8-Bit Adventures 2

This game has what made the classic 8-bit JRPG console games so special: - interesting and diverse characters - a story that spans the world (and even beyond) - a bunch of side quests - different monsters to fight - a real ending - post-game content There's a tactical element to the battles; you can even swap your party members at any time (except for those who are KO'd). However, the battles from the middle of the game onward are very easy...thanks to the freeze potions, you can paralyze all enemies except bosses and then destroy them with one hit. Nevertheless, it's a nice game that I can highly recommend to any JRPG fan.

The game picks up a lot with regards to sidequests and customization once you have all 6 party members. It takes a few hours to get there and is pretty linear until then. There's a lot of handholding, they want people who didn't play SNES etc. to enjoy this. All the gameplay mechanics are geared to make it more playable. Status effects don't persist after battles, no random battles, switching party members doesn't take a turn. The battles do pick up in difficulty, and there's a lot of bosses too, although with exploring all the side stuff it's still easy to be fully stocked on items but the bosses do get tense. However the dialogue sometimes doesn't move fast enough for me. There's a lot of talking, even though it's on the shorter side (less than 30 hours). It's a weakness, but also a strenght because they focused on making the story very emotional. The characterization of your party is highly personal and they aren't afraid to tug on your heart strings. The villain especially aims directly at your feels. Really nice graphics that are 8-bit in the overworld, but the battles I would say are more like SNES style (although still 8-bit technically, probably). Personally the 8-bit music annoyed me a little at first, turned the volume down and it's great. I'm about 9 hours into the game and it's picking up and making me want to play and play. Like I said above the battles aren't too difficult, it's not perfectly balanced (not getting tons of use from defensive skills), but I can tell they tried to put a ton of care into the balance and it's very fun. You have limit breaks, tag-team techs, one of the party can go super saiyan, everyone is unique and fun especially the robot. Stealing is stress free, like bosses don't have items so you don't have to worry about that. The world is basically conventional but well executed. There's lots of humour and very well placed throwback references. I'm glad I stuck through the slow-ish, story-heavy start.