Oh sweet joy, an other thread for myself only!
I was really looking forward to this game, knowing it wouldn't have been a big surprise like the first, but I was waiting for it nonetheless.
When you first snap the cart into the DS a very simple introduction will tell you how the city of Lagaard was born, about the great flood, the floating castle and the giant Yggdrasil tree. This is all narrated through static text and simple drawings and once it's over you're greeted by an SD model of the blond female gunner happily walking, gun in hand, in front of the city from which the game takes its subtitle.
Choosing New Game will prompt the game to ask if you had, per any chance, visited Etria and will ask you to digit a password to prove it. The password is of course provided by the previous game and...why in the era of wired or wireless networking do I have to input a 30+ character long password? Even Golden Sun gave the possibility to exchange info via link cable! Not to mention that beside your guild's name and a single item testifying that you beat the previous game, it appears that no other data is transferred. No names for your characters, no equipment, no items, no money...there's a slightly change in dialogues if you chose to bring your previous data (like "oooh, you're the famous guild Clan Wolf"), but right now it stops there.
BTW, as with the first EO, the first step is to register your party. Every class is available from the start with the exception of the Beast class (but I don't know if having Hexers and Ronins from the start is influenced by the previous savegame...I suspect not as the two classes are fully described in the instruction booklet with the Beast class is not), so I registered one character from every class and set off for the labyrinth with a Landerwhatever, a Protector, a Gunner, a Medic and a WarMagus. Later I switched the WarMagus for an Alchemist and then an Hexer, but I'm still in the learning phase.
Existing classes haven't changed much except for the Ronin that now doesn't need to change his/her stances during combat to use special attacks. Other classes had some of their skills renamed but they still have the same effect as before.
The new classes are the Warmagus, the Gunner and the Beast, which is locked at the beginning.
The Gunner in combat resembled the Survivalist, with low vitality and quick, long range actions; gunners cannot gather as many items as Survivalists but gain a full variety of elemental and healer shots as well as keeping the ability to strike at multiple targets relatively early on; they are mostly a combat class, lacking strong support capabilities.
Warmagi are strange. At first I thought they would mix swords with elemental magic; instead they mix swords, curses and healing magic. They aren't particularly strong but they have interesting party healing abilities but don't go as far as having resurrection or Salve III like the Medics, nor their curses are strong or interesting as Hexers. I found out that Warmagi can act as Medic and a Hexer together during the first Strati (levels of the labyrinth), but probably they'll lose effectiveness as the game proceeds as they don't specialize in any of their three fields.
The very first impression is that EOII tries to emulate its predecessor, as the first task is to draw a map of the first Stratum of the labyrinth, with occasional pop-ups from Lagaard guards giving you hints.
It also felt like that skills consume less TPs per use and some classes have access to HP-regenerating abilities very early. However, I let the game fool me and so I got mauled three times in the first stratum for being excessively careless: not healing when a character is in the red zone, not distributing even the first three skills point before reaching level 2 and so on or venturing too far in the labyrinth without TPs, healing items or warp wires...probably it's just an impression, but Laagard prices are higher than Etria and money is harder to come by, but probably it's because I haven't taken any skills that allow to gather materials.
The game has undergone subtle little changes that make life easier: now in the shop you are able to see how an item will affect a character in your party and directly equip it, there's a quicksave option (yay!), the inn can store items you collected into the labyrinth (useful for those multiple item fetching quests), the map maker has now more icons (three different types of terrain, chop/take/mine hotspots have their respective icons with different colors and there are arrows for secret passages.
The status screen also shows the prerequisites for each skill...not knowing what would have unlocked a certain skill had its charm, but this hardly makes the game easier, with a single skill point per level some were completely wasted on almost useless skills, so I'd say it's a welcome addition.
Graphics are mostly the same (some more detail here and there, but it's nothing too noteworthy), just like music, which sounds like a rearrange of the previous soundtrack; sound effects are exactly the same.
And now on to fight the first FOE...on the first labyrinth stratum.
I was really looking forward to this game, knowing it wouldn't have been a big surprise like the first, but I was waiting for it nonetheless.
When you first snap the cart into the DS a very simple introduction will tell you how the city of Lagaard was born, about the great flood, the floating castle and the giant Yggdrasil tree. This is all narrated through static text and simple drawings and once it's over you're greeted by an SD model of the blond female gunner happily walking, gun in hand, in front of the city from which the game takes its subtitle.
Choosing New Game will prompt the game to ask if you had, per any chance, visited Etria and will ask you to digit a password to prove it. The password is of course provided by the previous game and...why in the era of wired or wireless networking do I have to input a 30+ character long password? Even Golden Sun gave the possibility to exchange info via link cable! Not to mention that beside your guild's name and a single item testifying that you beat the previous game, it appears that no other data is transferred. No names for your characters, no equipment, no items, no money...there's a slightly change in dialogues if you chose to bring your previous data (like "oooh, you're the famous guild Clan Wolf"), but right now it stops there.
BTW, as with the first EO, the first step is to register your party. Every class is available from the start with the exception of the Beast class (but I don't know if having Hexers and Ronins from the start is influenced by the previous savegame...I suspect not as the two classes are fully described in the instruction booklet with the Beast class is not), so I registered one character from every class and set off for the labyrinth with a Landerwhatever, a Protector, a Gunner, a Medic and a WarMagus. Later I switched the WarMagus for an Alchemist and then an Hexer, but I'm still in the learning phase.
Existing classes haven't changed much except for the Ronin that now doesn't need to change his/her stances during combat to use special attacks. Other classes had some of their skills renamed but they still have the same effect as before.
The new classes are the Warmagus, the Gunner and the Beast, which is locked at the beginning.
The Gunner in combat resembled the Survivalist, with low vitality and quick, long range actions; gunners cannot gather as many items as Survivalists but gain a full variety of elemental and healer shots as well as keeping the ability to strike at multiple targets relatively early on; they are mostly a combat class, lacking strong support capabilities.
Warmagi are strange. At first I thought they would mix swords with elemental magic; instead they mix swords, curses and healing magic. They aren't particularly strong but they have interesting party healing abilities but don't go as far as having resurrection or Salve III like the Medics, nor their curses are strong or interesting as Hexers. I found out that Warmagi can act as Medic and a Hexer together during the first Strati (levels of the labyrinth), but probably they'll lose effectiveness as the game proceeds as they don't specialize in any of their three fields.
The very first impression is that EOII tries to emulate its predecessor, as the first task is to draw a map of the first Stratum of the labyrinth, with occasional pop-ups from Lagaard guards giving you hints.
It also felt like that skills consume less TPs per use and some classes have access to HP-regenerating abilities very early. However, I let the game fool me and so I got mauled three times in the first stratum for being excessively careless: not healing when a character is in the red zone, not distributing even the first three skills point before reaching level 2 and so on or venturing too far in the labyrinth without TPs, healing items or warp wires...probably it's just an impression, but Laagard prices are higher than Etria and money is harder to come by, but probably it's because I haven't taken any skills that allow to gather materials.
The game has undergone subtle little changes that make life easier: now in the shop you are able to see how an item will affect a character in your party and directly equip it, there's a quicksave option (yay!), the inn can store items you collected into the labyrinth (useful for those multiple item fetching quests), the map maker has now more icons (three different types of terrain, chop/take/mine hotspots have their respective icons with different colors and there are arrows for secret passages.
The status screen also shows the prerequisites for each skill...not knowing what would have unlocked a certain skill had its charm, but this hardly makes the game easier, with a single skill point per level some were completely wasted on almost useless skills, so I'd say it's a welcome addition.
Graphics are mostly the same (some more detail here and there, but it's nothing too noteworthy), just like music, which sounds like a rearrange of the previous soundtrack; sound effects are exactly the same.
And now on to fight the first FOE...on the first labyrinth stratum.
Comment