The Resurgence of JRPGs?

8:30 PM on 07.21.2015 (server time)0

I write for an independent video game journalism site called Middle of Nowhere Gaming and most of the news stories I’ve been writing recently have been announcements of rereleases of Japanese role playing games. Grandia II, Tales of Symphonia, Odin Sphere, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, all these games are being re-released in the future. There’s also newer JRPGs coming out in the near future, such as Bravely Second, Fire Emblem Fates, Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness, and Tales of Zestiria. Needless to say, I’ve had JRPGs on the mind and I just bought Tales of Vesperia on the 360 right now. I’ve honestly not heard this much about JRPGs since the early 2000s, except for that time when Microsoft kept publishing JRPGs on the 360 to appeal to Japanese audiences. Remember that? They had Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Also, Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant were 360 exclusives.

Anyways, I’ve noticed this trend and I’m quite in favor in it. I was introduced to JRPGs in the early 2000s by my buddy Don and I went crazy for them back then. I bought anything and everything in the genre. SaGa Frontier, Legend of Mana, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy Anthology, you name it. However, that mostly died down with the 7th generation, with few exceptions (shout out to Eternal Sonata). Because of that, I missed a lot of JRPGs in the 7th generation and the end of the 6th generation. However, since the success of Bravely Default and Ni No Kuni, this surge of JRPG releases has happened and I’m excited again to play and replay a lot of JRPGs. I just started a Final Fantasy X playthrough, I played Kingdom Hearts 1.5 earlier this year, and I’ll probably start Tales of Vesperia as soon as I’m done with this blog.

There is one drawback to all these JRPGs coming out. One of the sad things about me is I have a lot of trouble finishing RPGs. The reason is mostly due to me going crazy on the genre. I got all these JRPGs and therefore, couldn’t finish any of them. To this day, the list of JRPGs I’ve finished is small. Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, I think there’s others. So if anything, this resurgence of JRPGs is just going to expand my backlog. But that’s okay. I love the genre so bring it on! I’m gonna go play Tales of Vesperia! Oh wait. It has to download first. Shit!