Funnily enough, while our takeaways about MP are similar, we come from different ends of the spectrum.

I think limiting MP as much as possible is integral to a great dungeon, because now every encounter is something to think about. How much MP do you spend? Is the EXP worth the investment? How much damage should you take - how much healing do you still have? And some more. The answer to the question "How can I survive this encounter with the minimal amount of resources?" will shift with your gear, level and resources. Dungeons are all about resource management.

If they are not, they become boring. Every encounter will be the same, and you just use the same moves, which are usually your strongest ones. The answer to "How can I defeat this encounter as fast as possible?" will be the same each time. Especially with Press Turn as implemented in Persona games. You start every fight with advantage and kill everything in the first turn, nothing short of a boss would ever hit you if you're not forced to use weaker moves or even rely on auto-attacks for some things to preserve MP. Also, without a limiting resource, endless grinding within a dungeon becomes an option, and I don't think it should be.

Sadly, outside some Persona games and Etrian Odyssey, a proper dungeon seems to be a lost art. Older Pokémon games kind of went for that sometimes, but with healing around every corner and before every major fight, there isn't much left there either.

Still playing Xenoblade Chronicles X. No changes on JRPG front.

I did start Marvel's Midnight Suns recently. It's Tactical RPG, and obviously western, so not sure if it counts, but that's the closest to another JRPG I have come yet.

I started playing Persona 5 Royal in January. It's already June and I still haven't finished it lol

I'm towards the end of midnight suns, enjoy the journey!

Might try Breath of Fire IV

I played it last year emulated and loved it. The story is interesting although a bit sad and the game has this melancholic and kind of dream-like atmosphere, the music helps with the vibe too. The graphics are some of the finest spritework from that era IMHO, I quickly fell in love.

I finished Expedition 33 a few days ago, I think it deserves all the praise it is getting.

I was playing Breath of Fire III but had to stop for a couple of days and now I'm struggling to find it interesting again, unfortunately I have this problem quite often.

Thanks. I feel like I am spending too much in abbey, compared to actual fighting, but it hasn't gotten to where I am annoyed by it. Maybe as the game progresses they will start to balance a bit.

There's a ton of dialogue and I've enjoyed most of it. Who knew superheroes had so much drama

Does Vagrant Story count as a JRPG? Or is it just an RPG with Japanese developers?

After dropping Final Fantasy X a while ago (I regrettably played for like 30 hours or something, up until the Seymour wedding part in wherever that was, just wasn't having fun with how grindy it felt and how the choices some characters were making in the cutscenes felt wildly out of character), I decided to pick up Vagrant Story. I know nothing about the game.

The opening cinematic was very impressive considering the time, very clever way of faking rim lighting. The facial animations are also quite good for a sub 200 meg game. I played about 15 minutes and it seems interesting enough, we will see how long I continue to play it. The rotatable perspective seems like it could be easily frustrating for platforming, so I hope that the platforming in this game doesn't get too technical.

My singular complain so far is I think lack of voice acting really hurts this game. It feels like they probably didn't have voice acting in the budget and spent whatever extra on art direction, but if they had been given extra for full voice acting I think the game would have been vastly more captivating.

Heh, yeah, there's already some drama going on, and I guess that will just increase as more and more heroes join the group.

Finished Trails of Cold Steel 4, started Trails into Reverie.

Found that the middle part of Cold Steel 4 dragged, to the point that I stopped playing it and picked it up again. First started it August 2023. Thankfully I remembered enough to continue playing without restarting. I was playing through 3 and 4 on hard, but halfway through the final dungeon I dropped the difficulty to normal. The bosses just felt more like a chore on hard than a fun fight.

Enjoying Reverie so far, though only about 10 hours in or so

I really need to get back to Midnight Suns. I played about four hours of it, thought it was interesting, and then something new came out and I forgot about it for a while. I love that team's work, too. Really excited for Star Wars Zero Company.

As much as I love Trails, I felt like each one of the Cold Steel games have a major pacing problem at some point. CS1's was damn near the whole game, ugh.

Reverie was a very refreshing change of pace on that front.

Star Wars Zero Company is a different studio. It's by Respawn and some other studio, under EA.

Midnight Suns is by Firaxis, X-Com devs.

You should continue. I am not a fan of deck-based games, but it's fun to play. As for Star Wars Zero Company, looking forward to it as well. A tactical game in Star Wars world could be great.

Bit Reactor is the lead dev on Zero Company, and a third of them are XCOM/Firaxis vets.

Wow, didn't know that. That's cool then, and they apparently have full control over it.

Any idea why they all left Firaxis? I skimmed the whole article but didn't find anything.

Don't think I've come across anything on why they left. It did seem like the general vibe for a while was that 2K was done with XCOM, and they also didn't seem happy with the sales for Midnight Suns itself. Maybe the writing was on the wall for the team?