Narumi's long winded reviews

It should come as no surprise to the people who know me that I’m a big fan of JRPGs, for its ability to intertwine long complicated storyline and character-driven arcs with a satisfying exploration system and at the very least, a passable combat system that is generally simple to pick up despite seeming complex and easy to brute force through with enough overlevelling. In the past decade though, with the rise of HD consoles, these types of experiences dwindled down with the rise in online play and action-driven gameplay with RPG-elements tackled on the surface level, i.e. a leveling system and skill trees but without what made RPGs truly unique. As much as I like the exploration of say, Dark Souls, its stressful combat never allowed me to truly relax in the moment. To add, not many “traditional” JRPGs came out during this decade. FFXIII lacked a lot of key exploration aspects for instance, and it wouldn’t be until 2016 until a new Persona game were to come out. In the midst of this dr...

To begin I feel it necessary to say that I have absolutely no history with the series beyond knowing that it’s some SRPG series by SEGA and the only reason I was interested was because: they’re ditching the SRPG combat, they’ve gotten the Yakuza team to work on the event scenes, and Ayaneru and Mizuki Nana are in it. No other reason. To my surprise the game ended up being more VN oriented than a more balanced VN-Musou hybrid, which was a pleasant surprise considering the combat is pretty barebones and shallow, yet at the same time incredibly tedious. The meat of the gameplay lies in the VN segments where you interact with the various denizens of Tokyo. This reminded me very heavily of the Yakuza series in which almost everyone is a weirdo and you can either choose to be the Tsukkomi to their Boke or double down on the stupidity and freak them out. It’s great and it helps that Yakuza’s over-the-top cheesy animations are recycled in this game to full comedic effect. As far as the actua...

Full disclosure, my Japanese skills is somewhere between Kindergartner and Elementary School Student so I consulted KHHSubs' guide for most of my time with Ishin. Ishin is that game that gets a lot of revere and praise for being that lost or hidden gem never released in the West, with some people preferring it over 0 or 5 as the best game in the series. Is it? Hell no, and I'm going to briefly break down why in the following review. Let's start with story. It's a self contained story that's pretty interesting and decently written. It's like AssCreed where it takes place in an established historical era with actual historical characters but tells a completely original story that deviates from actual history quite a bit. So not knowing anything about the Bakumatsu era isn't a big deal, you just need to know some basic background info on each character to get going. Unlike the other Yakuza games (bar 0), there isn't much downtime or filler in this. Pacing...

Over 40 hours later, with all side quests done and the main story completed. I just wanna say this experience has been a blast. The story is by far the selling point of the whole game and it is just so good. It takes some time to get going for sure, but once the mystery reaches its climax, you just can't get enough of it and want to keep on going until the end. The game really knows how to keep your interest hooked and get you wanting more. For the longest time I've felt the actual plots in the series weren't really all that good (aside from 0) and the main draw for me was always the characters and their relationships. Judge Eyes is the rare exception in that it is good on both fronts, compelling characters you can't get enough of and a gripping mystery thriller with some slice of life moments to moderate the pacing. Quite possibly my favourite story in the series, a close close rival to Yakuza 0 for me. I do wish some of the secondary characters got more screentime t...