I can’t help but compare this book to my recently read Chasing the Dragon, which was about the history of Dungeons & Dragons from a business perspective. This book uses bigger words and lacks that new “Twitter-short” style of journalism. There are more second-hand sources. And since this is based on Japanese-originating content, no one’s going to have a bad word to say about anyone–everyone’s so polite. So there won’t be much conflict.

This author never had a bad thing to say about a JRPG. The whole thing is pretty much a long love letter to Square-Enix, which created Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. In fact, that’s mostly all the book is. There’s nothing meat and potatoes about it. It’s mostly fluff, describing the JRPG, its context around the release, some trivia, then moving on to the next game. It doesn’t go in-depth with the people who made them or how they got their ideas.

I’m not sure who this book is for or what its purpose is, other than a stroll down memory lane. I don’t know that this book needed to exist–it doesn’t say anything new or bold. Maybe there was just a lack of books about JRPG history? You won’t learn how the sausage is made from this, that’s for sure.