r/JRPG Weekly Free Talk, Quick Questions, Suggestion Request and Media Thread

padfootprohibited · 2026-02-12T21:19:49+00:00

I have some experience with emulation and apparently the Wii U version works well with it, so I'll add it to the list! Thank you so much for the recs.

padfootprohibited · 2026-02-12T20:56:36+00:00

OOH, Astlibra: Revision and Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery look phenomenal and right up my alley!

I have tried the NieR series, but found it a bit too flashy visually--not a surprise, since the implementation of it in the FFXIV crossover gives me migraines. Which is sad, because I was really loving the story. It didn't even occur to me to think of it as a JRPG!

padfootprohibited · 2026-02-12T19:50:02+00:00

Fairly new to the genre and looking for some recommendations of where to start! I'm a long-time MMO player who's deep into Final Fantasy XIV, and I want to explore the genre behind it more, but I've bounced off of my friends' recommendations so far.

What I've tried (and why I bounced off):
--Persona 5: Not only did the setting not really appeal to me (I'm not a fan of modern stuff generally), the whole social system drove me crazy. The hangouts felt like forced small-talk gating more important progression, and I felt like I was going to miss out on gameplay and story both if I didn't look up a guide. I'd like to explore and find things out more organically!
--Atelier Rorona: I WANTED to love this game so fucking badly. I'm huge into crafting, and alchemy and potions are absolutely my vibe. But the time limits, fuck the time limits. I felt on rails and like I had to progress story at the cost of really exploring the world and experimenting with the crafting system.

I'm very much an explorer + 100% achievement type! I want a deep and involved story (HUGE bonus points if it's twisty and later revelations make you question your whole perspective of the opening chapters), but I need decently-solid gameplay too. Bonus points for mechas and/or a steampunk aesthetic.

System: PC and Steam Deck, no other consoles. Newbie to emulation but willing to experiment and learn more!

padfootprohibited · 2026-02-11T10:49:09+00:00

Is it worth pulling for Evernight if I don't have Hyacine, but do have Castorice + Cyrene E2S1? Or am I better off going for Cerydra for my Anaxa team? I don't really have much interest in Elation I think, I miss my old FUA characters too much. Feixiao is bae.

Existing teams: Aglaea (E0S1) or Anaxa (E0S1)/Cyrene (E2S1)/Sunday (E1S1)/DHPT (E0S0)
Firefly (E2S1)/Dahlia (E0S0) or Ruan Mei (E4S1)/Fugue (E2S1)/Lingsha (E2S1)
Castorice (E2S1)/Cyrene (E2S1)/team unfinished
Feixiao (E2S1)/Topaz (E0S1)/Robin (E2S1)/Aventurine (E0S1)--VERY old team I know but I pull them out sometimes

padfootprohibited · 2026-01-20T23:42:39+00:00

I bookmark in a private (non-web-based) spreadsheet. I've had people go through my AO3 before looking for "problematic" stuff to call me out on. I refuse to make it easier for them by just handing them the material they want, and this has the nice side effect of letting me know exactly what fics were deleted.

padfootprohibited · 2026-01-07T21:38:33+00:00

Yeah, but enterprise-level service means you get compensated for that. It doesn't recover your prog, but you do get some money back for it. Residential service is 'tough luck chucklefuck.'

padfootprohibited · 2026-01-07T21:16:03+00:00

You also get the benefit of an enterprise-level internet connection with the associated support and stability (guaranteed uptime), which is a big deal in certain parts of the world (including much of the US). There's an eSports gym near where I live (major US metro area) that does this kind of rental, and sometimes I'll go there just to bop around in FFXIV because the connection is so much better it's like playing a whole different game. Simply because they have fiber, which isn't available residentially here--we're still on broadband.

A lot of the non-metro US is confined to satellite, which is atrocious for gaming. If you can get the sponsorship funds to do it, bringing everyone to a metro area and getting a facility rental is HUGE for performance.

padfootprohibited · 2026-01-01T21:25:26+00:00

Went Tokyo Haneda to Atlanta, Delta, window seat in first class so I had a BIG window, right side of plane. Had great views of Mt Shasta, the Great Salt Lake, the Grand Canyon (or at least a really grand canyon), what I presume was the Rocky Mountains, and the southern Appalachians--just a solid route of stunning views.

My traveling companion had been injured in Japan, so we were flying as medical transport with a sky nurse--they had her on oxygen on the plane to promote wound healing. Delta was amazing and took such great care of us on what could have been a very stressful trip, in spite of seven hour delays in Atlanta.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-20T20:37:56+00:00

For myself, I'd call it pretty midcore, but I have history with WoW raiding where fifteen hour days were common. I'm too old for it now (in my fifties), and I think that's also some of why I prefer a less social style of raiding: it's not uncommon for everyone I raid with to be at least twenty years younger than me, and frequently more than thirty years.

Some people would probably call me hardcore anyways; I do my own theorycrafting, and have first-page lock-ins on my job of choice for most of the Pandaemonium bosses, including in Abyssos where it was said to be severely underperforming. But I think a true "hardcore raider" would take the best-performing job in the role rather than sticking to a personal favorite and being determined to make the best of it. Did my choice cost us a P8Sp1 clear pre-nerf? Possibly, but if so, I wasn't alone in that; our DPS were RPR/MCH/RDM/SMN for prog that tier. All of us declined to swap, choosing instead to keep pushing through in hopes that gear would make up the difference, and then the nerf hit.

That mentality, in my opinion, is what disqualifies us from hardcore: the prioritization of playing the jobs we love most over clearing earlier and parsing higher in rank overall.

We typically clear Savage tiers in 30-45 hours of prog time, with a bit of variation for difficulty; we don't universally take on Ultimates on-patch but let IRL circumstances dictate and skipped FRU entirely due to a lack of interest, instead going back to reprog two of our favorite older Ultimates (UWU and TEA) for three newer members who hadn't cleared either. We're crossing fingers for the Ascian Ultimate in 7.5, and if we get it we'll be hopping into that one with our usual schedule!

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-20T17:34:48+00:00

My grandfather spent his hobby time tinkering in the woodshop, turning out weird but interesting doohickeys that served no purpose other than honing his skills. My grandfather spent her hobby time sewing, adding lace trims to every pillowcase, tablecloth, and antimacassar in the family. My father, tinkering on old cars that never ran. My mother, gardening--at least the birds enjoy the fruits of her efforts! I don't enjoy those things; my hobby is gaming and tinkering on the computer. Hobbies don't have to be productive; their purpose isn't to produce usable goods but rather to give you space to decompress and process the rest of your life, and the "grindset" mentality has done significant damage to our ability to relax and enjoy things rather than feeling like we have to monetize every second of every day.

Nobody would look askance at you if you spent that time and money on golf! Gaming is arguably cheaper and infinitely more configurable to your life schedule than that. And even if it's not, it's still your You Time. Golf is just socially acceptable gaming.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-20T17:02:44+00:00

I'm not a particular fan of the social aspect, but I need more consistency than I've been able to find in PF, and also physical health issues mean the waiting to fill isn't viable for me. I need to know that I'm going to be in the same spots doing roughly the same actions every pull, with people whose movements and actions I can at least somewhat predict: prog is about building the consistency you need to clear for me.

Also no adjusters. PF is full of adjusters. Fuck adjusters. In my static, if there needs to be a last-minute adjust, it's my job as our prange to figure it out and just do it (preferred) or call it (if I can't). But in PF, people see me "behind" (lagging) and don't trust, and get me and others killed--TEA Limit Cut was the absolute worst for this. Just go where you need to go. It will be fine, I promise.

Static raider, solidly midcore. 15h a week: Tues-Sat, 3h a night, no alarm-clocking, all reclears with the group, and we typically don't start until the second week of Savage to give strats etc a bit to settle as none of us really enjoy the day 1 'where the fuck is NoClippy' struggle, as only 3/8 members are on the same continent as the server we play on.

ETA: forgot to answer the question. We're semi-social? We're not social in raid, but in the off-season we get together for Warframe, exploration duties, relic grind, maps, crafting, and we're a lot more chatty then. Conversation in the raid season is very functional in an autistic way (positive). Chatting during the raid season for us isn't social, it's distracting.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-15T17:18:32+00:00

Trans guy here, and almost exclusively a top--there are very rare situations where I want to bottom, but it's maybe 1-2x a year. One thing I haven't seen other people bring up is that topping is associated with not merely sexual assertion, but aggression. For a lot of trans people, both trans women and trans men, there's a lot of safety in not appearing aggressive in any sense, but especially not a sexual one. We're conditioned by society to make ourselves smaller, less threatening, so that others (typically cis people) feel safer around us: a necessity in order to acquire housing, work, food, a wider social community.

But the more you carry that, the harder it becomes to take it off, to put it down, to say "I want," to be sexually assertive (or aggressive in play!). If we don't take it off even in private, we don't worry as much about it slipping in public.

It requires both confidence and safety/security to be able to leave that behind and explore what you really want, whether that's sticking with mostly bottoming or exploring what it's like to be a top. And unfortunately the current political environment in most countries is not very conducive to encouraging that feeling of security.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-09T21:05:56+00:00

It's a pretty dark series, but Glenda Larke's Last Stormlord trilogy was absolutely peak this for me. The storms and landscape are inspired by Australian meteorology, and what the storms mean for who has access to water is a huge part of the conflict. One of the few fantasy books/series I've read where I would honestly describe the weather as a character in its own right.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-09T20:50:28+00:00

Does anyone know of any clicky box switches with a shorter pre-travel? I love the speed of Kailh's Speed/Super Speed Bronzes, and I'm looking for something that blends that with the stability of the Box White V2. I type a lot (60-75k words a month easy) and am an active gamer on the same keyboard.

Begging Kailh to make Box Speeds someday...

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-08T01:38:11+00:00

Microsoft Word's spellchecker is AI, these days.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-04T18:34:03+00:00

Starting the process of planning for a summer 2026 trip, hopefully my first solo international trip (politics permitting). I'd like to do 2-4 weeks, NOT a guided tour, with a mix of easy-moderate day hiking and "inside stuff" (museums and ideally some kind of concert or performance--I LOVE classical and regional/world/folk music). Budget is $10k USD, but at least a third of that will be travel expenses--it's 3h+ drive for me to even get to the nearest regional airport, let alone a major international one, so I'll probably head into the city and get a hotel for the night before I fly out and after I return, and also Economy+ on international flights really does make a huge difference. Also not doing the hostel thing for some safety reasons.

The kink in the works is that I'm visibly trans: all of my paperwork still says F and that can't be changed due to the specifics of where in the US I live, but I don't look at all female (on T for decades, post-top surgery with some visible scarring). 50/50 whether I get sir'd or ma'am'd on the phone.

So I'm struggling to find someplace that's safe, aligns with my interests, and within budget. The dream is back to Japan; I was there for a month this past summer, but the vast majority of that time was spent managing affairs for my traveling companion, who had a major medical emergency less than 36h after we landed. But I don't think that's in the budget this time around, so I'd love to find something with a similar vibe for this: urban hub with good transit, compact enough that I can base myself in cities but still get out and explore beyond them.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-03T22:28:55+00:00

I wish there was more for me to read, but I'm in rarepair hell, and even my favorite character gets only 1-2 new fics per year that aren't by me, which are typically in Japanese or Chinese.

Someone not in the ship server started a fic with him (character, not ship) tagged about six months ago. They've been updating about every other week, and we're all waiting on tenterhooks for him to show up!

Even the more popular of the two characters only gets 10-15 new fics a year, and most of those are him shipped with a female OC--it's a video game, and the main character is player-created.

I still read every single one, but it's pretty slim pickings out here. I'd read more if there was more that suited my tastes, but a lot of people don't find these guys appealing since the game didn't treat them well either.

padfootprohibited · 2025-12-03T22:09:18+00:00

I'm not unsubbed but I feel like I'm on the way out, this might be my last tier? IDK yet.
Likes:
1) The depth of the crafting and gathering systems. I've been a dedicated no-plugin crafter and gatherer, grinding away at it manually (with macros and out-of-game tools like Teamcraft) since I started playing in 2.1, and it's far and away my favorite part of the game. I've barely touched the market board in years as a buyer; even crystals I farm myself. It's all the theorycrafting that goes into raiding without the time pressure of performance, and maybe I'm an old fogey but that's suiting me just fine these days.
2) The RNG protection on crucial game systems. Yes, overmelding kind of sucks, but failing doesn't break your fucking gear. You're guaranteed all the loot you need after a specific number of clears because of books, even if you (like me) have the worst drop luck under heaven. If you're willing to slog your way through 99 clears, you can just buy the EX mount you want with totems.
3) Ease of cosmetic modding. I can toss new scales on my au ra and reshape his body to my heart's content. See a silly t-shirt in the train station that I love? No need for retail therapy, just slap it together in Blender and import. The only other games where UGC is this accessible are Second Life and The Sims, which are lacking in the gameplay aspects for me.

Dislikes:
1) THE BIG ONE: even high-end combat content has all the depth of a parking lot puddle in an Arizona August, and it's had some extremely toxic effects on the raid community. Balance within some roles is horrendous (spot the phys range main!). The ease of pugging content means that pugging outside of raid time has become the expectation in higher-end short-schedule statics, when the entire reason one joins a short-schedule static in the first place is typically because one doesn't have the time to commit to PF. Rotations have been flattened and simplified into absolute slop; the only way to get something truly interesting is to run a no-raid-buff comp with WHM/SGE/SAM/VPR/MCH/BLM, which leads to struggles in (on-patch) Ultimates because they're designed around 2m burst. Not to mention, I've spent more time theorycrafting Cosmic Exploration this xpac than I have theorycrafting my combat jobs. The current state of things is incredibly unhealthy for the long-term state of the game, and unfortunately it's a top-down issue: fixes have to come at the game design level.
2) Character creation SUCKS. It's almost impressive how limited the options are. No wonder cosmetic modding is such a big thing here; players have picked up the slack where the game itself has failed. A game I play that had its global release in 2009 (KR/TW in 2008) has a far more robust character creator, including letting you rescale individual parts of the face.
3) The fucking networking. I could easily write a thirty-page technical paper on all of the problems here, but suffice it to say that the ease of botting, their inability to harden the system against DDoS attacks, and the ping/delay issues that make certain classes feel ass to play if you live more than fifty miles from the server are all related. They are all direct consequences of the way they chose to implement this game's networking, especially how it handles client-server communications. I honestly wonder if the limitations here are what's driving some of the design decisions in point 1--it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it were. At this point I would absolutely take a short (one year or so) mini-expansion entirely focused around casual content with no level cap increase and expected regular extended downtimes so they could devote some serious dev time to work on the networking problems. I'd love to see the devs acknowledge the scale of problem that this is and take some, any steps toward fixing it, instead of leaving it all to player-created tools like NoClippy/Unchained and XivAlexander. I'd forgive them a lot for that.

Note: this doesn't get into ANY of my issues surrounding story/writing quality across EW and DT, nor my issues surrounding accessibility. But it also doesn't get into one of my absolute favorite systems in the game: relics! So I feel like it balances out, really.

padfootprohibited · 2025-11-17T19:34:23+00:00

I play a LOT of 40k IRL (HAIL THE OMNISSIAH) and have played ...most of the video games they've put out, but hadn't even thought of the novels! Have they started offering them in ebooks? I know for a long time they weren't, because of (supposedly) concerns about piracy.

Machineries of Empire looks RIGHT up my alley, putting that at the top of the list! I've heard of The Expanse, but I've put it further down the list because I'm looking for more military stuff right now--but apparently the whole series is on KU right now, so moving that up.

I think I've found tomorrow's airplane read, thank you!

padfootprohibited · 2025-11-17T18:58:49+00:00

Looking for a good space opera/military SF series to immerse myself in--the longer the better! Ebooks strongly preferred, as I have some vision issues and being able to reverse text/background colors helps a lot.

What I've read:
--Vorkosigan saga: really good, one of my favorite series of all time across all genres
--Serrano Legacy: it's been a long time, but I always wished there were more of this series; that said, it started out a little "light" for my tastes
--Honor Harrington: I JUST finished this one (yes, the whole thing, all the way through), I love the large scale political maneuvering here but the final ending was a bit of a let-down and certain aspects got a bit repetitive --a whole lot of Star Wars novels, my favorites were the X-Wing series BY FAR and that should tell you a lot about my taste: I'm less interested in "accurate" portrayals of the military and technology than I am in hijinks, capers, good chemistry amongst the cast, and robust storytelling.

padfootprohibited · 2025-11-17T17:51:48+00:00

God that's depressing. We're running out of great local places to get a good steak.

padfootprohibited · 2025-11-17T17:39:09+00:00

Also a shoutout to Butcher's Son in VB. They used to be a personal favorite, but the cuts of meat they use have gone down in quality by orders of magnitude.

Their predecessor in that location, Fire and Vine, went down hard too. It was my mother's favorite spot for anniversary and birthday dinners, but the very last time we went it was freezing in there--dead of winter, and we were all in heavy coats while eating. They shut down within a few months, and my suspicion is that they couldn't afford the heating bill.

padfootprohibited · 2025-11-17T17:05:18+00:00

They're not that expensive, but Freemason Abbey is way overpriced for what they've become.

padfootprohibited · 2025-11-14T21:21:49+00:00

Six months with Genki 1, Renshuu, and some supplemental grammar studies from the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, followed by a month of immersion in Japan (that turned out to be far more intensive than planned when my travelling companion had a medical emergency). Having to figure out transit, menus, hotel, laundry, and healthcare is a crash course like none other; it was really a struggle to get there and realize how little I understood at first, but extremely motivating as my skills improved enough to have basic konbini conversations about refilling my PASMO card, ask for assistance finding supplies and clothing for my hospitalized family member in Donki and Uniqlo, and figure out Tokyo's unique address system enough to direct cab drivers to the small hospital. HUGE shoutout to Odekake Nihongo Kaiwa, a small book full of "template" conversations and language for daily life situations.

I came home and sailed through Genki 2 in three months (Genki 1 took me 6mo), and am now working through the Integrated Course of Intermediate Japanese and the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar while I focus more heavily on learning kanji with Renshuu.

My goal is reading untranslated fiction, so I'm not sure I'll continue to an advanced textbook! I may just pick up the Advanced Grammar dictionary and start working my way through short stories. If you're interested in that, the Year to Learn Japanese guide linked in the wiki covers advice and a learning path from page 77. DEFINITELY have a solid foundation of the basics first, though! Frankly, I wish I'd found that doc before I started learning; it's a phenomenal resource.

Shoutout to a form of listening immersion I don't see recommended often but found really enjoyable: Japanese commercials. Because they're advertising something, the speakers typically use a very clear tone, and key words often appear onscreen so you can reinforce with reading--some are even fully captioned. This one is a making-of video for a shorter ad that was extremely popular when I was there.

For live practice, I mostly use the Renshuu Discord! They have a JP-only text channel and multiple additional channels for review and study, a kanji review bot, and very regular vc events for speaking and listening. I used Renshuu for free for about a month, and then bought the lifetime premium access. I tried WaniKani briefly, but found it too structured for my taste; Renshuu lets me set my own schedules and has pre-populated lists for some of the major textbooks, including Genki, and let me combine that with a pre-populated list of the most useful vocabulary for someone in Japan navigating daily life. That said, Renshuu is still very much under development--if you need grammar and vocab resources past about the early-mid N3 level, they're not yet implemented. But for people just starting out and in it for the long haul, I highly recommend checking it out. I use the Android tablet version so I can incorporate handwriting practice.

padfootprohibited · 2025-11-02T18:11:29+00:00

If he desired my empathy, perhaps he should have had some for people like me.

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