Legaia 2: Duel Saga

Legaia 2 was slightly improved from the first game, but storyline and length. The battles were way to long and drawn out. The random encounter rate was just ridiculous. The story was cliche in almost every way. There was only a little bit of voice overs during battle, but they're pretty bad to begin with.

----------Battle System----------
Legaia 2: Duel Saga is a turn-based RPG. Your turns are in a round-based format. You have to set your moves at the start of the round and then watch everything fold out from there. In this game each character will gain an Origin, this Origin is their magic attacks in battle, so the lame magic system from the first game is over with. Your characters can also use the Origin within dungeons for solving puzzles, like Lang can bust boulders and walls with his, and Maya can breath life in plants to create vine ropes and such.

You gain experience and levels like any other game out there, but if you have a character in reserve they won't even gain a percentage of experience your active characters do. After Sharon joined my team I just flat out stopped using Maya, and by the time Ayne joined I had no use for him either, so those two characters became obsolete pretty quick. Other than that, your Origins also gain experience and levels, and new magic.

The battle system is roughly the same as the first game, but slightly improved. While its a little better than the first game, it's still a very slow system that drags on way to long. The point of the system is you have 4 movies, high kick, low kick, left and right punch. You can then set any of these moves into an order to create an Art, of you successfully created an Art then a bigger attack will happen. If you fight a really short monster, then an attack or Art with a lower attack is wise, and if you attack a flying monster then an attack or art with a higher attack is wise. That's really the gist of the system.

It's a pretty fun system AT FIRST. Then it gets old really quick, because it can take about 5 minutes for a battle to end later in the game because your characters have extremely long combo attacks, and if you fight a weak or dying monster with low HP and you kill them with the first attack of your combo, the combo will continue wasting my time. It's annoying and I dreading going into a battle near the end.

----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Lang, who looks exactly like the kid from the first game. He is a rookie in training for a Hunter's Guild in his hometown. As he is training with his mentor in the nearby woods he comes across a giant man and a monster ravaging through the woods looking for a crystal, the same crystal that supplies their town with water. That man then steals their crystal, and Lang goes out on an adventure to get it back. Lang later learns that he is a Mystic and can control an Origin and use it for good.

The story was decent but predictable and cliche. The first game had a much better story overall, but this game had better character development.

----------Graphics----------
The graphics are decent but not great. The character models looked ok and there's alot of detail put into their appearance, but they look stiff and blocky at times. The monsters are more creatively designed this time around, and they don't repeating the same monsters over and over again like the last game either so that's good. The textures for the dungeons are kinda lame, it feels like a really good N64 game.

----------Sound----------
The music is roughly the as the last game, actually they reuse a few tunes from it. There is a few decent scores to this that sounds like there was some budget used for it, but nothing that will blow you away. There are voice overs in this game and they're in English, but they're poorly acted and the only time they include voice overs in during battles and between or after battles similar to Legend of Dragoon for the Playstation.

----------World Map----------
The map is a lazy dot-to-dot map. Each icon shows a town, field or dungeon. There's probably around 15 icons on the screen, so it's not a very big game at all, actually the entire game takes place on one continent.

----------Time to Complete Game----------
28:37

This was a very short game, but it felt like an eternity. I have a feeling if the battle system was quicker and the random encounter rate was lowered then this game would of been about 8 hours shorter. After you beat the game you are just taken back to the title screen, no stats, no new game plus, nothing at all. This did have more sidequests than the first game, but I didn't have the patience to try them all.