Classic Falcom banger these niggas don't miss. I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would, the characters were lovable, the music banged and it was just super fun.
Zwei is a simple game that does a lot right. You're Ragna, a red-haired heroic treasure-hunter who loves airplanes. You start the game piloting one. And then some anime villains shoot you, and you crash into a floating island that looks like Zeal, from Chrono Trigger.
You wake up in the house of kind strangers and find out that the reason why you aren't dead is that this vampire princess named Alween made you semi-vampiric so you could help her challenge the demons who took her castle from her.
The game is structured in the traditional "town -> dungeon" way of RPGs. Towns are great, and you won't be bored to death by what NPCs have to say. They've made a low number of unique NPCs in each town, and I think that is way better than the character-generator looking NPCs of almost every game.
Combat is simple AF. There are 150+ enemies in this game, and you can button mash 'em all to death. It is weirdly satisfying, though, because enemies explode like money filled piñatas, and their deaths also sometimes gives you food.
Food is both health regenating and XP boosting, in this game. You don't earn XP directly from monsters, and the only way for upgrading your pair of characters is by eating. You can buy "XP food" from a vendor, though, so there is a direct relationship between gold and XP. (Every monster drops gold, so you'll never be fighting for nothing.)
This game is charming in that "uber PS1" way. It looks like a very good PSP game. You can't rotate the camera, as this game is ancient, but a lot of quality of life features are present (you can warp, skip cutscenes, save whenever). So this really feels like a PSP game, a really simple dungeon crawling experience that doubles up on the charm.
Dungeons are nicer than you would expect. They have cool gimmicks, and I liked a lot of them. Rewards are all significant. They have that tileset-dungeon feel to them, but not in a particularly bad way. They're fine.
So, everytime I saw Zwei I thought that the game, being kind of old and dirt cheap, might be too mediocre. After buying and playing it, I don't believe in this anymore. Zwei is actually a hidden gem and a good game to get for pennies when it goes on sale.
You wake up in the house of kind strangers and find out that the reason why you aren't dead is that this vampire princess named Alween made you semi-vampiric so you could help her challenge the demons who took her castle from her.
The game is structured in the traditional "town -> dungeon" way of RPGs. Towns are great, and you won't be bored to death by what NPCs have to say. They've made a low number of unique NPCs in each town, and I think that is way better than the character-generator looking NPCs of almost every game.
Combat is simple AF. There are 150+ enemies in this game, and you can button mash 'em all to death. It is weirdly satisfying, though, because enemies explode like money filled piñatas, and their deaths also sometimes gives you food.
Food is both health regenating and XP boosting, in this game. You don't earn XP directly from monsters, and the only way for upgrading your pair of characters is by eating. You can buy "XP food" from a vendor, though, so there is a direct relationship between gold and XP. (Every monster drops gold, so you'll never be fighting for nothing.)
This game is charming in that "uber PS1" way. It looks like a very good PSP game. You can't rotate the camera, as this game is ancient, but a lot of quality of life features are present (you can warp, skip cutscenes, save whenever). So this really feels like a PSP game, a really simple dungeon crawling experience that doubles up on the charm.
Dungeons are nicer than you would expect. They have cool gimmicks, and I liked a lot of them. Rewards are all significant. They have that tileset-dungeon feel to them, but not in a particularly bad way. They're fine.
So, everytime I saw Zwei I thought that the game, being kind of old and dirt cheap, might be too mediocre. After buying and playing it, I don't believe in this anymore. Zwei is actually a hidden gem and a good game to get for pennies when it goes on sale.
mid
This game is a much more mechanically sound game than Zwei 1 that's just infinitely less interesting. It's so boring and not in a bad way, but a painfully average one. I was just unengaged with like most things that were going on in both gameplay and story. Music is very good though.
This game is a much more mechanically sound game than Zwei 1 that's just infinitely less interesting. It's so boring and not in a bad way, but a painfully average one. I was just unengaged with like most things that were going on in both gameplay and story. Music is very good though.
Final Judgment: A sloppy "Ys Oath"-like with poor level design and a so-so JRPG story with uninteresting characters and padded out dialogue. Has a few interesting ideas here and there but doesn't add up to much.
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Other Thoughts:
So far, I like the bosses - you can bring food in and heal your way through the fight, but they're more fun if you try to not heal at all. It feels kind of like Ys Oath/6/0, but slightly sloppier? Hitboxes are iffier, the camera is tilted too low. Being able to magic-bullet spam with the girl while dodging reminds me of the fighting style in later Gunvolt games.
Dungeon design is repetitive/mini-map-watching focused. It's hard to get a sense of where you are in the scene, and there haven't been any interesting puzzles. The enemies can sometimes have interesting designs but the game gives you a lot of tools to make most combat encounters trivial.
The dungeons have a grading system around not taking damage, breaking all the pots, and finishing in a certain time. It's... not a very interesting grading system - I don't think the game has enough precision for a 'no damage' achievement to be 'fair'. But I guess it adds a tiny bit of replayability. (The grading system gives you points towards your Hunter Rank - similar to Bracer Rank if you've ever played Trails in the Sky). I would be interested in a low-hit run, but taking zero hits in sometimes 5-10 minute levels is too much!
Setting/story is fun - that mid-2000s tsundere girl/happy go lucky guy pair protagonists vibe. Nothing particularly deep, very light. Very 2000s Falcom, too. Has a bit of Gurumin! to it as well.
I like how the world is compact (well, certainly there will be a 'there's more!' jrpg world reveal, but atm it is compact!). Each time you clear a dungeon the dialogue of all NPCs gets refreshed, which is very Falcom-y.
The UI Widget items were cool, though. Kind of a funny idea... put a pedometer on the UI, or a widget to let you solve math problems, or something that reveals the tricky timing behind critical hits!
There's a weird system to leveling. Enemies drop food, and you can eat food for healing AND EXP in a dungeon. OR, you can try to obtain 10 of a food, and trade it in for a higher-grade food that gives 50% more EXP.
It seems to incentivize grinding or like, staying underleveled near the end of a dungeon. It feels like they wanted to keep leveling limited to after clearing levels, rather than within levels - by making food also heal, you're less likely to waste it all in the middle of a level (as you might need it later to heal.)
I wonder if it was some weird attempt at fixing how in Ys games you just end up overpowering everything by the end. It's hard for me to tell if the food 'works'... because the levels themselves aren't very hard to begin with. So far, I've just ended up saving all my food and trading it in for better food so I can be at a decent level for the boss.
-----
Other Thoughts:
So far, I like the bosses - you can bring food in and heal your way through the fight, but they're more fun if you try to not heal at all. It feels kind of like Ys Oath/6/0, but slightly sloppier? Hitboxes are iffier, the camera is tilted too low. Being able to magic-bullet spam with the girl while dodging reminds me of the fighting style in later Gunvolt games.
Dungeon design is repetitive/mini-map-watching focused. It's hard to get a sense of where you are in the scene, and there haven't been any interesting puzzles. The enemies can sometimes have interesting designs but the game gives you a lot of tools to make most combat encounters trivial.
The dungeons have a grading system around not taking damage, breaking all the pots, and finishing in a certain time. It's... not a very interesting grading system - I don't think the game has enough precision for a 'no damage' achievement to be 'fair'. But I guess it adds a tiny bit of replayability. (The grading system gives you points towards your Hunter Rank - similar to Bracer Rank if you've ever played Trails in the Sky). I would be interested in a low-hit run, but taking zero hits in sometimes 5-10 minute levels is too much!
Setting/story is fun - that mid-2000s tsundere girl/happy go lucky guy pair protagonists vibe. Nothing particularly deep, very light. Very 2000s Falcom, too. Has a bit of Gurumin! to it as well.
I like how the world is compact (well, certainly there will be a 'there's more!' jrpg world reveal, but atm it is compact!). Each time you clear a dungeon the dialogue of all NPCs gets refreshed, which is very Falcom-y.
The UI Widget items were cool, though. Kind of a funny idea... put a pedometer on the UI, or a widget to let you solve math problems, or something that reveals the tricky timing behind critical hits!
There's a weird system to leveling. Enemies drop food, and you can eat food for healing AND EXP in a dungeon. OR, you can try to obtain 10 of a food, and trade it in for a higher-grade food that gives 50% more EXP.
It seems to incentivize grinding or like, staying underleveled near the end of a dungeon. It feels like they wanted to keep leveling limited to after clearing levels, rather than within levels - by making food also heal, you're less likely to waste it all in the middle of a level (as you might need it later to heal.)
I wonder if it was some weird attempt at fixing how in Ys games you just end up overpowering everything by the end. It's hard for me to tell if the food 'works'... because the levels themselves aren't very hard to begin with. So far, I've just ended up saving all my food and trading it in for better food so I can be at a decent level for the boss.
Somewhat repetitive, but manages to do some interesting stuff despite the player character having a very limited set of verbs.
Generally it was very enjoyable when I played through it normally. When I was trying to collect all the treasures though, I quickly became frustrated with how you can't tell what's missing from each level... it even felt like I followed the guide perfectly and still was missing a chest. I'm someone who loves puzzles, but not when I can't tell if I need to redo them again and again or not
Что понравилось?
— Диалоги между основными персонажами. Как и в первой игре, между героями есть динамика, за которой интересно наблюдать. Плюс сами персонажи прописаны достаточно неплохо (не всегда, ну да ладно).
— Боевая система. Она стала удобнее и динамичнее.
— Удобство. Наконец-то нормальный угол камеры, пауза во время выбора предметов или переключения заклинания.
— Общая стилистика. Игра полностью перешла в 3D, появились срежиссированные катсцены с разными ракурсами камеры, поэтому важно было, чтобы модельки смотрелись не уродливо. Думаю, у Nihon Falcom это получилось.
— Боссы. В первой части битва происходила по одному и тому же шаблону: бегаем от босса, обстреливая магией. Во второй части битвы стали гораздо интереснее.
Что не понравилось?
— Подземелья стали скучнее, враги стали жирнее.
— Сюжет. В какой-то момент возникло ощущение, что «сюжетные повороты» тут только ради «сюжетных поворотов» и затягивания игры. Плюс некоторые анимешные шаблоны, которые видно прям издалека (привет, ниндзя Субару…)
— Диалоги между основными персонажами. Как и в первой игре, между героями есть динамика, за которой интересно наблюдать. Плюс сами персонажи прописаны достаточно неплохо (не всегда, ну да ладно).
— Боевая система. Она стала удобнее и динамичнее.
— Удобство. Наконец-то нормальный угол камеры, пауза во время выбора предметов или переключения заклинания.
— Общая стилистика. Игра полностью перешла в 3D, появились срежиссированные катсцены с разными ракурсами камеры, поэтому важно было, чтобы модельки смотрелись не уродливо. Думаю, у Nihon Falcom это получилось.
— Боссы. В первой части битва происходила по одному и тому же шаблону: бегаем от босса, обстреливая магией. Во второй части битвы стали гораздо интереснее.
Что не понравилось?
— Подземелья стали скучнее, враги стали жирнее.
— Сюжет. В какой-то момент возникло ощущение, что «сюжетные повороты» тут только ради «сюжетных поворотов» и затягивания игры. Плюс некоторые анимешные шаблоны, которые видно прям издалека (привет, ниндзя Субару…)
Ein Y's ohne stummen Protagonisten, aber einer Kurzgeschichte, die wirklich nicht interessant ist.
Manche Dialoge sind ganz nett, da die beiden Protagonisten sich gerne mal zanken, aber das Gameplay ist leider wirklich zu fade um hier ne Empfehlung auszusprechen.
Manche Dialoge sind ganz nett, da die beiden Protagonisten sich gerne mal zanken, aber das Gameplay ist leider wirklich zu fade um hier ne Empfehlung auszusprechen.
The story's nothing to write home about but unlike the previous game this one is actually playable which matters a ton. If you just wanna lose yourself in the dungeon crawl, you could definitely do worse than this game. Probably better too, but still this one's not terrible by any means.