Video game reviews, fan fiction, gaming news, and more! Since 2003. We especially love JRPGs, RPGs and the best of the rest. Never Ending Realm: Where your favorite games live forever!
JRPG stands for Japanese Role-Playing Game. This unique genre of game combines the Western RPG or Role-Playing Game genre first popularized by Dungeons and Dragons with Eastern storytelling and cultural references often seen in anime or manga. JRPGs are almost exclusively made in Japan.
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Everyone who regularly reads the site can attest to the fact that I am not a big fan of the Final Fantasy series post the departure of its creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. I am not alone in that line of thinking either. In fact, apart from Final Fantasy XII ( the game absolutely felt nothing like…
14 years after Grandia III (PS2), and we never got Grandia IV. We might have to blame the aforementioned 3rd iteration of the franchise (I refuse to acknowledge Grandia Xtreme’s existence) for the death of the series. True, the JRPG genre in general, peaked in the late 90’s and early 00’s, then gradually declined back…
Chrono Cross (2000) isn’t as widely beloved (or remembered), as its predecessor; the incomparable Chrono Trigger. This, despite being released at the climax of the JRPG golden era, and to stellar amounts of critical reception. The game still holds a 94 Metacritic rating, which is a higher rating than any FF game (only FFIX has…
Today’s throwback is none other than the legendary Final Fantasy VI. For about half a decade, the game was known as Final Fantasy III on the west, as Squaresoft had bypassed Final Fantasy II, III, and V in the US. Released in 1994, the Super Nintendo Japanese role-playing game has become one of the more…
Nintendo has surprised everyone again by announcing another new game this week. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity launches November 20th, 2020. Last week, Nintendo announced Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a remastered collection of classic 3D Mario games. Until that point, we thought only Pikman 3 Deluxe was left to be released in 2020. According to…
If I was asked to mention, or better yet to make a list of the top ten greatest Japanese Role-playing games ever, the number one spot would spark some controversy. Lists of that particular “greatest of all time” kind are always mostly subjective affairs. If someone wants to stand their ground and say that Quest…
The Legend of Dragoon has been one of the strangest titles that I have ever reviewed. The Playstation Japanese Role-Playing game, released in the year 2000, isn’t a really a special RPG, but it is the one game that I felt was the definition of “Pedestrian” when I first reviewed it, and yet, somehow, it…
The Golden Era of Japanese Role-Playing Games during the original PlayStation days produced many a great RPG on a consistent basis. It seemed then, that every month a new JRPG AAA title would arrive at store shelves for players to buy and immerse themselves for dozens of hours. During this period, in between the Final…
1998’s The Granstream Saga, is not a remarkable game, it was (even 1998) a deeply flawed action RPG, that featured many good (if not great) ideas that were not executed properly. Shade (the developers) left us instead, with what in my opinion is one of the most glaring examples of wasted potential in an…
Many will remember Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy VII (1997) as the first great Japanese Role Playing game for the PlayStation. However, a few months earlier, April 1997 to be exact, Wild Arms arrived on Sony’s debut system with a great JRPG experience for fans to enjoy. Wild Arms holds an 83 Gamerankings (The 90s Metacritic) rating….