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#JRPGJuly 2026 – Final 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 end of July is already on the horizon, but what about the staff's chosen games?
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Joshua Carpenter
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land
As #JRPGJuly comes to a close, I’ve made it close to halfway through Atelier Yumia. Even at this point, I still have very mixed feelings about the game. Alchemy plays a very small role and I can just auto-create items that are essentially as good as the ones where I engage with the system. It seems crazy that the system that Atelier games are most known for is such a disappointment in this entry.
The game also has lots of other issues, both big and small. I’m not finding the combat to be that engaging. I’ve never been a fan of cooldown-based action combat, but the difficulty is so low in Yumia that it often feels that mindless button mashing still results in victories. The puzzles are so basic — like connecting a line between two points — that it begs the question of why to include something so inconsequential. Also, there’s lots of small conversations between the party members as you explore, which would be great to break up long sessions of exploration -- except as there is no English voice acting, this results in the difficult task of reading subtitles while platforming.
Despite the negatives, Gust has created a pretty interesting world to explore and I find myself wanting to learn how the alchemic disaster that has shaped this world came to pass. While this isn’t my favorite entry in the franchise, I do want to see where Yumia’s story ends up.
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Matt Masem
The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie
With Final Fantasy III finished off last week, I decided to plug right along with some more RPG Backtrack podcast homework. We'll be resuming coverage of the long-running The Legend of Heroes series this December, so jumped right into the game I left off on: Trails into Reverie. I got a good bit into the game this week and enjoyed switching between the different storylines. The game is split into various plotlines, one with the Cold Steel protagonist Rean Schwarzer and his students, one with Crossbell's Lloyd Bannings and the SSS, and a third that I just started which seems to follow the villain of the game.
So far I've completed the first of Rean's and Lloyd's chapters and am already hooked. It's been a couple of years, so I didn't know where this kind of interstitial game would go. I figured it'd mainly wrap up some loose ends from Cold Steel and Crossbell, much like Trails in the Sky the 3rd did for that subseries, but much to my surprise, Rean and Lloyd are both dealing with major events taking place in their respective countries. The plots I've spent six hours with are easily worthy of a full game in either series, with military coups and kidnapped royalty already catching my attention and keeping me playing past my bedtime. I can't wait to see where the rest of this game takes me.
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Sam Wachter
Lunar II: Eternal Blue Remastered
Last week I finished Lunar II: Eternal Blue, so one would think I would have started a new game for this last week of #JRPGJuly. However, I ended up playing through the game’s epilogue, which was mostly full of new dungeons to explore and acquiring the best equipment. I will say, I found the epilogue mostly disappointing as there was no real additional story beyond Hiro wanting to go to Blue Star to be with Lucia. The game doesn’t do a good job of encouraging players to explore all these new areas, and honestly, I found the bosses way too easy — shocking, considering how much Zophar kicked my butt. I’m glad I completed everything, and the final smooch made me tear up. Overall, I finished two games for this year’s #JRPGJuly, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
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Robert Sinclair
Persona 5: Royal
Going into the month, I knew that Persona 5 Royal was a behemoth of a game, and at more than 30 hours in I'm only just now finishing the second target: the con artist (pun intended) Madarame. I was struggling to see why the game would jump from a pervy, abusive PE teacher to a painter in the beginning, but when you learn all the details, I feel like Madarame might be an even worse person. This man destroyed lives, ended careers, and even played a part in at least two deaths. He was a very good target for the Phantom Thieves. I'm really curious where the game goes from here, and I absolutely intend to keep playing even after #JRPGJuly ends because this game has sunk its hooks into me and I have to see where this journey leads me.
As an aside, again, I wanted to mention I started my Dark Souls Remastered file over. I killed the merchant in the Undead Burg and came to regret it deeply. It's not that I don't want his Uchigatana, but rather I missed out on buying all his useful stuff. He even has a repair box where you spend souls at a bonfire and your weapon's durability is completely restored. I may have to retread some old ground, but I feel like the stuff I got from him makes it totally worth the restart.
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Elena Ng
Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom
President Zip Vector’s obnoxious bowl cut aside, I quite enjoyed my time in Broadleaf. Out of all the nations in Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, Broadleaf’s relentless pursuit of scientific excellence at the expense of its citizens is a story beat I am very familiar with. As Roland mused in his journal, Broadleaf is like “going from a fantasy epic to a sci-fi movie”. After helping the nation, Zip gifted us his beloved airship, the Zippelin, of which the crew made an instantaneous decision to remove his giant face -- sorry not sorry, Zip! If I thought I enjoyed sailing across the ocean, then I loved being in the air. Similar to when I unlocked the ship, I spent a good while revisiting places to access loot or locations I couldn’t before. After Broadleaf, I felt my first real pang of dread in the game. The turn of events caught me off guard, and if I could have had a dollar for the number of times I exclaimed “oh no” during this arc, I would be well on my way to affording my own airship.
I didn’t finish Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom before the end of #JPRGJuly, but I have loved every minute of it, as well as participating in #JRPGJuly itself. This is now my new favourite Ni no Kuni entry. After 50 hours, the game still has my attention and I know it will leave a void when I finish it. The world is incredibly immersive with delightful characters. I adore the soundtrack and art. The combat is a smooth experience and the kingdom management system is one of the best I’ve played in recent times. As far as side quests go, there’s always someone to help or somewhere I am yet to explore. I also couldn’t be happier to have a full circle moment, concluding the month in none other than Ding Dong Dell, where my journey began. I am so proud of Evan and seeing him really come into his own, applying what he’s learnt about being a leader from the other nations. He is the most endearing type of protagonist, the kind who carries a deep compassion for others and always strives to do his best. I may not know how the story ends yet, but there’s one thing I do know: I would move to Evermore in a heartbeat.
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Joseph Tingle
Wild Arms
I hoped that I'd finish Wild Arms during #JRPGJuly, but unfortunately that didn't quite happen. While I loved my initial hours of the game, as reflected in my Week 1 post, I found the middle section of the game to be every bit of what you'd imagine from a 1996 slog. Things started looking up in Week 3, though, and now as we roll credits on #JRPGJuly, I can say with full confidence that Wild Arms is finally hitting its stride. Not only has the world opened up a bit more thanks to the addition of the two vehicles, but I've also been enjoying some of the late-game character and plot revelations. The flashback scene covering the relationship between Rudy and his father -- pictured below -- plucked right at my gamer-dad heartstrings, and was one of my favorite narrative moments of Wild Arms thus far. The villain ensemble are also starting to really shine as well, as we see how each are coming to terms with perhaps not loving the role they play in Mother and Zeikfried's plans.
One moment that stuck out in this last week was my ascent of Epitath Sea: a trademark tower dungeon featured in all of the Wild Arms games. While the dungeon itself wasn't too difficult, the boss duo that waited at the end was truly brutal. Being relatively sure that I had not missed any major items or pieces of gear, I was forced to grind out levels for an hour or so before I was able to get lucky enough to win the fight. I finally got through it at around 1am on a Tuesday -- a real throwback to my summer days as a high school student! Now, I am humming right along in the final sections and have every intent to finish this game in the last weeks of summer vacation.
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Pascal Tekaia
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
"I rolled credits on Infinite Wealth!" ...is what I'd like to say. What I SHOULD by rights be saying. But I'm playing it at my own pace, and I've never been one for rushed goodbyes. To be fair, I've had Ichiban's side of things wrapped up and finished for quite a while now. All that was left was Kiryu's half of the final chapter. But, dammit, they gave me a bucket list, and there's no way I'm letting Kiryu have any regrets or unfinished business. I've been by this man's side for eleven games now!
As the hours passed by and blips started disappearing off the map one by one, a sense of finality and anxiety started settling in. Well, it honestly wasn't THAT bad, but eventually I got to the very last item on Kiryu's bucket list, that final meeting -- if you played the game, you know what I'm talking about! I found myself putting it off again and again, not ready to face whatever it had in store for me. Honestly not sure I could take it. Tonight, I ticked that final check box. Tomorrow, I'll launch into Kiryu's final boss fight and roll credits for sure. In the meantime, closing decades' worth of history in the Dragon of Dojima's life, I'm really not okay.
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Cassandra Ramos
Sword of Mana
It really is nice to replay a game from my younger days. I wondered for a long time if my fondness for Sword of Mana would still hold up if I were to play it again. I've spent a little over seven hours on the game, so I've got a long way to go, but I'm already being charmed by this game again. I'm playing through the heroine's campaign, as the last time I played Sword of Mana, I played through the hero's story. I made it to Menos Village after the heroine broke the reactor on the airship she was being kidnapped in and ran off. The next stop is the town of Jadd. This time I'm using a guide in order to make Meia, the name I've given the heroine, a specific class called a Grande Divina. There's really no need to build up to a specific class, but I figured I'd give it a try instead of just allocating class points evenly. I do love how much more personality the heroine is given in this game over the original, which is to be expected since the player can actually follow her story and she's more of an action girl than a healer damsel in distress.
I absolutely adore this game's art style, which it shares with Legend of Mana, Magical Vacation, Magical Starsign, and Egglia. I didn't know until now that I should credit it to the artist Shinichi Kameoka. I wish the Mana series had stuck with it, but it's not unusual for long-running series to have multiple artists. Sword of Mana actually borrows heavily from Legend of Mana, as if Square Enix wanted to divorce the game from being a Final Fantasy spin-off as much as possible and refit it into the Mana series proper. There are added characters that are right out of Legend of Mana, like Nikolai, Li'l Cactus, and the Dudbears. There are mechanics such as tempering weapons using the same whimsical fruits and vegetables, forging weapons using similar materials, the Li'l Cactus character will secretly write in a notebook about recent story events and side quests, as well as (mostly) the same mana spirits, though they did originate in Secret of Mana. Suffice to say, Sword of Mana builds upon the bones that is the original Final Fantasy Adventure, and that's probably the best way to regard the original. I prefer Sword of Mana many times over Final Fantasy Adventure, but it's also not fair to compare them. Final Fantasy Adventure laid the groundwork for the series, but Sword of Mana takes that basic outline and expands it into its own thing. I doubt I'll finish Sword of Mana before July is over, but I will complete it. I want to see Meia's side of the story again.
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Stream Team
And that’s Week 4 done on #JRPGJuly 2026 for the Stream Team! What went down in those final hours?
- TheMightyTAM was a one-man army, clearing the field against hundreds of enemies in Dynasty Warriors: Origins.
- SpareOmbres fought back the tears to power through even more emotional endings in NieR:Automata.
- Smoking Joe Gamer tried to key in on the finale of Kingdom Hearts, but we all know only Kingdom Hearts decides when it’s time to roll credits.
- Leogrim fought through 444 monsters in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence—just to be rewarded with a single belt.
And that’s just a taste, alongside some incredible podcasts! We’re keeping the RPG goodness going seven days a week, so hit that follow button and turn on notifications so you never miss a show: [twitch.tv/rpgamer]
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That’s all for this #JRPGJuly! Let us know if you were successful in completing any JRPGs throughout the month!
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