#JRPGJuly 2026 – Week 2 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.
We’re already halfway through July. Let’s see how far along everyone has gotten!
Joshua Carpenter
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land
I had a surprising realization as I sat in the Philadelphia airport this week: I’m playing an updated version of Atelier Firis — the Atelier game I loath the most. Granted, Atelier Yumia is a much more polished experience than Gust’s earliest foray into open-world exploration, but it’s not the Atelier experience that I was looking for. I was really craving spending a bunch of time crafting lots of great items, armor, and weapons, but the focus seems to be more on story and exploration. It’s very weird picking up this game having skipped the entire Ryza trilogy. The combat is now more akin to a Xenoblade-style game with cooldown timers on abilities. I’m missing the old Atelier experience of creating overpowered bombs and other items to overwhelm enemies. At this point, it feels button-mashy without any strategic depth.
I also still haven’t wrapped my head around the alchemy system and the option in the game to automate synthesis is becoming a crutch for me that’s keeping me from learning the ins and outs of this game’s alchemy. In fairness, I’ve been playing this in inconsistent, short bursts so maybe I’ll click with it once I can focus on it more without distractions.
Matt Masem
Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster
Following up from last week, Final Fantasy III finally gave me equipment for some fun classes. Taking the hints from the NPCs that told me I needed Dragoons to defeat a boss, I changed a couple of my characters into them and WOW, I was instantly impressed enough to keep them through what I thought might be the final boss. They were extremely useful, I loved their jump command, and the spears that I equipped them with stole health, so they were almost always at full health and ready to go. They were an extremely useful job class, and they look cool too!
Besides having fun with Dragoons and a couple other new classes, I was amazed at all the different airships that I’m getting. The first airship I had wasn’t too durable as I crashed it into a rock and it was a goner. As a Star Trek fan, I enjoyed getting the Enterprise to sail and fly around in, that is until it got shot out of the sky. Next up, I found the Nautilus to be a fun ship to zip around in. That ship is super fast and eventually gets upgraded to go undersea, which ended up being extremely useful. Finally, if that wasn’t enough, I ending up getting the Invincible near the end and it was awesome. You can actually walk around in the ship, there are great stores on there and a bed to rest on, and finally I was able to fly over the mountains in the game. Despite playing tons of JRPGs in my life, I was still impressed all the different airships in this game and their different uses and fates!
Andi Privitere
Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster
My trek down “memory lane” continued this week. It’s interesting to feel out what parts of the game I have clearer memories of than other bits — I remembered the fight to acquire the monk and white mage jobs, while the thief asterisk sub-story felt entirely new to me. I’ll be tracking down the end to that particular tale this weekend.
I’m also challenging myself a little by choosing to play on a harder difficulty than I typically would; on the flip side, this does mean I feel like I’ve played a lot more time for a lot less progress. Rebuilding Norende is a bit of a mixed bag, as I was spoiled by using a homebrew network for the 3DS which connected people from all across the world, while this time on the Switch 2 what helpers appear is at the whim of how often the game feels like doling out additional guests to help speed up restoring my village. If you are or have played the HD Remaster, tag me in a message on Bsky so we can swap friend codes!
Sam Wachter
Lunar II: Eternal Blue Remastered
I didn’t think I’d have enough time to make a dent in Lunar II: Eternal Blue Remastered, but I did! Considering I’ve only played through this Lunar entry once, there is so much that I have forgotten in terms of the plot. I just recruited Jean, who is my absolute favourite character in this game, and Hiro and friends have jumped into a large hole to save the entire troupe from the wandering caravan. Why? Because they were all kidnapped by crazy plant monsters, Jean couldn’t karate-chop them all fast enough! Once I take out the plant monsters, the goal is to make it to the Holy City and hopefully meet the Goddess Althena! Also, I am dying less, you guys!
Robert Sinclair
I have to be honest, going from the first bad guy to the second in Persona 5 Royal is weird. It’s one of the best feelings seeing Kamoshida eat crow. The satisfaction of seeing a sexual predator and child abuser get what’s coming to him is one of those rare moments that hits perfectly. They made you hate him every step of the way and what do they follow up with? An art dealer. Maybe it grows on you as you delve into his palace, but I’m really wondering when they’re going to throw another top teir, totally evil bad guy at me.
The artists and design teams behind this game really hit it out of the park though. Each character is visually interesting, the menu and the battles are all eye catching and it all just pops. The music also always seems to hit the right notes for me too. I’m hoping I get through the second palace in the next few days.
Elena Ng
Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom continued to ramp up with plenty more gameplay mechanics this week. My new kingdom, Evermore, is finally up and running in all its glory. Evermore grants me access to many facilities such as cooking, weapon and armour shops, forageable materials, as well as valuable research so that I can craft better spells or make quality of life improvements. I can even whip up fresh Higgledies in the cauldron! All improvements increase influence and help generate a steady flow of Kingsguilders, the kingdom currency. Although kingdom management is incredibly in-depth, it’s not a hard system to learn. By the end of the week, I managed to expand the kingdom, as well as improve some stores, and level up some personnel. Recruiting citizens has instantly become one of my favourite aspects of the game. It’s incredibly satisfying assigning them to facilities or research tasks based on their talents and watching them become even more proficient over time. My citizens are living their best lives!
Outside of kingdom affairs, I now have access to side quests and it’s like a whole new world again. There is so much to do but fortunately fast travel makes backtracking effortless. The side quests come from many different sources and feature a good variety of tasks at recommended levels — ranging from one-off minibosses, fetch quests, or longer multi-objective quests, such as the Dreamer’s Mazes which are scattered across the world. This has made it easier to prioritise quests, since not everything can be completed immediately even if it’s unlocked. I also haven’t felt the need to do much grinding at all which is nice. I visited a country called Goldpaw, a sumptuous nation known for its casino. The ruler of such a kingdom is Grand High Roller Pugnacius, who rolls a die to determine the cost of taxes for the year! A chunk of the main story takes place here, and for a city that relies on luck to make important decisions, I won’t say much more than something very shady was going on. I continued on and acquired some really sturdy Ironbough Timber to build a ship. I’m now making some last minute preparations before setting sail across the sea.
Joseph Tingle
I have what I think is an unpopular opinion about JRPGs, but here goes: I really like puzzles. Having navigated half a dozen or so dungeons in Wild Arms, the puzzles consistently stick out as the unique charm of the game. While puzzles represent a point of perhaps unnecessary friction that has been stripped out of most JRPGs in the last few decades the puzzles in Wild Arms are a nice brain tease that breaks up the monotony of moving from one random battle to the next.
Being pretty well-steeped in the game at this point — nine hours, according to the game’s busted timer that doesn’t count in-battle time towards your playtime — I feel like I can see both some positives and negatives when it comes to the overall production. The soundtrack is great, but there is truly a limited number of tracks. Dungeon music gets repetitive, especially when it’s the same music you heard in the last three dungeons. The story is pretty decent so far, though, with a lot more lore than I was expecting. I am still waiting for the three main characters to emerge from the backdrop of their own stories. So far, the mage Cecilia is the most well-characterized of the three. We learn not just about her role in the story, but also her personality. For example: she follows a “adorable glutton” trope. I haven’t learned much about Jack and Rudy, and so it’s been more difficult to get into those characters. So I’m enjoying my time, but still waiting for another shoe to drop.
Pascal Tekaia
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
It’s funny how things turn out. Last week, I lamented that I had spent a full week in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth without even getting past my current chapter. As it turns out, I was literally only fifteen minutes away from wrapping up chapter 5: basically just a boss battle and some cinematics. I’m now somewhere deep in chapter 8, after about 50 hours of playing time.
Although progress is being made, that’s not to say that the game has slowed down even a little with throwing me new side content. Dondoko Island, anyone? That in itself ate up several hours, and that’s just scratching the surface and gaining one star for my resort, if I ever decide to go back and do more. Now, in chapter 8, my time has been split between two active parties, each with drink links, scavenger hunting, and walk-and-talks aplenty. But the most worrying part is that they’re having me start to check things off a literal bucket list. I don’t think I’m gonna like where this is going…
Cassandra Ramos
I can see how much time I spent on Final Fantasy Adventure, and it’s only been about eight hours. So no, I haven’t finished, and didn’t get much time to play the game at all. Even so, I hit some major story beats. I fought Medusa to try and get to tears, but even after her death, none were to do found. Tragically, yet conveniently, the NPC Amanda was bitten by Medusa and turned into one, so the hero was forced to kill her and got her tears instead. I’m fairly sure this is a case of censorship in the original localized English script, as Amanda’s Tears was called Amanda’s Blood in the Sword of Mana. Anyway, after traveling through some dungeons and beating some other bosses, I reached Glaive Castle and slayed Dark Lord. As it turns out though, Julius took the Pendant and brainwashed the heroine, Meia, so that he could get access to the Mana Tree. Pretty eventful for what was maybe three hours of gameplay tops.
Obviously, Sword of Mana is far more detailed than Final Fantasy Adventure, but the changes to the story intrigue me. There are minor things, like names changes. Glaive Empire in FFA is Granz Realm in SoM; the minor villain Davias becomes Devius; Dr Bowow becomes Professor Bomb, although the story involving him is drastically different since there’s no Chocobo for him to save by turning into a cyborg. Julius in FFA is the last surviving member of the Vandole Empire, while in Sword of Mana, he is the reincarnation of Emperor Vandole. Also, while there is the Mana Tree, there has been no mention of a Mana Goddess in FFA. As I haven’t played very many Mana games, I wonder when she is introduced. I think I don’t have much game left, so perhaps I’ll have Final Fantasy Adventure finished by next week.
Stream Team
Another week full of #JRPGJuly streams, but what happened on these streams?
– Cheezy took a little side-quest to show off the Endless Ragnarok expansion of Granblue Fantasy: Relink.
– SpareOmbres is worried about his emotional stability after finishing Ending B in NieR:Automata.
– TheMightyTAM returned after a long battle with computer failure to take the fight to the hordes in Dynasty Warriors: Origins.
– HerrFrog is getting thoroughly annoyed by the sheer number of children in his Arc the Lad III party. (Seriously, too many kids!)
– Smoking Joe Gamer asked chat if Kingdom Hearts is actually supposed to be fun. Chat neither confirmed nor denied. Join him every Tuesday and Thursday—don’t be a Heartless!
And there’s so much more, including some amazing podcasts! We’re rocking streams seven days a week, so be sure to follow our channel and turn on notifications so you never miss a live show: [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!
Recent Comments