#JRPGJuly 2026 Introduction

Welcome to another #JRPGJuly! Here’s to another year of communities coming together to love, play, and talk about JRPGs. For those who are unfamiliar with the event, it was created as a community game-along by Anne Lee of Chic Pixel and hosted by MDi. What is the goal of #JRPGJuly? To play JRPGs and share the experience with others through blogging, social media, and on the RPGamer Discord server. Join us on social media using #JRPGJuly and engage with your fellow JRPG fans!

As always, the RPGamer crew loves being a part of the event. Let’s see what folks are going to be blogging about in weekly updates this month! Also, our stream team is excited to be featuring a variety of JRPGs during July! We’ll have all our regular streamers, including Scar’s Friday Night SNES wheel spins, alongside special guests playing more RPGs than you can shake a stick at!

I am Sam, the Operations Manager here at RPGamer, and I am a vet of #JRPGJuly. My hope for this round is to complete Metaphor: ReFantazio, though I am currently nearing the end of that adventure. If somehow I manage to complete that, I’m goin’ old school with some Lunar: Eternal Blue because unlike the original Lunar… I’ve only completed this game once.

I am Cassandra, a contributor to many a feature here at RPGamer. I’m always playing one JRPG or another, but I wanted to do something interesting for the year’s #JRPGJuly. I decided to play Final Fantasy Adventure as part of the Collection of Mana compilation on Nintendo Switch. It will be the first time I play this game, and after I’m done, I want to play and compare it to the remake I have played before and love dearly, Sword of Mana for the GBA. I know that Sword of Mana is more of a reimagining of FFA, but I want to see how different they are and really see where the Mana series really got its start. It will also be a good opportunity to revisit a nostalgic favorite and see if it holds up.

Hello there, I’m Matt, and I’m one of the co-hosts for RPGamer’s RPG Backtrack, your biweekly nostalgia show where we cover games that are a couple of years to a few decades old. I also do the occasional review and feature around here. In August, we’ll be covering the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters on RPG Backtrack, so I figured, for the first time in 20+ years, I might as well play some Final Fantasy. We’ll see how many I get through this July!

Hello, I’m Elena. I write features, reviews, and occasionally appear as a podcast guest for RPGamer. Having only joined the site earlier this year, I’m very excited for my first #JRPGJuly! The JRPG I have chosen is none other than Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom. I absolutely adored being whisked away in the Studio Ghibli-esque world of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. With Revenant Kingdom, however, I’ve been hesitating for years because it devastated me to hear that they overhauled the creature-collecting system in the sequel. My Familiars! Apart from an attempt to start it about four years ago, in which I only managed to make it an hour in, I am starting fresh with a brand new copy on my Nintendo Switch 2. I am finally ready to embark on this epic adventure!

Hello! My name is Joseph, and I’m a relatively new feature writer at RPGamer. Recently, I’ve acquired the PSX-themed SuperStation One MiSTer system from Retro Remake, and I’ve been eager to dig into some PlayStation-era games that I had overlooked in my teens. Wild Arms, one of the first JRPGs on the PSX, is one of those titles that’s always stood out to me for its 90s anime aesthetics and combination of both 2D and 3D visual elements. Looking back at history, there weren’t a ton of RPGs on the PSX in its first few years. The earliest was the critically maligned Beyond the Beyond, which was released in August of 1996, almost a year after the console’s launch. Persona and Suikoden were released a bit later. Then, Wild Arms was released in April of 1997, just over four months before the release of FFVII. Though Wild Arms seemed destined to be overlooked, it was successful enough to spawn four generally well-liked sequels, a portable title, and a PS2 remake. Over the next month, I’ll be looking forward to finally checking out the original PSX game for myself. I’m excited to finally play Wild Arms, and I look forward to seeing what else the PSX has to offer.

Hi everybody, I’m Pascal, and you can usually catch me posting a review, jumping on the Backtrack podcast, or contributing to features here and there on the site. For #JRPGJuly, I will be working my way through Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I’m a HUGE fan of Kiryu and the Yakuza series in general, though I’ll be honest and say that the previous game in Ichiban’s story arc was not my favorite – I know, I know, it’s everybody else’s favorite. But I’ve already played through the first four chapters of Infinite Wealth before #JRPGJuly, and so far I’m really digging the Hawaiian vibes a lot! If I manage to finish Infinite Wealth this month, I’ve got Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth waiting in the wings to get started on, too!

Hey, my name is Robert S., and I’m a contributor here at RPGamer, and I’m jumping into #JRPGJuly with a behemoth of a game: Persona 5 Royal. I’ve had a couple of false starts, but I’m determined to beat the game and finally remove it from my backlog. Considering how much I enjoy the battles and that I consider the P5R character designs to be fantastic all around, I feel like I can muster up the gumption to get it done in a month.

I’m Joshua, and I work on editorials and features for the site, and I can sometimes be heard on RPGCast. #JRPGJuly is one of my favorite times of year, but this time I’ll be travelling for the first part of the month, so I’ll be limited to my portable library. I’m taking that as an opportunity to dive back into the Atelier franchise with Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land. I haven’t touched the series since Lulua corrupted my save file, but I’m itching to get back into some alchemy.

Wow, is it time for #JRPGJuly already?! I’m Andi, one of the site co-owners. I do mostly behind-the-scenes things, sometimes write reviews, and pop up regularly on the RPGCast, our weekly current news podcast. I’m returning to my turn-based roots, with plans to play Bravely Default II on the Switch 2, as well as continuing to progress through Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles

The RPGamer stream team is also joining in to celebrate #JRPGJuly all month long, beginning a little early on Monday, June 29th. We’ll have an amazing group of different streamers celebrating RPGs, new and old, seven days a week on our Twitch channel. Be sure to give us a follow and watch for streams, including:

• Arc the Lad 3
• Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
• Dynasty Warriors Origins
• Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
• Final Fantasy XIV
• …and many more!

Of course, the SNES Retro Wheel also continues all month long!

We hope you enjoy keeping up with our staff’s adventures this #JRPGJuly. Let us know if you are participating and what you will be playing in the comments.