Jinshin Game Length

[LemmyTheLenny]

Another day, Another Exe-Create RPG. I do like how Mikazuchi is just Jasper but Japanese but oh man is this game so bland. It dosent even want to take advantage of leveling over 100 because it always feels like you're in your 20's the moment you hit Lv 100. I did like the collecting all of the magic arts but its not enough to save how wasted and bland the game is right next to Asdivine Kamura.

[Victar]

Jinshin is another "shoujo" RPG in the style of Ghost Sync. Like Ghost Sync, the battle system has only three difficulty levels. Unlike Ghost Sync, Jinshin does give the player complete control over the encounter rate.... at a very, very late point in the optional postgame.

Unlike Ghost Sync, Hard difficulty provides a moderate challenge for several reasons: access to buff and debuff spells is much more limited (there's no party-wide INT-buffing spell in the entire game!) and putting all stat boosters on one character (Mikazuchi in my case) does not trivialize boss battles. It does trivialize most regular battles, though.

Jinshin wants the player to use a formation system similar to the one in Unlucky Mage/Hero, but 99% of the time it's better to just stay in a favorite formation instead of spending Mikazuchi's turn to change it.

Jinshin REALLY wants the player to use bad status as a weapon. It keeps giving the player spells, abilities, and accessories that can inflict bad status. I ignored all of them 99% of the time, which may have made the game harder.

The story is also "shoujo" in that the male protagonist Mikazuchi shares the spotlight with the female co-protagonist Hinoko. Hinoko is the tsukumo kami (minor goddess) who leads a mercenary unit, and she has earned the devoted loyalty of her generals (the other playable characters).

The best parts of Jinshin's story are when Mikazuchi has to come up with an ingenious tactical approach to difficult problems, whether it's "how can I get these hotheaded generals to work more effectively as a team", or "what's our next move when the enemy outnumbers us ten to one and we have no means to retreat or call backup".

The rest of Jinshin's story is a pretty standard save-the-world plot. There is plenty of Japanese cultural flavor in the names, clothing, food, architecture, music style, monster designs, mythological references, and so on, which makes Jinshin a little more interesting than bog-standard medieval fantasy.

On the highest difficulty level of Hard (Switch version), it took about 27 hours to reach the normal ending with all sidequests and all available requests complete. It took about 29 hours to finish the remaining requests, beat the postgame dungeon, and earn one of the true endings (the player gets to choose; neither ending has any prerequisites).

It took about 35 hours to do everything else. Even with experience boosters from the Shop, grinding enough levels to earn the 1 million damage challenge prize, beat the entire Secret Arena (the final match is Jinshin's ultimate superboss, and possible to win at lower than the explicitly recommended level of 550), and survive level 850 overworld enemies took time. Autobattling at pillars was faster than trying to kill metal monsters. I completed the enemy catalog and earned all catalog rewards, partly as a way to make grinding more interesting. I did not max out the party's stats.

I don't always jump at postgame grindfests, but I enjoyed Jinshin so much that I really wanted to wrap up everything before moving on to another game.