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.