#JRPGJuly 2025 – Week 1 Round-up
Welcome to another year of everyone’s favorite monthly gameathon. #JRPGJuly was created as a community game-along by Anne Lee @ Chic Pixel, and hosted by MDi. Once again, the RPGamer staff is showing their support for the event by playing some JRPGs. If you’re participating, make sure to use #JRPGJuly or share your feelings over on the RPGamer Discord server.
The first week proved to be busy for our staff. Let’s see everyone’s progress!
Joshua Carpenter
There are times when the world gets you down and you need something light and uplifting to lighten your mood and the Sakura Wars always delivers on that count for me. Despite being a game that centers around fighting demons that want to rampage and destroy Tokyo, Sakura War 2: Thou Shall Not Die remains irrepressibly upbeat and entertaining. While there is this serious danger hanging over the characters, the games spend most of their time concentrating on the interpersonal stories of the members of the Flower Division and their travails as they carry out cover for their more serious job by putting on performances in the Imperial Combat Theatre. It’s such a silly concept, but the quality of writing and the conviction that the actors carry it out with make it work. I find myself cackling at the ludicrous situations where the main character Ogami has to punch tickets and balance the egos of the stars.
The L.I.P.S. system is the gameplay system that makes Sakura Wars unique. Rather than just having occasional simple choices like most visual novel/RPG hybrids, the L.I.P.S. choices pop up much more often than in traditional visual novels and limit the player in the time they have to choose. You end up making bad choices because you have so little time and the screen is shaking, and you just end up panicking. L.I.P.S makes the player pay so much more attention to what is going on and makes the visual novel portions a much more active experience so that players are more engaged with the experience.
However, it was not all roses in the Taishō era. I lost some progress last night as my game crashed just as I was trying to save. The joys of emulating a fan translation. Hopefully, it’s an isolated incident and doesn’t prompt an unexpected u-turn in #JRPGJuly.
Jervon Perkins
Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin
I’ve never really been into monster collecting games. I skipped Pokémon growing up and only clicked with the idea through Final Fantasy XIII-2, mostly because of its story. I also just really love Serah. That narrative pull is what drew me to Monster Hunter Stories 2. It has a more emotional and character-driven approach than I expected, and I appreciate that it connects to the main Monster Hunter lore while offering a different perspective. Instead of being a Hunter, you play as a Rider, forming bonds with Monsties and focusing more on friendship than conquest. You start as the grandchild of a legendary Rider, and even early on, the story feels personal and sweet.
Combat has been surprisingly fun. It uses a rock-paper-scissors style system with three main attack types, and you can also choose from elemental affinities. It’s simple enough to pick up quickly but still offers room for strategy. The Kinship animations are a highlight. Each Monstie has its own, and they’re incredibly charming, sometimes totally over the top in the best way. They reflect the playful, childlike tone that sets this series apart. If I had one complaint, it would be the music. The cutscenes are fine, but the combat music hasn’t really impressed me. I’ve been queuing up my own playlists during longer sessions. After how much I loved the soundtrack in the Monster Hunter Wilds beta, I’m hoping the next entry in the Stories series levels up in that department.
Andi Privitere
Farmagia begins with a bang, sets off at a gallop, and doesn’t really slow down until you’re a couple of hours into the game’s main story. Fans of the Rune Factory series will see a lot of similarities in gameplay, though everything in Farmagia is simplified compared to other titles with similar mechanics. This also means that while the game does throw a fair few tutorials at the player, most are basic and straightforward. Hopefully, I won’t discover some key tasks I should be doing halfway through the game.
The main gameplay loop is simple yet satisfying: plant, water, and tend a small farm, which is growing monsters for your party or to purchase talents known as research. Talk to anyone in town who can progress the game’s storyline. Shop, craft, pick up quests, and/or train your monsters for a variety of benefits. Lastly, head into the dungeon and command your monster groups to attack foes, small and large. Each enemy has a little indicatorof which of your party allies will do the most damage to it; break down a monster’s shield, and you can throw increasingly powerful joint attacks at it. Dungeons are quite simple but still satisfying; it’s pretty easy to knock out a full day’s worth of in-game activities in about 30 real-time minutes. I like a game that doesn’t waste my time. Looking forward to experimenting more with different group leaders while balancing debuff and attack troops!
Sam Wachter
Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army
In a week filled with hiking and seeing friends, I still managed to put a dent in Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army. I’ve officially made it past where I jumped off when I played it on the PlayStation 2 many moons ago and am nearing the end of Chapter 5. I’ve been roaming around the shipyard looking for Kaya, and I’ve just learned about the Captain America-style Super Soldier Program.
I have to say I am enjoying the game more than I thought I would. The battle system still feels stiff in places, and trying to pull off Raidou’s super moves in a split second can be rather challenging. That said, the car-demon, Oboroguruma, may be a new favourite simply because he’s just that baggy old whore Christine from the titular novel by Stephen King… minus copyright issues. It is such a stupid demon, and I love it. Also, what is the deal with Rasputin? Between him and Demon Hitler, Shin Megami Tensei is just so crazy! Regardless of all the cuckoo-bananas nonsense in this game, I’m looking forward to pushing my way to the end of this mystery.
Robert Sinclair
This last week has been a fantastic time to play games. Very hot out? Air conditioning inside? A game that has been enjoyed by most people who play it? All the right boxes are checked. I’m really enjoying playing Metaphor. It feels very much like a Persona game, only without the teenagers. Not to talk badly about the Persona series, as I enjoy them too, but this just hits differently. The stakes are much higher, there has been some pretty brutal violence, and the fate of more than a group of friends hangs in the balance. I’m really liking it.
I think that the battle systems are great, and I really love that I can just smack weak enemies and kill them without having to go into battle. Bosses have been suitably challenging, regular battles are quick once you figure out weaknesses, the archetypes are quite varied, and being able to use skills from other ones allows a bit of extra coverage in case you need some healing or a specific element of magic. I really like the party members so far. Galica is adorable, and Hulkenberg is a goddess. I am ready to lay my life down for either of them! Can’t wait to see who else joins the team!
Ryan McCarthy
Something I’ve appreciated about doing #JRPGJuly over the years is giving me a chance to play games I haven’t gotten around to or, in the case of Final Fantasy IV, a game that I played but never finished as a kid. This is why I made the choice to play the GBA port, as it was the version of the game I had back then. Currently, I have about 12 hours of playtime on the clock and am now up to the part where I have access to the Lunar Whale, a spaceship that allows Cecil to travel to the moon, well past the point I stopped playing as a kid.
I’m very much enjoying my time playing it, and the notorious quirks of the GBA port haven’t dampened my experience much. The game has felt just breezy enough while still feeling like it requires enough of my attention to keep me engaged. The game’s plotting is undeniably silly and melodramatic, but there’s an undeniable charm to it, and the pacing does a good job of making things move at a good clip, so no section feels like it overstays its welcome, though the door gimmick in the Sealed Cavern might have been a bit much. Hopefully, I’ll finish the game within the next week so I can get started on Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Cassandra Ramos
Fantasy Life I: The Girl Who Steals Time
It’s been a slow start to this year’s #JRPGJuly. I wasn’t able to play for much more than an hour of my chosen game, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. I played and enjoyed the original Fantasy Life on the 3DS, so I wondered how much this game connects with the first, if at all. After creating my character and naming her Yumiko, the game world’s name is quickly given as Reveria, the same one as the 3DS game. The various regions of Reveria may not show up in this game, as Fantasy Life i takes place on one island. I gave the island the default name of Mysteria, as I was feeling uninspired. A little later on, the goddess Celestia is mentioned by an NPC. She is the Life Goddess from the first game, Life being this world’s version of job classes. I do wonder if there will be any other references or even character cameos in Fantasy Life i. Time will tell.
After creating my character and naming the island, things start with a bang, by which I mean a sudden dragon attack. After being separated from the others in the expedition, I wind up in what might be a different world, but considering the game’s subtitle, that may not be the case. My suddenly uplifted bird companion suggests we use the fossil dragon that tried to protect us to get back to our world, but for various reasons, I need to start my new Life and get to Fledgling Rank. In the original Fantasy Life, I first picked Mercenary. This time around I decided to start as a Paladin, as I like the idea of starting as a combat class. Battles are a fairly simple, real-time affair, although I imagine they will be a little different now that I’m a Paladin. One thing that took me by surprise was the voice acting. There’s not very much of it, as characters will just say one word or simple phrase that is only tangentially related to the text on-screen, but it does add a bit more flavor to the dialogue. I’m still very early in Fantasy Life i, but I have the rest of the weekend to get into it more.
Stream Team
This week saw Smoking Joe Gamer debut on the RPGamer Twitch channel, playing Visions of Mana! Noodle also guested, playing Final Fantasy XIV. Scar spun the wheel of SNES RPGs and is *so close* to completing Inindo! Will it happen on Tuesday? HeroHarmony continues to mask up in Persona 3 Reload, while Leogrim is enjoying a PlayStation classic, playing Metal Saga and… does that tank have fishnet stockings?!?
Two of our podcasts were streaming their shows: RPGCast and Q&A Quest. If you missed them live, fear not, you can listen to both right on our site. The holiday weekend will change up our schedule a little, but we’re still rocking streams seven days a week — be sure you’ve given our channel a follow and turn on notifications to know when we’re going live: [twitch.tv/rpgamer]
That’s all for this week. Let us know what sort of progress you’re making in your #JRPGJuly game in the comments or on social media!
I think I say this every year, but it still confuses me that the JRPG July logo has Hildibrand from Final Fantasy 14… an MMORPG rather than a JRPG.