Lost Dimension stand out to me as more than just another tactical RPG and is a unique JRPG mechanic that is simple, yet rewarding.

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What's your favourite part of Lost Dimension? Do you have a favourite tactical JRPG mechanic?
Leave a comment below, send me a tweet at @JRPGJungle, hit me up Facebook or Instagram and let's talk!

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Pictures note: Photos are taken from Play-Asia's Lost Dimension page