Category: JRPGs

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Amazing VGM: Smiles & Tears (EarthBound)

EarthBound | ending credits

Another years has come to a close, and It is time for me to end this year the same way as I usually do, with a highly emotional ending theme from one of my favorite games of all time. EarthBound holds a near and dear place in my heart, and I can’t help but become super emotional whenever I listen to its music or play it. Hell just speaking about it now makes me want to replay it.

And it is also quite appropriate since 2020 was a highly emotional year. It’s been kind of a meme about how much this year has sucked, but it did end on a positive note with Trump losing re-election. And yes, that doesn’t mean all of our problems are gone, but after four years of this asshole, it’s a relief to see him go the fuck away. And maybe things will start to get at least a little bit better.

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Detailed Reviews Eroge Game Reviews Gaming Jast USA JRPGs PC Gaming Retro

Lightning Warrior Raidy (PC/FMTowns/PC-98): A Surprisingly Solid Dungeon Crawler (Detailed Review) (NSFW)

Lightning Warrior Raidy | Box Art

Lightning Warrior Raidy is a hentai dungeon crawler that was originally released back in 1994, and was stored on five floppy disks. As this site’s arch nemesis HCBailly would say, this was high tech stuff back in the day. If this game’s Jast USA store page is correct, this is also the first “all-female yuri fantasy dungeon crawler RPG.” I don’t know why they say that though, since there are not only male characters in this game, but there are sex scenes involving men. From what I could gather, Lightning Warrior Raidy is considered a yuri title because of the amount of lesbian sexual content, and I guess back in the 90s that is something that is noteworthy.

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Detailed Reviews Eroge Game Reviews Gaming JRPGs PC Gaming Retro Reviews Visual Novels

Rance 5D: The Lonely Girl (PC): Amusingly Problematic (Detailed Review) (NSFW)

Rance 5D: The Lonely Girl | Box Art

CW: References to rape and slavery as plot devices.

Sometimes, the games I review make me answer some unexpected questions. Given that my reviews of eroge always end up among the most viewed of my work, I knew I would be taking a look at this series eventually, and I always knew that I would have some difficulties with it. In this case, I don’t mean “difficulty” as in it being hard to play, but more so hard for me to review.

I’m sure that most of you are well aware that I’m a feminist, and that my feminist views have largely impacted how I perceive the world around me. If I’m being honest, I’m usually hesitant to bring it up with most normies because they either know next to nothing about it and thus don’t grasp the significance, or they are one of the many who have been groomed by right wingers to believe that feminism amounts to what they see on Buzzfeed or Youtube cringe compilations.

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Detailed Reviews Game Reviews Gameboy Advance Gaming JRPGs Mother/Earthbound Nintendo Systems Retro Reviews Wii U

MOTHER 3 (GBA): A Genuine Classic (Detailed Review)

MOTHER 3 | Chapter 6

I really should have played this game a lot sooner than I did. I’ve commonly listed EarthBound as one of, if not my favorite games of all time. It’s hard to believe that my review of EarthBound was only the 2nd review I ever wrote, and yet I did not get around to even playing the equally amazing sequel until 7 years later.

To be honest, I may have just played MOTHER 3 for the first time fairly recently, but I have seen a lets play of it before. Hell I was actually introduced to this series through the lets plays of Chuggaaconroy and NintendoCapriSun, which I just realized were posted over a decade ago. Hell now that I think about it, I think I first saw those LPs almost a decade ago.

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Detailed Reviews Game Reviews Gaming Mario Mario RPG Retro Reviews SNES Wii Wii U

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES): Shoots for the Moon, Lands Among the Stars (Detailed Review)

BSuper Mario RPG | Bowyer

Super Mario RPG is a game that, when it was originally released, likely met with a lot of skepticism. Squaresoft’s RPGs are generally known as their huge sweeping tales that were not like anything that most gamers have seen at the time. Mario games, on the other hand, generally had no story beyond the typical excuse plot involving rescuing the princess. I can imagine the surprise when the two ended up going together like peanut butter and chocolate.

Since then, there have been two sub series that have been considered spiritual successors to Super Mario RPG; those being the Paper Mario series, and the Mario & Luigi series. Super Mario RPG was also one of the last games released for the Super Nintendo in 1996 and was the last game Squaresoft developed for a Nintendo system until Final Fantasy Tactics Advance in 2003. Super Mario RPG was the source of many technical achievements and innovations for the time of its release, but the real question is if it is as impressive today as it was in 1996.

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3DS Detailed Reviews Dragon Quest Game Reviews Gameboy Color Gaming JRPGs NES Playstation 4 Retro Reviews SNES Switch Wii

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation (NES/SNES/GBC/Ios/3DS/PS4/Switch): A JRPG Legend (Detailed Review)

Dragon Quest III | Box art

A lot of us who live outside of Japan don’t realize just how important the Dragon Quest series is to gaming. So many of us are bound to have at least one JRPG among our favorites of all time, yet ultimately aren’t familiar with the series that put this genre on the map. I’ve often thought of what it must be like to discuss the differences in gaming culture with a gamer from Japan, about the differences in popularity and what games that we never got in our respective countries.

Dragon Quest III is to the Dragon Quest series what Final Fantasy VII is to the Final Fantasy series. It’s the one that damn near every thinks of when they hear the name of the series. I finally got the chance to play through Dragon Quest III for myself a few months ago through its Switch port, and even thirty years after its release, it still kicks some serious ass!

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3DS Detailed Reviews Game Reviews Gaming JRPGs Nintendo Systems Retro Throwback Reviews

Bravely Default (3DS): Many Will Play, Few Will Finish (Detailed Review)

Bravely Default | battle

Ever since I knew of Bravely Default’s existence, I was hyped up for it. Just about everything I saw was a sign that pointed to this being an amazing game. First of all, it being a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light was a good sign seeing as how I found that to be one of the more underrated games in the Final Fantasy series. 4 Heroes of Light was a game I greatly enjoyed just due to how it managed to easily capture the feelings of Final Fantasy I-III while improving on their mechanics and presentation. Many have criticized it for being unpolished or overly difficult, but that was not correct. The game, despite not being easy in any sense, was well balanced enough due to how much more accessible and convenient the game’s job system was than previous games like Final Fantasy V. Yet what was probably the most memorable aspect of 4 Heroes of Light was its simplicity.

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Amazing VGM: Sealed Door (Chrono Trigger)

Chrono Trigger | Sleeps beyond the flow of time

So we all agree Chrono Trigger is amazing, and we all agree that it’s music is also amazing. I have considered replaying it for review purposes, but something something backlog too big blah blah blah you heard it all before. So I did the next best thing and watched Chuggaaconroy’s lets play of it. I remember a time when the most subscribed lets player on Youtube actually made videos for the fun of it as opposed to making them to cash in on fads. Yes I know he only covered this game last year, but we are talking about a game about time travel so… okay fuck it, I was just feeling nostalgic… and spiteful.

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Amazing VGM Gameboy Advance Gaming JRPGs Mother/Earthbound Music SNES Wii U

Amazing VGM: The Eight Melodies (EarthBound Beginnings)

EarthBound Beginnings | Melody

Oh what’s this? Annie has remembered that her Amazing VGM series exists after not posting one since May? Yeah, this series has been put on the back burner for quite some time. Really this blog, in general, was more of a side thing since I have been so heavily focused on political activism as of late, and thus when I found time to write gaming content, it was for my standard reviews. Of course I still need to finish a few of those and I don’t know how soon I’ll get back to doing these, but I have thought back to my Amazing VGM piece on NieR Automata’s “Weight of the World. ”

I just re-read that piece and I forgot how touching it was. Generally my Amazing VGM pieces are short and and quick, but I basically used this piece to speak to both the current state of the world and my own personal life. The same went for my piece on “Reunited ” from Undertale, and I wrote that one before I even had this blog. Considering how emotional this year has been for me, it is only right that I continue this tradition, and to make it even more poetic, I will re-write the last pre Guardian Acorn VGM piece that I needed to revise, Earthbound Beginning’s “The Eight Melodies.” For the purposes of this piece, I will be sticking to official arrangements.

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Detailed Reviews Game Reviews Gaming Indie JRPGs PC Gaming Playstation 4 Playstation Vita Retro Throwback Reviews Steam Switch Xbox One

Cosmic Star Heroine (PC/PS4/Vita/XONE/Switch): Mission Accomplished (Detailed Review)

Cosmic Star Heroine | Silver Dragon

Without a doubt, my favorite game genre has to be the JRPG. Games of this genre tend to have just the right balance between familiar and new. They are wide and expansive yet they aren’t overblown wannabe Hollywood movies like most AAA games are… for the most part.

One who has followed this blog for a while is likely familiar with my love of JRPGs, and likely knows that I took way too long to get around to reviewing this heavily JRPG influenced game. This game was requested as a review by Ryumaou Juno, a former patron of mine and still an occasional reader as far as I know. My apologies for taking so long to get to this one, my unreliability with getting requested reviews out quickly is precisely why I added much more stricter criteria for them. But hey, my incessant procrastination meant that I could have this the 150th game review to be put up on this site… unfortunately I didn’t because I had to put my Eryi’s Action review up.

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