Dual Orb II

released on Dec 29, 1994
by I'Max

Long time ago, a flourishing civilization was destroyed by the rage of a mighty dragon. The Earth was set in flames, and no one escaped the destruction - no one except one man, who managed to launch himself forward, thousand years into the future. There, he was found by people of Kardosa Empire, who soon understood they have in their hands a human who possesses the secret of a superior ancient technology, that was unknown to the primitive civilization of the present... You play the role of Aleth, the son of the High Priest in the small kingdom of Garade, whom leads a peaceful life with his friend Lagnus, Prince of Garade. One day Aleth accidentally gains possession of a precious artifact which is sought after by the Kardosa Empire. Aleth and Lagnus get involve in a conflict which will soon lead them to great discoveries of the secrets of the ancient civilization, of the great destruction that occurred thousand years ago, and of their own true identities... The game is a console-style RPG: your party meets randomly encountered enemies and bosses, and fights them in turn-based combat viewed from isometric perspective. You upgrade armor by buying it, and also can buy weapons, but weapons can also be upgraded for money to different levels, to create powerful attacks called "techs".


Released on

Genres

RPG


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Game Review - originally written by Gideon Zhi (founder of Aeon Genesis Translation Group)

Dual Orb 2 is a fairly generic RPG for the SNES. The graphics are good, the plot's alright, the music's good (although the inclusion of a boss battle theme would have been nice…), and the whole thing screams of “basically above average.”

You play as Aleth, heir-successor-person who was mysteriously found on a mountainside. You grow up being trained as a priest next to the crown prince Lagnus, and all is hunky-dory. You even go out and build a fort in the woods when you're a kid. Then, at one point, a visiting bard (who happens to be the only bard in any RPG I've played who can really kick some ass in battle) needs to get to the neighboring country, so you and Lagnus tail along. You naturally do your damnedest to get in trouble and break a seal and wake up your third real party member, and when you get back home, the place has been ransacked by the stereotypical Evil Invading Empire, and stuff happens and things. Yep. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but it works.

The interesting thing about the game is that there are very few real weapons that you can buy, maybe only ten or fifteen varieties total. Rather, you can spend your money upgrading your weaponry. Each time you upgrade it, it gets stronger (naturally) and once you upgrade it past a certain point, it becomes an uberweapon and you can use a special sekrit technique if you're low on health.

You wander around in dungeons and on the overworld, like in standard RPGs, and this is where one of my minor gripes comes in. The overworld is done in a tilted Mode-7 style, like FF3/6's overworld, but quite simply, it's too zoomed-in. The world is kind of small, but when you're trying to explore the massive southern continent with the desert on it, the zoomed-in view, combined with the encounter rate, actually started to get me kinda lost.

Speaking of the encounter rate, I might as well mention right here and now that it's high. Very high. Some might consider it to be ridiculously high. Battles go by quickly so it wasn't much of a big deal for me, but it might be for some people. Another thing I should probably mention in this paragraph, while I'm dealing with the combat system, is the difficult level. Some people consider this to be one of the hardest SNES RPGs ever, but I can't say I had a very difficult time of it… The fact of the matter is that stat-boosting spells and items are cumulative and last for the duration of the battle (or your character's health bar) so you can just pump your party up until the enemies aren't doing squat for damage against you and then just slaughter them.

The high encounter rate and general above-average difficulty of the normal random battles was nice, though. I found myself actually having to level up. Not for extremely excessive amounts of time - the game is only 20 or 30 someodd hours long - but it was definitely necessary. The prospect of a bit of a challenge was fun for a change.

I freely admit to not having beaten many fan-translated games (aside from the ones I've worked on, heh…) I can probably count them all on one hand. Suffice to say, I beat Dual Orb 2, and I was very satisfied with it. Your mileage may vary.

There might be something really good here but the game feels like a slog at times. Every scene transition is several seconds long (including to and from battle) and battles feel really slow.

Although leveling might make a difference, it feels like smithing your weapons is more important than levels (other than extra HP). Might go back to it again someday, but as it stands, I'd rather play through some other games in my backlog ahead of this.