For July, I only played Star Ocean Second Story R.

To summarize the game, it does start off strong but gets worse over time.

The story is fun. You start off with a central mystery to solve and some fun things happen along the way. Then, the second half begins and it's all fetch quests from there with some barely characterized antagonist group.

You have sheer endless options to mess with. Based on how you skill your characters, there are many different crafting methods, passive boosts or new overworld abilities. However, while it is fun to break the game, in the later parts, I had it broken to the point of being boring. A very common thing, as I'v learned.

There's a free flowing character recruitment system, where you can get up to 6 additional characters out of a larger pool in addition to your starting 2. Depending on which of these 2 main characters you chose as the main one, there are different options and dialogues. However, that also means you have to plan out recruitments if you want to get the most out of your playthroughs or even to get late game recruits, since you'll likely be full by then. I kinda messed up and would have to do 2 more playthroughs to get most of the interesting stuff - which I'm not up to.

Overall, I can still recommend the game, just for how strong it did start off.

For the next month(s), I'm playing through the Baten Kaitos Collection.

In July I finished:

• Trails in the Sky the 3rd . This was very good for the most part, but I prefered the story structure of 1 and 2. So much backstory for Kevin, by the end of the game your understanding of him has changed completely. Looking forward to starting a new arc with Trails from Zero next.
• Nier Replicant . I returned to this about 8 months after reaching ending A to get the other endings. I like the world and story but the gameplay to get all of the endings was very repetitive.
• Nier Automata . The gameplay of this one was much more enjoyable and varied than Nier Replicant, but I think the story was less interesting, though there were some nice twists. I was hoping for the characters from Replicant to play a more important role, but it was cool to see the same locations in the future.

I'm currently playing:

• Atelier Meruru . I started this so long ago and it's been a struggle to get through it. Something about it makes it so I don't feel like playing it very often, but I enjoy it when I do. I'm focussing on it now to hopefully finish it in the next few days.

After that I'm not fully sure but I'm considering:

• SaGa Frontier . I've only done one character's story so far (Red) so am curious to go back and try another character.
• Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song . Never played this.
• Tales of Symphonia . I started this ages ago and lost interest about 12 hours in when I had to go to another ranch. I didn't really like the combat system, but the world and characters were nice. I might go back and give it another chance.
• Octopath Traveler . Another game which I lost interest in. I'm at about 10 hours and I think I've done the first story part for about 6 of the characters. The stories and characters are just a bit basic, and it annoys me how fights seem to take such a long time, even using the weaknesses against normal mobs, and then boss fights go on for like 15 minutes or something.
• Disgaea . Never played any of this series.
• Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age . The last mainline (non-MMO) Final Fantasy game I haven't played, excluding 16 since it's so recent.
• Grandia . Played this as a kid and have nostalgia for it. I think I got stuck on a boss fight back then and didn't come anywhere close to finishing it. I used to run from every mob so I was always underleveled.

I finished Fire Emblem Engage in July, again. I played flier only so it feels like cheating all stage hazards and i was supprised how easy it is to dodge archers, they not that many. I rushed it a bit, so haven't read much of the story again, i only do some kind of (easy) challange runs or ironmans in engage.

And i played the Trails into Reverie, i'm on act 3 so far and it's good. Haven't expect something else. Like the story, the battle system good, but not much different than the game before. And there are way to much characters i like. But ehh the game feels a bit like playing a gacha game. With the Reverie Garden and everything you able to do there. They could have made a gacha game like this not like the gacha slop they have done, but good they haven't.

Too busy to finish stuff lately, but I did do some of Fire Emblem Engage (I think I'm almost halfway?). I also started Breath of Fire IV, I've got a bunch of big positives and big negatives with this one. For example, the spritework is gorgeous, along with dynamic character portraits in the text boxes. Feels like it'd be another one of my pet "lost sprite generation" games for fifth-gen games, except they sprinkled in a bunch of 3D models in for some reason. That hasn't aged well. The control scheme is also bizarre. Everything's at a diagonal for some reason, and Triangle to cancel? Oookay.

That said, for not-JRPGs, I also finished Kaizen: A Factory Story, which I really enjoyed even though I'm not normally into puzzle games. If you're looking for something different that's set in real-world Japan, it might be worth a look.

August doesn't have any big releases for me so I'll likely be continuing on with FE and BoF4. Not the case in September though, stuff's coming!

Does Fabula Ultima count? 😅