Justice Chronicles game length

[Travelman31]

This is one of the longer kemco games I have played, if not the longest. This is for the normal ending.

[LemmyTheLenny]

Perfect for grinders. I'm at the end where i need to get all of my weapons to L4 which is gonna be fun. Added

[Victar]

I played the 3DS version. I regret deleting my save data; the only screenshot I can offer is from my 3DS activity log.

Like Fantasy Chronicles/Mystic Chronicles, Justice Chronicles has three endings earned in linear sequence. Earning all three endings and completing all sidequests took about 49 hours. This unlocked the option to replay Justice Chronicles on Hard difficulty. I didn't try Hard; Justice Chronicles is challenging enough on its default difficulty.

This is a grindy game. Both level grinding and grinding for craft materials is required. Boss fights are very challenging, and some sidequest bosses will crush the party if they're fought as soon as they become available (fortunately there are no missable sidequests).

The story had surprising plot twists, and the gameplay was quite fun. This is the Kemco RPG that sold me on Kemco RPGs for life.

[LemmyTheLenny]

Beaten to true end, Killed Lucius, Baron, and Grace but Uranus wasn't worth fighting. Finished all sidequests except the monster extermination ones in the Ruins of Swelling Darkness because i was just done with this game. I also paid for 600 IAP points for double XP, Gold, Materials, and No encounters.

The game is a sequel to Mystic Chronicles but only loosely connected as there's only a few characters that show up in the true end of the game but you should still beat the first to see why Mystic chronicles matters.

So the story is why you should play the game as its a Telenovela in RPG format. There's virtually a plot twist after each and every dungeon that keeps you on your toes and remains entertaining through the game though there are some notable plot holes that really don't matter that much thankfully.

Gameplay is pretty fun when you grind to get stronger and take on bosses but the grinding alone is why I simply cannot recommend the game to anyone. Its a standard JRPG with Kemco's take on personas and it does its job well with the standard turn-based battles. The game does come with a comprehensive crafting system that seems inviting with multiple ways to modify your weapon for different situation but to do so requires INSANE amounts of grinding. Need a weapon to target an enemy's weakness? F*ck you because you need to grind more hours to get the materials and money needed to make this happen thus discouraging you from experimenting with other weapons when staying on your current weapon upgrade path is easier. This could have been remedied by reducing the grinding needed and implementing a system that lets you change your current weapon at will based on your upgrades such that if you have a Fire Sword+5 and an Ice sword+5, you should be able to switch between those without needing to retrogress to the same weapon or buy a 2nd sword and upgrade that instead. This here is why the game could have been so much better and so interesting had they just not decide to punish the player for choosing other options with even more grinding. Even worse is that you're not shown the full potential of the weapon/armour nor do you get to know what the effects are until you invest precious materials to try out the new weapon. Sure you can get around by reloading an older save but you really shouldn't have to do that in the first place.

Frankly the more I write about the crafting system, the more disappointed I am in how they dropped the ball on this just so they can force people to buy IAP to actually have a chance of beating this short game with massive padding in a reasonable time. Mystic chronicles had grinding but it was not as bad as this game and you could get by with the normal ending in that game. Justice chronicles ends on a cliffhanger and forces you to grind for the true ending which is behind a half-assed dungeon full of reused assets and forces you to keep grinding.

Don't buy this game.

Update: Also, the games flaws become much worse once the 5th and 6th party member joins. Vil and Anne joins very late (3rd from the final dungeon and 2nd from the final dungeon) and both of them start out with Lv. 1 weapons that require materials you wouldn't have thought of stealing. To make the both of them useful, you need to go through the trouble of grinding them out for several hours to make them useful and even then, they pale in comparison to Kline, Aila, and Fred. Furthermore, Paola has one of the worst weapon upgrading methods that practically stops you dead in your tracks so the crafting system essentially forces 3 characters into low tiers when the other 3 have much better skills and probably maxed them out already. I was so excited to use Anne and so enraged by the extra grinding that I actually dropped the game the first time around.

[Victar]

Justice Chronicles' crafting system is extremely grindy and tedious. I want to second the assertion that, as described above, the player is better off ignoring 90% of the crafting tree's options and sticking with the basic non-elemental crafting path for weapons or armor. That's what I did, and it worked for the whole game.

All characters need good crafted armor to survive, but weapon crafting is so grindy that crafting good weapons is not worth it except for characters who focus on dealing physical damage. I recommend designating one or two physical damage dealers - I chose Kline (main hero) and the blond guy - and maxing out their weapons. Everyone else can carry second-rate weapons and attack with spells, heal, buff the party/debuff enemies, steal items, or use items.

I think Justice Chronicles is worth playing, both for its plot-twist-laden story and its epic boss battles (the music is also pretty good), but tolerance for both level grinding and the grindy crafting system is absolutely required to progress.

[LemmyTheLenny]

I agree that having a good story and boss fights are nice but the more that I reflect on my experiences playing JC, there's no reason for this game to be grindy than it should be. I would be saying a much more positive opinion if the grinding wasn't killer here. It's just so infuriating that they have this interesting system that is squandered by massive amounts of grinding and this extends to not only the requests but also the leveling of skills that feels even worse when you consider that just about all the materials you need can be purchased with real money in the IAP store. In short, its the fact that all the negative elements combine together to really bring the value of this game down.