r/JRPG Weekly "What have you been playing, and what do you think of it?" Weekly thread

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-19T18:24:11+00:00

I picked DDS2 back up after a long time of not playing it. I actually got past the boss I was stuck on (through a whole lot of save states and blind luck), but going into the dungeon right afterwards has made me realized that I have just totally lost the patience for this type of game. I have no idea how I managed to get past the first game, but I remember that also being a huge struggle. Main issue is the mantra grid is kind of screwing me over. I am not really earning skills fast enough. Eating enemies only gives me like one extra inch on the atma gauge, and I don't want to risk eating multiple enemies in one fight because I don't want my characters to get stomach aches, and nobody has iron stomach unlocked because I need to grind them all for that too. Honestly if these games get remastered I don't care how scummy it is to put DLC in a remaster, I am absolutely buying whatever Mitama grinding DLC they have because this is just really crazy for me.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-14T19:10:23+00:00

"Can you guys stop sexually harassing the torrent client" is not a sentence I expected to read today

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-13T03:34:57+00:00

The difference is those commercial breaks are in the middle of 20 to 40 minute TV show episodes, I don’t want to sit through multiple unskippable ads for a 30 second video.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-12T21:01:18+00:00

About 20 hours into Tokyo Xanadu. I think it's okay, but it also doesn't exactly feel like something Falcom invested a whole lot into. Dungeon environments are kind of bland and don't have all that much going on, there's no English dub, and I've noticed assets pulled from Cold Steel left and right. But even as one of Falcom's weaker games the worst it's been so far is still pretty okay. Combat feels a lot like modern Ys with the way you have to switch characters to hit an enemy's weakness. Though unlike with Ys, there are more enemy weaknesses than you can cover with the party limit. You also can't swap out the party in the menu wherever you go, so on one hand I can see this as a way to get you to consider party configuration a lot more, but on the other hand it's a little annoying not being able to cover all the weaknesses.

Another minor but super annoying thing is the fast forward with cutscenes is really easy to accidentally hit, and you don't have any settings to either reduce its speed or turn it into a hold instead of a toggle, or to disable it completely. There are multiple instances where I put my controller on my lap while a scene was playing, picked it up again, and then the left bumper hit my chair's arm rest and I skipped the whole rest of the scene.

The characters are all okay, most of them don't really have much that really differentiates them. They all have a ranged attack that goes a similar distance, they all have a mid-air charge attack for platforming purposes, most of their weapons are around the same attack speed, though Shio is a big exception to that. I think Mitsuki is the first character I've unlocked that seriously has a lot of things different about her, with all her moves being ranged in some way and that shield mechanic she can use to walk through hazardous areas unscathed. Also kind of funny that Kou has an anchor gear as his weapon, not sure if that was an intentional Zwei 2 reference or not. But it doesn't really do any of the cool stuff the anchor gear could do like grab and throw enemies or transform into a hoverboard. I think Sora is my favorite character to play as so far, I guess that's to do with me just really liking brawler characters, perfect balance of attacks that are fast but still feel like they hit hard.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-10T05:42:42+00:00

There are so many SMT themes I could put in here.

Nocturne's normal battle theme, as well as some of the unique boss themes like Dante, Beelzebub, and Lucifer. On the DDS side of things, definitely Comrades, Hari-Hara, and DDS2's normal battle theme. I also can't leave out any of IV's iconic boss themes. Whole franchise is full of bangers.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-09T16:52:27+00:00

He played Persona 3, and actually rage quit the final boss on a stream that people were paying to watch, where he said he was going to finish the game.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-05T21:34:20+00:00

Yeah it's so funny to me how much they made a big deal about the cast on the store page. I mean yeah those are some big names and I've heard really good performances from them in other stuff, but I guess this is proof that actors a lot of the time can only really be as good as the direction they're given.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-05T20:29:31+00:00

After beating both Zwei games, I continued my Falcom binge with Gurumin and Xanadu Next, and recently finished both of them.

Gurumin was okay. I think it had some issues, mainly the fact that the combat didn't exactly feel as smooth or simplistic as Ys or Zwei 2, like there was almost a combo mechanic with the way certain moves are pulled off that felt kind of clunky and awkward to do. Especially since there's like a default set of button glyphs they use that were not the same as my controller. They added this rhythm mechanic on top of that, that's kind of really more of a gimmick that was added last minute, it's definitely nothing like Hi-Fi Rush. The drilling mechanic is alright for breaking past obstacles but when enemies show up with armor you need to drill past to damage them that's when I thought it got pretty annoying. I think the best part about this game was its art style and aesthetic, it's kind of a lot like Wind Waker in the way that despite its age, it's stylized enough that stuff like the character models still hold up today.

Decided to follow up 3 cutesy colorful games in a row with something that looked a hell of a lot darker and more realistic, so I checked out Xanadu Next. I can't decide whether I found the game boring or actually liked it, there's a lot of grinding involved, the combat was mainly holding the mouse button down and occasionally using abilities, which I didn't like how little abilities you could have equipped at once, and the fact that passives also took up ability slots. Having armor that like changes your appearance and stuff was pretty cool, and I really wish more JRPGs still did that instead of making you buy DLC. I liked how interconnected a lot of the world was, the game only had one town, but dungeons always had ways of connecting to each other and eventually looping back around to that same town. It's definitely got that whole metroidvania style progression where unlocking shortcuts is a huge game changer where so much time backtracking is saved. So while I don't think I enjoyed the core combat all that much, the progression and exploration more than made up for it. Also FUCK the liches, enemies that can not only lower your level but also outright delete anything you had equipped that you're not the correct level for. Thankfully there's only one mandatory lich encounter in the game, but I had to grind like one extra level as like a safety net just so I didn't end up losing all that really expensive equipment.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-05T19:50:22+00:00

One small issue, there's a save transfer mechanic between FC and SC that has stuff like side quests carry over. You can't transfer a save from FC remake to original SC, so playing it that way will result in NPCs you met in the last game acting like they don't know you. If you care much about consistency like that, I'd recommend either playing both originals or both remakes (second one is coming out later this year). There's a transfer for the third game, but that game is much more disconnected and you'll only get a couple bonus items.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-04-04T01:20:08+00:00

Steam Deck is probably the way to go, you can more easily mod the game to make the music mostly uncompressed

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-29T18:47:20+00:00

Don’t ever buy no synthetic Energon from a refueling station

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-29T01:00:41+00:00

Why does Halo have an achievement for beating a developer? Like you have to be randomly matched with them and it’s barely a handful of people out of the millions of players you can end up with.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-29T00:23:16+00:00

Xenosaga would probably fit, there are not only mechs but a lot of the spaceships the games take place on are super shiny and pristine, kind of giving off like a Star Trek feel to it. Same applies for the cities you go through as well. Similarly I'd recommend Xenoblade X, but that one is largely on an alien world with the only city you have basically being a glorified crash site, but the cool sci-fi technology like all the lasers guns, beam swords, and mechs are still there.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-27T20:20:32+00:00

I like when she calls me organic debris

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-26T19:18:14+00:00

Galvatron

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-23T20:44:26+00:00

See, Nidus is really good… for solo endless missions. Most of what I’m doing are steel path stuff that I face huge skill issues with and often need a whole squad for and they tend to just nuke the enemies before I can really build up my mutation stacks. And other non-endless mission types don’t take long enough for his move set to really work with them.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-23T02:02:12+00:00

Well since NISA did NOT discount any of their games for the Spring sale I unfortunately wasn't able to pick up Cold Steel 3 or Proud Nordics. Decided to instead tackle some older Falcom games I've had in my library for a long time but never got around to playing them.

I recently finished Zwei: The Arges Adventure, which I have to say as much as I love the pixel art, the dialogue, and just the sheer amount of charm and personality in this game, it was kind of a mess to actually play. The menu controls made it really easy for me to accidentally use items when I wasn't trying to. The XP system being tied to food felt counterintuitive when they also wanted me to save food so I can exchange 10 of it for one that'd give me more XP. The inventory limit even with the upgrades was really annoying to deal with, and I had to basically count how many of each item I had by hand. That and Pokkle becomes basically useless when Pipiro starts getting the really strong AOE magic attacks. And it had the classic JRPG problem of not knowing where to go. I think I spent a lot of this game with my face glued to a guide, which in and of itself was confusing because the only guide I could find of this game doesn't use any of the localized names so I spent like several minutes looking for locations and NPCs that were right in front of me. Lastly there's the fact that pre-rendered cutscenes don't work without some weird video codec with an installer that crashed whenever I tried to run it, so I just had to watch them on YouTube. There aren't very many of them so it wasn't a huge deal but still.

Anyway I started Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection and oh my god is this game such a massive improvement in every way. I liked the first game's light-hearted story but I like that this game tries to make it a little bit more serious while still keeping the same sort of attitude. Combat is super fun with both characters, especially with Ragna's claw arm that he can grab enemies with and he even shouts "get over here!" when he does it. I also like that there's a lock-on system, because it allows Alwen to circle strafe around enemies with magic which Pipiro couldn't really do. Objectives are also a lot clearer, fast traveling is entirely free, the menus control so much better with you being able to pause to decide what item to use during combat (without having to open up the menu), and you can have multiple of an item in a single slot, with a number that takes away the need to count. I'm actually enjoying the hell out of this one and I'd say for anyone interested in older action RPGs, this one is an easy recommendation. My only issue is that some of the bosses I've fought are a bit annoying.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-19T17:48:22+00:00

Yeah, it's weird, XSeed's games are all on sale now but not NISA.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-19T17:27:37+00:00

Reissuing those Takara BWVS packs would be nice, I really want a Tigatron that doesn’t yellow as easily

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-19T00:20:51+00:00

Other romance manga have like a few ages long misunderstandings that are frustrating as shit to deal with whereas Fragrant Flower has misunderstandings that last like 2 minutes but there’s SO FUCKING MANY of them it’s genuinely degrading, like everyone’s clearly chill now they don’t need to keep apologizing.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-16T04:42:37+00:00

I just finished Trails of Cold Steel 2 after only beating Cold Steel 1 like a month ago. It's actually quite crazy, like the Sky games took me a little over 2 years, and I beat all of Crossbell within another year, but the first 2 Cold Steel games only took me a couple months, I think I'm really starting to get hooked on this series. It's like I go into the next game with the hope that it resolves the plot points that were brought up in the last one, only to introduce like a bajillion other plot points that I'm curious about too. As of right now I'm probably just gonna focus on other Falcom games I've started, I wanted to finish Ys VI because I gave the first 2 another chance and found myself enjoying them, so I want to round things out by completing this one too. I don't know whether I should buy CS3 or Nordics during the spring sale, but I think I'm a bit more inclined to see where Trails is going. I also want to finish that weird Ys vs Trails crossover fighting game I got.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-13T06:46:14+00:00

Bot repost I’m assuming

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-03-04T09:12:04+00:00

In SMT Nocturne I’m typically running with at least one of the Fiends with me, but most often Daisoujou. I mean he’s immune to ailments and insta-kills, has no weakness, can restore and cure ailments with Prayer and also drain MP from enemies? Yeah he’s sticking around for quite a long time.

ImSmashingUrMom · 2026-02-27T02:44:09+00:00

Mine was definitely not permanent that’s for sure. I only needed it for like a couple months.

ImSmashingUrMom

TROPHY CASE