Cosmic Star Heroine is the first JRPG I've played to completion since I put the nail in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy's coffin with the hot mess that was Lightning Returns and it won me back to my previous - now possibly current - favorite genre of video game: The JRPG.

Previous favorite for a good reason. What was once charming and engaging went straight to shit as developers veered away from turn based combat and grindy world exploration to focus on strange, hit-and-miss real-time combat systems and ridiculously flashy visuals. The seventh generation of consoles features some of my favorite JRPG combat ever, and all of my most hated character design, story telling and world design. It's a real shit-show only redeemed by Xenoblade Chronicles - which I consider one of the best ever.

Thank whateverdeity for this game. It gives me hope for my once-favorite genre again.

Cosmic Star Heroine has some of the best turn based combat this side of Final Fantasy IV. It gives you loads of useful abilities that you can mix and match to find all kinds of fun combos. It gives you as much time as you want to make a decision as to what ability to use. It gives you four levels of difficulty that range from trivial to insane. It gives you something like 12 party members you can mix and match to your heart's content (when your party isn't scripted.) It never makes you grind and there's always a way through a battle.

It has more heart than a Valentine's Day parade. It reeks of the cheese that 80s and 90s JRPGs thrived on. It doesn't really earn it's more sentimental moments, but they're affecting anyway. I can smell the somewhat scungy laundry room where I was fascinated by Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy and Crono Trigger as a kid when I'm playing this game. The story really isn't anything to write home about, but I'll be darned if it didn't make me feel something anyway. Something no Final Fantasy can boast of since the ninth or tenth iteration of that thoroughly beaten dead horse.

Cosmic Star Heroine isn't going to win any awards. Though I never encountered anything game breaking, as of version 1.15, it's still a bit of a buggy mess. (I did have to alt-f4 once, but lost very little progress.) There are obviously unfinished sections. You can see the parts where the dev's ambition exceeded their grasp. (Judging from the credits, it was an overdue Kickstarter.) But dammit, anyone with a love of old JRPGs owes themselves a play through or two.